…they say there are lies, damned lies & statistics…& the statistics…statistically speaking…aren’t great

One of the less important falsehoods Donald Trump offered during his career in politics was that he represented a “silent majority.” That he was the voice not only of a politically subdued or dormant set of Americans — which was valid — but that this group constituted most of the country. This belief was unadulterated by his having lost the popular vote in 2016 and is presumably intact today, despite losing the 2020 vote by an even wider margin.

It is a belief shared by many of his supporters that is rooted not in the realities of circumstance but in a fundamental and largely unfalsifiable assumption about the extent to which the rest of the country agrees with them. If you declare polling to be inaccurate and invalid, there’s no reason not to assume that your own views and those of your friends (since most Americans don’t know many people on the other side of the political divide) represent the majority.

The problem is that there’s not a lot of evidence that it’s true. Yes, President Biden’s approval ratings are dire, but that’s a reflection more of Biden than Trump (as Trump’s low approval ratings were a reflection of him). Democrats are expected to lose control of the House and Senate in November, but it’s hard to extricate that from Biden’s soft political position. If Republicans retake the Senate, it would also be unusual if the Republican senators in the 118th Congress had received more votes than their Democratic colleagues: It’s only happened once since 1994. Which, of course, ties back to Trump’s 2016 win, one driven not by popular support but structural advantages.

…I mean…we know this…& it’s not like it’s just the US or anything…but you could call it an example of sorts

It’s useful to reevaluate all of this now because of a trend that’s emerged since Democrats took control of the legislative and executive branches last year. The political right has engaged in a series of cultural fights that are reminiscent of the push by the left in years prior, except instead of focusing on elevating issues of how racism is embedded in political and legal systems, the focus has been on how elevating those issues and the acceptance of same-sex relationships has run amok. Last year’s excoriations of “critical race theory” — a term intentionally overinflated to apply to anything race-related in the public discourse — have been set aside in favor of lamentations about “grooming,” an even more obviously dishonest presentation that casts anti-LGBTQ rhetoric as a defense of children.

“Set aside,” isn’t quite right, of course. It’s more akin to how omicron replaced delta in the country’s coronavirus infections: the latter was more viral, more effective at spreading and potentially more damaging to the political left. You don’t have to take my word for it. One of the primary promoters of both lines of argument told the New York Times explicitly that the “reservoir of sentiment on the sexuality issue is deeper and more explosive than the sentiment on the race issues.” Making it more useful.
[…]
As Matt Yglesias notes, Trump tried to effect the same sort of punitive use of governmental power as president, to little outcry. A president whose victory was even more tenuous than DeSantis’s was eager to try to use the power of the White House for political purposes, both against private companies and, infamously, against the foreign states.

In large part this is because the political right often finds itself unable to win cultural fights on cultural terms. The outcry against Disney has included repeated insistences that the company would wither into nothing from the sheer weight of conservative opprobrium; it seems to be doing okay so far. Similar threats against other companies like Apple have also been glancing blows. Where the right does often have power is in state governments. So it applies that power.

Were Biden and the Democratic House and Senate to try to explicitly punish a company for expressing opposition to their political agenda, the right would justifiably be furious. If the tables turn, there’s no reason to think that they would be. Meaning that there would be little opposition to seeing how far that use of governmental power could be extended.

After all, it’s in service to what the self-identified majority wants.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/25/right-embraces-an-unexpected-political-weapon-governmental-power/

…now as it happens I don’t have any specific statistics to hand…but…anecdotally…I’d say that in approximately 100% of cases there’s a distinct difference between who we are, who we think we are & who others take us to be

Let’s make it personal: Am I, as a new columnist for The Times, allowed to weigh in on anything other than a narrow sliver of Gen X white woman concerns?

Not according to many of those who wish to regulate our culture — docents of academia, school curriculum dictators, aspiring Gen Z storytellers and, increasingly, establishment gatekeepers in Hollywood, book publishing and the arts. It’s the ultimate litmus test: Only those whose “lived experience” matches the story are qualified to tell the tale.

So what is this vaunted “lived experience”? You may recognize it by its longstanding name, “personal experience,” or less excitingly, “experience.” But “lived experience,” with its earthy suggestion of authority, says to other people: Unless you have walked in my shoes, you have no business telling my story.
[…]
This is one point of view, and as with most points of view, some of it is valid. Clearly those who have lived through something — whether it’s a tsunami or a lifetime of racial discrimination — have a story to tell. Their perspective is distinct and it’s valuable.

But it is, crucially, only one perspective. And to suggest that only those whose identities match those of the people in a story — whether it’s the race of a showrunner or the sex of the author of a book under review — is a miserly take on the human experience.
[…]
The outsider’s take, whether it comes from a journalist, historian, writer or director, can offer its own equally valid perspective. There is almost never just one side to a story. Or even just two. Think about the great art that would be lost if we loyally carried out this rigid identitarian mandate. If a man can’t write about a woman, then Tolstoy doesn’t get to conjure Anna Karenina.

