This is my “various and sundry” page for 2025, January–?. For more information on the purpose of these pages, reading order, update policy, notes on terminology, etc., see the category description. For the other pages, see the category navigation.
With the approaching German parliamentary elections, the videotext of ARD seems to untiringly report demonstrations “against the Right” (“gegen rechts”).
ARD is the main nation-wide public broadcaster, financed by mandatory fees collected by force even from those who do not watch it, and fees that are to a considerable part used to push a Leftist agenda. In this, it is a good example of abuse of money taken from the people contrary to the interests of the people. (Cf. one of yesterday’s entries.)
Here two problems on different levels manifest:
Firstly, if we look at the actual respective text behind the headline, the demonstrations are not actually against the “Right” but against (alleged!) “Rightwing extremism” (“Rechtsextremismus”). This is symptomatic for how mainstream media, including the very strongly Leftist-dominated public broadcasters, try to blur the critical difference between “Right” and “extreme Right”—something the more problematic as the alleged “extreme Right” usually has far more in common with the Left, let alone extreme Left, than with the rest of the “Right”. (See e.g. a text on political scales for more on this.)
Secondly, Germany actually has a massive problem with the extreme Left. Not only are direct descendants of the DDR-ruling SED in governmental power in several states, but the ruling SPD follows and suggests policies that belong (following Reagan) on the ash heap of history. Indeed, in the combination between SPD and the “German-RINO” rule of Merkel, Germany has taken a number steps backwards during my 27 years here, including severe damage to the economy, to civic rights, and to energy production, similar to those pushed by the late Biden regime, while nothing has been done to resolve long-standing and systematic problems in the extended Leftist family, like the anti-competitive influence of mega-guilds (IHKs, etc.) and the poorly functioning and cripplingly expensive social-security systems.
A particularly interesting thought is what would happen if these headlines (and/or the underlying texts and/or the nominal claims of the demonstrators) were to be more drastically reformulated. What, e.g., if a move not just from “Right” to “Rightwing extremism” was made, but to e.g. “xenophobia” (without that spurious “Right” in any shape), or the focus was shifted from the “against what” to the “by whom”, e.g. in that we had headlines speaking of demonstrations by the “far Left”, “Leftist populists”, or whatever might apply.
Of course, the excuse for protests against the “Right” is often the defamatory claim that being “Rightwing” would be a matter of e.g. xenophobe/racist sentiments, while the events after October 7 have shown, again, that anti-Semitism comes predominantly from the Left—and while matters like more general xenophobe/racist sentiments have nothing to do with Left and Right. Likewise, a common defamatory claim is that there would be issues with “Rightwing” violence, while political violence, as is usually the case, is a predominantly Leftwing issue.
Looking specifically at AfD, a common target of such protests, it is notable that AfD has largely arisen as a protest movement against government excesses, the contempt for the citizens that German politicians continually demonstrate, repeated anti-democratic coalition governments that artificially let the Left into power, etc. Protests against AfD are, in their core, less a matter of any Left–Right or e.g. immigration issues—it is a matter of condemning dissent from the political narratives of “big government” and Leftwing parties. Large portions of the people object to the disaster that is German politicians/politics—and the result is a political campaign against those portions. (Again, similar to the situation in the U.S. during the COVID-countermeasure era and the Biden regime.)
In contrast, democratically minded politicians would have changed their course and distanced themselves from past errors. Sadly, Germany does not have an equivalent to Trump who stands a realistic chance of turning matters around. Should the nominally Conservative parties win, chances are that politics will be more “German-RINO” than Trump—again.
Personally, I have long contemplated leaving this increasingly far Leftist disgrace for some other country, and should a Leftist victory in the elections manifest, I might see the final straw. (The sadder, as I originally, partly, moved to Germany to escape the Swedish Leftism.) The problem is where to go. Countries like the U.S. and Italy are currently heading in a better direction, but that could change very quickly again. Based on language and proximity, the U.K. might have been an option, but the U.K. has disastrous Leftist problems of its own right now. Etc.
An unmentioned sub-issue in the previous entry is that politicians are often keener on being seen as doing something than on actually achieving something.
This is a topic worthy of deeper treatment at some later date. For now, I merely point to:
Firstly, how spending X million on some presumed worthy cause might appear more tangible than setting up a set of goals and striving to reach these goals. If in doubt (barring impoundment...), spending X million is usually easier than reaching goals. (“We spent X million on [cause]! Yay us! Vote for us again!”)
Secondly, once goals are reached (which they rarely are, in politics) the proponents of the cause at hand either have to shift the goal posts or abandon the cause. In contrast, spending X million can be done again and again and again—if in doubt, the failure to achieve actual change from spending X million can be a good excuse to spend even more money the next year. (Provided that voters are sufficiently easily manipulated.)
Recently, there have been several protests by Leftists against Trump and various Trump nominees for defying the law of the land, not respecting the rule of law, or similar—in a manner that makes even freedom of opinion impossible. (And which is extraordinarily hypocritical, considering much of what went on during under Biden and still goes on in, say, California.) Note e.g. Russ Vought, his doubts about the constitutionality of the “Impoundment Control Act”, and the supposition that this would disqualify him from the intended position as director of the “Office of Management and Budget”.
Firstly, there is a difference between holding a particular opinion and acting upon that opinion. I admit, that many Leftists, themselves, have great problems in this regard, with that common the-end-justifies-the-means mentality, which makes any act justifiable that furthers a particular opinion or a goal related to that opinion. Even inside the Left, however, this is not a given, and the extrapolation of this attitude to the non-Left is not admissible without further proof. What matters is not whether someone, e.g., considers a law constitutional but how he will actually approach matters relating to that law.
Secondly, laws are subject to scrutiny and the mere opinion that a law is constitutional does not make it so. When it comes to personal opinion, not even the SCOTUS can limit what is acceptable—and, indeed, the SCOTUS has reversed it self on quite a few occasions and on quite a few important matters. Even in a more practical application, it is vital that those who, in good faith, consider a law unconstitutional can work towards having that law stricken, be it through a legislative change or through a ruling by the SCOTUS. To then argue that “Congress says” or “a lower court says” is not helpful (except to the degree that a particular act would unlawfully go against a ruling in a lower court, which is a matter for the courts to handle—not Congress).
Looking specifically at the Impoundment Control Act, the portion of it under dispute is horrifyingly stupid—that the Executive is not allowed to not spend all the money Congress has appropriated for a given task, even should that task have been satisfactorily solved with a lesser use of money. (Also note the previous entry and issues around waste of money.) Worse, it seems reasonable to suppose that the true Leftist interest in the act is to maintain or grow government further, which is in direct opposition to the best interests of the people, and might well thwart portions of the agenda that Trump was elected to implement. Certainly, the act is very problematic from a division-of-powers point of view, and I would (as layman) not be surprised to see the SCOTUS favor the Trump camp on this issue.
Here, however, it might be important to differ between reasons for not spending. Consider declining to spend (a) with an eye at a mission already accomplished and (b) simply through having different priorities or disagreeing with what goals are worthy of pursuing (which was at least the alleged motivation when the act was introduced contra Nixon). A constitutional evaluation need not reach the same conclusion in both cases (or in other cases that might arise).
And even should the SCOTUS decide against Trump, this does not change that the law is stupid. (The SCOTUS properly decides what the law of the land is—not what it should be.)
