The Da Vinci Code and QAnon

Adam Lewental tries to understand how his parents became fans of the QAnon conspiracy theory and thinks that the best-selling book The Da Vinci Code may offer some clues. (I have not read the book but did see the 2006 film starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou and found it so absurd that any inclination that I may have had to read the book was utterly squelched.)

Lewental says that he first read it as a 13-year old and was blown away by it. But he “was shocked to find upon revisiting the book as an adult that it is absolute, unadulterated trash. Just really poor, from top to bottom.” But after explaining why it is so awful in terms of the plot and the quality of the writing, he says the damage done by the book is far more than to the world of literature. He says that its success is based on the fact that it persuades the reader to think that they themselves are able to figure out the clues and connect the dots to reveal a complex plot that is hidden from the unenlightened. This is exactly the mindset of the QAnoners.
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The need to end qualified immunity for police

The reason that police can get away with literally murder is because of a doctrine known as ‘qualified immunity’ that gives wide latitude to police actions taken during the course of their duties. Furthermore, even when they do get sued and fines are levied, the city pays the fines, giving them even more reason to not feel constrained.

Qualified immunity is a judicially created doctrine that shields government officials from being held personally liable for constitutional violations—like the right to be free from excessive police force—for money damages under federal law so long as the officials did not violate “clearly established” law.
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[Q]ualified immunity opponents contend that the Harlow Court got the balance wrong. Justice Sonia Sotomayor—who has called qualified immunity a “one-sided approach” that “transforms the doctrine into an absolute shield for law enforcement officers”—captures the core of that critique in a recent opinion, which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined. As Sotomayor put it, qualified immunity “sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers and the public. It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished.”

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Mitch McConnell is a real weasel

Trump was acquitted of the impeachment charges by the US senate because despite the fact that a sizable bipartisan majority of 57-43 found him guilty, the rules require a super majority of at least 67-33 to convict. I am willing to speculate that almost all of them believed him to be guilty of the charge but were scared to convict him for fear of angering Trump and repercussions from his cult followers. So they seized upon the fig leaf that is is unconstitutional to convict someone who is no longer in office, an argument that not only is absurd on its face but was roundly rejected by a large number of legal scholars and was even rejected by a majority senate vote of 56-44 before the trial started.
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The awful Neera Tanden set to join Biden administration

Joe Biden has nominated Neera Tanden to the head the Office of Management and Budget, an important position in the administration. She is an awful person for a multiplicity of reasons, as Max Blumenthal explains, but Democrats are likely to go along with her nomination while Republicans will focus on how mean she was to them, with both ignoring the very real and substantive reasons why she should be nowhere near high office.
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Flashback: “Henry Kissinger is not my friend”

I was pleased to be reminded of this great moment from one of the debates between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic campaign that showed once again why she was such an awful candidate. How anyone could value the friendship of that war criminal and see him as a mentor beats me.

Age is no excuse for casual sexist remarks

The head of Tokyo’s Olympic organizing committee Yoshiro Mori gave as his reason for opposing naming more women directors that “women talk too much”.

The remarks set off a firestorm of protest and Mr Mori apologised at the time but said he would not resign.

But on Friday he apologised for his “inappropriate statement”.

“What is important is to hold the Olympics from July. It must not be the case that my presence becomes an obstacle to that,” he said at a special committee meeting on Friday, where he also announced his resignation.
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Trump’s Folly

As part of his xenophobic, racist, nativist, anti-immigrant campaign, Trump pushed for a ‘big, beautiful wall’ along the border that Mexico would pay for. Like most of that blowhard’s promises, it was a sham. The useless wall is neither big nor beautiful nor did Mexico pay for it. Trump built a total of 453 miles of wall but many parts of it were not contiguous making it even more useless. Worse, the process of construction led to the carving of access roads and blasting staging areas that left horrible scars on a pristine, beautiful landscape, scars that will lead to further erosion over time. I hope this becomes known as Trump’s Folly.
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How having the death penalty delays trials

The death penalty should be abolished because it is a barbaric practice. I wrote yesterday about the renewed drive to abolish it and later I came across this article that provides another reason to end it, in that prosecutors demanding the penalty results in trials being delayed. This arose in the case of the student who went on a rampage in a high school in Parkland, FL.

It’s been more than 1,000 days since a gunman with an AR-15 rifle burst into a Florida high school, killed 17 people and wounded 17 others.

Yet, with Valentine’s Day on Sunday marking the three-year milestone, the trial of 22-year-old Nikolas Cruz is in limbo.
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Sri Lanka yesterday may be the US tomorrow

Over time I have noticed that political developments in the US show a pattern that is similar to that of Sri Lanka in the way that democratic norms get eroded, except that there is a lag of a decade or two. Sri Lanka has been a democracy since it obtained independence in 1948 but it has periodically come under great strain as various leaders and parties tried to undermine the institutions of democracy in order to obtain short-term political gain. Undermining the independence of the judiciary and the media and using the instruments of state power to the advantage of the party in power have all been features that I saw in Sri Lanka back in the day and I see in the US now.
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