Commenter Archive

I think the other element, which is also present in Republicans, is disdain of experts/technocrats.

Brexit voters (like Republican voters that pine for non existing factory jobs) have no clue how large the economic impact of being Europe's financial capital is(*). To them, it was always about Polish plumbers, and when technocrats warned about the economic impact their reaction was either to ignore it, because experts are elites worth only of mockery, besides, because finance is not real, or to welcome the destruction of the financial sector, because it will teach toffs a lesson (plus, finance is not real).

The impact will be dramatic. And you can see it in Boris Johnson agreeing that there is no rush to invoke Article 50 and start the process.

The other funny thing is that, the best case for the UK: being out of the EU but remaining in the European Economic Area, like Norway or Switzerland, they will still have to allow for free movement of people: so the Polish plumbers will stay.

All this pain and yet the main objective of most Brexiters will still be lost.

(*)But you cannot be Europe's financial capital if you are no longer in Europe

Rod's BenOp has the same problems as most of his writing. The tension between the Message and the facts.

One repeated question he never answers is, for instance, what you should do if your child rejects a basic tenet of the BenOp (*)? Do you kick him out, Amish style? do you accommodate him? Do you all move away?

I might even buy the book because I'm curious about all the mental gymnastics to accommodate an intentional community joined only by we don't like gay people around but we also won't beat the hell out of them.

(*)which apparently are reduced to no gay sex and obey established authority, but let's wait for the book next February)

You mean a wily Kurd. He wouldn't like it to be called an Arab

And people that Saladin don't like don't end well.

Stop wondering. You nailed it

In 2012 there were 25,000 annulments in the USA. (Big drop from 72,000 in 1990 - big upswing from 338 in 1968)

There must be a hell of a lot of great reasons going around.

The reality in the ground is that before the 1920s the possibility of a civil divorce, even if allowed by law (divorce was quite restricted) had such social and economic costs that almost no one had the, again, social and financial, resources to face it.

So for the 99.99% divorce as not really available. It was indeed forever.

The statistics I found show that over 95% of annulment processes that go full board in the USA are granted. There's arguments that the percentage of those granted over those introduced is about 80%, but the difference is rejections via procedural matters and people desisting of the process (some, but not the majority, remaining married). The USA is an outlier but world average is about 85%. (I've rounded the numbers since I've seen different sources).

If 90% plus of the processes that are completed result in finding that there was indeed a defect in the consent, and that the marriage never really took place, why would you think that the case is not the same everywhere, even in the case those that never get divorced.

That's all the Pope said. If 90% of the people that ask find themselves never married, what's the status of the ones thT never ask? Aren't they likely in the same situation?

The fact that Will and Clancy love each other very much and don't want to ever be apart doesn't mean that, when they got married, their consent wasnt vitiated by the pesky idea, in the back of their minds, that, if Will/Clancy somehow, against all odds, is really a jerk, I could get a divorce.

So Will, I'm sorry, if you ever though divorce was a possibility, you are probably not married. Take it with the Pope.

On a separate, but related issue

During the last conclave, all conservative Catholics and allies (Dreher) were prayng for the Holy Ghost to bring forth a Pope from the Third World, which they expected would be very much a social conservative and anti gay (see the Anglican and Catholic churches in Africa) At that time I made some comments in Rod's blog warning that social conservatives were completely ignorant about the Third world Church. They might be above average antigay when the subject comes up (probably more in Africa, less so in Lat Am), but the subject really doesn't come up that much back home. What they all are is very much socioeconomic liberals, concerned about poverty, inequality, anti authoritarianism and almost Bernie supporters (if Bernie ever got to run in Africa). They would hate every minute of a Third World Pope, because he would care little for the pelvic issues and a lot about Social Justice. An African Pope might have been slightly more anti gay, but definitely not an inch less pro Social Justice

God answered their prayers, and delivered both what they wanted AND what they needed, even if they didn't really want what they needed.

I don't give Ross much credence, but I read Rod Dreher regularly.

My conclusion. which reaffirms itself every day, is that Social Conservatives main concern is the Message.

In their minds they have this pretty Message (in the case of Rod mainly dealing with sexual purity of every imaginable type), and their only concern is to spread the Message, and fight those that doubt the Message.

You can see Rod (because he is a cultured, intelligent, person that would be a proud Leftist if it wasn't for the Message) wrestle internally with homosexuality. His mind starts pushing him to accept that gays and lesbians (and even transgenders) are people deserving of every consideration, and in the last minute he walks back all of that because he has to affirm the Message load and clear: that LGBT people are immoral (*) and nothing can be done about it.