The general mentality that Congress provides upper limits on spending, not lower limits, is far saner. If Congress, within its portion of the divided powers and responsibilities, wants to achieve something, this something is much preferably stated in terms of concrete goals—not spending. By analogy, a business that decides to “spend X million on a new factory” is far less professional and likely to be successful than one that decides to “build a new factory with the following characteristics [list of characteristics] by no later than [date]” and allocates a maximum of X million as a budget for the task at hand. (And note how this type of specification would restrict a CEO/POTUS/whatnot who disagrees with the goal at hand in a more constructive and practical manner than would lower limits on spending.)
In a next step: If the Impoundment Control Act is not set aside in a manner that causes further court proceedings, how is the matter ever to reach the SCOTUS? Chances are that it never would and that, therefore, the opinions of lower courts or, worse, Congress would have the same practical effect as that of the SCOTUS—an absurdity.
While governments are very keen on abusing their power to e.g. rob Peter to buy the votes of Paul or to implement some agenda that is to the disadvantage of Peter and/or that Peter disapproves of, there are some particularly problematic issues illustrated by e.g. recent reports around USAID and Trump’s intervention against it.
Any government spending abroad, to the (real or claimed) advantage of foreigners, etc., must be viewed with great scepticism: A typical Western country (the U.S. most certainly included) has a massive problem with too high taxes, too much spending, and too high debt—how, then, can spending on other countries, on foreigners in those countries, whatnot, be justified?
Examples can likely be found, e.g. when a certain spending is an investment with an expected payout exceeding the investment to a sufficient degree, but how often is this actually the case?
Worse, charity projects have a long history of not even achieving what they set out to achieve but to fatten various pockets of politicians, civil servants, and whatnots along the way. Why then should the government cut out individual choice, individual judgment on costs, benefits, and risk, and other matters better handled by the individual, in favor of government spending of tax-payers’ money?
Worse yet, much of the USAID spending appears to have had no (even spurious) objective justification whatever—instead, it has been a matter of abusing tax-payers’ money to push Leftist or far Leftist agendas on a global level. In what world should the tax-payers have to accept such abuse?
More generally, anyone who is entrusted with someone else’s money has a fiduciary duty, be it a legal or an ethical one. Spending that does not fall within a sufficiently narrow frame or is not expected to be sufficiently in the interest of that someone else, is simply not conscionable. With governments, this is the more, not the less, important, because governments give the tax-payers very little choice—to the point that the “entrusted” is an on-paper claim by the governments that hardly matches the views of clear-thinking tax-payers.
At the same time, this propaganda spending parallels an internal problem in many or most countries, that Peter’s money is used for the purpose of telling Peter what he should believe, how he should behave, what he may or may not say, or, even, how he should vote—and very, very often to the outright disadvantage of Peter. (To tie in with the above, this can include direct or indirect pro-tax propaganda, that the government uses tax-payers’ money on attempts to persuade the tax-payers that they should enjoy paying taxes.) Such an abuse of money is not only grossly unethical but also risks a perpetuation of certain beliefs (even when flawed) and certain regimes.
Here “how he should behave” is to be seen on a more moralizing level, that “in order to be a good human being, you should X”—as opposed to “by legal mandate, you are obliged to X”.
Note that this type of influence is not necessarily as direct as during the COVID-countermeasure era. It can also include an abuse of the school system (rampant in e.g. the U.S. over the last few decades) and the extensive government funds that are gifted to various parties in countries like Sweden and Germany to “further” democracy (while actually doing the opposite).
Looking further at recent news, we have the UNRWA, which has (at least, partially) been captured by Islamist and anti-Israel/-Jew interests—to the point that some employees were involved with the atrocities of October 7. The UN, in general, certainly has a long history of anti-Israel positions. However, if a government gives money to either of the two (or any other specific UN organization or any of a great number of other organizations), there is no guarantee what the uses will be. Even a government that is opposed to, say, anti-Semitism might then find it self supporting it monetarily. The Biblical Peter, of course, was a Jew and a great number of metaphorical Peters will be so today. We then have Peter being robbed to further his enemies. (With similar remarks applying to other groups of Peters and other abuses.)
Then we have the issue of interference with foreign countries: Even the Democrats have been known to complain about foreign interference in U.S. domestic matters—but how is the abuses of USAID any different?
A recurring theme around U.S. elections are Democrat manipulations in order to achieve Democrat victories by “extra-democratic” means. Two of the main complaints from the Republicans include too lax voter-ID laws and ranked-choice voting.
These two cases are radically different, however, in that there is no automatic (and obvious-to-me) mechanism by which ranked-choice voting would favor the Democrats. There has been a few cases (notably, in Alaska) where the Democrats have had a leg up through this approach, but the issue seems less to be a systematic advantage and more that the Republicans had not adapted to the approach. (In reverse, consider e.g. the 1992 POTUS election and the possibility that Bush would have beaten Clinton, if sufficiently many Perot votes had counted to his advantage in a ranked-choice system—something which would have favored the Republicans.)
In contrast, weaker voter-ID laws make it easier for those ineligible to vote to still vote, for one voter to vote twice by taking the place of someone else, and similar, and (at least in the current political landscape) this favors the Democrats in a systematic manner through the demographics of ineligible voters, the repeated attempts by Democrats to cheat, etc. (With the reverse applying to stronger voter-ID laws.)
From another point of view, strong voter-ID laws are beneficial in their own right, and regardless of what party is affected how, because they ensure that voter eligibility (etc.) is respected. If someone, for instance, wants to extend the right to vote to non-citizens, the way to do so is to suggest a change of law, have that law put to a parliamentary vote (or put to the vote of the people), etc.—not to ignore existing law by making the law unenforceable. (Potentially, with modifications, but following the same principle, if and when a change of the constitution of this-and-that is needed.)
Exactly this, however, is a massive problem with the Democrats and the U.S. Left more generally: various checks and balances, separation of powers, democratic procedures, etc., are not seen as means to ensure that government functions properly but, all too often, as pesky obstacles to the Leftist agenda that should be ignored or removed so that this agenda can be pushed through by any means possible. Note e.g. the failure of far-Left DAs to enforces laws for ideological or other partisan reasons and the many cases of judicial activist judges/justices.
This, while ranked-choice voting has a mixture of advantages and disadvantages, which can lead to better or worse results, depending on issues like exact implementation, voter awareness of how to handle it, whether all parties have adapted to it, and, of course, the exact constellation of votes in the election at hand.
The 2025-01-29 “Potomac River mid-air collision” (using Wikipedia’s naming) gives another example of how important it is to see claims in their right context (cf. the previous entry):
The issue of whether DEI contributed to the crash has been raised. Superficially, it might seem that DEI might be relevant if some of the immediately involved decision makers (pilots, air-traffic controllers, and others that might have directly contributed) were hired/promoted based on sex, race, ethnicity, whatnot.
However, a bigger issue is whether DEI measures might have contributed to problems like understaffing. Notably, I have seen several claims that exactly that had happened with air-traffic controllers, that an artificial lack of air controllers had been caused by a failure to hire “non-diverse” applicants with the right qualifications even with positions remaining open (as opposed to merely preferring to hire “diverse” applicants while still filling all positions).
Now, I do not vouch for these claims being true (I have not done the legwork), but they do show the right type of thinking needed, that one has to look beyond the immediate and “obvious” potential connections and consider the many less immediate and less obvious connections that can exist. Similarly, what if some other profession has a problem with filling empty positions or filling positions with competent applicants because the “non-diverse” are reluctant to even apply, e.g. because they foresee lesser chances of being hired or a worse career (if they are hired) than they could have somewhere else?
