Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 26, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Dzień garba” in Polish), Wednesday, June 26, 2024, and National Chocolate Pudding Day. Every time I think of this, I think of Bill Cosby, who used to advertise it on television. And then I think of the legal allegations against him, which eventually put him in jail for three years.  His convictions were eventually overturned, but so far he’s paid $4 million in settlements.

From reddit

It’s also National Canoe Day in Canada, Tropical Cocktails Day, Forgiveness Day, National Coconut Day, International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. International Day in Support of Victims of Torture,World Refrigeration Day, and Ratcatcher’s Day in Hamelin, Germany celebrating the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.  Below is one illustration of the legend on a postcard from 1902. Look at all those rodents following him!  The postcard says “Greetings from Hamilin” with a poem about the ratcatcher (“Rattenfänger”) on the left side:

loki11, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

There’s a Google Doodle today (click to read). It’s the winner of a contest for illustrating “My wish for the next 25 years,” and the winner, Maisie Derlaga, describes her food-oriented answer this way:

“Every Sunday night is filled with chaos, laughter, and the smell of food in my household. The standing invitation goes to any friends and family in the area. As my life grows and changes, my wish for the next 25 years is that this tradition remains a constant.”

Note that “Google” is spelled out in food:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*A “progressive” Squadmember, Rep. Jamaal “Fire Alarm” Bowman, lost the Democratic primary big-time in New York, getting 41.6% of the vote in a field of two (the victor was a centrist Democrat, George Latimer).  I guess Bowman’s public criticism of Israeli military conduct and of “Zionists” didn’t help him, nor did the rescue operation mounted by AOC and other people in the Squad. It was the most expensive House primary race in history, with $25 million spent supporting the candidates.

Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York, one of Congress’s most outspoken progressives, suffered a stinging primary defeat on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, unable to overcome a record-shattering campaign from pro-Israel groups and a slate of self-inflicted blunders.

Mr. Bowman was defeated by George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, in a race that became the year’s ugliest intraparty brawl and the most expensive House primary in history.

It began last fall when Mr. Bowman stepped forward as one of the leading critics of how Israelis were carrying out their war with Hamas. But the contest grew into a broader proxy fight around the future of the Democratic Party, exposing painful fractures over race, class and ideology in a diverse district that includes parts of Westchester County and the Bronx.

Mr. Bowman, the district’s first Black congressman and a committed democratic socialist, never wavered from his calls for a cease-fire in Gaza or left-wing economic priorities. Down in the polls, he repeatedly accused his white opponent of racism and used expletives in denouncing the pro-Israel groups as a “Zionist regime” trying to buy the election.

His positions on the war and economic issues electrified the national progressives, who undertook an 11th-hour rescue mission led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. But they ultimately did little to win over skeptical voters and only emboldened his adversaries.

Does this mark a turning point in support for “progressives”?  I don’t think so: there was a huge organized opposition, including The bad news is that gun-totin’, canoodling Lauren Boebert won the Republican primary in the 4th district of Colorado, also by a big margin: 43.4% of the vote in a field of six candidates. Ceiling Cat help Colorado!

*Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that ultra-Orthodox Jews (“Haredi”) must be drafted like every other Israeli. (From the founding of the country they’ve been exempt from the draft, and many of them also receive govenment stipends so they can study the Torah without having a “real” job.)  Note, though, that Israeli Arabs are still not required to be drafted (though quite a few fight for the IDF), as the government considers it immoral to force Arabs to fight against Arabs. (Don’t ask me about Israeli Arabs who convert to Judaism: yes, they exist, and they can be drafted because they are no longer considered Arabs!).

Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, a decision that threatened to split Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government amid the war in Gaza.

In a unanimous decision, a panel of nine judges held that there was no legal basis for the longstanding military exemption given to ultra-Orthodox religious students. Without a law distinguishing between seminarians and other men of draft age, the court ruled, the country’s mandatory draft laws must similarly apply to the ultra-Orthodox minority.

In a country where military service is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis, both men and women, the exemption for the ultra-Orthodox has long prompted resentment. But anger over the group’s special treatment has grown as the war in Gaza has stretched into its ninth month, requiring tens of thousands of reservists to serve multiple tours and costing the lives of hundreds of soldiers.