You see similar discussions about issues like sex education. If you teach sex education in schools you are going against the Message that sex should not be engaged into except in certain specific circumstances. Transgenderism. If you allow someone to present as transgender yo are going against the Message that sexual complementarity is the Mandate of God. It's a pity that blacks are disproportionally killed by the police but the cause is of course that black men do not marry black women and stay at home (which would be good btw) and to suggest police violence or institutional racism has anything to do distracts from the Message And so on.

If you ask him what's his proposal to accommodate LGBT people or black people or Muslims (which he claims he wants to do) you hear crickets. Any proposal would go against the message so he is stuck in this strange place.

He claims he's moved by his Christianity (ver 3.0 or later please). But he has developed his own theology about why gay sex (opposition to) is a condensed symbol of Christianity (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/burnt-by-the-sol-gay-rights-christianity-condensed-symbol/ ). In this theology the differences between Christianity, Islam and Judaism, like the nature of Christ, are unimportant, because they all subscribe to the important condensed symbol, that sex outside of a male-female marriage is VERY BAD (the fact that more than 70% of Jewish congregations -including Conservative ones- in the USA accept SSM is unimportant either.

Whenever you read Dreher, or Douthat, or First Things, talking about the Pope, the word Message won't be far. They accuse him of veering off-Message, of muddling the Message, of confusing the Message for the followers. In this particular case, the problem is that the Pope is planting doubts, not about Douthat's particular marriage, but about the Message that Douthat's marriage IS THE REAL THING. That's his big problem with the Pope. That he doesn't follow with the Message

(*) perhaps Eve Tushnet isn't, but the jury is still out there on her - if she only stopped saying she is a chaste lesbian and went for a chaste person that is not currently looking to get married, it will be better

Lily of the Valley, perhaps the best of King of Serials Balzac, includes a scene in which the protagonist enters a room looking for someone, and the room is painstakingly described for two pages. Well, "someone" wasn't there, so he walks out of the room and keeps searching for her somewhere else.

Serials like Balzac's the Human Comedy, or Trollope's Barchester Chronicles, are true soap operas. For decades, we follow the stories of the same characters in different threads (novels) mixing and matching them from protagonists to barely part of the escenerie and back to front and center, without end.

And, being paid by the word, or the page, they padded them with endless description. No need to imagine plot if I can instead describe an empty room.

Were I to write about this commercial, first I would have to ignore all the Asian text and subtext.

I'm not fully ignorant of Asian culture, but my understanding is not deep enough to comment about the scene. For instance, is the dream scene wildly shocking -a taboo breaking behavior- or as an almost acceptable depiction of male bonding taken to an extreme?. Likewise, I'm sure there is important content in the fact that the dreamer is married with a child. Is he fulfilling a Confucian duty of begeting a new generation, or is he in love with his wife and this is just a depiction of attachment to material things? What about the wife? Did she marry with Western style romantic expectations that might be about to be shattered, or, like him, marriage and family are duties owed to past and future generations, against which the inner feelings of wife and husband are of little concern.

Having talked at length about all I wouldn't talk about, looking at the commercial with Western eyes, these are some of my thoughts, starting from the end backwards:

- The punch line is great! To me it was completely unexpected and had me laughing (the lamp commercial on the other hand made me sad). It's quite unforgettable, and makes me want to watch it again which is what any TV ad should aim for.

- We have finally got to the point where we can laugh at a gay(ish) story because it's funny. Twenty years ago people laughed at gays because gays were objects of derision and mocking (*) Ten years ago we couldn't laugh at anything gay because it was a sensitive subject and only bigots would make fun of gays. Brokeback Mountain pathos was the only acceptable emotion. We now are arriving to the point where gay is normal enough that we can all laugh at something that is both gay and funny, not because it's gay, but because it's funny. This is fishing important, and to me it's the most important takeout of the commercial.

- We can talk about gay in Asia. This is also fishing important. Normalizing LGBT is not just a decadent Western European/American West and East coasts thing (and Latin American, social conservatives always seem to ignore how much gay rights have advanced in macho country Latin America). The largest, most populated part of the world is having this discussion. There is debate about gay marriage in China. Taiwan's president might/might not be lesbian but she can talk about gay issues. There is debate in India (still not solved, but the issue is on the fore). I think this is progress.

- Yay bisexuality. You can love your wife and at the same time have a pang at remembering your boyfriend and thinking what might have happened to him and if he is ok and still remembers you. I expect that as homosexuality becomes more normal people will accept that you can have feelings, sexual and romantic, for people your own sex and people of the opposite sex. There will be less pressure to either conform to the straight mold or stay fully homosexual.

