Welcome to Sunday, April 20, 2025 and it’s EASTERN. Here is a Jewish joke and some memes for you, both from Now That’s Wild:
h/t: Matthew:
He is risen.
— Paul Bronks (@slendersherbet.bsky.social) 2025-04-20T08:52:43.438Z
This is the best Easter post of them all (again, h/t Matthew):
I may have found the connection between Christ and the Easter bunny
— Laura Martínez 🥑 (@miblogestublog.bsky.social) 2025-04-19T14:09:52.419Z
Happy Easter!
— Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) 2025-04-20T08:54:09.212Z
A joke I tell every Easter:
Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this before (and if you’ve read this site consistently, you have). I love a good Jewish joke, and this is an excellent one for Easter. It comes from the site Southern Jewish Humor, which gets the story from Eli N. Evans, who wrote The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South. Evans said he searched for the best example he could find of Southern Jewish humor.
He told the story of a Jewish storekeeper in a small town who was approached by the Christian elders to show solidarity for their Easter holiday.
Mr. Goldberg was chagrined but when Easter came, after sunrise services on a nearby hilltop, the mayor, all the churchgoers, and the leading families in the city gathered in the town square in front of his store. The store had a new sign but it was draped with a parachute.
After an introduction from the mayor, at the appointed hour, the owner pulled the rope and there it was revealed in all its wonder for all to see: “Christ Has Risen, but Goldberg’s prices remain the same.”
It’s also Chinese Language Day, Lima Bean Respect Day (no, thank you), National Baked Ham with Pineapple Day, National Pineapple Upside-down Cake Day (one of my faves), National Cheddar Fries Day, and National Cold Brew Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 20 Wikipedia page.
I’m still busy writing, but we should be back to normal by Monday or Tuesday.
Da Nooz:
*The biggest news for Americans is something I’d hoped for: the Supreme Court curbing Trump’s hubris when he ignores lower courts’ rulings against palpably unconstitutional actions. Now it’s happened: the Supremes have put a “pause” on deportation of Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act:
The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration early Saturday from deporting another group of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members under the expansive powers of a rarely invoked wartime law.
“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the court said in a brief, unsigned order that gave no reasoning, as is typical in emergency cases.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented. The White House did not issue any immediate response.
More than 50 Venezuelans were scheduled to be flown out of the country — presumably to El Salvador — from an immigration detention center in Anson, Texas, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. The American Civil Liberties Union in recent days had already secured court orders barring similar deportations under the law, the Alien Enemies Act, in other places including New York, Denver and Brownsville, Texas.
The situation in Anson was urgent enough that A.C.L.U. lawyers mounted challenges in three different courts within five hours on Friday.
The White House had better obey THIS court, because if it doesn’t there will be a constitutional crisis. The Supreme court determines what the law is, and once that’s done, the Executive Branch has no choice but to obey it. If Trump flouts the Court this time, I don’t know what’s going to happen, especially because Trump controls the military. He would surely be in contempt, but then what happens?
*More from the Wall Street Journal:
Venezuelan men in the government’s custody have been transferred from across the country to the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas, in recent days and had been told they were at imminent risk of being deported using the wartime act, according to the ACLU and written declarations by several of the men’s attorneys.
The government hasn’t made clear how much time the men have to contest their deportations, lawyers said. In court documents, the ACLU said some were told they are being sent to El Salvador. The Homeland Security Department, which is carrying out the deportations, declined to answer questions about what a spokeswoman described as “ongoing counter terrorism operations.”
The expulsion of hundreds of migrants without hearings sparked legal battles that have gone to the Supreme Court twice in less than a month. The justices in a narrow ruling confirmed individuals designated as alien enemies are entitled to notice of pending removal from the country and an opportunity to challenge their deportations before a federal judge in the district where they had been detained.
In response to the Supreme Court ruling, individuals designated as alien enemies who are still held in U.S. custody have filed challenges in several states, and judges in those cases issued temporary blocks on categorical removals under the Alien Enemies Act.
Hearings are set for next week in several cases. The cases argue the government still hasn’t implemented a system of notice that would allow those slated for deportation to seek a court’s intervention in time.
“Saying to people, here’s your notice and we’re going to deport you immediately, do what you need to do. That is not proper due process,” said Michelle Brane, the executive director of Together and Free, an immigrant advocacy organization. “I don’t think that’s what any court means when they say give people a reasonable amount of time.”