Even looking at decision makers, it is not enough to look at the immediately involved. What, e.g., if (!) the apparent pre-mature absence of an air-traffic controller went back to a poor decision by a manager who was promoted for DEI reasons? (I have no knowledge that points to this and merely use the situation for illustration of possibilities to consider.)
In reverse, however, we also have to consider that apparent signs of DEI need not be so. For instance, it appears that the helicopter was flown by a woman. However, it would be wrong to conclude that a woman would automatically be a DEI case. It could be that she had gone through the exact steps that a man would have gone through, qualified in the same manner, etc., and either did not contribute to the collision or contributed in a manner that could equally have happened to a man with the same background and qualifications.
In a bigger picture, it is important to understand that issues like these are often a matter of probabilities, rather than certainties. The issue is not that, say, a Black lesbian woman would automatically cause a disaster because she is a Black lesbian woman. The point is that DEI measures increase the risk of something going wrong. Say that candidate A has a risk of one-in-a-million of making a fatally wrong decision and that candidate B is at one-in-a-hundred-thousand. Most of the time, both will do equally well, but the number of events needed for the former to reach that fatally wrong decision is (in terms of expectation values) ten times that of the latter. Indeed, if the former make out 90 % of all relevant employees and the latter 10 %, the latter will still be the source of slightly more errors in total and going from percentages of 100–0 to 90–10 might almost double the number of errors.
This the more so when several decision makers have to make a simultaneous mistake and probabilities are multiplicative. Say that two persons both have to make a mistake and that a sufficiently vetted candidate has a probability of one-in-a-thousand of making such a mistake. The joint probability of two persons erring is now at one-in-a-million. Replace one of them with a one-in-a-hundred DEI employee and the joint probability is one-in-a-hundred-thousand, which might still be enough for most purposes. Replace both and the probability is a full one-in-ten-thousand, which is a very different matter.
Further, note that this can apply even should, e.g., Black lesbian women be equally suited as White straight men, simply because a artificial narrowing or broadening of applicant pools can have such effects. Say that a hiring process goes from picking the top 10 percent of applicants, regardless of “diversity”, and then switches to hiring the top 5 percent from the “White straight male” applicant pool and the top 15 percent from various “diverse” applicant pools. Clearly, this will lead to an increase in candidates outside the top 10 percent being hired, even were sex, race, whatnot irrelevant to individual suitability.
Normally, I use “DIE” over “DEI”, as it catches the problematic nature of this idiocy so much better. Considering the nature of the events that triggered this entry, I make an exception.
It appears that various trade tariffs and/or tariff increases take effect around now. While these have been met with great scepticism from various observers (and while I am, myself, a proponent of free trade), they must be evaluated in light of three usually overlooked or ignored points:
At least some tariffs (and/or the threat of them) are not intended mainly as a source of income or as a trade intervention. Instead, they serve as means of exerting pressure to achieve a change in unwanted behavior: Play ball or be hit by tariffs.
(Where it is important that the respective country at hand will be worse hit by tariffs than the U.S., because it is more dependent on trade with the U.S. than the U.S. is on trade with it.)
Now, if the other country does play ball, there will be no tariffs and none of the damage that the tariffs could do would come into being.
(2025-02-04)
While it is too early to tell what the end results will be, it is notable that the tariffs towards both Mexico and Canada have been postponed, exactly because the two decided to “play ball” when it came to issues around border control.
Criticism is often raised based on the silent assumption that everyone else would engage in free trade, and that the U.S. would deviate considerably from international norms. In reality, a great many other countries interfere with free trade, be it through tariffs, export subsidies, unfair competition, whatnot—and much of the U.S. tariffs is simply intended to create a balance, to reduce the risk that some other country gains an unfair advantage at the cost of the U.S., to give other countries incentives to lower tariffs (“play ball”), etc.
Other sources of government income bring harm too. If we look e.g. at Trump’s suggestion to replace income tax with tariffs, any harm done by tariffs has to be viewed in light of the benefits that can ensue from lowering income tax. For instance, if a tariff makes some products more expensive in the stores, having more left of a paycheck will give more money to use for purchases. (Which is not necessarily to say that the net effect would be neutral or positive—just that both sides of the equation must be considered in sufficient depth and with an eye at a fair overall evaluation.)
Whether gains from tariffs will be sufficient to replace (as opposed to lower) the income tax in today’s world, seems dubious, but Trump definitely has a point about the historical situation (look e.g. at “The Federalist Papers” or seminal texts on Economics from a similar time period). Moreover, an ethical argument can be made, in that income tax can be seen as a more intrusive measure that violates the rights of the citizens to a higher degree, interferes more with “pursuit of happiness”, etc.
Before and during the Biden presidency, I had some speculations (some published; some not) about why so poor a candidate as Biden had been picked to run for POTUS. These speculations often seem less plausible looking back.
Most notably, I suspected that Biden and Harris would prove a backdoor to somehow smuggle Hillary into the presidency: her primary failure against Obama and election failure against Trump did not make her seem likely to ever get there without some type of artificial help. At the same time, she seemed to be obsessed with the idea of being the first female POTUS (pre-Obama: the first POTUS not to be a White man) and the Clintons still have a great amount of influence within the Democrat party. So, wait a bit, get Hillary into the line of succession (likely, by replacing the hopeless Harris as veep in an Agnew–Ford manner), and then give Biden the boot over his weakened mental faculties (Nixon–Ford).
The failure of this scenario to manifest is not conclusive evidence against it, as it might e.g. be that the lie that Biden was mentality fit proved too painful to reverse or that Hillary had insufficient support to force the switch. However, the likeliest explanation is that this switch was, after all, never the Democrat plan.
Of course, a similar switch did ultimately take place (and did prove extremely painful), in that Biden was re-nominated in the 2024 primaries and then booted in favor of Harris, who would have been extraordinarily unlikely to gain the nomination on her own. (Witness her fiasco in 2020, her poor performance in office and with media, and repeatedly reported problems between her and her staff.) However, on the balance, this seems to have been nothing more than an attempt to avoid the looming loss of Biden in the election (as opposed to a way to get a first female or Black female POTUS).
Sadly, the Democrats did not have the honesty to admit that Biden’s detractors had been correct for some four years. (Unless they believed their own propaganda: a recurring problem with the Left is that it is so very hard to tell when someone on the Left deliberately lies and when he merely repeats someone else’s lie in good faith.) Instead, they behaved as if his mental issues had been “sudden onset” and as if any similarity with the detractors’ complaints was pure coincidence.
The fact that Biden did remain in office, even after withdrawing his renewed candidacy, is a slight oddity. Again, I can only speculate, but I can at least imagine that there was some trade-off, that if Biden withdrew the candidacy, no-one would invoke the 25th amendment to boot him.
In a next step of speculation, the original choice of Harris could have made sense from Biden’s (or his team’s) point of view, in that she was so weak a replacement that it reduced the risk of a booting.
As for Biden’s health, I do not know what, more specifically, is wrong with him, but it is not uncommon that sufferers of similar problems have “good days” and “bad days”, or “good” and “bad” portions of days. This is important to bear in mind whenever someone loudly protests that ‘I met Biden! He was perfectly lucent! Defamation!!! Defamation!!! Defamation!!!” (even apart from the possibility that some such protesters lie). The point is not whether he was lucent at some given time but whether and how often he might not be lucent, what the implications that has on his decision making, on who really is in charge, on how large the risk is that he is not lucent when a crisis occurs, etc.