“These days, in the midst of a difficult war, the burden of that inequality is more acute than ever — and requires the advancement of a sustainable solution to this issue,” the Supreme Court said in its ruling.

The decision threatened to widen one of the most painful divisions in Israeli society, pitting secular Jews against the ultra-Orthodox, who say their religious study is as essential and protective as the military. It also exposed the fault lines in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, which depends on the support of two ultra-Orthodox parties that oppose their constituents’ conscription, even as other Israelis are killed and wounded in Gaza.

Israeli courts have ruled against the exemption before, including Supreme Court decisions in 1998, 2012 and 2017. The top court has repeatedly warned the government that to continue the policy, it must be written into law — though that law would be subject to constitutional challenges, as previous ones were — while also giving the government time to hammer our [sic] legislation.

Although Israel is a Jewish state in one sense, it’s also a secular state, with no religion being given more rights than another.  I approve of the Supreme Court’s decision, though Malgorzata agrees that it’s the right decision but that it came at the wrong time, since it would take ages to train a ton of Haredi for war. (I say “draft ’em all” and stop the stipends). There were similar rulings in earlier years, but they’ve never taken effect because of governmental change or temporizing.  But in a country that’s secular in this way, there’s no moral principle that would mandate giving one subclass of Jews exemptions to a policy that holds for all other Israelis (save Arabs).

*I was certain that Lauren Boebert, a Republican congresswoman who’s as dumb as a rock (and canoodles too much in public!) would not be re-elected after moving to another district in Colorado when she faced defeat in her present one. Now, however, much to much chagrin, she’s favored—and by a large margin. What is going on in Colorado? (See above, she won, much to my dismay):

After a tough year of embarrassing scandals, Rep. Lauren Boebert’s jump to a new district may pay off Tuesday.

Six months after the bombastic two-term Colorado Republican announced she would move her political fortunes from the state’s Western Slope to its Eastern plains and suburbs, Boebert has eclipsed her Republican primary rivals in fundraising and was 35 points ahead of the nearest one in a recent poll.

“The math just isn’t there for anybody to beat her,” Colorado GOP political consultant Dick Wadhams said as the primary approached.

Coloradans, who primarily vote by mail, have been casting their ballots for weeks. If Boebert is successful in securing the nomination Tuesday, she will be comfortably positioned for the general election in a district with a 13-point Republican advantage, according to the Cook Political Report.

Boebert, who first became known on the political stage for her vocal support of gun rights, has gained national recognition over the years for such attention-grabbing antics such as tweeting “Today is 1776” on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and booing President Biden during the State of the Union. Friday, she received the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, who called her a “trusted America First Fighter.”

In Douglas County, a wealthy suburb of Denver that makes up nearly half of the district’s Republicans, several voters pulling in to cast or drop off a ballot next to the bleachers of the local fairgrounds were supportive of Boebert.

“I know she’s controversial, but she has a lot of spirit and she’ll fight for what’s important,” said Charlie VanderLinden, a Castle Rock retiree who said national issues including immigration and crime led her to vote for Boebert. VanderLinden was one of the few people who chose to vote in person, because she said she didn’t trust her mail-in ballot.

It must be Trump’s endorsement that gave her such a boost. And this goes to prove not just the power of Trump’s endorsement, but the fact that no matter how thick you are, you can always find a place in Congress.

*An apparently pro-Hamas mob is reported to have roamed the streets of Los Angeles, attacking and beating Jews, and spraying people with bear spray. The news is mostly on Jewish and right-wing sites:

Some people are calling this a “pogrom”. It was at best a low-level riot against Jews by Islamic terrorist supporters and Antifa with the complicity of local Los Angeles authorities.

I have an article with more to say about it, but the videos speak for themselves.

The target was Congregation Adas Torah (Congregation of the Bible) but the pro-terror rally spread out to two adjoining synagogues and then the violence spread out past Kosher restaurants, a Jewish school and to nearby residential streets on both sides of Pico Blvd in the Pico Robertson neighborhood where the Hamas rioters freely attacked Jews.