Privileging only those voices with a stake in a story carries its own risks. Though you gain something through “lived experience,” you lose something as well. You may find it harder to maintain a critical distance, which can be just as useful as experiential proximity. You may become blinded to ideas that contradict your own or subconsciously de-emphasize them. You may have an agenda. A person who tells the story of her own family might, for example, glorify a flawed father and neglect to mention a delinquent brother-in-law.
[…]
Moreover, authenticity of voice is only one criterion by which to judge art. A creator may represent the identity of some characters, but unless a story’s cast is remarkably homogeneous, that person can’t authentically represent all of them. Furthermore, authenticity of voice in a novel, for example, doesn’t guarantee quality of prose, storytelling, pacing, dialogue or other literary merits. Good writing, a strong performance and a great story all are feats of the imagination.
[…]
Taken to its logical conclusion, the belief that “lived experience” trumps all other considerations would lead to a world in which we would create stories only about people like ourselves, in stories to be illustrated by people who looked like ourselves, to be reviewed and read only by people who resembled ourselves. If we all wrote only from our personal experience, our films, performances and literature would be reduced to memoir and transcription.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/opinion/lived-experience-empathy-culture.html

…I might…for example…not buy everything else that article says…though I think the parts quoted above are pretty hard to argue with…but on the other hand I could maybe argue that it misses the point…or at least it seems that way to me…because the logic of the suggestion that you can’t speak to a thing that lies outside your personal experience strikes me as being founded on a rejection of the concept of empathy…& I’d argue that’s a fundamentally dangerous thing to do…more so if it’s not even done consciously…but then, I’d argue we need more of that shit…so you might say I’m biased

Americans are worrying about their gas prices. Germans are turning down their heating. Peru has seen violent protests — and a violent crackdown on them — over rising fuel costs. Nigeria’s national energy grid recently collapsed. And that’s just this spring. Focused on the future, the United Nations Intergovernmental Planet on Climate Change warned in a report on April 4 that too much investment is going into fossil fuels and too little into the energy transition that could prevent a devastating increase in global temperatures.
[…]
Vladimir Putin has escalated this crisis. His invasion of Ukraine has pushed up prices and forced Europe — until now the largest importer of Russian natural gas — to begin an attempt to end its longstanding dependence on Russian gas. But Mr. Putin didn’t cause this crisis alone. For nearly a year before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, supply struggled to meet demand, causing prices to surge. For the best part of a decade, the American shale boom met the world’s rising energy needs, but in 2020 shale oil output slumped and the rate of growth of shale gas fell.

President Biden’s hope that he could focus his presidency on the climate, not fixing the world’s oil supply, shattered. Unable to resurrect a nuclear deal with Iran that would have restored Iranian oil to world markets, Mr. Biden began last year to ask other producers to increase their output. His pressure was to no avail. Meanwhile, China’s demand for gas imports grew by 20 percent over 2021, helping push European gas prices up nearly sixfold between March and December.
[…]
The parallels with the 1970s are obvious. The oil shock in the wake of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, which involved the world’s rising oil producer, Saudi Arabia, was extremely disruptive economically and geopolitically. That first shock was followed in 1978-79 by the revolution in Iran and Iraq’s invasion of Iran, plunging the two oil producers into a long war.

Then, one geopolitical era ­— with the United States as the world’s largest oil producer and Britain as (when Washington let it act) the military guarantor of Western energy interests in the Middle East — unraveled. As the Arab states seized control of production and prices from the seven big Anglo-American companies that had controlled oil in the Middle East for decades, Western economies stagnated under the inflationary pressure, supercharging protests, strikes and electoral realignments across Western democracies.

What lies ahead promises to be more disorderly — and ultimately transformative — than the events of the 1970s. This is, indeed, a bigger disruption. During the geopolitical upheaval of the 1970s, the physical supply of oil from the world’s reserves was never the issue. Now, with Asian energy demand vastly higher than it was, it is. And demand for gas and coal may well also exceed worldwide output over the next few years. We appear to have entered a time when countries will have to compete for the world’s remaining accessible fossil fuels and governments openly choose geopolitical alliances to secure them.

…coincidentally…assuming one believes in coincidences…also a time when it appears imperative that less of this stuff be used…I’d make a joke about diminishing returns…but it doesn’t feel like it’d be funny

It’s not just international politics that are being shaped by the sustainability of present energy consumption. Domestic politics are being shaken up, too.

By damning oil companies that aren’t ramping up production, Mr. Biden has decided to privilege the voters desperate for lower immediate prices over the Democrats who insist the climate crisis should remain the priority. For the European Union, the fact that European consumers are filling Moscow’s war coffers has forced unpalatable ethical issues to the surface. As the prime minister of Italy, Mario Draghi, asked Italians: “Do you prefer peace or the air conditioning on?”
[…]
What does this mean for the most existential geopolitical issue of all — climate change?