The DHS spokeswoman said the agency was “complying with the Supreme Court’s ruling.
You have to give the ACLU a hand for this, as it’s been filing objections to deportation in many states to prevent the government from court-shopping, and it won this one. We don’t yet know how the court will rule, but at least, unless Trump is even more insane than I think, the snatch-and-grab-and-deport tactics of the Administration will have to stop for a while as the government cools its jets.
*The worst of the deportations attempts, in my view, concerns Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was snatched up by masked ICE-men and spirited away to Louisiana for nothing other than writing a pro-Palestinian op-ed in the student newspaper (you can read it here). This can’t come close to anything warranting detention, and yet it happened. What’s worse, though she was kidnapped by the government in Massachusetts near Tufts, they flew her to Louisiana, hoping that a conservative Southern judge would approve her being taken to some place like El Salvador. Now, however, although she’s still in detention, she’ll be held in Vermont:
Ozturk, a Turkish national, was in the United States on a student visa, which was revoked without her knowledge on March 21.
She is among the many university students and teachers who are not U.S. citizens to have visas revoked and deportation proceedings initiated overpro-Palestinian statements or participation in pro-Palestinian protests. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month that the administration has revoked hundreds of such visas.
The State Department declined to comment on the judge’s order, citing ongoing litigation.
Critics have accused the Trump administration of transporting students and others with deportation cases to facilities in Louisiana and Texas that fall within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans, widely considered the nation’s most conservative.
According to court documents, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that Ozturk was transferred to Louisiana because there were no available beds in New England detention facilities. It added that detainees are “routinely” transferred out of state because of “operational necessity and considerations.”
That is a big fat lie!
Ozturk’s application challenging her detention was filed in Massachusetts and transferred to Vermont by a U.S. district judge in Massachusetts, who denied a government request to have the case transferred to Louisiana.
No deportations without a hearing and, ultimately, a Supreme Court ruling that such deportations are constitutional!
*Even though Trump has called off for now a U.S. attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Israel is reported to still be making its own preparations for such an attack.
Israel has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months despite US President Donald Trump telling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States was for now unwilling to support such a move, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Israeli officials have vowed to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and Netanyahu has insisted that any negotiation with Iran must lead to the complete dismantling of its nuclear program.
US and Iranian negotiators were holding a second round of preliminary nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday.
Over the past months, Israel has proposed to the Trump administration a series of options to attack Iran’s facilities, including some with late spring and summer timelines, the sources said.
The plans include a mix of airstrikes and commando operations that vary in severity and could set back Tehran’s ability to weaponize its nuclear program by just months or a year or more, the sources said.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Trump told Netanyahu in a White House meeting earlier this month that Washington wanted to prioritize diplomatic talks with Tehran and that he was unwilling to support a strike on the country’s nuclear facilities in the short term.
The short term is getting shorter, Trump has a ludicrous and unsupported trust in Iranian treaties, and Iran is one of the worst countries in the world to acquire nukes, arguably second to North Korea.
*Although I may unsubscribe from the Free Press (I will if Nellie stops writing TGIF, and the whole site is becoming too MAGA-ish and imbued with respect for faith), I will keep on paying Andrew Sullivan for The Weekly Dish. Yes, he’s a conservative, but a sensible and eloquent one, and I benefit from his lucubrations. His latest column is called “The Bukele playbook Trump is following.” Bukele, of course, is Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador for six years. He’s a bad egg and here’s what Sully has to say:
In some ways, the core character of the Trump administration can be seen in two Oval Office press conferences with two young, informally-dressed foreign leaders. The first was with Volodymyr Zelensky, president of a country invaded and now partly occupied by Russia, who has courageously kept his country free from total Russian domination. The second was with Nayib Bukele, a man who governs in a permanent emergency, has seized 83,000 people with no due process and put them in brutal gulags, strong-armed his Supreme Court to gain an unconstitutional second term, and is one of the worst human rights violators in Latin America.
So it’s obvious which one Trump and Vance prefer, isn’t it? They humiliated Zelensky while lavishing Bukele with encomiums for his collaboration in providing an extra-territorial, extra-judicial, concentration camp for whomever in America Trump wants to grab off the street, bundle into an airplane, and get Stephen Miller to call a terrorist. What’s not to like?