Some Jewish community members stood up to them

The LAPD was slow to intervene and generally ineffective. The failure to once again confine the hate mob to a protest zone allowed the violence to continue escalating.

This was the same thing that had happened at the Museum of Tolerance and in other instances.

Despite the killing of Paul Kessler [see here] at a protest where the sides were not separated, LA authorities continue allowing Hamas supporters free access to their Jewish targets.

And after 8 months at some point that can’t simply be dismissed as incompetence.

Some video of the fracas (there are more at the site).

Note that the protestors are masked, and you can be sure it’s not to prevent covid!

*I’ve been thinking about reading Nellie Bowles’s new book. Some of the reviews haven’t been kind, but it’s selling like hotcakes, I love her snarky but point-on analysis, and, since I read Jonathan Kay’s new review in Quillette of her book and a related one, a review called  “The roots of progressive radicalism: Nellie Bowles vs. Musa al-Gharbi“, I’ve decided to read both. A few paragraphs of Kay’s review:

The question of why so many left-wing cultural, academic, activist, and political institutions are now being upended in this way is addressed in two widely discussed new books. Taken together, they offer a fuller explanation than either writer—one a journalist, the other an academic—is professionally equipped to provide.

The first, Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History,is by Nellie Bowles, a former New York Times reporter who quit the Grey Lady in 2021 to join her wife Bari Weiss (also formerly of the Times) in creating The Free Press.

Several progressive writers who’ve reviewed Bowles’ book have chastised her for airing the left’s dirty laundry in a way that, they claim, makes too much of fringe actors and minor controversies; suggesting that she’s (at best) a sensationalist, or (much worse) a faux-progressive literary quisling working at the behest of nefarious conservatives. But these accusations ring hollow. The violent disruptions that have unfolded since 2020 in Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and other urban areas left deep civic scars that are still being healed. The retreat from street policing that took place following the BLM protests has been linked to a surge in homicides. The campaign to decriminalise hard drugs has caused many downtown areas to become open drug markets strewn with human misery and waste. Demands to include trans-identified men in women’s sports have made a complete mockery of many female competitions. Bowles didn’t pluck any of this from her imagination.

Bowles’ often-sardonic style may not bring smiles to the faces of progressive readers who’ve been taught to equate satire with social-justice blasphemy (I found her book hilarious, for what it’s worth). But it’s an exercise in denial to suggest that the ugly spasms of extremism she’s witnessed and chronicled aren’t newsworthy, or that this phenomenon isn’t contaminating the overall progressive brand.

And al-Gharbi’s book:

Like Nellie Bowles, Musa al-Gharbi is a young American liberal dedicated to the task of understanding the illiberal tendencies that now dominate much of the progressive landscape. But he comes to the project from a very different background, which explains why he’s produced a very different book.

Ironically, however, al-Gharbi’s outsider status in elite academic circles turned out to be a major intellectual asset, as it made him alive to the hypocrisies and false pieties of campus life that his more privileged colleagues took for granted. In time, the sociology of elites became one of his research specialties—as well as the subject of his new book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite.

At the centre of al-Gharbi’s analysis is Bourdieu’s idea of symbolic capital, which the French scholar defined as the “various forms of distinction and prestige acquired through cultural recognition.” The accumulation of symbolic capital may not be important to working-class individuals who are primarily occupied with feeding their families and keeping a roof over their heads. But it is often fiercely sought after by wealthy knowledge workers who, operating at a “distance from necessity,” seek to cultivate the “long-lasting dispositions of mind and body” associated with high status (“virtue signalling,” in the modern idiom). Hashtags comprise a form of social capital. As do exotic pronouns, ideologically correct corporate mission statements, and those oft-satirised 2021-era lawn signs whose lettering began with the words, In This House, We Believe.

Symbolic capital seems like a synonym for “virtue flaunting”, epitomized by those “In this house we believe” signs, which, thankfully, are disappearing. al-Ghabri’s book seems more scholarly, but, if truth be told, I’ll read Nellie’s first, as I need a good laugh.