What new or newly stated speculation is correct, on that I can only speculate.
In light of recent events, it might be a good idea to consider limits on the ability of the POTUS to issue pardons, commutations, and whatnots. (For the most part, I will just use variations of “pardon” below, without a restriction in meaning. Note that the institution of such limits would presumably require a constitutional amendment. Similar limits, unless already present, might make sense on the gubernatorial level.)
Exactly what those limits would be is a tricky question, as there might be unforeseen consequences, as a limit might open loopholes for lawfare, or similar—and I will not attempt to answer the question beyond some speculation.
For illustration: It might seem tempting to remove the possibility to pardon family members, due to the risk that a POTUS would act too self-servingly where such are concerned, that such pardons would be a matter of corruption rather than a righting-of-wrongs, a granting of clemency, or some more historically typical and more legitimate reason. However, as seen during the days of the Biden regime, lawfare against a former POTUS and his allies is a considerable risk, and that such lawfare would also hit family members is a definite possibility. (But the fiction that the Biden family would be at risk borders on the preposterous. Hunter Biden, e.g., was prosecuted for actual and serious crimes of which he was guilty.)
It might, for instance, be sensible to require pardons to be “narrowly tailored”, in that they are limited to certain specific sentences and/or the specific events from which these arose, or, on the outside, certain types of crimes. For instance, the blanket pardon over a ten-year period given to Hunter Biden was pretty much the opposite of what should have been done. Even assuming that a pardon was to be given at all, it should have enumerated exactly what sentences, on-going trials, crimes under investigation, whatnot were to be included. Moreover, if the motivation was indeed a perceived-by-Joe-Biden political persecution, that enumeration should have been limited to alleged crimes that actually saw a potential of prosecution for political reasons, and would then not include cases where someone else would be equally likely to be prosecuted and where sufficient and sufficiently legitimate evidence was present.
Likewise, it might make sense to limit pardons to alleged crimes of which the POTUS has sufficient knowledge, be it through court proceedings, news reporting, “personal knowledge”, whatnot. What if someone receives a wide and vaguely formulated pardon to remove punishment for a lesser crime and this pardon inadvertently protects against punishment for a hitherto unknown greater crime? What if something believed to be e.g. a negligent killing, post-pardon, turns out to have been deliberate murder? Etc.
However, even such seemingly straightforward ideas can come with traps. Say that Joe had personal knowledge of some Hunter crime that had yet to be discovered, that he wished to issue a pardon for that crime, but that enumerating that crime would bring it to public knowledge—possibly, even, in a manner that amounted to self-incrimination. What the correct resolution is, I leave unstated, but the example does demonstrate the complications that can occur.
Another issue is trumped-up crimes that would have been pardoned, had they been trumped up at the time of the pardon, as opposed to the day after the POTUS at hand left office. Ditto alleged crimes that were under (even legitimate) investigation but where neither of the public, the POTUS, and the accused knew of the investigation at the time.
Likewise, it might make sense to limit pardons to sufficiently individual cases. For instance, Biden seem to have commuted death sentences in a near-blanket manner and with an eye much more at the punishment than the crime, the circumstances of the crime, the person convicted, a suspicion of innocence, whatnot. While I do not know what his motivations were, a POTUS who uses his pardoning power because he opposes the death penalty would certainly be conceivable. (In such a case, the executive branch would not just interfere with the judicial branch but also with the legislative.) Even with Trump’s pardon of the J6 victims some care is called for: Here, it is a matter of a common greater event, the prosecution was largely politically motivated, and punishments were often out of proportion. This while those sentenced to death shared a punishment, were typically not victims of politically motivated prosecution, and were typically punished in a reasonable manner based on the law. (I say “typically”, because I have not looked into the details and cannot rule out individual exceptions.)
Even so, the behavior of the various J6 victims varied wildly and a too blanket pardon risks freeing someone who did deserve punishment or whose excessive punishment would have been better commuted than fully pardoned. (But it could be argued that the sum of time served, legal costs, “pain and suffering”, reputational damage, whatnot, will already have reached the level of “excessive punishment” throughout, making a reasonable commutation almost equivalent to a full pardon.) Correspondingly, some degree of individual differentiation is strongly to recommend. (I am not aware of to what degree such a differentiation took place, but, going by the news, the pardons were issued with at least some discrimination.)
On a semi-related topic, it is high time to bury the idea that issuing or accepting a pardon would imply an acknowledgment of guilt on behalf of the pardoner resp. the pardoned. The potential consequences of such ideas are highly negative, including that it might become impossible to protect against lawfare or other trumped up charges without a pseudo-admission and that the guilty might receive better treatment than the innocent. (Note similar problems around the despicable practice of “plea bargaining”, e.g. how someone innocent who maintains his innocence can be punished worse, in the case of flawed verdict, than someone guilty who admits to his guilt.)
The Biden-to-Trump switch is a great occasion, something very much needed for both the U.S. and the world, and something that I in 2020 might have seen as an almost impossible development.
However, Biden has continued his last-minute-agenda of pushing poor decisions that prevent or complicate much of the good that could follow. For instance, today, I learn that he has given pre-emptive pardons to Fauci and members of the lawfaring J6 committee. (Whether Birx, likely, a greater evildoer than Fauci, was included was not mentioned. See some earlier entries for some few other examples.) Further pardons were extended to members of the Biden family, with the hypocritical motivation that Biden would fear lawfare against them—while the Biden regime has pushed lawfare against others in a manner that is unprecedented in at least modern U.S. history.
These pre-emptive pardons reduce the probability that a proper investigation of the respective misdeeds takes place, they unfairly remove perpetrators from their punishments (should these ultimately have been found guilty in an alternate reality without flawed pardons; note that not all evil deeds are illegal and that matters of proof has thwarted the punishment of a great many criminals), and they give strong incentives for future abuse of government power, e.g. in that the next Democrat POTUS could bring another slate of extremist lawfare because the perpetrators rely on a presidential pardon to protect them from consequences. Indeed, the pardons of members of the J6 committee are additionally extraordinarily tasteless and outright absurd, because the members wilfully engaged in per- and prosecution of others in an abusive manner, while they, themselves, are now exempt from (at least, criminal and federal) prosecution for their acts.
However, other means of prosecution and/or investigation might still be possible and, if so, with a reduced ability for the perpetrators to refuse disclosure based on self-incrimination (“taking the 5th”).
Another upside is that Trump can now do virtually whatever he wants in terms of pardons and no-one can make a legitimate complaint without having to acknowledge the precedent set by Biden and that Biden’s pardons (likely) were still more far-going. This could quite conceivably include pardons for the J6 victims.
(2025-01-21)
Almost the first thing that I read in the morning is that Trump has issued exactly such pardons, freeing countless victims of politically motivated per-/prosecution and partially undoing one of the greatest atrocities in U.S. history. (The more so, if we look outside times of war.)
Partially? Well, he cannot undo the time already lost on trials and imprisonment, the personal traumas, the loss of credibility of the U.S. justice system, etc. Whether he can do something about the escape of the J6 committee remains to be seen, but the odds might be against it.
(The morning German time. It is still inauguration day in parts of the U.S. and might or might not still have been so in D.C. at the time of the pardon.)