Back in 2019, an energy transformation to address the climate crisis appeared on the horizon. Across the world, more new renewable power was added than ever before, and sustainability-minded investors looked to pour capital into green energy innovation. Several Group of 7 governments passed legislation to establish legally binding net-zero targets for 2050.
[…]
Now the momentum has changed again. For the green transition, the renewed public awareness that the supply of hydrocarbons does not take care of itself, even as Western governments promise to curtail their use, is — paradoxically — a step forward. If governments and citizens are serious about transitioning away from fossil fuels and toward greener energy, a necessary transformation that requires nothing less than changing the material basis of modern civilization, then they will have to admit that oil, gas and coal — the energy sources of the past, on which we continue to rely — can’t be taken for granted. Their extraction and use are inseparable from the difficult work of politics. That is evident today. Let’s hope we can remember it in the future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/opinion/oil-gas-energy-prices-russia-ukraine.html

…because it’s never easy to keep things in perspective

It is impossible to know what is inside Mr. Putin’s head, of course. But to judge from his bellicose and impassioned speeches before the invasion and since then, he may believe the conspiracy theories he repeats. Here are five of the most prevalent theories that the president has endorsed, with increasing fervor, over the past decade. Together, they tell a story of a regime disintegrating into a morass of misinformation, paranoia and mendacity, at a terrible cost to Ukraine and the rest of the world.
[…]
In 2007, at his annual national news conference, Mr. Putin was asked a strange question. What did he think about the former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s comment that Russia’s natural riches should be redistributed and controlled by America? Mr. Putin replied that such ideas were shared by “certain politicians” but he didn’t know about the remark.

That’s because it was entirely made up. Journalists at Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a state-owned newspaper, had invented the quote on the grounds that Russian intelligence was able to read Ms. Albright’s mind. For years, there appeared to be no mention of it. Then in 2015, the secretary of the Russian Federation Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, repeated it. He reported serenely that she had said Russia should not control Siberia or its Far East — and that’s why America was involved in Ukraine, where Russia was busy fomenting a conflict in the eastern part of the country. At the time it felt as though Mr. Putin’s colleague had lost the plot.
[…]
NATO is Mr. Putin’s worst nightmare: Its military operations in Serbia, Iraq and Libya have planted the fear that Russia will be the military alliance’s next target. It’s also a convenient boogeyman that animates the anti-Western element of Mr. Putin’s electorate. In his rhetoric, NATO is synonymous with the United States, the military hand of “the collective West” that will suffocate Russia whenever it becomes weak.

So it makes sense that NATO is the subject of some of the regime’s most persistent conspiracy theories, which see the organization’s hand behind popular uprisings around the world. Since 2014, they have focused on Ukraine. Since Ukraine’s Maidan revolution that year, in which Ukrainians forced the ouster of the Russia-friendly Viktor Yanukovych, Mr. Putin and his subordinates propagated the notion that Ukraine was turning into a puppet state under the control of the United States. In a long essay published in July 2021, Mr. Putin gave fullest expression to this theory, claiming that Ukraine was fully controlled by the West and that NATO was militarizing the country.
[…]
NATO and the West menace Russia not just externally. They also cause trouble within. Since at least 2004, Mr. Putin has been suspicious of domestic opposition, fearing a Ukrainian-style revolution. Fortress Russia, forever undermined by foreign enemies, became a feature of Kremlin propaganda. But it was the Maidan revolution that brought about a confluence in the Kremlin’s messaging: Not only were dissidents bringing discord to Russia, but they were also doing so under orders from the West. The aim was to turn Russia into a mess like Ukraine.

In this line of thinking, opposition forces were a fifth column infiltrating the otherwise pure motherland — and it led to the branding of activists, journalists and organizations as foreign agents. Though Mr. Putin could never bring himself to utter the name of his fiercest critic, Alexei Navalny, Mr. Putin stated that Mr. Navalny was a C.I.A. agent whose investigative work used “materials from the U.S. special services.” Even Mr. Navalny’s poisoning in August 2020 was, according to the president, a plot perpetrated to blacken Mr. Putin’s reputation.

The clearing away of domestic opposition — ruthlessly undertaken by the Kremlin in recent years — can now be seen as a prerequisite for the invasion of Ukraine. Since the war began, the last vestiges of independent media have been closed down, and hundreds of thousands of people have fled Russia. Any criticism of the war can land Russians in prison for 15 years and earn them the title of traitor, working nefariously in the service of Russia’s Western enemies. In a sign that the association of dissent with foreign enemies is now complete, Mr. Putin’s supporters have taken to marking the doors of opposition activists.
[…]
By 2020, one-fifth of Russians surveyed said they wanted to “eliminate” lesbian and gay people from Russian society. They were responding to a propaganda campaign, undertaken by state media, claiming that L.G.B.T.Q. rights were an invention of the West, with the potential to shatter Russian social stability. Mr. Putin, unveiling his party’s manifesto ahead of 2021’s parliamentary elections, took things a step further — claiming that when people in the West weren’t trying to outright abolish the concept of gender, they were allowing teachers in schools to decide on a child’s gender, irrespective of parental wishes. It was, he said, a crime against humanity.
[…]
In the second week of the war, regime-friendly bloggers and then top-ranking politicians, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, claimed that Russian intelligence had obtained evidence that America and Ukraine were developing biological weapons — in the form of disease-ridden bats and birds — to spread viruses in Russia. The Ministry of Defense suggested it had unearthed documents that confirmed the collaboration.

To add ballast to the claim, state media repeated a remark made by Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host, that the White House was involved in biowarfare against Russia in Ukraine. There was, of course, no credible evidence for anything of the sort. But the story spread across Russia, and the Kremlin even convened a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss it. After all, Hunter Biden was probably financing it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/opinion/putin-russia-conspiracy-theories.html

…so…to harp on about that rejection of empathy thing I was moaning about earlier…the examples of ukrainians trying to share the experience they’re involuntarily living through with russians who deny it even as audio &/or video evidence is presented to them by friends or relatives literally in the thick of it…that’s pretty stark…but…it sure does seem like a lot of people are living in glass houses when it comes to the narratives they champion…or indeed oppose

As far as we know, neither a new addition to a beloved series on famous Americans titled “Who is Barack Obama?” nor “Muffin Wars,” a book about a kid detective, has harmed any children.