*And from the ever-reliable AP “oddities” section, a heartwarming rescue of a baby moose, followed by its return to its mom (video below):

An Alaska man and two police officers rescued a baby moose from what police described as “a sure demise” after it fell into a lake and got stuck in a narrow space between a floatplane and a dock.

Spencer Warren, who works for the outdoor tourism company Destination Alaska Adventure Co., had arrived at work about 6:30 a.m. Friday to prepare a floatplane for the day’s trip when he heard what he thought was an odd-sounding bird.

He quickly spotted the moose calf stuck between the floats of the plane and the dock at Beluga Lake in Homer, a Kenai Peninsula community about 220 miles (350 kilometers) south of Anchorage. The floats replace the wheels on a plane, allowing it to take off and land on water.

He immediately thought, “Oh, man, where is mama? I know she’s nearby,” before spotting the worried mother about 4 feet (1.2 meters) away with another calf. Mother moose can be dangerously protective of their calves — a photographer was killed by a mama moose protecting her young just last month in Homer.

The baby moose tried to get out of the lake, but couldn’t get its footing on the top of the metal float with its hooves. Its wary mother was keeping Warren, the would-be rescuer, from getting too close as it struggled.

“It’s like an ice rink for the moose and its hooves,” Warren said of Friday’s rescue. “So he just kept slipping and slipping and could not get up.”

Warren checked in with his boss, who called Homer police.

One officer eventually positioned his police cruiser between the mama moose and the floatplane to allow another officer and Warren to rescue the calf, Homer Police Lt. Ryan Browning told The Associated Press.

. . . . and the happy ending is shown below:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, there’s a surfeit of raspberries, which Andrzej and Malgorzata eat with yogurt. Hili inspects the fruit daily, looking for rodents:

Hili: They are ripening unevenly.
A: But thanks to that we have fresh raspberries every day.
Hili: Pity that mice do not like them.
In Polish:
Hili: Nierówno dojrzewają.
Ja: Ale dzięki temu mamy codziennie świeże maliny.
Hili: Szkoda, że myszy ich nie lubią.

*******************

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy (“Cultural” of course should be “Musical”).  I can’t vouch for the truth of this list:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Science Humor. I’m pretty sure I did this. . .

From Masih. Much to her approbation, Canada has listed Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, and the government urges Canadians to leave Iran or not go there. The video includes news reports and an interview with Masih.

From Jiten: a long duck joke (you’ll have to expand the tweet):

I retweeted this, a video that shows that if you’re biased enough you’ll believe bull-goose loony stories:

From Simon; Seinfeld strikes back at pro-Palestinian hecklers during his comedy act, and he does quite well:

From Malcolm. It’s videos like this that make me realize that I’ll never understand cats.

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb, still on hols (back tomorrow). First, a lovely view of the surface of Mars from the Curiosity Rover. Be sure to turn the sound up to hear the Martian winds:

I don’t know what’s going on here, or where it is, but capybaras are surely the world’s chillest mammals:

33 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Thanks for Mars video, Matthew…maybe a mashup of video from Curiosity and audio from Perseverance and eerily damn impressive. Almost makes ME believe the created in a Hollywood studio conspiracy rumors. We have surely progressed smartly from the 1950’s when as a kid, the best photos of Mars I could see were an orange blob with some darkish smudges. Yes Prof Pinker: Enlightenment Now!
    There is a nice three-minute narrated Mars video put together a few years ago pointing out some geology and hydrology features of the landscape at

    1. I’ve found a few accounts in eXtwitter that post plain, simple latest-greatest photos of Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter … maybe they’re enhanced, but these new craft record astonishing details.

      1. Thanks Bryan and just a note for non-STEM readers that “enhanced” does not mean “making stuff up”, but rather uses formal statistical techniques to account for apparent data measurement errors and missing data. A very simple example would be you make four measurements of your cars speed at half second intervals and the measurements are 25mph, 26mph, 35mph, and 28mph. Knowing the acceleration characteristics of your car, you would “enhance” the data record by changing the 35mph reading to 27mph recognizing the 35mph sensor reading as faulty. Obviously there is a lot more to it, but this is the idea and is sometimes called data filtering, but more correctly data smoothing after the fact. With photos, depending on resolution, one expects colors, light, shadows to change fairly continuously across boundaries.