But the intense bromance between Trump and this populist dictator is rooted in more than the convenience of cheap gulags. The more you examine Bukele’s rise, tactics, and politics, the more you see that it offers not just an insight into what Trump has already done, but is a playbook for what Trump wants to do in the future.
. . . As president, Bukele bars journalists he dislikes from press conferences and directly communicates via social media. He has a domination complex: according to one of his former aides, Bukele “is explosive. He doesn’t listen, nor is he tolerant. If he meets with you, he’s not asking for your opinion. He just wants you to do what he says.”
He even staged his own January 6, a year before Trump’s. When the legislature in February 2020 balked at a further request for money to fight crime, Bukele assembled a mob of supporters outside the parliament building, rallied cops and military officers, and denounced legislators for any delay: “Let’s see if the Assembly is on the side of the people, or if they just talk nonsense on TV.”
Then he did what Trump didn’t have the nerve for. The mob yelling outside, Bukele led the armed soldiers into the legislature, sat in the equivalent of the Speaker’s chair, and proclaimed: “I think it’s very clear who is in control of the situation.” A year later, a tamed legislature removed the magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber and the attorney general, so that Bukele could find a way to get a second consecutive term — explicitly barred by the constitution. The Steve Bannon Project avant la lettre.
, , , , And Bukele’s amazing record on homicides is only impressive if you ignore the fact that of course police states can reduce crime dramatically, if you don’t care about distinguishing the innocent from the guilty. There is not much crime in North Korea last time I checked (another dictatorship Trump adores). Currently, El Salvador has an incarceration rate of 1,659 per 100,000 of the total population — #1 in the entire world. Second is Cuba, with less than half that: 794 per 100,000. That’s the kind of country Trump loves. European democracies? Nothing but sneering contempt.
My view is that this week was a turning point. We have seen the true nature of this presidency and its enablers. As they welcomed Bukele into a tarted-up Oval Office, they also scoffed alongside him at the Supreme Court’s order that Trump facilitate the return of a man sent to a torture gulag by an “administrative error.” They laughed and then openly lied, with Bukele saying he had no power to return a “terrorist,” with Trump agreeing, even as just one simple request from Trump would resolve the stand-off.
. . . This is what is in front of our nose. The extinction-level event I foretold has happened in the last three months. There is only raw power now. And it’s coming for anyone who stands in its way. As Trump’s OMB director, Russell Vought, asks: “Do you know what time it is?” For him and core MAGA, what he means by that — and has always meant by that — is that we are now in a post-liberal order, and the Constitution is no longer in effect.
Only Trump. Now and always.
You can see why I like to read Sullivan; he’s miles better than what’s in The Free Press. Now I happen to agree with him here, but of course we disagree on many matters, most notably religion (Sully is a semi-pious Catholic). But Sullivan, though a Republican, is a centrist one, and I still hope against hope that he’ll become a centrist Democrat. It hardly matters these days, though; remember that he voted for Harris.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili wants a lion cub. Malgorzata explains: “Hili adores baby lions (she has seen videos of them) and she wants one to play with. She knows she will not get one but she always asks even though she knows the answer.”
Hili: Can you buy me a baby lion?Andrzej: No.Hili: Always the same answer.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy możesz mi kupić małego lwa?Ja: Nie.Hili: Zawsze to samo.
And a lovely photo of Baby Kulka:
*******************
From Stacy:
From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy; a tongue surrogate for extreme ailurophiles:
From The Grammar Police:
Masih’s still quiet so, keeping on the pro-woman thread, we have a post from J. K. Rowling. Go have a look at the thread. Nearly all of them are trans-identified males:
The pictures in this thread really do paint a thousand words about the male-centric movement to which large sections of the media continue to pander. ⬇️ https://t.co/u1HGGLTfy7
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 19, 2025
From Richard Dawkins on the UK Supreme Court decision (see also here):
https://t.co/nRMfPPyP4q
Supreme Court rules that a woman is legally defined as . . . a woman. Congratulations.