- Male bonding. Sometime/somewhere between the late XIX century and the end of WWI, male bonding, which had been a thing for centuries, became a taboo. Was it cause or effect of the distaste/condemnation Victorians had for homosexuality? Was it a consequence of raising the nuclear family as the only valid social arrangement, whereas male bonding was seen as a threat to the duties the man had towards his family (Prohibition's origin is making sure working men did not spend their money with their cronies at the bar getting wasted, but took it to the missus)? In any case, male bonding because associated with homosexual attraction and thus taboo (except in some extremely hyper male contexts like cop partners, where the masculinity of the pair could not be doubted). The unacceptableness of male bonding in XX century society was a great loss. Acceptance of homosexuality is now allowing non sexual-non romantic male-male bonding to also reappear. If male-male love and so are ok, male-male deep friendship is ok too. Progress again.

I think I've covered my thoughts about the commercial. I think there is a lot of food for thought in it, and hope someone will chime in it further.

(*) Wild generalization here, totally inaccurate with respect to a lot of people(**) and probably off by a couple of decades one way or the other. Please nod and move on.

(**) Have you noticed that the number of people that never laughed at gays in those days grows day by day? It's like we are having people born retroactively.

I dare not :-(.

Is the dialogue on the TV movie relevant?

This is worthy of a much longer post

there's not enough +1s in the world to say that I fully support what you said here

I fully agree she is less progressive than Warren who is less progressive than Bernie.

But I would stipulate that Hillary's progressiveness is closer to where most Americans are.

I am probably closer to Warren than to any of the other two, but I'm definitely closer to Hillary than to Bernie.

Not only I don't think Bernie can win, I don't want him to be President. Him vs Cruz? Obviously him. Him vs Trump, probably him, but only because of the Supreme Court appointments. Take that out of the picture and I might give Trump some consideration.

Let it be known that, once you translate this into English, this is a great comment

Perhaps attack is the wrong word. I don't attack them personally. But I really want to fight for critical thinking.

It is reasonable that minorities are worried about the KKK activities in general. It is unreasonable that a lone Klansman is walking alone in a college campus looking for a minority to whip. The possibility is not zero. Suicide by cop exists, and this would be a close second. But it's very unlikely.

Uncritically accepting unreasonable things gives us people that believe a Honolulu paper published a fake birth notice half a century ago as part of a conspiracy to sit s Kenyan baby in the Oval Office a few decades into the future.

I don't criticize people not knowing what a Dominican friar looks like. Monks and friars are extremely rare in the USA. I don't recall seeing one in the street in the 21 years I've lived here. I don't think I've even seen one on TV either.

But to see a KKK-like garb worn by a one random guy in the most uncongenial place for it and not to consider more likely explanations (frat party!! - stay inside; you might get eggs thrown at you, or step on vomit!) is a major failure of critical thinking.

And the widesprrad failure of critical thinking is probably the biggest theat we face in the USA. The one thing that will surely destoy the country.

Attack might be the right word after all.

I just remembered that Shia ayatollahs wear turbans. Bad J_A, no cookie for you.

Hell, yes, let's attack them!

As painful as it is to agree with notme, you have to keep your mind engaged all the time, and have a healthy skepticism about what other people say.

You just mentioned that people confuse Sikhs with Muslims all the time (*). That's because the average American is not a well informed person. They really do not know much about Muslims, Catholic religious orders, geographic distribution of mammals, or much else. So I always factor in the possibility that whoever is talking might be mistaken about an important fact.

Hell, you are an elementary school teacher. How many times a day you explain to a pupil that something he saw is not what he thinks he saw "No, Peter, he was not an astronaut. He's the guy that sprays the grounds for bugs, with a safety mask"

So if I hear about a KKK guy ALONE with a whip, walking in the night wearing the regalia, yes, my first conclusion is that he's coming or going to a costume or a toga party. KKK members don't walk alone leisurely looking for gardens to plant a burning cross. Any true KKK member walking alone to a meeting you have ever seen was carrying his hood in a backpack, to don it when he reaches the group.

I don't know if this is Occam razor or not, but, of all explanations, the one that is more reasonable FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE ACTOR (in this case the alleged Klansman) is the likeliest one. It's unreasonable to assume a lone Klansman in full regalia walking at night through campus looking for trouble. It's an irrational action for a member of a terrorist organization, and therefore it's very likely a mistake of whoever saw him.

There's no excuse to disengage your brain just because someone told you something, even if they truly believe it. Next thing we'll know, Kazzy will believe what politicians say.

(*) except in old movies and cartoons, do people wear turbans outside India and Indonesia? In any case Indian Muslims are Sunni, so a Real Muslim with a turban is likely a Sunni. Jahanman (Hell), 80% of Muslims are Sunni. Almost any non-Iranian Muslim you meet is Sunni (50-50 if he's Iraqui or Quatari)

Yes I do. He's tapping very similar veins of resentment. Essentially any party that has the name of the country or the word National in the name.