Trump, in turn, is off to a good start, so far, but seems to be rattling of the executive orders that were already known to be in the pipeline. To analyze them might require weeks, so I will limit myself to one positive surprise (to me) and a negative known that mirrors it:
Mount McKinley is restored to its traditional name, which removes a politically motivated renaming, reduces confusion, and gives hope that various other such renamings will ultimately be undone. (Note, in particular, the many cases of variations of “We cannot have an X building!!! X fought on the wrong side in the civil war!!! Racism!!! Racism!!! Racism!!!”.)
It also reduces the risk of future misdevelopments, where an increasing political pressure might lead to similar issues as with pronouns and someone who has the audacity to say “Mount McKinley” (maybe, because that is the name that he once learned in school and had ever again seen for several decades) might find himself in court for an alleged hate crime.
However, then we have the “Gulf of America” thing. While the motivations are less nefarious than with many woke renamings, it can cause similar problems and it also brings a severe international issue: While Mount McKinley is a part of the U.S., the Gulf of Mexico/America is only partially so, and we might now have issues like the U.S. speaking of “Gulf of America” and other English-speaking countries of “Gulf of Mexico”—and while those countries that use other languages (including Mexico...) are likely to continue with the use of the respective old name, which often amounts to exactly “Gulf of Mexico”.
A partial justification might be found if “America” is to be understood in its proper sense, namely, as what is sometimes referred to as “the Americas” (in an attempt to resolve the unnecessary ambiguity that arises from mis-applying the label “America” to the U.S. only).
However, I doubt that this is Trump’s intent and it would raise considerable questions about where to draw the border of the Gulf, as a larger area of water might be called for than just what “Gulf of Mexico” implied.
In a bigger picture, a potential future threat is that consecutive presidents use pardons, executive orders, and whatnots, to simply negate the acts of the respective predecessor. What, e.g., if the next Democrat decides that Mount McKinley must be re-re-renamed to match a Leftist preference?
As noted in the past, one of the severe flaws of the Biden regime was its failures in foreign policy, including how Trump left the situation around Israel in its best state since decades and Biden allowed it to degenerate to its lowest point since at least the 1970s.
Trump threatened “hell to pay”, unless Hamas had fallen in line before inauguration day (and the beginning of his second term). At virtually the last moment before inauguration day, Hamas fell in line. Indeed, factoring in the weekend, and the respective Jewish, Christian, and Muslim versions/equivalents of the Sabbath, giving it even another two days would have pushed the deadline to its limits. (Inauguration day falls on a Monday, this time.)
An interesting contrast between Trump and Biden can be found in the traditional U.S. ideal of speaking softly while carrying a big stick. Biden spoke softly, while carrying, at best, a little stick. Trump speaks loudly, and has not yet been put in a position to truly use his stick, which remains of unknown size. (No penis-metaphors intended.)
A disturbing point is how Biden tries to take credit, despite the low likelihood of a connection. Not only is the synchronicity between cease fire (hostage freeing, etc.) and inauguration day striking, but:
Firstly, Biden has had some fifteen months to achieve something. He has failed to do so.
Secondly, the involvement of the coming Trump administration has not been limited to bluster and threats. It has also involved diplomatic and behind-the-scenes-efforts (one Steve Witkoff appears to have been particularly important, going by recent news).
This applies even should the eventual resolution largely match suggestions by the Biden regime (as I have heard claimed but have not verified): Anyone can make suggestions—getting the other party or parties to accept them is the trick. This gives a good segue to the topic of Hamas, Israel, and who was the roadblock:
Leftist/Hamas/Iranian/whatnot propaganda continued its anti-Israel spin with claims that Israel would be the roadblock, while all signs that I saw pointed to the Hamas (and/or Iran, depending on how much say the Iranian regime had at any given time). The current caving of Hamas, with this timing, is yet another strong sign that Hamas (and/or Iran) was the problem.
As an aside, Biden has closed out his presidency with further poor or odd decisions than those mentioned in earlier entries, which casts a further negative light on him. For instance, in another dubious foreign policy decision, he has removed Cuba’s status as a state sponsoring terrorism and loosened sanctions. (Because a soft attitude worked so well with Iran...) For instance, he has added further student-loan forgiveness that punishes those who paid their debts, gives poor incentives to future students, costs the tax-payers more money, and risks a further cementing of overly high tuition fees and a borrow-to-study and/or the-government-will-eventually-pay-for-me-so-I-can-just-borrow mentality, which (as with e.g. ObamaCare) not only fails to address the underlying problem—but makes that problem worse. (While we can discuss what is or is not a reasonable tuition fee, there is no doubt that the poorly implemented U.S. system of student aid and loans has artificially pushed fees up and done more to pipeline tax-payers’ money to colleges than to relieve the economic situation of students.)
Good riddance to the worst POTUS of my lifetime. (To date. I sincerely hope that no later comer will exceed him.)
Through the course of the day, some more details about the hostage issue has reached me, and it seems to be yet another very bad deal, where the Hamas does not just release kidnapped innocent victims, but exchange them for far greater numbers of captives by the Israelis, including many who rightfully do belong in jail.
Who is to blame for this, I leave unstated (especially, whether it goes back to Biden), but it does put the whole issue in a far more negative light, and I would find it prudent to reject the deal in its current form, to renew and increase pressure on the Hamas, and to get it done correctly. Also note a related text from my 2024 entries, including on the dangers involved and the perverse incentives that result.
To amend an above claim: Anyone can make suggestions, getting the other party or parties to accept them is harder, getting acceptance when the suggestions are worthwhile is the actual trick.
(2025-01-18)
The deal was also further from approval at the time of publication than I understood it to be: it did take until Friday, which reduces the likelihood of a coincidental timing even further.
On the downside, again, this is not a good deal at all.
An interesting point around George Soros, who recently, in a mockery of more worthy recipients, received the U.S. “Presidential Medal of Freedom” (briefly mentioned in an earlier entry):
On the one hand, he has become one of the world’s most famous and destructive Leftist activists.
On the other, I first heard of him in a context where the Swedish Left condemned him as living proof of how evil capitalism and capitalists are: In the early 1990s, he engaged in extensive short-selling of various currencies (including the Swedish Krona), leading to chaos, devaluations, great losses of taxpayer’s money, and whatnot.
To what degree Soros is to blame for these events and to what degree the ERM and the often dubious choices of semi-fixed exchange rates of the time, I leave unstated. It could be argued that Soros was just a symptom of an underlying disease and/or someone who just took advantage of a disease ultimately caused by others. (It could also be argued that his behavior at the time, and some later occasions, was extremely incompatible with his later image as a philanthropist.)
The point above, however, is the then Leftist take on Soros.
While the ongoing fires, themselves, are a dire problem, it seems that this problem is made worse by government mismanagement in both the immediate now and the accumulation of previous years, including artificial restrictions on the water supply.
This while California has a very high tax pressure and both a very big and very nanny government. Now, where did all that money go? Leftist and far Leftist projects that do the citizens little good and certainly are of no help with fighting or preventing fires.
In this, the situation is typical for Leftism/Socialism/whatnot: The government does virtually everything except fulfill its core obligations—and, to boot, what it does do, it usually does very poorly. Almost always, it does worse than markets, private enterprises, the citizens’ own choices, whatnot, would have done (what applies depends on the case at hand). Often, it does more harm than good even relative complete non-action.