And “The concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man”. Yes, the science was settled in the Precambrian. Nice that the law has finally caught up.— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) April 16, 2025
From Malcolm, a diva kitten:
STAAAAWP !! pic.twitter.com/RS66tPSY3v
— Posts Of Cats (@PostsOfCats) April 11, 2025
Two from my feeds. First, a nice man; but what is that mammal?
the internet was made for videos like this pic.twitter.com/N34U7Q5K6r
— kira 👾 (@kirawontmiss) April 18, 2025
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:
A French Jewish boy was murdered by cyanide gas upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was five.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-20T09:23:52.731Z
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. This first one is scary:
A video showed a doctor with measles treating kids. RFK Jr later praised him as an ‘extraordinary’ healer.My @apnews.com story with comment from @unbiasedscipod.bsky.social @craigspencer.bsky.social @pauloffit.bsky.social –>
— Michelle R. Smith (@mrsmithap.bsky.social) 2025-04-18T20:31:48.433Z
Hares can jump BIGLY and also have SUPERFETATION:
The European brown hare is the only mammal with confirmed 'SUPERFETATION': multiple fetuses at different developmental stages, showing they're getting pregnant while ALREADY pregnant, which is separate from the more common phenomenon, multiple pregnancies in the same cycle, 'superfecundation'.
— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2025-04-18T20:08:09.180Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY”
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions. -Robert Lynd, writer (20 Apr 1879-1949)
I don’t know which particular species, but the mammal is one of the marmots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot
I suggest the Bobak Marmot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobak_marmot
That’s what I was going to guess.
I wish the man wasn’t promoting the feeding of wildlife in wild areas. The habitat where marmots live (alpine regions) is wild by definition unless they’re in Switzerland. Habituating them to human food is not kind unless you plan to stick around all year above tree line and feed them what they come to crave. Larger animals become dangerous once they associate humans with food and have to be shot to keep them from eating tourists. That’s why it is illegal to feed wildlife in national parks. Really, please don’t. This is self-gratification, not kindness. Stick to city parks if you must feed rodents.
It should be the Himalayan marmot. The algorithms seem to like them these days as I have seen many of them as suggestions on different pages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayan_marmot
Apropos policing language, I think track vs. tract is a matter for the lexicography police, not the grammar police.
There is also “accuracy” instead of “accurate” which falls within the “jurisdiction” of the grammar police.
There are some punctuation issues with the lens care box.
I did not notice the UTI box issue! Oi!
Dawkins’s “the science was settled in the Precambrian” is a good line.
Agreed. That one got my attention, too!
The Biden Administration willfully chose not to enforce existing immigration law. As a result, millions poured over the border. Now, the same officials who presided over the “overwhelming” of our immigration system invoke due process when Trump tries to expedite removal. It would take several decades to process the flood of people that Biden intentionally allowed to enter. Those in the former administration knew this, even as they effectively left the border open. Whether by negligence or design (I lean strongly toward the latter), the administration created a dynamic in which enforcement all but ceased, while legal and bureaucratic bottlenecks guaranteed that most entrants would remain indefinitely.
I understand the due process concerns. But the Democrats knew that due process was impossible at this scale—and they exploited that fact. The question is “Why?” Is it moralism—“No people are illegal”? Is it economic—an influx of exploitable, low-wage labor? Is it demographic—a long-term bet on amnesty leading to electoral advantage? And why do we see similar patterns across left-leaning parties in Europe, even as social cohesion frays and public frustration grows?
For decades, Republicans winked at illegal migration as it was source of cheap labour. The conservative WSJ had an official editorial board position of “open borders.”
In those same decades Democrats opposed illegal migration as it undercut union labour, who were solidly Dem.
Then at some point for unclear (to me) reasons the Dems seemed to stop caring. Perhaps the decline of unions?
Trump was the first Republican who was more accurately a populist and tightened the border somewhat in his first term.
Biden’s crazy open border policy was definitely crazy and I don’t what the motives were. I suspect it was simply a reaction to Trump. Plus the decline of unions.
Biden’s policy let in millions, with unmanageable numbers arriving. Big opposition developed and it helped elect Trump who’s now going wild in response to Biden.
But even Democrats don’t object to simple deportation. But Trump has added an extra piece: he’s sending some of them not to their home countries but to a brutal prison in El Salvador. He claims they’re gang members but most have not had a day in court before being snatched up and sent to El Salvador.
The Dems do not think anyone should be imprisoned without due process, even illegal migrants.
Frau Katze, the reason the Dems changed their tune on low-skilled immigration is because they gradually stopped being the party of the working class. It is the working class that pays the price for low-skilled immigration while the upper classes reap the benefits (being able to hire service workers at low wages – child care, lawn care, etc.). Imagine someone would propose open borders for foreign medical doctors. For instance, Medicare could pay medicare benficiaries to go to Mexico or Thailand for expensive medical procedures. American doctors would be all up in arms against such a policy (since it would reduce demand for their services) and the Dems would oppose it to – even though it is equivalent to open borders for doctors (to letting lots of medical doctors immigrate to the US, and thereby flooding the labor market for doctors).