Bullets, however, do measurable harm to kids. And while the pace of gun violence in and around schools is on the rise, one of the most aggressive and effective efforts, led largely by White conservatives, in shaping the American classroom right now is the banning of books. Our nation looks totally insane.
[…]
American schools issued at least 1,310 book bans in the last five months of 2021, including “Who is Barack Obama?” and “Muffin Wars,” according to the Pen America index of school book bans.

During that same period from August to December, roughly 28,170 children were inside a school when bullets were fired, according to The Washington Post database on school shootings.

[…] parents manipulated by politicians inflaming fears for their own gain are targeting books that address race, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation.

Children are watching as parents scream at school board meetings and issue death threats against board members and librarians, and as adults call for books featuring stories about people who look or love like them to be burned. In Idaho, there is a proposal before the state legislature to fine and jail librarians who lend books that are deemed “harmful” to kids under 18.
[…]
“Virginia’s parents have had enough with the government dictating how they should raise their children,” Youngkin wrote earlier this year in an opinion piece in The Washington Post after a victory fueled by an illusion of parental empowerment.

If parents want a say over what their kids read, they need to build relationships with their children that include discussions about what they are reading. Parental involvement is hard work. It is not done by censoring and limiting what everyone has access to.

…if anyone happens to be interested…back in the mid-sixties simone de beauvoir wrote a book called “les belles images” that did a pretty good job exploring the futility of a parent trying to curate their child’s perception of a world in an effort to have them live in what these days would probably be called “a safe space”…&…not coincidentally…what a disservice that might be to a child who inescapably will have to live in a reality in which naive ignorance is no defense…but you know what they say about the style of the times

Youngkin ran a campaign ad using Virginia mom Laura Murphy, who dabbled in book bans a decade ago when “Beloved,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Toni Morrison, gave her high school senior night terrors.

If reading about a historically accurate account of the horrors of slavery gave that Virginia boy nightmares, imagine what is going on with the kids who had to curl up under their desks while gunfire shattered windows and people screamed on Van Ness Street last week.
[…]
The alarming rise in book bans, allegedly in the name of protecting kids, is misplaced energy that ignores real trauma that is a daily part of life for American kids, whether they are hurt by a bullet, scarred by witnessing gun violence, or hiding in a supply closet with a teacher in a lockdown drill, preparing for something that our nation has allowed to become a regular part of life.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/04/25/book-banning-gun-violence/

Many people would look at the spiraling circus and think: This is bad. Low-level, nonpartisan school boards are not where these radioactive political issues should be hashed out. Someone should find a way to reduce the heat on these public servants.

Instead, Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature went the other way: passing a law last fall that allows for partisan school board elections, setting up a system that not only codifies the existing toxicity but also promises to exacerbate it. So much for putting students first.

The overwhelming majority of school board races around the country are nonpartisan. This was the case in Tennessee until Republican lawmakers, during an emergency session called to deal with Covid-related issues, rammed through legislation permitting county parties to hold primary elections to select school board nominees, who can then list their party affiliations on the general election ballots. It was a controversial move, and the opposition included state Democrats, droves of educators and school board officials and even some Republicans.

The law’s supporters insist that partisan contests will give voters a clearer sense of school board candidates and their values and, more broadly, that they will increase involvement and public interest in what are typically low-profile races.

Critics of the new system counter that the law will change the fundamental nature of the position — and not in a good way. Among their biggest fears: To win their party’s primaries, candidates will need to focus more on hot-button issues that appeal to base voters, leading to more and fiercer culture clashes. Campaigns will require more money and more partisan brawling, discouraging many people from running. Those who skip the primaries and run in general elections as independents will be at a disadvantage. (America’s two-party system is not kind to independent candidates at any political level.) And as time goes on, the pool of people who choose to run will be composed less of civic-minded parents than of partisan warriors and careerist politicians.
[…]
Jim Garrett is the chair of the Davidson County Republican Party, which is holding primaries for its candidates running for the Metropolitan Nashville school board. Nashville is among Tennessee’s bluer regions, where Democrats have an electoral edge. Even so, with the new system, he says, more Republicans are running, and they are raising more money. “It looks like the cost of a campaign is going to be about double what it used to be,” he estimates.

The local G.O.P. is also investing more in these races. For the first time, Davidson Republicans are arranging training sessions for school board candidates. These races weren’t a focus in previous elections, says Mr. Garrett. “They are a focus now.”
[…]
So down the partisan rabbit hole Tennessee school boards are being nudged — with other states possibly to follow. Missouri, Arizona, Florida and South Carolina are among the states where lawmakers toyed less successfully with similar legislation this year. Some bills made it farther than others, and the idea is likely to keep popping up. The conservative American Enterprise Institute favors listing school board candidates’ party affiliations on ballots. A collection of conservative leaders has been exploring other ways to bring school board races more into line with other types of elections, according to Politico.