A particularly sad aspect is that many residents appear to have had fires (or specifically wildfires?) removed from their insurance coverage beginning in 2024. While I have not looked into the details of this, it also appears that the reason is governmental limits on charges, that insurers are not allowed to charge enough to (in their estimate) make the policies profitable enough to justify the risk from fires (which are unusually common in California). If so, this is yet another demonstration of the problems that occur when market forces are sabotaged and businesses are seen as charities to be run for the “common good” instead of as businesses. (See several older discussions for more on the general issue, e.g. [1].)
(2025-01-10)
Here, I have seen conflicting (and always superficial) claims. It might, instead, be that policies were discontinued in their entirety (as opposed to reduced in coverage) and/or that new policies are routinely declined. If so, the situation is even worse.
As Reagan observed (with reservations for exact phrasing): The scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help!”.
Will Californians learn their lesson and throw the Left out of power? I doubt it.
Will the responsible politicians take that responsibility? I would be outright shocked, if they did. More likely, they will ignore all subtopics except the causes of the fires, which will be called “!!!Global warming!!!” in a blanket manner and without a shred of proof. Worse, chances are that the fires will be used as an excuse for even more government intervention.
In a twist, the parts of Germany where I live currently see snow and temperatures at or below freezing. California dreaming on such a winter’s day? Hardly. Safe and warm if I was in LA? Well, warm, I suppose.
Recently, we have seen several events relating to Joe Biden, the Biden–Trump transition, “legacies”, and similar.
To look at some of them:
Biden seems set on wrapping up his term in a manner that reflects how disastrous that term was, including very controversial commutations of death penalties into life-in-jail and prestigious awards to some of the most undeserving candidates imaginable, including Liz Cheney, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros. In all three cases, the awards seem intended to reward pro-Left, pro-Biden, and/or anti-Trump work rather than politically neutral accomplishments. (And neither of Liz Cheney and Hillary Clinton has actually accomplished much, as the two have mostly had this-or-that handed to them for being the daughter resp. wife of a far more successful man. Soros, in turn, has certainly been a force of evil in the world.)
To boot, going by my cursory readings of today, Biden has tried to cement his poor energy policies before Trump can reverse them and extended the freedom from accountability for COVID-vaccine producers to 2029—just when there were signs that accountability would finally improve.
The confirmation of Trump as election winner followed on January 6th, but not without various repetitions of long-debunked lies from various Leftist commentators, including patently false claims like that Trump would have instigated a deadly insurrection on the same day in 2020.
In the thematic overlap, we have the paradox that the Left tries to raise Biden to the skies while pointing to Trump as a second Hitler. In reality, Biden is closer to that mark than Trump and the Biden-era might go down as the worst four years in post-WWII U.S. history—and largely because of the Biden regime, its complete botching of the COVID-situation, how civil rights were trampled, the economy needlessly destroyed, etc.; through the political per- and prosecution of non-Leftists, including great restrictions on freedom of speech and extensive lawfare; the disastrously misimplemented Afghanistan withdrawal and other foreign policy failures; and, related, the deterioration of the “war and peace” situation of the world.
More accurately, “four years aligned with consecutive inauguration days” or some very similar alignment. It might, e.g., be that even shifting the four years at hand by a few months would give a slightly worse result, because the last two months have been somewhat in the sign of “Trump 2.0”, while the corresponding months four years ago were dragged down by the ongoing COVID-failures (which, of course, began under Trump—no matter how much worse Biden made them).
As to “might go down”, I note that there were quite a few bad years in the 1960s and 1970s, with issues like the Vietnam war and the various oil crises. A fair comparison would require much work and might involve apples vs. oranges. (A particular complication is how the increase in living standards over time should factor in. On the one hand, the living standard in 2025 is, on average, far higher than in e.g. 1965; on the other, this is a societal development that tells us little about e.g. the accomplishments of any given president. In the end, it might be necessary to speak of “worst four years” with regard to some specific criterion or set of criteria, with potentially different results for different choices.) From another point of view, the current four years might be the worst peace time years since the 1930s.
As a spin-off of the previous entry:
Just like being pro-business is not the same as being anti-worker, there are many false combinations of “pro-X; ergo, anti-Y”, “pro-X; ergo, pro-Z”, etc., be it through sloppy thinking or through Leftist propaganda. (Including some others implied by that entry, e.g. a false equivalence between being pro-business and pro-“big business”.) These can cause great harm and I suggest correspondingly great caution against jumping to conclusions.
For instance, many on the Left (maybe, specifically with the far Left and/or in the overlap between the Left and Muslims/Arabs) seem to believe that someone who is pro-Jew or pro-Israel would automatically be anti-Palestinian or that someone who is pro-Palestinian should draw the “right” conclusions and also be anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, or, even, anti-Jew.
For instance, someone who criticizes immigration policy as too lax or unpragmatic, or who opposes specifically illegal immigration, might soon be slapped with a label of “anti-immigration” (in general) or “anti-immigrant” by the Left.
That I did not formulate the true position in terms of “pro-” or “anti-” is not important—the issue is not one of language but one of positions and distortions/misunderstandings of positions. The prefixes are helpful in identifying, illustrating, and understanding cases, but have no inborn magic. Likewise, a further escalation beyond “anti-immigrant”, to e.g. “xenophobe” or “racist”, is somewhat common and does not become less of a problem because these prefixes do not appear in the words of escalation.
(The low importance of the prefixes, as such, is illustrated by how equivalent prefix-based formulations can be found by those willing to compromise in other regards, e.g. by resorting to a cumbersome “anti-current-immigration-policy”.)
For instance, and this might be the paramount example, even very justified rejection of Leftist activism, excesses, and whatnot around certain groups is denounced as a rejection of or hostility against the groups or their members—and this even when the activism is not in the interest of the groups and even when the activists lack the support of very many in those groups. This has been taken to a comical conclusion with recent “trans” controversies, where Feminists and trans-activist try to shout each other down with mutual accusations of being “hateful”, “oppressive”, or whatever is the word du jour—and, of course, of being “anti-woman” resp. “anti-trans”.
For instance, to take something less political, many seem to equate being pro-education with being pro-school. I, however, am both pro-education and anti-school. While the earlier examples are likely explained by a mixture of deliberate distortions for propaganda purposes and fanatical blindness, this one might go back to more fundamental misunderstandings. In particular, there seems to be very, very many who believe that schooling and education are the same thing. Further, very, very many seem to believe that school is a good way to gain an education. In reality, both beliefs are misconceptions, to the point that school can be more of a hindrance than a help in gaining an education.
More generalized cases exist. For instance, the BLM-era saw the absurdity that slogans like “all lives matter” were condemned as e.g. racist or were taken to imply that “Black lives do not matter”—as if being pro-human would imply being anti-Black, even though Blacks are humans too. This is the more absurd, as “all lives matter” was an objective improvement over the original “Black lives matter” and the related problems among some adherents, who seemed to wish for a genuine special treatment of Blacks and/or pushed a false narrative of a societal disregard for specifically Black lives that simply was/is not borne out by statistics. (Similar issues apply to e.g. claims about “systemic racism”—they are not borne out by statistics.)
A related problem is the many who think in terms of e.g. “either you are with us or against us”, who mistakenly see an incomplete enumeration of options as complete, whatnot. To assume that all non-negative numbers are positive or all non-positive numbers negative is a mistake—0 is non-negative and non-positive at the same time.
Another related problem is various types of “guilt by association” and premature conclusions based on irrelevant similarities or irrelevant overlap in various preferences. (The worse when pushed deliberately.) At an extreme, my school class was once told by visiting anti-rock propagandists that the band Kiss consisted of Nazis. Sole proof? The styling of the “ss” part of the name.
