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Tuesday’s Forum
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24 responses to “Tuesday’s Forum”
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Anyone taking odds that this will be televised? It is all part and parcel of the performative show that is the Trump Show.
Fort Hood mass shooter Nidal Malik Hasan to die by US Army firing squad
Nidal Malik Hasan, a former Army officer and psychiatrist who killed 13 people and injured 32 others during a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, will be executed by a U.S. Army firing squad, the Pentagon announced Monday.
“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell announced. “He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the attack.
I used to be indifferent to the idea of the death penalty. However, since it has been proven that innocent people have been found guilty and executed, I believe it should never be used; that there should be zero probability that such an event happens. Period.
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I found this NY Times guest essay (gift link) absolutely fascinating. Not because the Conservative/Libertarian interviewee has any meaningful ideas, but rather for the subtext. She’s a fellow traveler who is suddenly finding the Trump Train inconvenient and is now trying to imply that she (and her fellow Reason magazine Libertarians) were always trying to go in a different direction. The fact that the Libertarians are leaving the ship means… something?
Here’s an insight into the Conservative (capital C) mindset:
Guida:That bet looks at the very least more questionable now. Polling suggests that the American people do not believe the MAGA agenda is delivering for them. This is going to be a definite challenge for the folks who have turned their whole intellectual and institutional purpose to the promotion of what I call “will-to-power politics” on the theory that this is what voters really want.
What is will-to-power politics?
Slade: It’s an approach that sees politics as purely a war to determine which side will get to wield power to reward its friends and punish its enemies. On the right, it explicitly repudiates the old-school Reagan-style commitment to limited government and free markets and instead calls on conservatives to be more “muscular” and less squeamish about using the coercive power of the state to enact their values and their conception of the common good.
The fact that Reason Libertarians felt compelled to join this movement because of the evil libruls tells you all you need to know. Literally the only concrete example of the tyranny of the liberals she gives is some laws that seek to discourage gas stoves in new construction. This, of course, caused them to embrace fascism.
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Libertarians have a tendency, both amusing and sad, to prioritise short term advantages and passions over rather obvious longer run problems.
Which is a bit odd, given their self-asserted stance as rationalists, but there you go,
Hardly unique to them though: it was an approach that also led to the self-immolation of European “traditional conservatism” c.1900-1945.
Though they at least had the excuse of never claiming to be analytical rationalists in the first place.
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Stories from the Iran War.
Now that this war has dragged on, secondary and tertiary news stories are coming out.
Soldiers seriously wounded in Iranian drone strike tell AP the military’s medical system failed them
The shrapnel hit Army Lt. Col. Arturo Lincón’s body like shattered glass.
One chunk of metal lodged into the left side of his jaw. Another piece sliced through his salivary gland before bouncing off his jaw and piercing the back of his neck, severing an artery and embedding in a vertebra.
Lincón was among dozens of U.S. soldiers injured in an Iranian drone strike on March 1. The attack on the second day of the U.S. war with Iran killed six troops who were providing logistical support of critical supplies at Port Shuaiba in Kuwait.
Whether the military was properly prepared for treating its wounded has become a sharp point of contention. Soldiers and family members have told The Associated Press of a failure to recognize the seriousness of injuries, a poor plan to get the wounded to hospitals and red tape that has hindered follow-up care. The Pentagon has said that the medical care was appropriate.
Exclusive: Soldiers and Gold Star families press Army leadership after deadly Iranian drone strike
On a sunny, cloudless morning on March 1, the day after President Donald Trump started the war against Iran, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan was coordinating critical Army supplies out of Port Shuaiba in Kuwait.
In an instant, a drone crashed through the ceiling and exploded, killing Marzan, who had served in the military for 36 years. The force flung soldiers into the air, fragments of sheet metal and glass shards impaling them. The tin roof was peeled back “like opening up a sardine can,” one soldier recalled.
Six soldiers were killed and dozens were injured in the deadliest known strike on U.S. troops since Operation Epic Fury commenced on Feb. 28.
‘He’s not coming back’: Months after deadly Iranian attack, families of soldiers struggle to cope
For Michelle Tietjens, the pain of loss often hits hardest at the start of each day, when the realization dawns all over again that she’ll be facing it without her husband.
“Waking up in the morning it always takes me a little bit to get going,” she said. “Because you relive it – that he’s not here and he’s not coming back.”
Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, an Army reservist from Bellevue, Nebraska, deployed for the third time to the Middle East in the summer of 2025. Even before he left, his wife felt uneasy about potential retaliation after the United States and Israel bombed Iranian nuclear sites. Her husband tried to minimize the risks to keep his family from worrying.
But after Valentine’s Day, the 42-year-old sergeant stopped calling home on the weekends, instead communicating solely by text message.
