Entry 440: Life Update

Just a quick, or semi-quick, maybe, life update for all my fans out there.

Things have been going pretty well for me -- they're mostly normal.  In the lead-up to the midterms, I've been simultaneously trying to remain pissed off and stress-free.  These emotions aren't as contradictory as one might think.  I heard Rebecca Traister, one of my favorite voices of feminism, on a podcast recently promoting her new book Good and Mad, and she talked about the virtues of anger, and how being mad doesn't preclude you from being healthy and sane.  In fact, anger is often the appropriate human emotion for a situation, and actually letting yourself feel it, embracing it even, is better than bottling it up and pretending it doesn't exist, or feeling guilty about feeling it.  The key, I think, is focusing it in the right direction.

Right now I'm focusing my anger by donating to various blue candidates and causes.  I will vote too, which is the most important thing, of course, but I live in DC, so it doesn't matter much on a national level.  (Although DC politics is interesting and important in it's own right.)  Now, if DC could obtain statehood that would be a different story, but I don't see that happening in the immediate future.  It is something, however, that I think Democrats should fight for.  Why not?  We are US citizens.  Why don't we have the same representation as everybody else?  Same for Puerto Rico.

The answer, of course, is that Republicans are in power, and they don't want it, because they are very unpopular among the people who live in these places.  And the key mission of Republicans -- their primary unifying feature -- is staying in power even if it means employing anti-democratic methods.  The Republicans are the party of entrenched power, and they use that entrenched power, mostly to further entrench their power, even if it means denying the will of the people -- and that's exactly what it means right now.  One thing that annoys me a bit is when liberals blame Democrats for being weak and/or not being able to win elections.  There is some truth to it, of course, but the far bigger issue is that Democrats, being the party that represents traditionally marginalized groups (racial minorities, women, LBGT folks, youths, etc.), are constantly fighting an uphill battle against the centuries-long vice grip on power of older white males who currently comprise most of the GOP.  You can see this in the voting results -- Democrats almost always win more total votes than Republicans.  They frequently win the "popular vote" -- often by a significant margin -- and still lose.  Clinton received millions more votes than Trump; Dems in Congress received millions more than their Republican counterparts; and yet Reps control all three branches of government.  It's not fair; it's not democratic (little d).  And it's because Republicans don't believe in fairness or democracy.  They believe in gerrymandering, voter suppression, fearmongering, and straight-up lying.  This isn't some unhinged, leftist rant; this is an accurate assessment of the current political situation that I could back-up with a bevvy of facts and examples.

What to do about it?  Donate, vote, speak up, get involved, don't give up, don't get discouraged -- what else can you do?  Overwhelm them with democracy at every level.  Be angry.  But also stay sane and live your best life.  Don't let the bastards get you down.  That's my advice.

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On the topic of staying sane, my Krav Maga classes have become and important part of my life maintenance.  There's something so satisfying about exhausting yourself physically, and doing it in a group is way better than doing it alone.  I fear my gym is struggling financially, though.  They recently raised rates -- it's not cheap: $50/week -- and I've noticed a down-tick in class attendance.  That's expected -- it's basic microeconomics -- but I don't know if they're making up for it with the higher rates.  I got a text from them the other day that said, "Hey!  This is E from Krav Maga :)  Just checkin' in!  How's training been going??" and I'm not sure why they would send that unless it's some sort of virtually glad-handing.  I also didn't really know how to respond.  Is this a pro forma group thing they sent out to everybody?  Is E actually expecting me to continue a personal dialogue?  If I ignore it, and then I see her at the gym, will it be awkward?  Will she say something about it?  I wrote back, "Pretty good, I think.  Thanks!"  And then she wrote, "Awesome!  We love having you here!"  So, it obviously is a membership outreach thing.  Also, perhaps she's trying to trawl for people who might be considering leaving.  I think reliable cash flow is an issue, which is why they went to a weekly payment system instead of their old monthly system.  Anyway, you probably don't care about any of this, so I will move on.

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S and I had a date night on Friday, and we saw First Man at this cool, trendy boutique theater in this cool, trendy part of town.  It's good to have the occasionally reminder as to why it's nice to live in the city.  The movie itself was decent -- not fantastic, but worth watching.  The main problem with this movie is that it couldn't match the magnitude of the actual event.  The moon landing might be the coolest thing humankind has ever done.  This The Onion article captures it perfectly.  Also, the film is a biopic of Neil Armstrong, and Armstrong was a very quiet, calculating man.  Those are fine qualities for leading a stressful space mission, but they don't necessarily translate into great cinema.  The entire time I was in the theater, I just felt like I'd rather be watching real footage or reading about the actually moon missions rather than watching Ryan Gosling look pensive on the big screen.  (Nothing against Gosling, who is good in the movie.)  Also, as S pointed out, there was too much screen time from inside a capsule with the camera shaking repeatedly.

One thing I appreciate about it is that it was very accurate -- at least with respect to the verifiable things.  Obviously, not every conversation Armstrong had with his wife is captured verbatim, but the facts about the mission are, as best I can tell, spot on.  (And people who knew Armstrong said in interviews that the film depicts him very accurately.)  Every time I thought something was exaggerated for dramatic effect, I looked it up afterwards and found out it wasn't.  It didn't need to be, because the moon landing was a precarious and dramatic mission from the get-go.  There was no guarantee that they were actually going to touchdown on the moon successfully.  I think Buzz Aldrin said he gave it 50/50 odds before the mission.  Having to abort and return to Earth without landing was a definite possibility.  Although, if that happened, they probably would have just gone back a few months later and then a few months later if that didn't work, until they got it right, and we would have all forgotten the failed attempts, once they actually landed.  So, maybe the stakes weren't that high as far as aborting is concerned.  But also there was the very real chance of them exploding or getting stranded in space.  The odds of one of those things happening were much higher than I think people realize.

One weird thing about moon exploration is how little we've done of it.  The Apollo missions represent the entirety of physical human contact with the moon, and those ended in 1972.  We haven't been in over 45 years, and only 12 people have walked on the moon total.  I think we need to go back as a warm-up and then go to Mars.  I know it's expensive, but, it's worth it, in my opinion.  Doing crazy, mind-boggling shit is a worthy human endeavor.  I do concede however, that there is a big drawback to space exploration: There's nothing interesting close to us.  Why aren't there Martians and moon creatures?  If our universe was made by a divine creator, he or she actually did a very ho-hum job.