        1. I assume Jerry will list it, but in case he doesn’t, June 30 is “Asteroid Day,” which is said to be recognized by the United Nations. The Planetary Society notes, “Let’s not end up like the dinosaurs!”

          For details about in-person events in Luxembourg and virtual events related to Asteroid Day, see details here:
          https://x.com/exploreplanets/status/1805955927247315028

  2. “Tinfoil keffiyeh” is great. Might be a good band name. Like for a progressive klezmer band.

  3. I think I have an idea why a cat would climb into the hangers and then sit there. I have noticed my cat will go just sit in a space in the bathroom next to the sink and calmly take in the view from there. He is an indoor only cat and even though I have placed shelves all over to increase the area and interest, it is still a small apartment that doesn’t change. If you were stuck in a small place you too might try silly things to relieve the monotony.

    1. Everything in the house is intended to be used for cats in whatever way suits them.
      It actually looks rather comfortable. But maybe next time, will try knocking them off of the rack.

  4. Although Israel is a Jewish state in one sense, it’s also a secular state, with no religion being given more rights than another.

    But the Haredi receive government stipends don’t they? Can other religion institutions get government money? I am not criticizing Israel favouring a religion; but I’m wondering if a particular religion is favoured with government money, even if people of all religions have the same rights as defined elsewhere.

    1. As I said in the post (did you read it), Haredi do get stipends, and that’s favoritism that needs to be stopped. Both the exemption of Haredi and the stipends they are given violate the secularism of Israel, and both were struck down by the Supreme Court. As they should have been!

      1. Thanks. I did read ‘many of them also receive government stipends so they can study the Torah’, and that’s what prompted the question. But you say ‘Both the exemption of Haredi and the stipends they are given violate the secularism of Israel’. Thanks again!

        1. When they carved out that Haredi exception in the 1950s the Haredi were a rounding error in Israel’s population. A few thousand tops.
          In subsequent decades their demography (HUNDREDS of babies each – or so it seems) has expanded the matter/problem.
          The system was well designed but didn’t account for differing birth rates.

          That exact error – in the 1930s – was the ultimate downfall of Lebanon also – with different groups obviously (Muslims v Christians)

          D.A.
          NYC

          1. Different birth rates, and different generation spans (age at first birth) are leading to the relative growth of less “modern” population segments everywhere. Differential fertility is how Albanians became a majority in Kosovo, it’s a major reason of hostility against the Rohingya (they have enormous population growth and the Burmese have little), and the relatively few Palestinian and Mhallami refugees who came to Germany decades ago have had a lot of children, and are now a conspicuous social group hard to ignore, to cite but a few examples.
            I grew up with a deeply ingrained instinct that it is Nazi to think about such things, or acknowledge them. But they are real and have consequences.

  5. It perplexes me that the left tolerates violence against Jews and, in many cases, left-leaning media turn a blind eye. Were white-power neo-Nazis the perpetrators, CNN, WaPo, etc., would cover it extensively, with Democrats vociferously condemning it.

    What troubles me is my long-held belief that violence against any group is unequivocally wrong, regardless of the culprit. Historically, Democrats have championed this stance, highlighting injustice and hatred, while Republicans often seemed indifferent. Now, I see Republicans calling out these issues, while Democrats seem silent. My principles remain unchanged, yet it appears the Republicans align more closely with them on this matter.

    Are the non-right media concerned about alienating young Democratic voters in the year of “The Most Important Election of our Lifetime”TM? Or has the perception shifted so that Jews are now seen as part of the oppressor class, making violence against them seemingly acceptable?

    Thanks for the duck joke – I’ll be retelling that one!

    Boebert’s a joke too, just not a funny one.

    1. I was afraid something like this would happen after the New York DA dropped charges against most of the Columbia trespassers and vandals on the grounds that it would be impossible to prove that any individual was individually guilty of any individual illegal act. The lesson here is that the anonymity of a mob, especially a mob wearing masks, allows its members to get away with just about anything. So we can expect masked mobs to commit just about anything, restrained only by the angels of their better nature suppressing the scent of blood and armpit sweat in their nostrils, or by the fear of extra-legal lethal retaliation.