All of which would indeed most likely earn school board campaigns more attention and resources and make candidates easier to ideologically sort. But at what cost to America’s children?

How to Make School Board Culture Wars Even Worse [NYT]

…it’s something of a paradox…not least in terms of that empathy thing…after all…we’ve all been a kid…so you’d think they’d be easier to empathize with…& yet when it comes to considering the future…we generally default to a different standard

The “really” in the title of Vaclav Smil’s newest book, “How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going,” is doing some heavy lifting. Implicit in the renowned energy scientist’s usage is the idea that most of us are uninformed or just plain wrong about the fundamentals of the global economy. He aims to correct that — to recenter materials rather than electronic flows of data as the bedrock of modern life — largely through examining what he calls the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics and ammonia. (The production and use of all four currently requires burning huge amounts of fossil carbon.) Which brings us back to that “really.” In the context of Smil’s book, which will be published May 10, the word is also a rebuke to those calling for rapid decarbonization in order to combat global warming. “I am not talking about what could be done,” says Smil, who is 78 and who counts Bill Gates among his many devotees. “I’m looking at the world as it is.”
[…]
“This promise of inventions — 3-D printing! Houses will be printed! Cars will be printed! Have you seen any printed houses and cars? We live in this world of exaggerated promises and delusional pop science. I’m trying to bring it onto some modest track of reality and common sense. The official goal in the U.S. is complete decarbonization of electricity generation by 2035. That’s Biden’s program: zero-carbon electricity in 2035. The country doesn’t have a national grid! How will you decarbonize and run the country by wind and solar without a national grid? And what will it take to build a national grid in a NIMBY society like the U.S.?”
[…]
That I don’t know, but aren’t there credible pathways to decarbonizing the grid? Mark Jacobson at Stanford has said we have most of the technology we need to produce America’s power renewably and keep the grid secure and stable by 2035. Or what about the example of countries like Norway or Namibia that are producing a vast majority of their energy from renewables? Check the China statistics. The country is adding, every year, gigawatts of new coal-fired power. Have you noticed that the whole world is now trying to get hands on as much natural gas as possible? This world is not yet done with fossil fuels. Germany, after nearly half a trillion dollars, in 20 years they went from getting 84 percent of their primary energy from fossil fuels to 76 percent.[In 2000, Germany began its Energiewende policy, an attempt to decarbonize the country’s primary energy supply. At the time, fossil fuels accounted for nearly 84 percent of that supply. By 2020, that share had decreased by only about 8 percent.] Can you tell me how you’d go from 76 percent fossil to zero by 2030, 2035? I’m sorry, the reality is what it is.

You know Pascal’s wager? Yes, of course.

Couldn’t we think about the problem of decarbonization in similar terms? Like, yes, maybe all the effort to transition to renewables won’t work, but the potential upside is enormous. Why not operate according to that logic? This is the misunderstanding people have: that we’ve been slothful and neglectful and doing nothing. True, we have too many S.U.V.s and build too many big houses and waste too much food. [U.S. food waste has been estimated to total between 30 and 40 percent of our entire food supply.] But at the same time we are constantly transitioning and innovating. We went from coal to oil to natural gas, and then as we were moving into natural gas we moved into nuclear electricity, and we started building lots of large hydro, and they do not emit any carbon dioxide directly. So we’ve been transitioning to lower-carbon sources or noncarbon sources for decades. Moreover, we’ve been making our burning of carbon much more efficient. We are constantly transitioning to more efficient, more effective and less environmentally harmful things.
[…]
Even though we’re constantly improving, we’re also facing an imminent catastrophe in climate change. I wonder if that makes it hard for people to internalize the improvement. This is also making me think of a paper you wrote about the future of natural gas in which you referred to Bill McKibben as America’s “leading climate catastrophist.” [That was in a paper published by a nonprofit arm of the Spain-based natural gas and electricity company Naturgy, in which Smil took aim at the climate activist McKibben’s contention that moving from coal to natural gas was tantamount to breaking “our Oxycontin habit by taking up heroin instead.”] Is he wrong? What is “imminent”? In science you have to be careful with your words. We’ve had these problems ever since we started to burn fossil fuels on a large scale. We haven’t bothered to do anything about it. There is no excuse for that. We could have chosen a different path. But this is not our only imminent and global problem. About one billion people are either undernourished or malnourished. The fact of possible nuclear war these days. Remember what they used to say about Gerald Ford? He can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. This is the problem of society today. We cannot do three things at the same time. So who decides what is imminent?
[…]
For more than 30 years, global warming has been making headlines. We’ve been aware of this for 30 years, on a planetary scale — all these I.P.C.C. meetings. Our emissions have been going up steadily every year. So here’s the question: Why haven’t we done anything? I could give you a list of things we could do but we haven’t done. Why do we keep saying it’s a catastrophic problem but do nothing about it?