Note hat this explanation is not specific for the US. It applies to all advanced countries where formerly leftist parties stopped to represent mainly working-class interests (in favor of now representing mainly the interest of the college-educated middle and upper classes). Denmark, for instance, is an exception. It has one of the toughest immigration regimes, by choice – supported by the Danish Social Democratic Party.
David Leonhardt: In an Age of Right-Wing Populism, Why Are Denmark’s Liberals Winning? New York Times, Feb 24, 2025
Around the world, progressive parties have come to see tight immigration restrictions as unnecessary, even cruel. What if they’re actually the only way for progressivism to flourish?
https://archive.ph/YMo0S
On the shift of formerly working class parties mostly abondening the working class:
Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano and Thomas Piketty: How politics became a contest dominated by two kinds of elite. The Guardian, Aug 5, 2021 [it’s free online]
Studying hundreds of elections, we found that political parties increasingly cater to only the well educated and the rich
Educated voters’ leftward shift is surprisingly old and international. The Economist, May 29th 2021
A new paper by Thomas Piketty makes the rise of right-wing populism look like a historical inevitability
https://archive.ph/WERjf
The source of the data presented by The Economist news magazine is this article:
Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano & Thomas Piketty: Brahmin Left versus Merchant Right. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 137(1), 2022, 1-48
Abstract
Herbert P. Kitschelt and Philipp Rehm: Polarity Reversal: The Socioeconomic Reconfiguration of Partisan Support in Knowledge Societies. Politics & Society, December 2023, 51(4)
Matt Grossmann & David A. Hopkins: Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2024
Ruy Teixeira & John B. Judis: Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes. Henry Holt & Co., New York, 2023
Thanks for all the links. I’ll check them out.
Yep it now Trump appealing to the working class.
Big change.
Thanks for these great links and such thoughtful, well-cited comments. Denmark is a fascinating exception. Both the books you cited are available in my public library. Much appreciated.
Deportations are not the problem, the problem is lack of due process when you are deporting people to a gulag with little chance to ever get out if you are falsely accused, or when your due process is violated because court orders are violated, etc. These are quite different things of course. No one would be talking about due process even if we were simply removing illegal aliens to their country of origin. That’s legal. Now there are multiple reports of people taken to El Salvador who have been falsely accused (not Garcia mind you) and 2 reports of US citizens detained by ICE for 2 and 10 days under serious threat of deportation.
While I share concerns about due process, your response nicely sidesteps the main issues I raise—namely, the Biden administration’s willful failure to enforce immigration laws, creating a backlog of millions of cases that effectively makes mass deportation impossible in the face of rigorous due process claims. It does so in exactly the way my post predicted a left-leaning argument would—focusing on specific examples of due process abuses without addressing either the broader context or the motives I questioned.
So what? Whining about the previous administration’s deeds that make it harder for the new administration is such a cliche, my auto suggestion gave me “administration” after “whining about the previous” without any letters typed.
The complaint about the administrative nightmare is also weak given that the requirements for due process are lower when you deport to a non-prison destination. Trump chose to deport straight to prison. Of course the bar is higher in this case. Whining about the impossibility to clear the higher bar for so many people is just a deflection.
Yes, and engaging in dismissive ad hominem rather than with the substance of the critique is your own very high bar, I take it. It remains that Biden cynically exploited the procedural constraints of due process and the sheer scale of the border crossings to dare any future Administration to try to correct his willful refusal to enforce immigration law. (This violation of his oath and duty is separate from Trump’s abuses.) You say the bar is lower for due process depending on where one is being sent? Perhaps this is a misunderstanding on my part: I would very much like to see where this distinction is made in our laws.
To Doug – You’re right about Biden. You don’t think that Peter addressed some of the reasons he (Biden) may have willingly allowed it?
Yes, Debi, Peter often supplements the discussions nicely.
I was an early and long time subscriber to Andrew Sullivan. I valued his heterodox views and willingness to reassess them. Great food for thought. I had a few of my dissents published.
I watched as he slowly came around to supporting Obama, and his religious perspective sounding more Buddhist than Catholic. His thought process as he reevaluated his prior understandings was very interesting to follow.
