Suck it up, cupcake

Rex Huppke has your number, fragile little men. What’s with all the bold brave conservative guys rushing to demand satisfaction for being called mean names?

…following news there was an outbreak of bedbugs in the New York Times newsroom, David Karpf, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, jokingly tweeted: “The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens.”

Hardly anyone saw the tweet, as the professor at that point had few Twitter followers. But Stephens saw it — and it hurt his feelings. So much so that he sent an email to Karpf and the university’s provost, writing: “I would welcome the opportunity for you to come to my home, meet my wife and kids, talk to us for a few minutes, and then call me a ‘bedbug’ to my face.”

Stephens was clearly trying to leverage his status as a Times columnist to get Karpf in trouble, all because he was mad the professor called him a bedbug. So much for Stephens’ worries about “the job security of professors.”

Jesus. Stephens writes opinions on one of the most prominent media platforms out there, and further, he’s one of the most despised conservative extremists at the NYT, and he lashes out at a mild insult? Try being a woman expressing a preference for a movie to her few followers on Twitter. She’ll get a thousand times the rage that Stephens gets, and she’ll deserve it far less. She’ll probably deal with it with far more equanimity than Bretbug. (He really is verminous pest who ought to be steamed out of the press, anyway.)

I’m humblingly low on any kind of media ranking, but I get constant, substantial harassment. The biggest noise was when Stuart Pivar tried to sue me for $15 million, or Michael Shermer blustering and threatening and sending me cease & desist letters, but I also get constant attempts to get me fired — remember Comma, the Sovereign Citizen who was dunning the board of regents with conspiracy theories? There are lots more examples of that kind of thing that I haven’t even bothered to mention. Another thing I don’t mention: over the years, there have been multiple instances of people setting up Pharyngula parody blogs, or even more petty, blogs that no one reads that attempt to rebut every post I put up. These are usually created by disgruntled ex-commenters who got banned, and have to express their resentment. Yeah, I get called worse than “bedbug”. I don’t care. I know these things will fade away in time.

And, of course, I’m getting sued by Richard Carrier for daring to investigate accusations of sexual harassment against him. You’d think, if he were confident that the accusations were false, that the appropriate reaction would be to welcome an investigation, but no — he lashed out with a set of absurd lawsuits against multiple people.

I know from experience. It turns out that poking your head up and criticizing the status quo will draw out swarms of delicate little flowers (strangely, all men so far) who will try to destroy you, often while piously declaiming the importance of Free Speech out of the other side of their mouth. Bret Stephens is just the latest, most prominent example of white male fragility. Would you believe he’s even comparing himself to persecuted Jews in Nazi Germany because a college professor called him a bedbug?

Maybe I’ve been underestimating my power. They wouldn’t be trying to suppress me if I were harmless, after all.

P.S. I may be an immensely dangerous college professor, but I still need help. There is a group of us being currently sued, and we need donations to cover the legal costs. If you can help out, we’d appreciate it!

P.P.S. The next big event in that case is September 24th, in a Minneapolis court. I’m not sure where or what time yet, but I’ll let you know when it gets closer, in case anyone wants to show up and listen to our lawyer orate eloquently.

P.P.P.S. Will no one think of the bedbugs?

The big picture

You want a pithy summary of why so much noise is being made about Jeffrey Epstein? Here’s a good one.

The sprawling connections between Epstein and the nation’s intellectual and scientific elite — the full extent of which may still be ripe for exposure, Buzzfeed suggested — raised questions not just about individual judgment (Harvard biochemist George Church chalked it up to “nerd tunnel vision” in early August), but the enduring exclusivity and chauvinism of power networks writ large. “After the revelations of abuse and rape,” Adam Rogers wrote in Wired magazine this week, “the most frightening thing the Epstein connections show is the impregnable, hermetic way class and power work in America.”

It’s not that we have a particular animus against this one guy, or his coterie of clients, but that it’s a reflection of a deeper problem — the artificial hierarchies that afflict the whole system. Men vs. women, white vs. black, rich vs. poor, the ranking of colleges, the phony misrepresentation of what the wealthy colleges are for (it’s not for a better education, it’s for networking with other rich bozos), it’s all one big ugly structure that impedes the advancement of merit, and gives the privileged the ability to prey on the less well off. Sometimes the system of oppression is laid bare and exposed, and this is such a case.

“Facts, not emotion”

What would you, as a manager, do with Clifford Currie, a civilian contractor working in an Army hospital? There is a huge pile of documentation that shows he is unstable, unreliable, and hostile. There were months of reports piling up.

Army investigators reviewed more than 1,000 pages of documents, including witness statements, law enforcement case files, and email correspondence. Though some names and specific details were redacted, statements from 25 witnesses supported Blanchard’s claim that she’d warned her supervisors — and anyone else who would listen — that she felt Currie was a threat.