In my previous entry, I mentioned that “the Democrats are usually viewed as the ‘big business’ party, these days”. This gives a pointer to the topic of what it means to be pro-business, pro-“big business”, and whatnot.
In particular, the traditional Leftist propaganda in many countries that this-or-that non-Leftist party (e.g. the U.S. Republicans or the Swedish Moderaterna) would be pro-“big business”, anti-worker, driven by ruthlessness and a wish for personal profit, whatnot, is typically horrendously wrong. (Even by the standards of Leftist propaganda.)
A complete analysis would take many pages, but consider some important points in brevity:
Members of these parties, on the contrary, are often driven by idealism and the good of everyone including a wish to protect the rights of the individual to do as he sees fit with his own time, money, and resources, a wish to ensure that neither individuals nor businesses are reduced to sources of income for the government, and a wish for more economic growth to create the resources necessary for a flowering society. Much of this overlaps strongly with the three, arguably, most basic humans rights—life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
(With “often”, note that there might be a variation both between parties and individual members of any given party. Broadly speaking, however, those that match the Leftist claims are a small or very small minority, in my experience.)
This while the Leftist accusers often have non-idealistic motives, such as (politicians) the ability to rob Peter to buy the votes of Paul and (voters) being Paul.
It is usually the Left that favors concentration of business endeavors in big corporations (witness e.g. Sweden and the Social-Democrats for large parts of the 20th century), and it is usually Leftist policies that lead to the type of gigantic government contracts that favor “big business” so over businesses in general and over the tax-payers, who have to foot the bill for the contracts. (The previous entry can give some idea of why such a concentration might be favored by the Left.)
While the idea of “big business” is hard to separate from big corporations, favoring big corporations and favoring “big business” is not entirely the same thing.
The non-Left, on the other hand, rarely has such preferences and, instead, favors entrepreneurship, self-employment, small and medium businesses, whatnot, for reasons like overall prosperity and “pursuit of happiness”. Yes, a tax break for all businesses implies a tax break for the behemoths—but the true purpose is not necessarily there and, unlikely the Left, the non-Left is unlikely to discriminate on factors like size. (And in as far as the behemoths have a part in the purpose, it is in the form of “lower taxes result in more growth, more employment, more whatnot”—not “More money for the rich!!!”. (Apart from cases like when a politician falls to lobbyists, which is an issue largely divorced from political alignment.)
There is a world of difference between being anti-worker and being anti-union. The parties at hand tend to be anti-union, yes, but not anti-worker. (The idea might do more to reveal the “us vs. them” thinking of and/or Marxist influence on the Left than anything else.) Even anti-union positions are usually fueled by the misbehavior and excesses of unions, artificial obstacles to growth, and similar—not the type of hate that some portions of the Left show towards businesses. (See a dedicated page on unions for some details.)
Likewise, being pro-business and anti-union (let alone anti-worker) is not the same thing.
A particular big-picture issue is “political philosophy” and pro-/anti-takes on questions like free markets. For instance, being in favor of free markets does not automatically imply being in favor of “big business” or big corporations. Often, it is the other way around, because a focus on big corporations can reduce competition and, therefore, the benefits of free markets.
With the switch of year, a few U.S. states have seen renewed hikes to (often) already very high minimum wages, hitting already weakened businesses in fields like food service.
As with many political decisions, these hikes have negative side-effects and, to boot, negative side-effects that often can give the political Left a paradoxical boost—effectively rewarding it for doing damage.
For instance, it is usually primarily small businesses that fail in situations like these, because they have smaller margins, a lesser ability to find work-arounds, whatnot. Likewise, the implied barriers to entry will be worse for those with little money and their eyes set on, say, opening a small café than those about to open a chain, backed by millions in funding. In the long term, all other factors equal, there will then be fewer small-business owners, a loss of small-business culture and entrepreneurship, a larger portion of the population moved into employment instead of self-employment, etc. In a next step, we will then have fewer voters who have an understanding of business issues, see the employers’ side of the equation, understand based on their own situation how harmful Leftist policies can be, etc. (Notwithstanding a temporary boost of dissatisfaction-with-the-Left through the immediate blow.) We will also have many stuck in employment who either were formerly self-employed or, in a non-hike alternate reality, would have moved into self-employment—and many of these might believe (whether correctly or incorrectly) that they can gain from various political interventions into the employer–employee relationship, including, in another paradox, higher minimum wages. Likewise, the proportion of voters now positive to a strengthening of unions is likely to increase.
On the flip-side, there will also be disadvantages for the Left, as with disgruntled customers who find that their favorite café has just closed. (But in the wake of the COVID-countermeasure era and with an abundance of scape-goats that the Left can use, it is yet to see how this will affect future votes.)
An interesting side-question is to what degree any given point (above or below) might be within the awareness and/or “calculation” of the Left. Considering the typical apparent competence levels, I would not necessarily imply a calculated approach of e.g. “if we force small-business owners out of business and into employment, we will get more votes”—it might just be something that happens.
However, if calculation is present, we also have to keep in mind the difference between what does happen and what the Left expects to happen. Much in this text contains elements of speculation—especially, when it comes to the net effect on voting patterns. (And I make no claim of having put up every pro and every con. On the contrary, I just try to get a general idea across.) Maybe, a failure of small businesses will actually hurt the Leftist vote in the net because voters are not as naive as the Left and/or I might think. However, when it comes to calculation, what matters is not whether the Left stands to gain or lose but whether the Left believes that it stands to gain or lose.
For instance, some already in employment will now be out of employment, while those out of employment (those with little or no prior experience in particular) will have greater problems finding employment. The result is more voters who (whether correctly or incorrectly) believe that they stand to benefit from strong “social safety-nets”, government-enforced redistribution of money from the one group to the other, and whatnot, which will be a boon to the Left.
Throwing a wider and much more speculative net, we might even have effects like a Leftist benefit through a larger market share for big corporations (which can be easier to control by political means that a myriad of small businesses; in specifically the U.S., the Democrats are usually viewed as the “big business” party, these days) or through voters spending more time at home and less e.g. eating out (the more isolated the voters, the more they might depend on the likes of MSNBC, the Washington Post, and Facebook for their worldview).
In contrast, it is not a side-effect that some in employment will now earn more because of a minimum-wage hike, which can also be good for the Left. On the contrary, this is the intended “core effect” of a hike, and likely the true main reason why Leftist politicians pushed for hikes to begin with—vote for us and we give you more money at the cost of someone else. (And, yes, here I do assume calculation, as the effect is so much more obvious than with the side-effects above. Idealism might well be present among many Leftist politicians too, but less so than among Leftist voters, the less so, the higher up, and even less so when we look at the likes of “political strategists”.)
With a long delay, I am catching up on the 22nd season of “Family Guy” (far from the erstwhile heights of the series), and am again struck by a seeming schizophrenia in many viewed-as-Leftist makers of TV and whatnot. Creator and leading man Seth MacFarlane has a long history of pushing Leftist nonsense (especially, on “The Orville”, which I stopped watching for that reason), has often had an almost direct message that Republicans (and/or some specific Republican, and/or Fox News, and/or whatnot) is evil, and failed to take a stand over the nonsensical un-casting of Mike Henry.