      1. It’s to be expected that the violence would escalate when nothing is being done time after time when situations occur. At one time I thought elected officials and media feared for their safety after the Charlie Hebdo attack, but now I suspect it has to do more with votes and looking like they’re supporting decolonization or whatever it is.
        Extremism is extremism regardless of who’s doing it, and should be condemned and prosecuted.

        The usage of masks has been a nice outcome of COVID, hasn’t it. It became a virtue signal after the immediacy of the dangers of COVID passed to show that the wearer valued safetyism and superior to those uneducated neanderthals rabble who didn’t wear a mask everywhere, and now it signals that you’re part of the cool protesting crowd. I’d guess if BLM protests were to occur today that you’d see all of them in masks.

  6. The Grammy thing is a total gut punch.

    … orrr… maybe… it’s a good thing. I have 10 of those 14 groups on my standard playlist – might need to make it a full 14.

    #MusicWithCreativity

    1. Nobody who cares much about music as art cares much about Grammys.
      Grammys are mostly about music as business.

  7. As a native (upstate) New Yorker, living in diaspora since 1978, I am glad to see Bowman defeated. We’ll see if his defeat has any effect on the rest of the squad. Since Latimer benefited from donations from AIPAC, the squad may even double down. It can go either way. We’ll see.

    1. I love that the NYT article referred to the 16th as “a diverse district that includes parts of Westchester County and the Bronx.” That’s the correct meaning of diverse as “containing variety” instead of diverse as “containing mostly minorities”.

      Also wrt the Colorado 4th district the phrase in my house is “dumber than a box of rocks.”

      1. Despite the win by attention-whore Boebert, there is some good news in the Colorado primary votes. The State GOP has been taken over by a completely bat-shit crazy wing of MAGA extremists, and nearly all of the candidates that they endorsed/supported lost to more traditional Republicans. I believe that Boebert was carried by name recognition and a huge amount of cash. She played the odds by fleeing to a solidly Republican district because she most likely would have been defeated this fall by a Democrat

  9. Regarding “We believe…” lawn signs that Jerry is happy to notice disappearing…

    Soon after Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine, I put up a flag of Ukraine next to a U.S. flag. I’d never before put up a U.S. flag, as I always knew that I lived in the United States. But having it next to a Ukrainian flag was my way of saying “I am an American supporting Ukraine’s fight for democracy and survival.” (My father was Ukrainian, and my wife & I do regularly donate money to help Ukraine.)

    I also added a flag with an image of Earth from space. This flag signals a variety of things for me, including the simple reminder that Earth is, indeed, a planet in space, and that we need to take care of Earth’s environment. It is also a reminder to people that the political divisions we see on maps are “artificial” and not “natural” to the planet.

    (I also support space exploration and humanity’s expansion beyond Earth, but that’s a separate issue.)

    When it became clear that we’d be having a repeat contest between Biden & Trump, I had a small sign that I’d made for the previous presidential election re-made into a flag, which I hung next to the other three.

    I consider these four flags as both signals of my support as well as reminders to people who are prone to forget or ignore certain things. Do these four flags also mean that I’m virtue signaling or “virtue flaunting” my “symbolic capital”?…

    (I’ve always been a working-class guy, and I didn’t finish college.)

    Here’s a link to a photo of the four flags:
    https://x.com/Jon_Alexandr/status/1781753030171582465

    1. Flags are cool.
      We believe signs have always been so horribly cringe.

      D.A.
      NYC

    2. Jon, when I was still serving in the military I moved into a professor-rich neighborhood in a wonderful far-left town. This was when the Iraq war was in full swing and Americans had not yet settled into the numbing sameness of it all. I was on leave for the first two or three weeks that I lived there, wearing civilian clothes the entire time, silently noting with both amusement and some agreement the handful of “War is not the Answer” yard signs that dotted my new neighborhood. (I was privately opposed to the Iraq War, but bumper stickers and yard signs eliminate all nuance. Before I tell you that “war is not the answer,” then I would first like to know the question.) Within a week or so of my wearing a uniform each day, then the yard signs started to proliferate like mushrooms that emerge soon after a rain. And the bombs kept falling. And men, women, and children continued to die.