Because of systemic and institutional inertia combined with vested interests working against change. But you aren’t suggesting that because we haven’t done enough in the past, then we don’t need to do something in the future? No. I’m just telling you that this is a totally unprecedented problem, and people don’t realize how difficult it will be to deal with. You don’t have to have 200 countries to sign on the dotted line to reduce emissions. But you have to have at least all the big emitters: China, the United States, India, Russia. What are the chances today of Russia, China and the U.S. signing on the dotted line as to the actual reduction of emissions by 2030? Also please notice that the Paris agreement has no legally binding language. In an ideal world, we could cut our emissions if we put our minds into it. [In Smil’s view, that means, as he told me, “doing things on the margins” — i.e., with far greater efficiency and less waste than we do them now.] But the point is it has to be done by all these actors in concert. Are we going to come together and make that global compact to make it work? That’s the question.
[…]
The key to understanding risk — forget about climate change — is very simple. It’s discounting the future. People will eat pork bellies and drink a liter of alcohol every day because the joy of eating pork belly and drinking surpasses the possible bad payoff 30 years down the road. Suppose we start investing like crazy and start bringing down the carbon as rapidly as possible. The first beneficiaries will be people living in the 2070s because of what’s already in the system. The temperature will keep rising even as we are reducing these emissions. So you are asking people now to make quote-unquote sacrifices while the first benefits will accrue to their children and the real benefits will accrue to their grandchildren. You have to redo the basic human wiring in the brain to change this risk analysis and say, I value 2055 or 2060 as much as I value tomorrow. None of us is wired to think that way.
[…]
This is where I become unpalatable to the media because I do not have one message like “everything is getting better.” I see it as checkered. People do sacrifice for our children, take the right steps. But the same people who will buy a solar panel and heat pump will buy an S.U.V. People will stop eating meat, then fly for a vacation in Toscana. We are messy, hard-to-define individuals. We are subject to fashions and whims — this is the beauty of humanity. Most of us are trying to do the right things with climate, but it is difficult when you have to move on the energy front, food front, materials front. People have to realize that this problem is unprecedented because of the numbers — billions of everything — and the pressure of acting rapidly as we never acted before. This doesn’t make it hopeless, but it makes it excruciatingly more difficult.
[…]
Does your understanding of the science around energy and climate change compel you in any particularly political directions? No. I used to live in the westernmost part of the evil empire, what’s now the Czech Republic. They forever turned me off any stupid politics because they politicized everything. So it is now, unfortunately, in the West. Everything’s politics. No it is not! You can be on this side or that side, but the real world works on the basis of natural law and thermodynamics and energy conversions, and the fact is if I want to smelt my steel, I need a certain amount of carbon or hydrogen to do it. The Red Book of Mao or Putin’s speeches or Donald Trump is no help in that. We need less politics to solve our problems. We need to look at the realities of life and to see how we can practically affect them.
[…]
Not today. Maybe tomorrow. Not tomorrow. Again, it’s the scale. You see, you have almost become a victim. It’s inevitable because you are living in it, you are soaked in it, you are in New York City — this pushing people to one side or the other. We don’t need pushing to the sides. What we need is the dull, factually correct and accurate middle. Because only from that middle will come the solutions. Solutions never come from extremes. It’s also irresponsible to state the problem in ways where, when you look closer, it’s not like that. There are these billions of people who want to burn more fossil fuel. There is very little you can do about that. They will burn it unless you give them something different. But who will give them something different? You have to recognize the realities of the world, and the realities of the world tend to be unpleasant, discouraging and depressing.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/25/magazine/vaclav-smil-interview.html

…I know I can empathize with that last part…I’d rather not think of myself as unpleasant or discouraging…but I’m painfully aware that these almost always come across as depressing…it’s hard not to see the pattern

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) last week forcefully denied a New York Times report, based on an upcoming book, that he had told other Republican leaders he would tell President Donald Trump to resign — only to have his denial contradicted by an audio recording to the conversation.
[…]
Now McCarthy is denying the audio says what it says.

How can someone in McCarthy’s position evade the truth like this? Here’s a master class in spin and obfuscation. (A McCarthy spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.)

…because of course they fucking didn’t

First, let’s begin with a transcript of the conversation. It starts with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), asking a question about the House passing a resolution calling for the 25th Amendment to be implemented. That’s a process under which Trump would have been immediately removed from office.
[…]
The key section is when McCarthy says: “The only discussion I would have with him [Trump] is that, I think this [a 25th Amendment resolution] will pass. And it will be my recommendation you should resign.”

That line clearly shows McCarthy told his colleagues that he would tell Trump he should resign.

But the initial report by the Times, on Jan. 12, 2021, framed it a bit differently — that he asked other Republicans whether he should ask Trump to resign:
[…]
A day later, McCarthy denied that report in an interview with the Bakersfield Californian:
[…]
Now, McCarthy is spinning the audio in ways to deceive.

On Saturday, he said: “On a phone call right after Jan. 6 I was asked by Liz Cheney about the 25th Amendment and to explain what else would happen. I just walked through different scenarios, that’s all that happened, I think the phone call was overblown.”

Notice McCarthy’s trick here. Cheney did ask a question and referenced the 25th Amendment. But that was not her question, and McCarthy did not walk through various scenarios. Cheney had asked if Trump might resign if the resolution passed — and McCarthy said he did not know but he would tell Trump he should resign if it did.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/25/kevin-mccarthys-master-class-spin-obfuscation/

…but then…some people will say anything…particularly if they think it’s in their personal interest

Fox News host Sean Hannity promised Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that he would push an Election Day get-out-the-vote message to his radio show listeners, according to communications within a cache of more than 2,000 text messages obtained by CNN.
[…]
In past years, Fox News has attempted to set some boundaries for its on-air personalities: Even opinion hosts, who could be open about their ideological views, were nonetheless expected to stop short of publicly wading into political contests.