On that note, until next time...

Oh, one last thing, a crossword puzzle acquaintance of mine has won on Jeopardy! the past three nights (and he did something on the show, which I don't get but ascertain is funny).  He's the fourth person I know from crossword puzzles who has been a champion on the show -- that's nuts.  Watch tonight if you're a fan of trivia.  He's the reigning champion with the Afro.

Entry 439: On Several Topics

So, as I figured along, Bart O'Kavanaugh was seated on the Supreme Court.  I never thought his status was in much jeopardy.  I knew Flake and at least one of Collins or Murkowski would vote "yes," and then that would be that.  I wouldn't read much into Murkowski voting "no" and Manchin voting "yes."  Those were strictly political plays after the outcome was already decided.  Murkowski, a Republican, wants to emphasize her bona fides as an independent (she won via write-in, after all), and Manchin, a Democrat, can't get on the wrong side of too many conservatives, since he's up for reelection in West Virginia, one of the Trumpiest states of them all.  I'm fine with Manchin's vote, if it helps his reelection.  I'd rather have a Democrat in that seat to cast a possible deciding vote on something that actually matters in the future, than have Manchin make a symbolically gesture against O'Kavanaugh.  As for the composition of the court itself, it's now 5-4 conservative, with two men credibly accused of sexual harassment.  That sucks -- there's no other way to put it.  Be mad, donate, vote.

***

I recently found out two old friends of mine found themselves on the wrong side of the law.  The first is an environmental activist who helped turn off an oil pipeline in Minnesota.  In a surprising move, the court dismissed a criminal case against him and his partners.  Ultimately, I think this is a good thing -- nobody wants their friend to face prison time (he has a wife and three kids) -- but it's bittersweet because it stops a line of communication with the public about climate change.  The defense team had a slate of expert witnesses to testify about our heating planet, and it sounds like the defendants also planned to take the stand to give their own testimony and motivations.  This would have garnered at least a little bit of media attention, and now that opportunity is gone.

This is another big reason a conservative court is going to be damaging to the country (and humans writ large).  They are going to side with business interests in cases of environmental regulation.  Republicans are literally the only major political party in the world that doesn't believe in anthropogenic climate change, and, at the moment, they are the party with the most say in what we do about it.  So, what we do about it is nothing.  Actually, it's worse than nothing, we make it worse.

The weird thing about this, of course, is that Republican need an environment that's suitable for future generations just as much as Democrats do.  But one feature of all Republicans, perhaps the defining feature, is that you believe what the party wants you to believe, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.  Also, there's the fact that conservatives have so demonized liberals that they would rather destroy human life as we know it than take their side on a position.  One modicum of solace I do take is that when climate change gets so bad everybody is forced to reckon with it -- and I do think that day will happen -- we are going to know exactly who was at fault.  This isn't a case of "[shrug emoji], we didn't know any better."  We know better.  We've known better for a long time.  It's just a sliver of people with outsize power, who are in willful denial and/or don't care.  We will be able to call them out by name: The Koch Brothers, Donald Trump, James Imhoff, Scott Pruitt, and every current Republican in Congress right now, without a single exception.  They might all be gone when shit really goes down, but let's not forget them.  They will be the ones most responsible for whatever future we are currently damning ourselves to.

***
My other friend is currently in prison.  I went to high school with this kid, we were pretty good friends, not BFFs, but we'd hang out quite a bit.  He was a bit-part member of my little crew.  We played lacrosse together on the school team.  We'd shoot pool, play pick-up basketball in his backyard, sneak beers together, stuff like that.  We even went camping together once.  I remember he filled up a Doritos bag with water and threw it over a bathroom stall while my other friend was taking a dump, and we all thought it was the funniest thing ever.  He also was scared of every sound in the night and every animal.  We saw a raccoon, and he just about shit himself.  He literally wanted me to hold his hand to walk 100 yards to the bathroom in the dark.  We were 17-years-old, I think.  (I told him no.)

Anyway, he went to college at UW with some other friends of mine, but everybody lost touch with him after his freshman year.  A while down the road, after graduation, another one of my friends caught up with him, and he was suddenly a millionaire businessman.  He dropped out of college to work for software company (it was the late '90s, when the dotcom bubble was at its largest, and people were getting hired with little experience), and then he started his own company shortly thereafter, and it blew up.  He had a mansion on Lake Washington and a bunch of sports cars and boats and stuff.

Admittedly, I was a bit surprised when I heard this, as he wasn't any sort of computer whiz or business genius or anything like that.  But he was a reasonably smart guy and a hard worker, so, whatever, he hit the jackpot, good on him... or not.  A few years ago he pled guilty in a $100 million piracy case.  He was part of a scheme to sell ill-gotten and pirated authorization codes of Mircosoft software.  This absolutely floored me when I first heard about it.  I couldn't stop thinking about it, and even now it seems surreal.  Unfortunately, I don't know anything other than what I can find online, so I don't know the details or his motivation or even what his sentence is.  I don't know if his business was crooked from the get-go or if he got into it later.  I suspect the latter.  My guess -- based on nothing but high school memories and gut feel -- is that he started his business at the right time and made a bunch of money, but then the bubble burst.  Things went south, and he wasn't ready for it.  He had an expensive lifestyle he felt compelled to maintain, even if it meant doing illegal things.  Another factor might be shame.  He's Korean-American, and growing-up his dad was a stereotypical, hard-ass, super-demanding Asian parent.  Maybe his business was failing, and he couldn't deal with the shame of it.  I don't know.  Other than an odd "what's up" on Facebook, I haven't talked to the guy in 20 years.  I do know he has at least one kid, though, so it's a sad situation, even if he did bring it on himself.