The hospital’s chain of command knew that Currie “exhibited erratic behavior and risk indicators,” and that he “had multiple angry outbursts, acted ominously, and actively intimidated” Blanchard, the report said.

Two weeks before the assault Blanchard said that she met with her supervisors, and pleaded: “Please, don’t leave me there as a sitting duck,” but was told to “come back with facts, not emotion,” she told Task & Purpose. “I went back to my office and I just cried, because I just felt so hopeless.”

The report noted that Currie was the subject of 53 complaints from patients between 2013 and 2016 — 31 of which occurred in 2016 while Blanchard was his supervisor. According to the report, three of the patient complaints described Currie as “being hostile.”

The military did nothing. Then Currie walked in on Katie Blanchard, poured gasoline on her, and set her on fire. It was a sudden, violent act, but there’d been obvious signs and multiple warnings that this guy was going to snap. She survived, with serious scarring and pain, and she sued the Army for needlessly putting her life in danger. Guess what happened next? They have a rule that says the military can’t be sued!

On April 18, 2019, the Army denied Blanchard’s claim for damages, citing the Feres Doctrine — a 1950 Supreme Court precedent which bars service members and their families from suing the military for injury or death brought on by their service. The claim, which Blanchard’s attorneys provided to Task & Purpose, included the names of 14 people within her chain of command who were allegedly warned by her that Currie posed a threat.

“Come back with facts, not emotion”. That sounds so familiar, the kind of thing skeptics and atheists would say all the time. Sometimes the emotions are the facts, and you have to have policies to deal with them…or you end up with women burning in their office chairs.

Paper ballots everywhere

This shouldn’t even be debatable. We can’t trust Republicans or Russians (increasingly the same thing) to manage an election honestly, so a paper trail is necessary. Take, for example, the case of Georgia (the one in North America, not the one in Eurasia):

To find a clue about what might have gone wrong with Georgia’s election last fall, look no further than voting machine No. 3 at the Winterville Train Depot outside Athens.
On machine No. 3, Republicans won every race. On each of the other six machines in that precinct, Democrats won every race.The odds of an anomaly that large are less than 1 in 1 million, according to a statistician’s analysis in court documents. The strange results would disappear if votes for Democratic and Republican candidates were flipped on machine No. 3.

There were other irregularities there, too. Let’s not forget the open dishonesty of gerrymandering, either.

It’s funny how the Republicans are fanatical about accusing Democratic voters of fraud and cheating, but they don’t want to fix these basic, obvious problems. It’s almost as if the accusations are a distraction to keep the electorate from noticing how blatantly they are cheating to stay in power.

But it isn’t even a question!

Over in that imperialist undemocratic monarchy across the Atlantic (we can be smug because we got rid of the “monarchy” part), people are wondering how the country got to the point that democracy can be suspended by a buffoon, and further, how said buffoon can actually be appointed prime minister — a question that we non-monarchists have been asking ourselves as well. At least part of the answer has to be that our respective upper classes are trained to be pompous buffoons, either at Eton or in our equivalent prep schools for the rich elite. At least in Great Britain bits of the training have been exposed.

Laurie Penny explores the implications of an amazing question from the entrance examination for Eton. This is a question that 13 year old boys are expected to address.

The year is 2040. There have been riots in the streets of London after Britain has run out of petrol because of an oil crisis in the Middle East. Protesters have attacked public buildings. Several policemen have died. Consequently, the government has deployed the Army to curb the protests. After two days the protests have been stopped but twenty-five protesters have been killed by the Army. You are the Prime Minister. Write the script for a speech to be broadcast to the nation in which you explain why employing the Army against violent protesters was the only option available to you and one which was both necessary and moral.

I am impressed by how the question is not even a question. It assumes the answer and demands that you justify it. There is absolutely no latitude to question the actions or condemn the policies that led the army to be deployed against civilians — nope, every action we have performed was right and just, no matter what it was, and your job is to keep doing the same thing and tell the populace that their murders are “necessary and moral“. I have to marvel at the implicit arrogance of this thought exercise. So this is how you get Boris Johnson. Great Britain apparently didn’t learn a thing since Peterloo.

We don’t have one Eton, but instead a network of elite prep schools, mostly in the Northeast, some in the South — Phillips Exeter Academy might be the closest thing to Eton that we’ve got. Now I’m wondering what kind of biased drivel you have to recite to get into those, although we’re also different in how one gets into the civil service, anyway. My impression is that most of the training our ‘elite’ kids get is to coach them in glorious capitalism and how to trample on the middle class and the poors in your stampede to excessive wealth.