“He knew he couldn’t keep things out of his voice when he was talking to me,” said Michelle Tietjens, his wife of more than two decades. Her husband checked in by text in the hours after the U.S. and Israel pounded Iran with airstrikes to mark the start of the war on Feb. 28.
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I”m sorry but these people are just weird.
Communities with high birth and marriage rates could soon gain an advantage in securing federal transit money — a long-sought goal of the Trump administration but one that a top Democratic appropriator calls “bizarre and dystopian.”
The Federal Transit Administration wants to revamp a multibillion-dollar program that helps state and local authorities fund infrastructure projects such as rail improvements and new bus lanes. Public feedback on the administration’s plan, which was rolled out Oct. 1, is being accepted through mid-November.
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Those pushing this might care to examine how well such policies worked in fascist Italy, or the Irish Republic, or more recently in Hungary under Orban.
That is, not very much.Arguably they did better in Franco’s Spain; but that was likely largely because a lot of the target population were peasant cultivators, who had traditionally had large families anyway.
Linking public transit infrastructure to birth rates, however, does seem utterly nuts even by Vichy France standards.
Perhaps it might more likely be a attempt to give the administration a fig-leaf to enable the diversion of funds to “red states”?
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Jim Bakker is dead, at the age of 86. Would it be against blog rules to hope that, along with Dennis Hastert, this is some sort of trend? Or at least good things come in threes? Mitch McConnell seems ripe. I almost wish I were religious so I could savor the idea of them enjoying their just reward.
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I’m making up a constitution for a novel (don’t ask). I figure it should begin with the rights of the people, before moving on to the structure and roles of government. It’s for a nation called Antirya.
I’m also considering two kinds of rights. Sovereign rights and civil rights. The former are sacrosanct, meaning they cannot be limited, suspended, or taken away at any time for any reason. The latter are merely sacred. They can be limited, suspended, or even taken away with sufficient cause, say like a national emergency such as war or a pandemic, or in retribution for crimes (and only for the duration of the sentence).
I won’t write the whole thing, naturally, but some articles will be written in whole.
Thus Article I: All persons within Antirya are equal before the law, and are entitled to equal protection without discrimination.
Article II lists the sovereign rights. thus far I’ve found three: the right to life (no death penalty), the right to vote (no suspension of voting rights even in prison), the right to bodily autonomy (no effing prohibition on abortion).
This article may need a second section, specifying the right to vote is limited to Antiryan citizens of 20 years of age and older.
Article III is the long laundry list of civil rights. It ends with the proviso that rights held by the people and not enumerated in the constitution are retained by the people.
The structure of government will be more conventional. three branches, bicameral legislature, perhaps multimember districts, proportional representation in the upper chamber, etc. I think the judicial power will be split in some way. I’m not entirely clear on how. But suppose not every appeal hangs on constitutional questions, nor can be resolved entirely in reference to the constitution. So there’d be courts of law and courts of appeals, and a separate constitutional court.
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Alternatively, there is the older English view that written constitutions can be a bit of a nuisance.
Depending perhaps upon when they are written, and the base assumptions of those who write them.There is also the difference between (English) Common Law and (west European) Civil Law in certain assumptions of rights, their origins, and their inalienability or otherwise.
For good and ill, the US combines a largely English-type Common Law view of inherent and traditional rights and the role of courts in upholding such, and an Enlightenment European view of the virtues of codification and enumerated rights.
Other civilisations have proceeded on entirely different bases to either the British or European or hybrid American assumptions.
I might suggest than in a history of hypothetical Antirya, some tensions might be between a majority inclined to a rationalistic political/legal/social order; and minorities who regard it (for one reason or another) as untenable.
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Basically there are three parties that matter. The Liberals favor a largely unregulated free market economy, small government, and a minimal safety net. The Democrats a regulated free market economy, big government, and a robust welfare state. The Populists favor a return to monarchy, and a privileged and untaxed nobility; they claim this will be best for the people.
The first two parties are both strong supporters of individual liberties. that’s why the constitution begins with guarantees of rights and equality before the law.
This all takes place in another planet, not Earth, which requires too long an explanation. It’s a human society that developed independently of Earth’s civilizations. So, it’s bound to be different. When they find Earth, both sets of humans will regard each other as alien.
I still need to figure out how to make the process to amend or reform the constitution neither too hard nor too easy.
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“… a human society that developed independently of Earth’s civilizations.”
Obvious case being an alien visit in the Palaeolithic that, for reasons best known to itself, collects a set of H. sap and sets them down somewhere and leaves them to get on with it.Personally, I’d look long at how (as the “if” must must be assumed) a high-tech civ might emerge, and why that would follow “western” type ideological assumptions.
I’m inclined to think a lot of our current western politics are contingent, not determined.
The alternative, of course, is the “substructure determines superstructure” view.