I stopped my subscription a couple of years ago when almost everything became about Trans and Woke. I didn’t necessary disagree with some of his posts, but it became repetitive and strident. I still read the email excerpts and may resubscribe to hear some of the interviews.
Sullivan: ” . . . two young, informally-dressed foreign leaders . . . .”
Does Sullivan have “a thing” about leaders’ sartorial choices, especially a tie? Were Bukele the apotheosis of Democratic Ideals would Sullivan still raise an eyebrow at his attire?
I’m tempted to research his writing to see if he’s similarly held forth on, e.g., leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, or those of Africa and Southern Asia when they have visited the White House.
Did Chou Enlai meet Sullivan’s sartorial requirements when he formally received Nixon in China?
Sullivan brought up the issue of what the foreign leaders wore, because Trump and some of his supporters had recently criticized Zelensky for not wearing a suit while visiting Trump in the White House (saying that this indicated a lack of respect on Zelensky’s part).
The court orders to pause deportations directly challenge the Trump administration. Since Trump is such a contrarian—and has so much animus for existing norms and institutions—violating those orders will be a great temptation. Will he be able to resist? And indeed, what will happen if he continues his deportation spree? Criminal contempt? So what? This will be interesting. Is it unprecedented for a president to disobey a Supreme Court order?
Abraham Lincoln defied the Supreme Court in the case Ex parte Merryman
Temporarily, until he got Congress to approve it. AIUI.
Temporarily was a matter of several months. Actually, it was just Judge Taney acting on his own authority. The Supreme Court did not make a decision in this case. A better example, is President Andrew Jackson who defied the Supreme Court in the matter of Worcester vs. Georgia.
Bukele and Trump are symptoms of a deep decline in the US and more generally the West. This goes way beyond crime. China builds dams/roads/railroads. The US and the West enforce PC. Does a civilization that lets men pretend to be women, so that they can cheat, really have a future? Like it or not, but Bukele has freed El Salvador from gang control. The murder rate in El Salvador has fallen by 95% just since Bukele took office. Bukele enjoys a 91% approval rating. Quotes from Time “After decades of violence, fear, and extortion, citizens can move freely in former gang-controlled “red zones,” lounge in parks, and go out at night.” and “For now, Bukele’s support remains unshakable among ordinary Salvadorans, including many who have family members in prison. Anyone who did not live through the terror of life under the gangs will never understand how much things have changed, says Alvaro Rodriguez, a 39-year-old taxi driver. “Thanks to Bukele, the most dangerous thing here are these pigeons,” he says, gesturing at a plaza in downtown San Salvador that citizens used to have to pay gang members to enter. “
I’m mixed on Bukele, as an attorney I’m pretty much opposed to politicians pushing the boundaries of the spirit and letter of the law.
That said… I often think about the implications of having a murder rate of 100 per 100,000 (in the US I think ours is around 6, Europe is 3-4).
At (former, before Bukele) that rate nothing in your society works – it takes up the entire head space of your population and ruins your economy. Getting one’s head around that amazing murder rate and what it does to individuals and society should be the starting point in this analysis. It was number one on earth including countries at war.
Even good politicians in un-wrecked countries like ours stretch things for much less important reasons.
As I say, I’m conflicted, and his helping Trump lately is terrible, but the above points are things we Americans have no experience of and often don’t consider.
D.A.
NYC
Long ago, I had the opportunity (or perhaps misfortune) to read numerous articles about R. Duterte in the U.S. media. Almost all articles are followed by reader comments. With only a few exceptions, a certain pattern was obvious. American commenters couldn’t stand him. Filipino commenters supported him. He was the mayor of a big city (Davos) in the Phillippines for 20 years. He has lots of administrative experience. He was hardly an unknown quantity, when he ran for the presidency. He is not a figure of the right by any standard. His stated hero was Hugo Chavez (now deceased) of Venezuela.
He won because the people of the Philippines were disgusted by elite misrule.
Frank Y and I were evidently writing pretty much the same thing at the exact same time. I swear we’re not teaming up: just that great minds think alike! 🙂
Cheers Frank!
D.A.
NYC
Before Bukele was Duterte. Before Duterte were the Chinese Opium Wars. The story of the Opium Wars reflects badly on the British, the Americans (to a lesser extent), China, etc. Gladstone (a scoundrel in many respects) is one of the rare heroes of this story. My standard comment on this is “If the price of drugs is Mao, then the price is too high”.