While Hannity has long been an outspoken supporter of Trump during his presidential campaigns and presidency, the messages — which had been turned over by Meadows to the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 — suggest that Hannity saw himself as part of the broader pro-Trump campaign apparatus on Election Day, offering up his radio show audience to help boost Trump’s chances. (CNN wrote that Hannity was one of Meadows’ most frequent pen pals.)
[…]
The network had previously put some limits on Hannity’s participation in pro-Trump events and lectured him when he crossed the line. When Hannity and fellow Fox host Jeanine Pirro appeared onstage with Trump at a campaign rally in November 2018, the network called it “an unfortunate distraction [that] has been addressed.” In September 2016, after Hannity appeared in a pro-Trump video, Fox News said that it was not aware of his participation and that “he will not be doing anything along these lines for the remainder of the election season.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/04/25/sean-hannity-cnn-meadows-text-messages-election-day/

…safe to say there looks to be a bit of a difference between “attempted to” & “set some boundaries“…but then that’s hardly the biggest change doing the rounds

Now that it has ended, one way to look at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s scheme to require extra inspections of commercial trucks crossing the southern border is that it was a disaster, inane in its design and nearly catastrophic in its effects.

But when seen in combination with another governor’s attack on what conservatives used to reverentially call “free enterprise” — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s war on Disney — it looks more like the beginning of a new paradigm for Republican political economy.

Central to this shift is a genuine change: Republicans are no longer accepting as a given that state actions that harm the economy — even intentionally — are necessarily politically risky.

Nevertheless, Abbott’s move, which required a second inspection of trucks performed by the state after one by federal Customs and Border Protection agents, was one of the most remarkable policy face-plants in memory.
[…]
In this case, the damage was vivid and immediate. That might have hastened the moment when he decided the political costs outweighed the benefits for him in demagoguing about the border, something tough-talking poseurs such as Abbott have long relished. But doing it in the first place showed a willingness to do harm to his state’s economy to make a political point.

It’s hard to overstate how reluctant politicians ordinarily are to do such a thing. There’s a shared belief among Democrats and Republicans that if anything they do comes to be seen as an economic drag — such as letting a factory close, or raising the sales tax — then voters will punish them ruthlessly.

[…] people have a remarkable ability to conclude that anything good that happens with the economy can be attributed to their own party, and anything bad can be attributed to the other party, even if any reasonable assessment of the facts would prove otherwise.

Finally, Republicans are showing that they don’t actually believe in the economic principles they claimed to hold for so long. Once you cast them aside, you’re liberated to be as vindictive as you like.

Republican antagonism toward what they now call “woke corporations” has gone from bitter grumbling to state action. Critically, what arouses their ire is almost entirely brand-management efforts that involve public displays of sympathy for liberal social ideas.

Which is why they’re going after corporations one at a time, not changing their fundamental views on capital. They’re still all for corporations being able to spend unlimited amounts to influence elections, the narrowest possible regulations on companies befouling the environment, the lowest corporate taxes, nonexistent enforcement of worker safety laws, and any efforts to crush collective bargaining. Such privileges, however, can and will be withdrawn from a specific corporation unless they either stay quiet or support conservatives and their vision of social retrogression.
[…]
Rest assured, other Republicans are watching carefully as they contemplate which companies they might attack in their own states. This trend is just getting started.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/25/abbott-desantis-new-republican-perspective-on-capitalism/

…& speaking of getting started…I probably shouldn’t get started on the hows & whys of the apparent inability of the world’s richest man to avail himself of a fucking dictionary

The Tesla CEO, who has previously referred to himself as a “free speech absolutist,” has a track record of silencing critics with threats of lawsuits and firing employees who disagree with him.

…not just because he’s clearly a free speech solipsist…but also because I don’t have that kind of money to spend on lawyers

In one instance, Fast Company reported that Musk found the identity of a would-be anonymous blogger who posted a negative stock analysis of Tesla and contacted their employer, threatening to sue, according to the blogger.

…though I will note that if you check that fast company piece you’ll notice it’s referred to as borrowing from peter thiel’s playbook

“I do not know what Mr. Musk’s precise complaints are about me. I do not believe he has any valid legal claim, and I would have no trepidation in defending myself vigorously were he to bring any claim,” Montana Skeptic wrote in their farewell post. “My response to his threats was simply to protect my employer and preserve my employment.”

…hard to blame them…at least they had the option of preserving their employment…which a number of musk’s employees sure as hell haven’t

Musk has denied allegations of rage-firing employees and says his criticism of Twitter is based on a fundamental belief in freedom of speech. He argued in a tweet that since Twitter is “a de facto public town square,” the company’s posting policy “undermines democracy.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-absolutist-elon-musk-censors-employees-critics-2022-3

The billionaire will pay about $44 billion for the company in a deal expected to close this year, Twitter said in a news release Monday.
[…]
So why does the world’s richest person, who already leads electric-car company Tesla and aerospace company SpaceX, want to buy the social media company?
[…]
Musk has said he wants to promote free and open speech on the service, which he has said he sees as an essential place for sharing viewpoints.
[…]
He said he thought Twitter should be “very cautious with permanent bans,” adding that he thought timeouts were better.