Sometimes it isn’t the answers that matter, but the questions asked that shape your mind.

Conservatives don’t understand this democracy thing

The Republicans of Alabama have just urged their state reps to kick Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, out of congress.

The state GOP supported a resolution calling for the congresswoman’s ouster at its summer meeting in Auburn this past weekend, according to Al.com. The committee reportedly approved the resolution on a voice vote after it was introduced by state Rep. Tommy Hanes.

The resolution calls on Alabama’s congressional delegation to “proceed with the expulsion process in accordance to Article 1, Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution.”

That’s just weird. I thought Southern conservatives were all about states rights and opposing federalism, but here they are, trying to interfere in another state’s politics. OK then. Can Minnesota urge the immediate expulsion of Moscow Mitch from the Senate? I wouldn’t mind that at all.

I could also mention this bizarre move by Boris Johnson to suspend parliament in order to prevent anyone from stopping by democratic means his grand plan to sunder Britain from the EU.

As long as you rely on billionaires for funding, you are participating in a criminal enterprise

The take-home message of this article is that scientists who took money from Jeffrey Epstein should give it back, and I kinda sorta agree…but first I have to mention this annoyance.

Giving away the money would begin to clean up the gross, topologically complex web of influence trading that Epstein helped weave. Before and after his year in prison, in 2008, Epstein lavished money and attention on scientists—biologist Stephen Jay Gould, biochemist George Church, evolutionary scientist Martin Nowak, linguist Steven Pinker, physicist Murray Gell-Mann, physicist Stephen Hawking, and AI researcher Marvin Minsky, among many others.

Why is Stephen Jay Gould in there? He was dead in 2008! He died 6 years before that, as a matter of fact. There is no sign that he accepted buckets of cash from Epstein, unlike Nowak, who received $6.5 million (which Harvard refuses to return). Gould was both a SJW before the term was invented, and so deathly sick with cancer that the idea he might have participated in Epstein’s sleaze is ludicrous.

But back to the topic at hand — returning or reinvesting the money in socially aware programs is a band-aid. Yes, if you were a scientist who turned a blind eye to the creepy guy who was giving you all that money, you should be punished appropriately, and taking away your ill-gotten gains seems like an entirely reasonable and fair response. If somebody just hands you a million dollars, would you just pocket it without asking where it came from or what was expected in return? If an authority comes along later and takes away that free pile of money you accepted, no questions asked, you’ve got no grounds to complain…especially not when they tell you what you should have inquired about in the first place, that it was given to you by a criminal.

It’s only a start, though. The system is broken. When we’re dependent on the generosity of billionaires to get any science done, that skews the outcome — your funding is no longer coupled to any measure of merit, but on your skill at schmoozing and pandering to fat cats, and on your association with over-hyped organizations like Harvard. Taking money away from scientists does not fix the system. What we need to do is take that power away from the billionaires, and nothing in this solution is going to discomfit the unearned prestige and influence of the criminally wealthy.

Look around your university. See all those fancy buildings named after well-off alumni? That’s the problem, that we rely on the whims of assholes who inherited or stumbled into or stole great wealth, and they use science as Epstein did, as a cosmetic to cover up their crimes and make themselves look better than they are.

Some news of progress!

OK, happy news to start the day.

  • After Jeannette Ng called them out, the sponsors of the John W. Campbell Award didn’t dig in their heels — instead, they took a look at the archive of old Campbell editorials, said “Hey, those are pretty shitty and they don’t reflect our values at all,” and they just renamed it to the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. No muss, no fuss, no drama, no screeching right-wingers howling that they can’t do that (well, there are some voices echoing out of the bottom of a trash can — Theodore Beale has declared that this decision means “Science Fiction is Dead” — but no one with real influence has protested).
  • Oh, look. Someone at YouTube noticed that their generosity towards Nazis might be hurting their bottom line. YouTube killed several big-name Nazi accounts, finally. Lost to us now are the racist words of James Allsup, VDARE, the American Identity movement, and The Right Stuff, channels that pumped out the most vile anti-Semitic and racist garbage. I’m most gratified to see VDARE get stomped, because that organization has been poisoning mainstream politics and media for decades. They’re whining about the death of political thought now.
  • Andy Ngo has been quietly let go from Quillette — they say it’s so he can pursue other projects, but we all know it’s really because of this article, where an undercover investigator discovered that he was actively collaborating with Patriot Prayer to bias his reporting.

    Ngo tags along with Patriot Prayer during demonstrations, hoping to catch footage of an altercation. Ben says Ngo doesn’t film Patriot Prayer protesters discussing strategies or motives. He only turns his camera on when members of antifa enter the scene.
    “There’s an understanding,” he says, “that Patriot Prayer protects him and he protects them.”