I wish I could say the reaction in Canada to the UK Supreme Court ruling was closer to what Richard Dawkins reports, and not this:
This is question asked at Question Period in the British Columbia provincial legislature, a regular event in Parliaments where Opposition Members ask questions of Government Cabinet Ministers. In this exchange, an independent (ex-Conservative) MLA asks the Premier a question. He defers the response to his Deputy Premier in the Socialist Government, who is also the provincial Attorney-General. It’s not pretty:
https://x.com/taraarmstrongbc/status/1912945153800835509?s=61&t=6SKmH-167eaxdn6cPeYMwQ
Notes:
1) The unnamed doctor MLA Armstrong refers to in her follow-up is a real person. I won’t name him, because she doesn’t, but I have verified that the events she relates are documented in media reports of his own words on tape from 2021, including his statement about coaching children and parents to make fake claims of suicidal thinking to accelerate access to care in our rationed system. He is a psychologist, not a medical doctor, so the “transitions” of children are “only” psychological manipulations of plastic juvenile brains, not medical or surgical treatments. But yes the doctor did speak of trans-ing a two-and-a-half year old child.
2) The assertions by MLA Armstrong, even if dated, are radioactive for the BC socialist government. The psychologist is quoted as boasting that half of the 1000 children he has transitioned are wards of the BC child welfare system, which employs him part-time. Most of these wards in BC (as in the rest of Canada) are indigenous children apprehended from unfit or abusive parents, so any claim that these children are being victimized by trans-advocacy instead of being lovingly guided to discover their true Two-Spirit selves must be swatted vigorously as a threat to the entire Reconciliaton moral panic currently consuming Canada. There is anger in the A-G’s remarks, but real fear, too, that MLA Armstrong brought this up.
3) This could be me projecting, but I find it chilling that the Premier delegated the A-G to answer the question. She accuses MLA Armstrong of uttering hate. Hate speech is a criminal offence in Canada, with jail time. Under Canadian law, to lay a charge of hate speech (as with a handful of other offences), the police must obtain the consent of none other than the A-G of the province where the hate speech is alleged to have occurred.
4) The Politburo-style applause and desk-thumping from the Government benches is part of the theatre. No MLA wants the whips to see him being first to stop applauding. What is disappointing is how the Conservative Opposition was silent after MLA Armstrong’s questions. (Granted she is no longer a member of the Conservative Party so they probably do hate her more than the Government does.) But the form is that their Members applaud the Opposition questions as vigorously –“holding the Government to account” — as the Government Members applaud the responses. Yet crickets.
Leslie, the finding of the BC Nurses Association against Amy Hamm is basically Canada’s Maya Forstater case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forstater_v_Centre_for_Global_Development_Europe
Obviously, sanity will only be restored in Canada if the liberals, the NPD, etc., lose elections and conservatives get into power.
For Amy Hamm to go all the way to the Supreme Court might also help.
Yes, Amy Hamm’s case is unbelievable – I hope that she appeals, as Maya did after the judge in her original tribunal inexplicably ruled that the belief that sex is binary, immutable, and sometimes important was not WORIAD (worthy of respect in a democracy). In Maya’s case her initial loss proved to be hugely beneficial because the decision in her favour by the Employment Appeals Tribunal set a precedent in law, which a victory at the lower level wouldn’t have done.
Sorry, Peter. My response to you got tagged under my own comment, surely my mistake.
Peter, the Courts in Canada are highly deferential to these non-judicial tribunals of the administrative state. They are part of the Executive, not the Judiciary. Judicial review will examine only procedure — “Did the Tribunal follow its own rules?” — not fundamental fairness or even truth questions. Essentially, if the College of Nurses says that it is professional misconduct for a nurse to say “transwomen are men”, even if not in respect of a specific patient she was caring for, that is not a matter for the Courts to second-guess. Without a successful judicial review, there is no avenue to the Supreme Court of Canada. Appeal Courts will simply refuse to hear the appeal, allowing the College decision to stand.
Human Rights Tribunals, which hear complaints alleging discrimination by members of the general public, are similarly immune to judicial oversight except on procedure.
As you say, the solution is legislative, which means politics. The Courts aren’t going to help us out here. Indeed, the Courts are likely to rule that any legislative remedies passed by Parliament abridge the Constitutional Rights of transgender people! Alberta’s law against gender mutilation in minors is being challenged as we speak.