 ***
S took the kids to her in-laws in South Carolina for a few weeks, so I'm by myself for a few days.  I'm going to fly there on Saturday to join them, and then we will all drive back next week.  The kids go to a year-round school, so they get a couple of random breaks throughout the year and this is one of them.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying it.  It's just nice that simple things are actually simple again.  I wake up in the morning and just go to work.  I make one breakfast instead of three.  I don't have to fight with anybody to get them to use the bathroom or to put their clothes on.  That's how I've been taking advantage of it -- doing normal things normally.  I also took back-to-back classes at my gym on both Monday and yesterday.  Getting crazy with the exercise.  It feels good, but I'm super sore now.  (I'm not 25 anymore; hell, I'm not even 35 anymore.)  I love taking classes there, though.  It's so much better than exercising alone.  I'm so much more motivated to actually go to the gym and to push myself once I'm there.  I see the same faces every time I go, so I feel like part of a team, and there's a weird accountability, like if I don't go that guy with the braids and that girl with the cut-off sleeves are going to look down on me.  Even though I know in reality the guy with the braids and that girl with the cut-off sleeves don't actually think about me, in my head they are judging me for every class I miss, and it's strangely motivating.  Also, I'm still doing Krav Maga in addition to the fitness classes, so I'm learning self-defense and getting in shape.  The only downside is it's pricey: $50 per week.  But so far it's worth it, and I rarely spend money on myself, anyway. 

***
Speaking of sport, I don't think my children -- or at least my oldest child -- is going to take much of an interested in organized sports.  He's still young, but early returns aren't promising.  He goes to soccer on Saturday, and he's kinda into it for the first 20 minutes or so, and then he gets bored and goofs off.  This week the usual "coaches" were gone, so I stepped in with a couple of other parents, and during the scrimmage, I was occupied on another field, but I glanced over and saw him lying down on top of the goal -- like he climbed up the back of the net and just sprawled across the top, while the game was in progress.  Eventually, another parent chased him off, but he still didn't want to go in the game.  He just sat on the sidelines the entire time.

In his defense, it goes way too long.  It starts at 10:30 am, and they are supposed to practice for an hour, and then play a 36 minute game.  With breaks it ends up being over two hours.  It's ridiculous.  They're six!  It's a struggle to get them to stay focused for five minutes, let alone over an hour and a half.  I don't understand what the organizers are thinking.  It should be 20 minutes of practice, a 10-minute break, and then a 30-minute game.  Door-to-door it should be, like, an hour and half out of your day.  That's how I would do it if I was in charge of everything, and if I was in charge of everything the world would be a much better place.

And on that humble note... until next time. 

Entry 438: The Less Than Compelling Testimony of Bart O'Kavanaugh

I didn't listen to yesterday's testimony by Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh live, but one of the few advantages of today's perpetual stream of news is that it's very easy to stay up-to-date on things without following them exactly as they happen.  I've listened to the highlights of it, listened to analysis on the radio and podcast about it, and read around ten articles on it.

My conclusion: Dr. Ford is telling the truth.  She was assaulted by Kavanaugh when they were both teenagers.  He doesn't remember it because he was very drunk when it happened and also, possibly, because, at the time, he perceive his actions as memorable -- they didn't amount to anything more than fooling around or "boys being boys" -- certainly in his mind they did not constitute sexual assault.  I think he thinks he's telling the truth in his adamant denials.

Where Kavanaugh's defense utterly falls apart, however, is around the parameter.  He is either lying or psychotically in denial about his drinking habits, the company he kept, and his attitudes toward sex and women as a teenager and a young adult.  He also mounted a contradictory defense by claiming that: a) Dr. Ford is credible; b) this is all a leftist conspiracy to smear his name.  If a) is true, then investigations and hearings are warranted, and there is no basis for b).  Basically, what Kavanaugh is saying is -- I think allegations of sexual assault should be taken seriously, unless they are against me.

I also think it is very telling that he evaded all questions concerning an FBI investigation.  If he wants so badly for his name to be cleared, then ask for an investigation to clear it!  It's obvious that he doesn't want one, and it's obvious why.  It's not because the FBI will find proof of the assault or even of the party at which it allegedly happened.  It was over 35 years ago; all physical evidence is likely to have been erased by time; and it's very likely nobody but Ford remembers it.  (Why would they?)  The reason Kavanaugh doesn't want an FBI investigation is because he's painted himself into a corner by significantly playing down his past boorishness.  An honest investigation will not definitively expose him as an assaulter, but it will definitively expose him as being less that truthful, and it will destroy this pristine image -- all-American good guy, hard worker, occasionally beer drinker, sure, but all in good fun -- he's tried to cultivate of himself as a young man.

But anybody who lived through high school can see through his dishonesty immediately.  He's is not being truthful about his yearbook.  His references to the "Renate Alumni" do not have to do with an innocent kiss.  They are clearly a reference to a girl he and his group of friends used to brag/joke about doing sexual things with.  This is the type of thing dumb-ass high school boys (i.e., high school boys) would write code messages about in a yearbook -- not some little smooch.  And Kavanaugh's insistence that "boof" means fart and "devil's triangle" is a drinking game are even more absurd.  These are (or at least were) well-known terms for anal sex and two-guy-one-girl sex, respectively.  Again, this is the type of thing high school boys joke about.  No high school boy would use a term meaning anal sex in a wink-wink message in a yearbook earnestly thinking it was about flatulence.  That's one of the least believable things I've ever heard.  It's so unbelievable that even the Republicans I know who support Kavanaugh would admit that it's not true.

Then we get to his drinking.  I think the term "blackout drunk," which came up several times in the hearing, is a problematic one.  I think of blackout drunk as having no memory of the night before.  I've been drunk many times in my life and only once was I blackout drunk, by this definition.  "Memory-impaired" is a better term.  I've been memory-impaired -- not remembered little parts of a night or they were so hazy I effectively don't remember them -- many times.  Again, there is absolutely no way Kavanaugh has never been memory-impaired from drinking, given what we've heard from people who used to party with him.  An investigation would make this clear immediately.  His old buddy Mark Judge -- who literally wrote a book called Wasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk (in which Kavanaugh is obviously referenced under the quasi-pseudonym "Bart O'Kavanaugh") -- would make this clear immediately.  And also that's why we didn't hear from Judge yesterday, despite the fact that he was allegedly in the room when Kavanaugh assaulted Ford.