    Bye, Andy. We knew you weren’t a journalist all along, and you have to be pretty blatant when even Quillette finds you toxic.

When the universe is getting cleaned up one asshole at a time, you have to appreciate these little victories. Especially when they kill all of science fiction and all political thought, an impressive achievement.

Rich people using charities as a way to whitewash their crimes

The effort to salvage David Koch’s reputation is underway — usually by praising him for his donations to charity. Jeet Heer is having none of that.

Such encomiums are premised on the idea that Koch’s charitable giving was so commendable that questions about where his money came from or the general impact of the super-rich on society would be impertinent. This willful lack of curiosity was sharply critiqued as long ago as 1909 by then-President Theodore Roosevelt, who wasn’t impressed by John D. Rockefeller’s setting up a foundation to help disperse his mountain of money. “No amount of charities in spending such fortunes can compensate in any way for the misconduct in acquiring them,” Roosevelt curtly but accurately noted. In the case of the Koch family, there’s plenty of misconduct to investigate.

Then he explains how the Koch money was earned by their father, a fanatical John Bircher, who built oil refineries for Nazi Germany, and how they were despicable in their treatment of their employees. How much would they have to give away in order to compensate for the evil they’ve done? More than they have.

Must we celebrate David Koch’s bountiful donations to public institutions, even if we dislike how the duo have pushed the Republican Party (and America as a whole) to the right? Not at all. The Koch brothers’ bad deeds outweigh their public service. Besides, plutocratic philanthropy is a wretched social model.

I would also add that even their good donations were tainted by an agenda. They funded a major exhibit on human evolution at the Smithsonian, but one of their goals was to play up how climate change affected human evolution. Why, we wouldn’t be here if not for climate change! Therefore, it’s all good for you.

At least that was one step beyond outright denial.

Charles Pierce is also piling on.

Fair warning. I am about to speak very ill of the dead. David Koch went to his eternal barbecue spit on Friday. Except for his surviving brother, Charles, no man had a worse effect on American politics since the death of John C. Calhoun. Every malignancy currently afflicting us can be traced in one way or another into their wallets, and that’s not even to mention the lasting damage they’ve done to the planet as a whole. Sorry, Morning Joe gang, I wouldn’t care if they opened branches of the National Museum of Puppies and Rainbows in every congressional district in the United States. The Koch brothers financed the wrecking ball that is still doing damage, and now one of them is dead, and, if I am not rejoicing, I am breathing deep sighs of relief and praying deep prayers of thanksgiving.

Well, I’m rejoicing, at least. Let the whole family rot.

Whose side are the police on, anyway?

I remember the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry — when we lived in Eugene, we often (but not as often as we’d like, it was a long drive) trekked up to Portland with the kids to enjoy it. It was a safe place, a hands-on museum with lots of children’s activities. I wonder how it’s changed in the past 30-some years.

It’s still supposed to be a safe place. In the recent demonstrations with fascists, the Portland police actually recommended that it was a good spot to visit that weekend, that it would be free of protests and Proud Boys. They lied. They actually led the Nazis right past the museum in order to clear them from downtown.

I was with my son, my daughter-in-law, and two little boys under five years old. We did not want my grandchildren anywhere near fascists. The Portland police bureau had published a map promising that OMSI, across the river from the planned site of the rally, would be safe. Alas, as police defused the main rally, some of the fascists found their way across the river and marched past the museum.

While the kids played in the beautiful Science Playground, the public-address system announced that the museum was in “lockup”; no one could enter or leave until further notice. We could not see the street; none of the staff knew what was going on; no one could tell us how long the lockup would last; no one knew whether the marchers might assemble in front of the museum, making escape impossible.

An actual lockdown, in contradiction to what the police had earlier recommended. Wow. They really don’t care, do they?

It’s not just Proud Boys, either. The Republican Party is merging with fascism.

Although no major political figure has embraced antifa activism, the Republican Party has begun to embrace the Proud Boys. Last fall, the Metropolitan Republican Club invited a Proud Boys leader to speak at a club event. (After the event, two Proud Boys beat four protesters so badly that a jury on Monday convicted two of them on charges of assault and riot.) The Republican activist Roger Stone has said he was initiated as a Proud Boy, and Proud Boys appeared at a federal courthouse when he turned himself in on charges brought by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Stone and the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson posed in the Fox greenroom with two Proud Boys accompanying Stone.

This summer, Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Bill Cassidy are sponsoring a resolution that would designate antifa as a “domestic terrorist group.” No mention of the Proud Boys or any of the other neofascist groups who feel empowered by the ascent of Trump.

I guess we’ll need to go into lockdown any time a Republican passes by.