If you look at Western European Politics (and I acknowledge I don't follow the Eastern European politics) you can see that the Le Pens of the world are very competitive at (i) a national level; or (II) at a municipal level in places equivalent to the USA rust belt. They get to the second round in presidential elections, or reach the mayoralty of third level places like Frejus or Villiers-Cotterêts.

But conversely, the National Front has only two representatives in the National Assembly, out of 577. They are too dispersed nationally to swing larger constituencies (though in France they have a good presence in rust belt like Picardie).

So, in places without National Elections, like Germany or the UK, the nationalist right doesn't have the mechanism to aggregate all their voters to reach pole position like they do in France or Austria. The UKIP is real and has a lot of support, they got almost 4 million votes in 2015. But Farage cannot even get himself elected MP (they only got one, Clacton, an incumbent Tory that defected to UKIP in 2014).

The mixed system in the USA allows the nationalist right to get their man nominated, while making it very difficult for him to be elected. At the end of the day, they cannot add the votes countrywide.

A more interesting question is how will Trumpism (or the nationalist right) evolve in the USA if it doesn't have the financial backing of the political donors?

The Nationalist Right offers nothing to the donors, while you cannot get elected did catcher without them (*), while at the same time those who found their voice in the Trump campaign will not meekly go back to True Conservativism (TM)

Who and how will become the avatar of the Nationalist Right in the USA is the most interesting political question of today. Cruz would like to, but I doubt he can close the deal. If not Cruz, who?

(*) Trump could ignore (so far) the donors because (a) he's been a household name for decades; (b) the media gave him about one billion (no citation available) in free messaging; and (c) if push came to shove he could self finance for a while. How many billionaires can an Appalachian miner or an Arizona retiree name?

It's a pity he didn't win.

Though I loathed GWB with the passion of a hundred Suns, I wasn't particularly impressed with Kerry, whose middle name could be Elitist if it wasn't already Forbes.

And then he became Secretary of State, and he has amazed me in this role. The way he managed the relationship with Russia in Syria (starting with the disposal of chemical weapons), the Iran nuclear deal, and the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba has been outstanding.

I didn't shed many tears for Kerry himself in 2004. I had little faith in the man at that time I now think the USA is worse off by not having had -nor having in the future- a President John Forbes (aka "Elitist") Kerry.

Last December, when Nate Silver was giving Trump a 1% or so chance to win the nomination, I argued with two very republican coworkers that Trump had the best chance to win. They laughed at my Democratic ignorance.

RCW#1 is a conservative Catholic Kansan that follows the lead of the bishop in political matters (pity that Houston-Galveston is a fairly liberal dioceses) that supported Marco. RCW#2 is a feisty New Jersian (is that a word?) that actually went to school with -and supported- Chris Christie.

They claimed that Republicans will chose a True Conservative (TM) candidate. One that would support the True Conservative (TM) program: Low High Bracket taxes, aggressive foreign policy, Rod Dreher style social conservatism.

My argument was that Trump was tapping the same vein that had brought Ted Cruz to the fore: Otherism. Republican voters couldn't hare less about the True Conservative (TM) program: They just wanted their country (their world) back. A country with no black presidents with funny Muslim names, a country with no gays parading as Army Secretaries,a world where foreigners and women did as they were told, etc. Their country (their world) had been stolen by Others. Well, they will kick the Others in the behind.

With Trump they had all that Cruz could offer, minus the weird Dominionist religion that always lingered in Cruz' background. It was a slam dunk

Republican voters never voted for the True Conservative (TM) program. They had always voted against the Democrats because the Democrats were always in favour of the Other. The actual True Conservative (TM) program always polled very poorly. Finally, here comes a Man that is fully committed to denounce Obama as not American; fully committed against Muslims and Mexicans; blatantly saying the quiet parts out loud. And he's not only attacking the Others like a bull terrier. He's also totally unconcerned about the things Republican voters did not like of the Republican Party: tax cuts for the rich, social conservatism, imperial foreign policy. It's like Christmas came early.

My RCWs laughed at my Democratic-ly skewed analysis. Trump will never be a candidate.

Alas I changed jobs in April. I wish I was still there. I'm an in-your-face-loser winner.

We once had to carry my mother to an emergency cardiologist visit because her blood pressure was over the top and her heart rate was at alarming levels

She was stressed due to several days of watching nonstop some news on TV (irrelevant to the story).

Doctor's orders were to stop caring about TV news. It worked

i meant gentle indeed

You are correct - It's easier to build up plastic from smaller hydrocarbons (gas) than break larger ones to make them. The technology allows for both