There was another path for Kavanaugh -- a more honest one in which he owns up to the gross references in his yearbook and his prior hard-drinking and classifies them as something many teenagers/early twentysomethings do (which is true!) and they don't give an accurate picture of him as a fully formed adult.  But he didn't take it.  He took the Trump track, which is to become indignant and deny everything, and claim "The Left" is out to destroy you, even when the facts suggest otherwise.  (Curiously, The Left took down Al Franken and let Neil Gorsuch be.  It's almost as if they only go after people who have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct.)  And it will probably work.  The only people Kavanaugh needs to convince to be seated as a Supreme Court justice are Republicans, and the Republicans are currently a party in large part comprised of aggrieved white men, and they want on the court somebody like them, who will unabashedly fight for them.  Kavanaugh showed yesterday he fits this description to a tee.

I predict he will be voted in early next week along party lines.  The only possible Republican holdouts -- Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski -- will come around.  They sometimes claim to stand up for women's rights, but I predict partisanship will overcome any such sentiment in the end.  It will be a sad day for the Supreme Court, a sad for women, especially victims of sexual assault, and a sad day for our country in general.  But don't despair.  Vote.

Until next time...

Entry 437: The Worst Defense of Brett Kavanaugh Imaginable

This article by Dennis Prager has been making the rounds on some podcasts I listen to, by which I mean people have been using it to underscore the absurdity of some of Brett Kavanaugh's defenders.  I wasn't going to read it, because I've read and heard stuff by Prager before (he used to come on The Adam Carolla Show from time to time), and it's almost always truly awful -- a trifecta of bad ideas, poorly argued, underscored by hubris -- but I finally caved, and unsurprisingly it really is as bad as advertised.  I decided to do that thing where I copy the article in full and then ridicule it, because some things need to be ridiculed, and this article is one of them.  After the dashes everything in plain print is Prager's article and my comments are in bold.

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The Charges against Judge Kavanaugh Should Be Ignored

It is almost impossible to overstate the damage done to America’s moral compass by taking the charges leveled against Judge Brett Kavanaugh seriously.

It undermines foundational moral principles of any decent society.

Taking charges of sexual assault seriously undermines foundational moral principles of any decent society?  I would say committing acts of sexual misconduct does more to undermine such principles, but so far at least we are very much on brand for a conservative like Prager -- being an accuser is often considered worse than doing the misdeeds one is accused of.

Those who claim that the charges against Judge Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford are important and worth investigating and that they ultimately, if believed, invalidate his candidacy for the U.S. Supreme Court are stating that:

Before he gets to his points, notice he's already packaging two separate issues together: 1) Whether or not the charges against Kavanaugh are worthy of investigation; 2) Whether or not they are invalidating if believed.  It's a perfectly consistent position to say they should be investigated, and then ultimately decide they are not invalidating.  In fact, the very purpose of an investigation would be to determine this.

a) What a middle-age adult did in high school is all we need to need to know to evaluate an individual’s character — even when his entire adult life has been impeccable.

Literally nobody is saying this.

b) No matter how good and moral a life one has led for ten, 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years, it is nullified by a sin committed as teenager.

See above.

No decent — or rational — society has ever believed such nihilistic nonsense.

Yes, and neither does anybody else except Prager's straw man.  My last post expressly addresses the quandary of handling accusations against adults from their teenage years, and if you want to hear somebody more professional and more prominent than me talk about it, listen to Slate's episodes of Political Gabfest on Kavanaugh.  Emily Bazelon, certainly no fan of Kavanaugh's jurisprudence, states explicitly how uncomfortable she is with holding adults accountable for things they did as children.

This is another example of the moral chaos sown by secularism and the Left. In any society rooted in Judeo-Christian values, it is understood that people should be morally assessed based on how they behave over the course of their lifetime — early behavior being the least important period in making such an assessment.

If you want to get into a debate about Judeo-Christian values versus secularism when it comes to sex, I'm all for it.  Because I can't think of anything that has a worse track record on anything else in the history of humankind than religion does on sex.

These religious values taught us that all of us are sinners and, therefore, with the exception of those who have engaged in true evil, we need to be very careful in making moral evaluations of human beings.  

"True evil" is such a catch-all cop-out (what is it? and who gets to decide?), but okay I agree with the larger point about being careful in making moral evaluations.

And, of course, we were taught to extend forgiveness when people demonstrate through their actions that they have changed. As a well-known ancient Jewish adage put it: “Where the penitent stands, the most righteous cannot stand.” In other words, the highest moral achievement is moral improvement.

This is subtly one of the weakest arguments Prager proffers (and that's saying something), because, although I'm not religious, I know that key pieces of many religions, including Judaism and Christianity, are atonement and repentance.  Kavanaugh has neither atoned nor repented for his "sins."  On the contrary, he's categorical denied them, in effect saying his accuser is either lying or mistaken (as if it's impossible that the guy who used to drink to excess and has already shown his "flexibility" when it comes to truth and who doesn't want an investigation by a neutral party could be the mistaken/dishonest one).

As I mentioned in my previous post, if Kavanaugh had responded differently to the charges -- if he had said that he doesn't remember everything he did as a drunk, dumb kid, and that he was sorry if he caused any pain, then things would be very different, but he didn't say that.  He makes no acknowledgement of any mistakes on his part at all.  Until he does (which he won't), getting into all this "where the penitent stand" stuff seems moot to me.

Perhaps the most important principle violated by taking this 36-year-old high school-era charge seriously is the principle of the moral bank account.

Every one of us has a moral bank account. Our good deeds are deposits, and our bad deeds are withdrawals. We therefore assess a person the same way we assess our bank account. If our good actions outweigh our bad actions, we are morally in the black; if our bad actions greatly outweigh our good actions, we are morally in the red.

This is not how society works.  This is not how morality works.  We don't allow people to commit crimes and behave immorally because they have enough credit in their moral bank accounts to make up for it.  (It's like a riff on that Simpsons clip: I'd like to remind the court how many good things I've done in my life.  I should be able to run over as many kids as I want!) This is such a simplistic way to view morality, and more problematically, it's a total useless and impractical one, because there is nobody qualified to evaluate our moral currency and run our accounts.  There are no moral bankers.  How much does a grope cost?  How much does a lewd comment cost?  How much credit do you get for not harassing somebody?  And what do you get for doing something good for one person that's simultaneously bad for somebody else?