Henry voiced Cleveland Brown, a Black guy, for some two decades. At that point, someone discovered that he was White and he was forced out—only to be replaced by someone whose voicing is sufficiently close that I doubt that I could tell the difference without a direct comparison.
This while other “incongruous” castings were kept or added, including MacFarlane as a dog and a baby, Mila Kunis as a fat, ugly, unpopular teenager, John G. Brennan as a lisping red-headed Jewish pharmacist, and (cf. below) Damien Fahey as Brad Pitt.
(The two last identified per Internet search, with corresponding reservations. I saw no indication that Brennan would be either a Jew or pharmacist in real life. He might or might not have a lisp or be red-headed, but the odds are against it. I am reasonably certain that Fahey is not Brad Pitt in real life.)
At the same time, when actual values, not labels and political fads, shine through, these often have more in common with the Republicans than the Democrats—something often seen in both “Leftist fiction” (for want of a better phrasing) and actual Leftists, who often seem to have a very poor grasp of who in politics actually believes and tries to achieve what. (As absurd as it might sound, there are those who vote Democrat to support e.g. free speech, which shows an abysmal ignorance.)
There have also been quite a few swipes at Leftist movements (but not or only far too rarely Leftist politicians). For instance, Brian is often depicted as a stereotypical virtue-signalling Democrat/pseudo-Liberal/“Progressive”/whatnot—and usually in a manner that pokes fun at him. For instance, the last episode that I watched, “Fat Actor”, centers on the casting of Brad Pitt to play the notorious-for-being-fat Chris Christie, Peter’s objections to the failure to cast a fat guy for the part, Brad Pitt taking lessons in being fat from Peter (who is fat on the Christie-level) and, ultimately, Peter actually playing the part. The movie flops, because Peter lacked something important—the ability to act. (For consistency with the terminology of the episode, I use “fat” to imply outright obesity.)
It is great shame that this episode came several years after the aforementioned un-casting. It is also a shame that the important theme, the problems with ideologically driven casting, ended up in an otherwise very weak episode.
The casting of non-fat actors as fat characters might seem unusually problematic, but has precedents, including the somewhat recent portrayal of “the Colonel” by Tom Hanks in the movie “Elvis”. There are also a number of examples on “Family Guy” (not just Mila Kunis), but the optics are a non-issue, as this is an animated series. MacFarlane (who voices the aforementioned Peter) has been chubby, but, unlike Peter and Chris Christie, not grotesquely fat on those occasions that I have actually seen him on screen.
The real-life Brad Pitt once played a former fat guy on “Friends”, which also featured several uses of fat suits by Courteney Cox and at least one by Matt LeBlanc, to portray past and/or alternate-reality versions of their characters.
I have often been left wondering whether this or that “creator” is actually a Republican or otherwise non-Leftist, who tries to balance a mixture of Leftist virtue signalling with “subliminal” non-Leftist messaging. (Judged by “Family Guy” alone, this could apply to MacFarlane, but the excesses of “The Orville” make the idea problematic.) Other than that, I do suspect that many simply are Leftist-by-ignorance, including ignorance of the facts of life/world/humanity/economics/whatnot and ignorance of who actually stands for what in politics.
After writing, I went back to watching—only to immediately land in a good illustration of various complications and contradictions with the episode “Faith No More” (the last of the season).
Brian goes out with a Christian woman, pretending, with his usual hypocrisy, to take a pro-Christian position in order to get her into bed. During the date, she and various Christians are depicted in a caricatured manner, and, after she takes a “no sex before marriage” position, Brian throws a fit and rants about the alleged evils of Christianity. (Including a spurious equalization of being Christian with being a Republican and/or Trump voter.)
He now uses Stewie’s time machine to go back in time for the specific purpose of preventing the rise of Christianity. He turns Jesus onto a career as a stand-up comedian (here and elsewhere, the episode plays strongly on Jewish, or specifically U.S. Jewish, stereotypes). After his return to the “now”, he finds a world filled with Jews, with yarmulkes galore, the aforementioned Jewish pharmacist suddenly speaking without a lisp and with a deep voice (allegedly, due to the absence of two millennia of persecution), etc.—and is ecstatic.
Ecstatic, that is, until he encounters the Sabbath, the command to turn off all electronic devices for the day, and to walk a few miles to temple. He turns around and sends Stewie back in time to stop Moses, too.
In the new world, free from all religion, he brags about how much better things are, with no arbitrary rules, restrictions, intolerance, whatnot—until God shows up and forces him to restore the original reality.
To just look at the naivety of what a world without Jews and Christians would be like:
Firstly, no Moses would not have implied no religion. (Even discounting that Moses actual existence is not a verified fact, that God, who definitely exists in the “Family Guy” universe, could easily have picked someone else to, say, lead the Jews out of Egypt, and that Abraham might have been a more suitable target than Moses.) On the contrary, humans tend to be religious; there are other religions outside the Judeo-Christian + Islam, with countless millions of followers, even today; and Christianity was only one of several religions that might have had a similar influence on the world in the Roman days—it just happened to be the one that came out on top. Certainly, there is no particular reason to believe that specifically the Jews would have taken over, had we had Moses but not Jesus. In other words, chances are over-whelming that we would simply have had other religions or (on the outside, cf. below) quasi-religions. (This with reservations for differences between the real world and the “Family Guy” universe.)
Secondly, in today’s U.S., the Left is a far greater source of restrictions of an arbitrary nature, intolerance and hate, unquestioning demands for compliance, whatnot, than is Christianity—while lacking many redeeming (no pun intended) features of Christianity. More, large portions of the Leftist ideology/-ies have a quasi-religious nature, both in that they fill a vacuum in those that need a religion but are not allowed to have one (because they have been told that everyone enlightened is an Atheist, that all religion is superstition, that only Republicans are religious, or similar) and in that they have a more-or-less religious nature in terms of strength of belief, resistance to evidence, imposition of “Thou shalt X!” and “Thou shalt not Y!”, etc.
While I am, myself, an Atheist, I am an Atheist for better reasons than that I was simply told that I had to be one in order to be enlightened. Moreover, I have known quite a few Christians over the years (if not in a U.S. setting), including members of my own family. None has been a fanatic and e.g. a “no sex before marriage” attitude has been quite rare (in those cases that I can judge). Those who have been “serious” Christians (as opposed to, say, goes-to-Church-for-weddings-and-the-odd-big-holiday Christians), have almost invariably been or, at a minimum, tried to be good persons—while the complaining-about-Christians Brian has often proved himself a piece of shit.
How to handle Atheism within the “Family Guy” family and universe is a tricky question, as, again, the existence of God has been well established. Likewise, the Jesus of the “now” (as opposed to the Roman-era Jesus) has had numerous prior and in-person interactions with the family. To some part, this could boil down to the question of when obedience, not just belief, is called for.
Oddly, there was no (or only a parenthetical) mention of Islam in the episode. This despite many of the negatives attributed to Christianity, including arbitrary rules and (at least, historical) persecution of Jews, today being far more relevant to large portions of Islam and the Muslim world, including the Iranian regime, the Hamas and Hezbollah, and the Taliban. (Note that “Faith No More” was aired in 2024, well after the genocidal anti-Jew attacks of October 7, 2023, which reduces the plausibility of mere ignorance.)
Of course, such selective and distorting takes are not at all uncommon in, say, Leftist news reporting, where it is very hard to avoid the conclusion of something deliberate.
The following is an automatically generated list of other pages linking to this one. These may or may not contain further content relevant to this topic.