Which Marx explicated, but a more sensible view than that of Marx (ie minus the silly Hegelianism) still seems reasonable.Given how odd and contingent “western” civ is, I wonder if looking at the possible development of basically non-western bases (China, India, etc) might be for civilizational polity.
And of course, assuming Antirya is the sole, or at least dominant, polity on the planet and/or planetary system.
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There isn’t one.
But the continent where Antirya is on is made up of four large nations which, over centuries, conquered or otherwise absorbed smaller polities. There are two other nations, both rather small and with what’s seen as poor conditions for development in an agricultural age.
the other two continents worth mentioning are small and sparsely populated. they play no major role in the novel.
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More like 5,000 BCE.
I do know why, but it’s rather underwhelming.
I don’t chart the development over 6000 years, either. The novel opens with the societies that developed somehow.
IMO, there were two basic types of human societies in primitive times: nomadic hunter gatherers and sedentary agriculturalists. The latter became dominant, and in almost every case developed some form of property rights and a legal system to enforce them.
There are a few odd exceptions like sedentary hunter gatherers, and nomadic bands who raided and plundered and built up their own notions of property rights.
In any case, the sedentary agriculturalists are the ones who go on to build cities, manufacture goods in quantity, organize complex social system, institutionalize divisions of labor, set up monetary systems and financing systems, institutionalize religion, and form governments. These, IMO, tend towards individual liberty in due time. Or at least some of these tend that way, and that’s Antirya in this case.
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There’s an argument that in many cases the rulers of the sedentary agriculturalists were derived from hunter/nomadic types who shifted from predating on animals to predating on people.
(Vampire analogy?)
And then settled down as a ruling elite.
Most obviously in India, but there are indications elsewhere.
There is also an argument that much of the regulatory and exploitative nature of the agricultural polities derived from a nomadic/hunter derived ruling elite needing to subjugate and exploit a setted population.There may also be an argument that the elite self-interest tends more to individual liberty than does the agrarian base.
Yes, I’m partly being argumentative for the sheer love of it. That’s me 😉
But this entire thing about about derivation of politics from social bases and their “class” differences and ideological priors is something that’s intrigued me for a long time. -
I can guess why 5000 BC is an obvious date point.
I have vague memories of a book (from the late 70’s?) about a possible signal and evidence of a landing about that time.
Damned if I can remember the book, though.Just imuho mapping post-AD “western” politics onto a culture presumably absent a lot of the key conditioners (Buddhism, Hellenism, Romantitas, Christianity, Germanic invasions etc) seems arguable.
How derivable is social/political modernity from ancient China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Meso-America, India, Celtic Europe?-
I’m not sure why I picked c. 5000 BCE. I think there was agriculture by then, which is relevant to the story.
As to how things developed, I won’t and can’t chart 5-6 thousand years of imaginary history and make it make sense. Maybe readers, if any, can write fan fiction about it.
For now I need to come up with maps that make sense, or the war near the end won’t.
One thing, the aliens that transplanted humans along with their cultivars and domesticates, set them up in scattered groups over a relatively small area. They mixed them up to maximize genetic diversity in each group, so there were all colors and “races” mixed from the start, this yields, over time, a prevalent mix of brown skin tones, with some white and black outliers. Other characteristics are more mixed, like eye and hair color, facial features, etc. Racism doesn’t really find a fertile soil. Conflicts are about other things.
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The skin tone etc would likely derive from climate over time.
Going “white” on Earth seems pretty certainly a derivative of longish term habitation of high latitudes.” I won’t and can’t chart 5-6 thousand years of imaginary history and make it make sense”
Where IS your sense of ambition? lol
For a non-racialised hypothetical humanity, the obvious thing is a geographic impediment to millenia-scale proliferations over either high or equatorial environments.
I would note, however, that ethnic differentiations of rulers and ruled have been possible even absent “colour race” distinction.
At least in the short to medium term.
See eg the post-Roman division of “Latins” and “Gemans”.
Or the Mongol or Manchurian military rule in China.
Or the Mughals.
Or etc.
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I’d be inclined to point to the very different socio-political assumptions of other cultures in about 1800 compared to the Euro/American (including southern American): China, Ottomans, Iran, Mughal India, etc etc.
And for that matter, how much ancien regime opinion was convinced Enlightenment assumptions were invalid. -
Meanwhile, in the Middle East:
The Yemen government claims it has driven the Houthi forces back from the Bab al Mandab.
The situation seems very much to be in flux; but it’s important to keep in mind that the south Yemenis love the Houthi very little.Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Russia continues to hammer what it considers to be key economic and infrastructure targets.
I say “what it considers to be” because I suspect Putin is rather miscalculating this, again.Meanwhile, elsewhere: various situations continue to go to shit in large part because the US administration is just not that interested at senior level, and nobody else, as yet, has the power or inclination to act
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