But this is how Prager thinks.  I've heard him talk about why he's religious, and one of his reasons is that without God there is no "objective" moral truth.  He's very bothered by the relativism of human morality.  And, by the way, so am I!  It's scary and weird to think that there is nothing out there to keep us in line -- that there is no ultimate justice -- that we are all we have.  But my answer isn't to make a bunch of shit up and pretend as if there is.  And even if Prager is right about a real God holding an objective moral truth, it does absolutely nothing for us now as flawed humans trying to adjudicate the actions of other flawed humans.  But I'm digressing...

By all accounts — literally all — Brett Kavanaugh’s moral bank account is way in the black. He has led a life of decency, integrity, commitment to family, and commitment to community that few Americans can match. On these grounds alone, the charges against him as a teenager should be ignored.

Ignored?  No.  Ultimately dismissed?  Maybe.  We need to know, as best we can, exactly what happened, and we need to know if he's being truthful about it.  Again, that's the whole point of an investigation and hearings and further inquiry.

Also, it's worth noting, being a Supreme Court judge is not only a morality competition.  If Kavanaugh is knowingly lying about the charges against him that would disqualify him from the court in my view, even if he's such an upstanding citizen, he's still morally in the black by Prager's reckoning.

So why is this charge taken seriously?

Because charges of sexual assault should be taken seriously, even if the accused are teenagers.  At 17, you are not legally an adult, but you're not a little kid either.  You're in between, which makes cases like this very sticky.  And I'm not the first one to point out that when it comes to a poor black teenager accused of committing a crime, conservatives rarely have issue with him being treated and tried as an adult, and yet when it's a privileged white kid, suddenly it's a different standard.  (And sometimes they aren't even kids -- George W. Bush tried to slough off bad things he was doing in his mid-30s as youthful indiscretions, and don't even get me started on Don Jr.) 

One reason is, as I recently wrote, the greatest fear in America is fear of the Left — the fear of what the Left will do to you if you cross it. Not fear of God. Not fear of doing wrong. Fear of the Left. Offend the Left and you will lose your reputation and, quite often, your job or your business.

One reason conservatives hate "victimhood culture" so much is because they want nothing more than to be the victims themselves.  They love pointing out how persecuted they are.   The big bad Left coming to get you!  I mean, sure, the Right (to use the counterpart of Prager's term) holds all three branches of the federal government and the majority of state governments and governorships, but it's actually the Left who holds all the real power.  They should be feared.  I mean, just look at all the great men they've destroyed: All Harvey Weinstein has is the millions of dollars he made while sexually assaulting his underlings, same with Matt Lauer.  Louis CK had to leave the comedy scene for almost a whole year, and look at how mean everybody is to Donald Trump -- he almost didn't get to be president!

As a middle-age, upper-middle class white man, I know exactly what Prager is talking about.  I mean, yeah, sure, we've controlled the entire country since it's inception over 200 years ago, and we don't have to worry about things like, say, a police officer mistaking us for a burglar in our own home and killing us.  But if we grope just one woman or defend somebody who does, we will absolutely get destroyed on Twitter. 

Oh, by the way, Christine Blasey Ford is receiving death threats and is too scared to live at home right now.  She's probably just afraid the Left is going to take her reputation.

Another reason is pure, amoral, demagogic politics. No honest American of any political persuasion believes that if a woman were to charge a Democrat-appointed judge such as Merrick Garland with doing to her 36 years ago in high school what Brett Kavanaugh is charged with having done 36 years ago in high school, the Democratic party and the media would be demanding that the confirmation vote be delayed or that the candidate withdraw.

This is flat-out wrong.  Did Prager not follow the Al Franken story?  The Left, with dwindling few exceptions, doesn't like sexual assault because it's wrong, and it sucks for women.  The end.  It doesn't matter who carries it out.

One of the Right's staple moves is to project their own failings onto the other side.  Their party is now run by a man who has been credibly accused of sexual assault by nearly two dozen women (and who admitted it on tape), and they supported an alleged child molester for Congress.  They have no honest defense for this, so they either shamelessly deny it (despite the evidence), or they do what Prager is doing and play the "both sides" game.  But there is no both sides in this one.  It's not equal.  The Right supports sexual assaulters (perhaps begrudgingly, but they support them nonetheless); the Left doesn't.  Period. 

A third reason is feminism’s weakening of the American female (and male, but that is another story). A generation ago, a drunk teenager at a party groping a teenage girl over her clothing while trying to remove as much of her clothing as possible would not have been defended or countenanced. But it would not have been deemed as inducing post-traumatic stress disorder either.

Hey, if anybody knows about the weakening of the American female, it's a 75-year-old man, right?  I mean, I could either trust his views on the subject or those of every woman I've ever talked to.

As for the rest of the paragraph, Prager is right: A generation ago we did not treat sexual assault allegations with the gravity they deserved.  Is this supposed to be in support of his thesis?

This weakening of the female is perfectly illustrated by the statement released by Susanna Jones, head of Holton-Arms School, the private preparatory school for girls in Bethesda, Md., that the accuser attended. “As a school that empowers women to use their voices, we are proud of this alumna for using hers,” Jones said.

“Empowers women”? Please.

Speaking out against sexual assaulters knowing full well an avalanche of shit from people like Dennis Prager is coming your way is indeed empowering.

Nearly every woman past puberty has experienced a man trying to grope her. (This is, needless to say, wrong.) My mother was groped by a physician. She told my father about it. My father told the physician that if he were to do it again, he would break his hands. And it remained a family folk tale. If you had told my mother she was a “survivor,” she would have wondered what you were talking about. The term was reserved for people who survived Nazi concentration camps and Japanese prisoner-of-war camps and for cancer survivors, not women groped by a man.

That's what his father did?  That's the appropriate solution?  Why didn't he report this man?  Did he still have a job?  Did his mom still see him?  How many other women was he assaulting?  Couldn't his dad have prevented a lot of groping (which, needless to say, is wrong) by saying something more public?