      May I ask, where do you park your cars?! I appreciate you mentioning your Ukrainian heritage and financial support of those in need. That flags a core reason why we should be careful in our ridicule of others: not everything is an empty political gesture divorced from meaningful connections. But I remain of the conviction that there are two types of Americans: those who post yard signs (and bumper stickers) and those who do not. There are fine people on both sides.

      As to the “In This House We Believe” signs, it is doubly amusing that it, no doubt, escaped the displayers that there is an ancient formulation of the phrase: “but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). One can also find a “What We Believe” list on most evangelical church websites. Just another point of congruity between the practices of the “progressives” and any number of religious faiths.

      1. Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Doug, though I don’t know for sure what you mean with some of them. Are you saying that bumper stickers and yard signs have no effect?

        “… men, women, and children continued to die” after bumper stickers proliferated with statements like “War is not the answer.” I’m pretty sure they have an effect, but the net effect is not clear. (Might be a good research topic.) I’ve been “anti-war” for my whole life in the sense that I would prefer political solutions, but I understand that war is not always avoidable, and it’s sometimes necessary.

        Regarding the “believe” part, I can certainly understand the theological connection with current so-called “progressive” positions. Personally, I don’t believe in belief — not in gods, nor in science. I think using scientific methods is the best and most effective way to explore the universe, but I understand that the results of scientific exploration are always provisional, to a lesser or greater degree. Science is not relevant because I “believe” in it.

        Regarding cars — we park two of them in our driveway, usually with their rear bumpers visible from the street. One car is now electric, and the other is an older ICE car. Both have “tasteful” bumper stickers. I’ve been more concerned about the ICE car getting its catalytic converter stolen than about any kind of political vandalism.

        We live in an older and generally “liberal” suburban Bay Area neighborhood, though there are significant “conservative” exceptions. (A nearby neighbor names his WiFi network “Let’s Go Brandon,” and another one has three small painted metal Christian crosses on his corner property, with short homilies about his god.)

        But I think the possibility of political vandalism will go up significantly just before and after the election, whomever is declared the winner. And if Trump somehow gets to be president again… Well, that is indeed a very dark cloud on the horizon. We might need to become less politically visible.

        1. “Are you saying that bumper stickers and yard signs have no effect?”

          Will you be persuaded by your neighbor’s crosses? By the taunting WiFi label? While it is an empirical question, my hunch is that these types of things have little effect, if effect means to influence outcomes in a desired direction. That said, I always welcome the exercise of one’s voice in a democracy, no matter how insignificant the voice might seem. War will not end. The nuclear weapons will likely never disappear. Hate will never cease. Money will retain outsized influence in politics and life. Evil men will prosper. It doesn’t matter. To speak freely is its own advantage.

          1. I will certainly not be persuaded by my neighbor’s crosses, but someone on the fence about religious belief might be tipped into one or the other direction.

            Given the potential for a cascading effect, I never think my expressed opinion will have no effect. I think that position is too close to nihilism for my tastes. And though it’s unlikely, there’s always a chance that I might find myself at the fulcrum of significant change — even if I don’t recognize it in the moment.

            The only thing I’m pretty sure about is that things will never be perfect. And I’m fine with that.

  10. Never thought I’d say this but — even with her public hi-jinx and gun totin’ ignorance… I’d take a Bobert for each and every member of the Squad.

    Their latest defeat, that of Fire Alarm fool, just north of me made me happy.
    Next is AOC and her Instagramable squeaky pitched voice and show-off stupidity.

    Then – most importantly – Tlab.

    D.A.
    NYC

  11. I see a dead cat if the cat should get suspended by the neck in the angle of one of the coat-hangers 🙁

  12. Not only have I tried to move an object using The Force, but after seeing the movie “Scanners” when I was a kid I tried to make people’s head explode using my mind.

    Hangers Kitteh needs to audition for Sarah Silverman’s show Stupid Pet Tricks.

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