“Well, I think we would want to err on the, if in doubt, let the speech, let it exist. But if it’s a gray area, I would say let the tweet exist,” he said. “But obviously in a case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, you’re not necessarily going to promote that tweet. I’m not saying I have all the answers here.”

…& much as I would very much agree with the part about his not having all the answers…I would also dispute pretty strongly that some of the answers he lays claim to are anything of the sort

“My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” he said. “I don’t care about the economics at all.”

…if you believe the man with the most wealth in the world doesn’t care about the economics…I have a bridge I’d like to sell you…at a price I’m sure we could agree is an absolute steal

Under federal law, Musk will have to notify regulators at the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department about his plans to buy Twitter. If regulators open a review of the deal, it could lead to delays in closing the purchase.

After that, Musk has pledged to take Twitter private. When he announced his bid, he said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that “since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”

Musk has said he would want to keep as many shareholders as allowed by the law when he takes the company private. And he hasn’t announced plans for what a leadership team or potential board of directors would look like, so there are still a lot of open questions about how much direct influence Musk would wield.

The first thing to point out is that this deal makes no financial sense for Elon Musk. He's paying a premium for the stock, the total value of the acquisition is almost a fifth of his net worth, and there's no obvious way he's going to squeeze more money out of Twitter operations

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) April 25, 2022

The second thing to point out is that it will be much, much harder than most people think to remake Twitter as Free Speech, Inc.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) April 25, 2022

Sure, Musk could just fire most of the staff. He can destroy Twitter, for the low low price of $46 billion. But actually making it into the thing he and many others want … pretty skeptical.

Anyway, thanks for listening, the column is here. https://t.co/crMbLpZtt8

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) April 25, 2022

Musk has said he wants to make Twitter’s algorithm more transparent, including letting people see whether their tweets were promoted or demoted. He said he wants to make the algorithm that recommends whether a tweet gets promoted or demoted “open source,” or available for the public to view and improve upon. He said he believes that will help prevent “behind the scenes manipulation.”
[…]
A former Twitter employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private matters said the company has considered an “algorithm marketplace” in which users can choose different ways to view their feeds. But efforts to offer more transparency have proved challenging, the person said, because of how tied Twitter’s algorithms are to other parts of the product. Opening it up could reveal trade secrets and invite abuse, the person said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/25/why-elon-musk-wants-twitter/

…there are a number of reasons why he might be doing this…most of them more complicated than wanting to be able to drown out anyone else’s view by being the loudest voice in his soon-to-be-privatized “public square”…or to continue his willful misinterpretation of definitions to make free speech into…say…free speech™

What Elon Musk is doing is what plutocrats have been doing: using money to buy power and power to protect their money, taking control of media to rig the discourse and hedge against resentment, and branding themselves the solution to the very problem they are.

— Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink (@AnandWrites) April 25, 2022

This isn't just some corporate takeover.

This is about a set of very specific moves that our oligarchs have been taking that have gradually concentrated economic, political, and discursive power in fewer and fewer hands.

The moves work in concert slowly, until a day like today.

— Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink (@AnandWrites) April 25, 2022

…& I know…that sounds more than a little histrionic…but…well

Combine this w/the Citizens United formula that money equals speech & so those w/the most money are entitled to the most speech, lack of campaign finance regulation & pols who depend on $ to hold power & you've got a country sinking ever deeper into the quicksand of corruption.

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) April 25, 2022

That said, the rest of us don't. We deserve better. And the place that starts is to set basic rules for public forums as we have in media for years–from truth in advertising to libel laws to the late lamented Fairness Doctrine.

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) April 25, 2022

To conclude, the right v. left politics of the media is just a distraction that draws attention away from the rich vs. poor and especially the super-rich vs. everyone else dynamic that really drives our politics.

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) April 25, 2022

…the only way to win the game is not to play, you might think…although…as with so many things…it’s not really as simple as that

Yep… It's actually not even difficult to find a person's deleted tweets, even if they delete their account. https://t.co/wRm6zFjEtu

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) April 25, 2022

…it’s true, you know

https://www.thetrumparchive.com/

…anyway…while I go hunt out some tunes…you could amuse yourself with this

Before everyone leaves, let's have some fun.

What are some of the things we'll see on #WhiteTwitter?

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) April 25, 2022

…or ponder this

muted so if there’s any of this going on in the replies i’m not gonna see it pic.twitter.com/xz3tXcxgAF

— lesbian mothman (@verysmallriver) April 14, 2022

…but while you’re at it…consider if you will that…just maybe…what some people think is a price worth paying

Oil and gas CEOs received nearly $45m more in combined total compensation in 2021 compared to 2020 amid a spike in prices [Guardian]

…or indeed a better world

A new documentary sees a reporter don a VR headset and head into the world that’s supposed to be our future. Within 10 minutes, she had witnessed the most disturbing sights of her life – in a space seven-year-olds can access

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/apr/25/a-barrage-of-assault-racism-and-jokes-my-nightmare-trip-into-the-metaverse

…sure does give me a new appreciation of the phrase “more money than sense”?