Also, his point about the term "survivor" is totally irrelevant.  It's what I call terminology trolling (which is some terminology I just made up on the spot -- what do you think?).

When my wife was a waitress in her mid teens, the manager of her restaurant grabbed her breasts and squeezed them on numerous occasions. She told him to buzz off, figured out how to avoid being in places where they were alone, and continued going about her job. That’s empowerment.

This -- and I say this without exaggeration -- is the most embarrassing paragraph of an opinion essay I've ever read.  If my name was attached to something this terrible, I would destroy my computer and then I would destroy my wife's computer and then I would go door to door, city to city, country to country, in an attempt to destroy the entire Internet one computer at a time.  I wouldn't succeed, but I would try (and even if I did somehow manage to do it, I have enough credit in my moral bank account that nobody could hold it against me).

Think about what Prager is saying: The way to handle sexual assaulters in the workplace is to tell them to "buzz off" (which I'm sure hurt this man's feelings immensely) and then do... nothing.  You shouldn't report them.  You shouldn't call them out.  You shouldn't hold them accountable in any way.  In fact, it's on you to change your work life so that you don't get harassed anymore.  Avoiding your boss so that he doesn't sexually assault you: That's not empowerment.  That's acquiescence.

And it's an acquiescence that too many women have had to do for too many years.  And it needs to end.

This betrays the mindset of people like Dennis Prager: They just don't think sexual assault is that bad.  That's the bottom line.  They might not like it.  They probably don't treat women that way themselves and wish other men wouldn't as well.  But ultimately it's just not something that we as a society should make that big a deal of.  Boys will be boys, and girls just need to deal with it.  It's nothing deeper than that.

In sum, I am not interested in whether Mrs. Ford, an anti-Trump activist, is telling the truth. Because even if true, what happened to her was clearly wrong, but it tells us nothing about Brett Kavanaugh since the age of 17. But for the record, I don’t believe her story. Aside from too many missing details — most women remember virtually everything about the circumstances of a sexual assault no matter how long ago — few men do what she charges Kavanaugh with having done only one time. And no other woman has ever charged him with any sexual misconduct.

Maybe Mrs. Ford is an anti-Trump activist because she's anti-sexual assault.  That would make a lot of sense, actually.  As for the rest of his account, well, it's also true that women rarely manifest fake accusations, and when they do, they are rarely as lacking in lurid detail as Mrs. Ford's.  So, there's that.

Do not be surprised if a future Republican candidate for office or judicial nominee — no matter how exemplary a life he has led — is accused of sexual misconduct . . . from when he was in elementary school.

Hahahaha... It's funny to think of an elementary school kid committing sexual misconduct, isn't it?  But, seriously, I won't be surprised if a future Repulican is accused of sexual misconduct, and I also won't be surprised when other Republicans support him nevertheless.

Entry 436: How Much Are You Who You Were When You Were a Kid?

I haven't written much about politics on this blog in a while.  It's been a conscious decision.  With our current president dominating the ether (though, maybe, hopefully less so than before -- is his act finally getting stale?), I need a reprieve from all that when I'm writing this blog.  I am still paying attention though.  And I am donating to Democratic candidates to retake the House and possibly, though likely not, the Senate.  I recommend you do the same.  Dems are by no means perfect, but they really are the only choice for people who care about America's democracy.  Right now, they really are the only choice for anti-Trumpers.  And there are more anti-Trumpers than Trumpers, even if you add in the soft supporters -- the people who say, for social reasons, they don't really support him, but actually do, because they voted for him and they vote for all the other Republican candidates who cover up his misdeeds -- the people who think saying they "disagree" with one of his crazy lies is a courageous act of independence -- but the Trumpers hold outsize political sway because they vote more reliably, and because they have a huge demographic advantage, both through anti-democratic gerrymandering and unfortunate natural sorting (Dems are mostly packed into big cities).  But Democrats can overcome this disadvantage with just a bit of extra turnout at the polls.  We've seen this in special elections already.  And money can help with turnout by raising awareness (running ads, knocking on doors, etc.).  So, if you can spare time or money (and most people can) donate or volunteer with ActBlue or the DNC or your local candidate or something, and if you live somewhere where it matters, or even where it doesn't matter, vote!

In other political news, Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation went from being a done deal to being, well, still pretty much a done deal, in my opinion, but perhaps one that's more politically risky for a handful of Republics (e.g., Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski) than before.  The only chance Dems have of blocking that seat is to somehow delay a confirmation vote until after the midterms and then win the Senate, a prospect I give roughly 0.1% chance of happening.  For one thing, Republicans know this, so they are almost certainly going to vote before the midterm, and they are almost certainly going to vote yes unanimously (again, in my opinion).  There will be some hearings and a lot of talk about "standards of evidence," and then they will toe the line.  And even if they don't, even if they somehow don't have the votes to confirm, there is only a slim chance (maybe 1-in-3) of Dems winning the Senate in November, anyway.  They have to net two seats out 35 of which 25 are currently held by Republicans (or something like that).  So, even if the "blue wave" comes to pass (a big if) it still might not be enough, in which case, it might not be Kavanaugh, but it will be somebody just as bad.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Today's big question: Do you consider the accusations of sexual misconduct by against Kavanaugh, by a childhood acquaintance, Christine Blasey Ford, as disqualifying from Supreme Court confirmation?  I say yes, but I already would vote against him, if I could, for many other reasons, so I'm not impartial.  If I really liked his jurisprudence would I consider the accusations disqualifying?  That's trickier.  So far, there is just one allegation against him from one person at one time.  Is that enough?  It depends on, among other things, how credible it is, and this one does seem to be credible to me.  Ford is a well-respect professor, and there is evidence she's not just making this up now -- she told her husband about it years ago, as well her therapist, although she didn't name Kavanaugh explicitly to the latter.  Also, the man who was allegedly with Kavanaugh at the time, Mark Judge (not to be confused with the creator of Beavis and Butt-head), has written extensively about his escapades of blackout drunkenness, so it's certainly possible that the event happened and neither man remembers it.  It's also possible Kavanaugh remembers it and is lying when he says doesn't.  And of course it's possible Ford is lying or completely mistaken, but that seems much less plausible to me than the first two.

My opinion: I think something happened.  Whether it was an attempted rape or just kids doing stupid shit because kids do stupid shit, I think we will never know.  That's the other thing: Kavanaugh was not an adult when this was said to have happened.  That muddies the water a lot for me.  Kids often treat other kids inappropriately and cruelly, because their brains aren't developed enough to completely understand how their actions affect others and because they lack impulse control.  I've seen kids, ever older kids, 16-, 17-years old, do fucked up sexual things to other teenagers and didn't think it was wrong.  I even thought it was funny at the time.  Once a wrestling teammate of mine put his dick on another teammate's forehead while he was doing a bench press, as a "joke," (the funny part being that the guy couldn't do anything about it because he was holding 200-pounds in his hands).  I thought it was hysterical, everybody did, except the guy who the got the dick on his head.  He was mad and embarrassed, understandably so, in retrospect, because that's sexual harassment.  Obviously, something like attempted rape is a whole different ball of wax, but maybe that's not what was intended.  Maybe Kavanaugh and his friend thought it was all a joke or thought that that's what you do when you want to hook up with girl, because they were privileged, shelter, dumb-ass kids, who went to all-boys school and didn't learn how to interact appropriately with opposite sex.  Should this be held against them into adulthood, if there is no evidence they behaved this way as adults?  How much leeway should we give to kids to grow up?

My answers to these questions are that we should give people a lot of leeway and not judge them for what they do when they are kids.  Childhood, after all, is when we are supposed to learn from our mistakes, even our big mistakes.  However, with respect to Kavanaugh, there is a reverse Catch-22 for his detractors.  It goes like this: He is now an adult, and by categorically denying the charges against him, he is in effect calling his accuser a liar, impugning her character, and giving carte blanche to his supports to go after her.  If you believe Ford to be credible at all (which I do) then this is a disqualifying act.  It's not the original act he did as a child; it's the false denial he did as an adult.  However -- this is where the Catch-22 part comes in -- if he admits he did it, then instantly the public outcry would be so great, he would likely not to be confirmed anyway.  So, he now can't win.  (Unless enough people agree with him that his accuser is lying or wrong, in which case, he can win, and that's probably what's going to happen.)  What Kavanaugh could have said is that he takes allegations of sexual harassment seriously, but he doesn't remember this event happening, but he did drink as a teen and do stupid things he doesn't always remember now (like most people), so although he would never have tried to rape somebody, if he did touch somebody in an inappropriate, scary way, he's very sorry, and it's only because he was a drunk dumb kid, and that's not who he is today, and not how he ever behaved as an adult.  Furthermore, he's deeply troubled by the distress this has caused Ford over the years, and he's reaching out to her directly to try to make amends and reconcile the situation as best as possible.  That is the more human response, and one that would, I suspect, more accurately reflect the truth.  It's also the tougher row to hoe.  Would this be good enough for people?  Would he still get confirmed if he said this?  We will never know, because he didn't say this.  He took the easy way out, which, I think is also the dishonest way out, and this is the problem.  In general, forthrightness is not Kavanaugh's strong point, and this is another major demerit.  We should demand a higher level of rectitude from Supreme Court justices.  I mean, isn't Clarence Thomas enough?  We need another one?

Anyway...

I think that's enough for now.  Until next time...

Entry 435: Ain't No Cure for the Sunday Night Blues

The Sunday Night Blues are in full effect tonight.  You know that feeling of ennui mixed with sadness you get as a kid on Sunday night because you have to go back to school?  Well, I get that as an adult too.  It was really bad in grad school, because, like Susanna Hoffs, Sunday was my fun day.  It was the only day of the week I took a prolonged break from my research, and I would go to my local water hole and watch football with my friends all day.  When I returned home, I was still two-thirds drunk and crashing hard from my high of Miller Lite and Buffalo wings, and that's when the blues would creep up with a vengeance.  After getting married the feeling wasn't as intense, and since having kids I don't notice it as much (Who has a time to wallow in languor with kids?), but it still returns from time to time.

Today the conditions were perfect for a unwanted visit -- specifically, the weather.  Just like Scott Weiland, I think so much depends on the weather, and it has been brutal this weekend -- a relentless downpour.  It came at the worse possible time too because as I mentioned in my last post, I have Lil' S2 by myself right now, and not being able to go outside makes things so much more difficult.  Yesterday morning, we went to the park, even though it was very soggy, because it was the only two-hour block in which rain wasn't in the forecast.  As it turns out, we didn't even get that.  We got caught in a cloudburst and had to hurry home.  Only for some reason Lil' S2 refused to ride in the stroller, so we couldn't even hurry.  We meandered home in the driving rain, while Lil' S2 threw periodic tantrums because he didn't want to walk but also wouldn't get in the stroller.  We took about a half-hour to travel a route I could finish in literally three minutes if Lil' S2 would've just let me push him in the stroller.  We were both as drenched as you could possibly be.

Today I didn't even bother to try to leave the house.  It was raining so hard all day, we would have gotten soaked just going to the car.  And I didn't know what to do anyway.  A museum would require street parking (no thanks), and I'm not sure Lil' S2 would go for one of those indoor play areas by himself.  I could envision us going there and him not really being into it, and not interacting with the other kids, and just hanging on my pant legs.  So, we just stayed home.  I tried to make the best of it, but there is only so much you can do, especially when you have a kid who wants to be entertained all the time.  He's usually not like that -- he's the more independent one of the two -- but with S being gone, he's been super clingy, and I mainly indulge it because I know he misses his mom.  So, basically our day consisted of hide-and-seek for 15 minutes, ride scooters on our the deck for 15 minutes, read a story for 15 minutes, watch iPad for 15 minutes, lather, rinse, repeat.

Also, I was constantly checking scores of games on my phone, which is a terrible habit, and such a colossal waste of time.  I can't help it though.  I managed to curb my social media use drastically.  I never check Twitter anymore, and I only lurk on Facebook (I haven't posted in a long time) for maybe five minutes a day.  But I can't shake the compulsion to constantly look at sports scores on my phone.  I am in a super tight fantasy baseball match, which is my excuse today, but there is always something for which I can make an excuse.  At some point I just need to put down my phone and not pick it up.  I somehow managed to make it through the first 35 years of my life as an avid sports fan without having to check my phone every 30 seconds.  It's just so depressing to look at the clock, realize I've been awake for six hours and the only thing I've "accomplished" is following my fantasy teams.  Now, to be fair to myself, it is hard to focus on anything of substance when your primary task is watching your kid(s), but still I could be doing something else.  Taking up crochet would be time better spent than what I do now.

Speaking of sports and time, this website is pretty fun if you're a baseball fan.  It tells you who the first younger player than you in MLB was, and who the last player older than you was.  The first player younger than me was a pretty good third baseman for the Pirates and Cubs name Amaris Ramirez.  The last player older than me is to be determined, because it hasn't happened yet, but it will likely be ex-Mariner closer Fernando Rodney who's got me a by a few months, and is still pitching pretty well.  (The only other option is Bartolo Colon who's 45 and kinda sucky.)  In the NFL, there's a decent chance it will be none other than the ageless wonder Tom Brady, who was born in the same month, in the same year as I was, a few weeks before me.  I feel like we're basically best friends because of this.  Actually, I'm not sure Brady would be such a great hang.  He had a MAGA hat in his locker and called Trump a friend, and he's also into some weird fitness shit -- the sports equivalent of Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP garbage -- so I'm not sure we would get along.  Although probably we would, I get along with almost everybody.  But given the opportunity, I think I would rather kick it with Aaron Rodgers.  He seems cooler. 

Anyway, I think that's enough of that.  Until next time...

Entry 434: Dinner and a Movie

I guess it was a movie and dinner, if you want to be chronologically accurate, but S and I actually got to go out tonight without our kids like real people.  We are finally done with daycare, after five years, now that Lil' S2 is in preschool, and when we stopped, the woman who runs our daycare gave us a gift certificate to a nearby restaurant and four hours of free babysitting -- some sort of customer appreciation gift.  It's a very nice gesture, especially from somebody who wasn't always the easiest person to deal with.  Let's just say, I appreciate the gift, but I appreciate being done with her daycare more.

We took the opportunity to see Juliet, Naked at our local "arty" theater.  I wanted to see it, because I read the book, and I'm always keen on seeing a movie after I read the book, even if the movie looks bad, or, as in this case, I didn't really like the book.  I mean, the book was fine.  It's by Nick Hornby, and I thought I really liked Nick Hornby, because I loved High Fidelity the movie and then I really loved About a Boy the book (the movie was solid too).  But then I read a few of his other novels -- How to Be Good (bad), Slam (decent), Juliet, Naked (so-so) -- and realized that maybe I don't like him that much.  But Juliet, Naked the movie was enjoyable -- cute is an apt description.  It wasn't brilliant, award-winning cinema or anything like that, but that's not what it was trying to be.  It was really good for what it was.  It was like a Judd Apatow movie (actually he produced it), without the too-clever-by-half dialogue and without being 25 minutes too long.  The three main actors -- Rose Byrne, Chris O'Dowd, and Ethan Hawke -- were all excellent.  I really like Ethan Hawke now, because I heard him on Bill Simmons' podcast, and he was super into talking about his career and his old movies.  He geeked out on them like a fanboy, and I like it when celebrities do that.  I get annoyed when they act too cool for school about their work.  It's refreshing when artists appreciate their art as much as you do (which, coincidentally, is a big theme in the movie).  After Hawke, Simmons had Denzel Washington on, and the difference couldn't have been more stark.  Washington was interesting, and he came off as a decent guy, but his attitude about his old movies was like "You still care about that?  Move on."  Anyway...

Oh, another great thing about Juliet, Naked is that it Matt King (aka Super Hans) had a bit part in it.  I love that guy.*

So, holiday tomorrow.  We have the pool or the beach on the docket.  I guess it's the last weekend for that type of thing.  I mean, with climate change the weather will probably still be really hot here for another couple of months, but Labor Day is usually when everything closes for the season.  I'm pushing for the pool, because it's easier/less expensive.  It's not my call, though.  Our friend is the one with the pool membership, so if she says she wants to go to the beach, then I guess the beach it is.  S said she will take the kids by herself, but I'm not looking for a get-away day.  I want to do something with my family -- just maybe something that takes three hours instead of eight hours, that's all.

Also,  I want to spend time with Lil' S1 because I won't see him for a few weeks.  S is taking him to South Africa with her for a work trip.  Her parents are also going, so it's a quasi-vacation.  I'm not super stoked about it to be honest.  I get really worried when I'm away from my kids for more than a day, especially if they are out of the country, and also it makes me nervous to be the only one around with Lil' S2.  I keep having these awful thoughts of me having a brain aneurysm, and him being trapped alone in our house until somebody somehow realizes I'm gone.  But, you gotta live life, right?  You can't seal your family off in a protective bubble.  And even if you could, what would you do if it ran out of oxygen?

And truth be told, the trip actually comes at a decent time.  When I'm the only parent in town, it's really hard for me to make my Krav Maga classes, which is usually very irritating, but I recently injured my shoulder and could stand to take some time off to try to get it right.  Getting old(ish) is a bitch.  I'm actually not that far off, performance-wise, from where I was in my 20s.  I'm nearly as fit and maybe even a bit stronger now, but I just get destroyed by injuries in a way I never did before.  Seemingly small things linger for weeks, and I can't seem to go longer than a month or two without something major -- pulling a hamstring, spraining my thumb, throwing out my back, fucking up my shoulder.  It sucks.  Maybe I need to start taking HGH.  Anybody know a good PED dealer?

But I really shouldn't complain.  I received news recently that one of my cousins needs a liver transplant -- another one.  He already had his original liver removed because it was cancerous, and now his body is rejecting his new one.  Apparently his chances of getting a different, better new one soon are decent, but still -- perspective.

On that cheery note... 

Until next time...

*Weirdly, I can't find Matt King being credited for being in this movie, but I swear he is.  He even has a line.  I suppose I could have mistaken somebody else for him, but I don't think so.  Also, there is no part listed on imbd that fits the description of his (?) role in the movie.  So, I don't know.