No interest in cultivating an image of responsible manhood

During the months my performing group rehearses I rarely post to this blog on Tuesdays. I am today because rehearsal was called off because of the cold weather. At the time of posting the temperature was 2F and is expected to go down to -5F overnight. That’s about -20C and colder than a household freezer. Add a wind chill to that and there are plenty of reasons to call off events and close schools. I finished the book The Star That Stays by Anna Rose Johnson, that star being the North Star that is motionless in the night sky. This is a young adult novel about Norvia Nelson. Most of the story takes place when she is 14 in 1914. Norvia was born on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan to a mother with Ojibwa and French-Acadian ancestry and a Swedish father. She has three brothers, Herman, Elton, and Caspar and a sister Dicta, short of Benedicta. When she is about twelve the family moves to Boyne City, Michigan. Her parents divorce and her Pa moves to Flint. As the major part of the story opens Ma announces she is about to marry Virgil Ward. He has two grown daughters and son Vernon, who is a few months younger than Norvia and of poor health. He is home schooled. Norvia doesn’t like the idea of Ma marrying again and is afraid that Virgil will be too much like Pa. Virgil turns out to be quite nice. She also wants to go to high school, an idea that Pa was against. Norvia is delighted that Virgil’s house has many of the 19th century books featuring strong girls, such as Little Women and Anne of Green Gables. She wants to be fun and popular as these girls are. She wants a Dashing Young Man as her beau. Shortly after Ma and Virgil are married he is dismissed from his church’s leadership because he married a divorced woman. So Norvie is afraid people won’t let her become popular if they find out she has a divorced mother and has Ojibwa heritage. Over the year nothing profound happens to Norvia. This is just a lot of normal stuff teenagers go through. She eventually figures out what her book heroines are really teaching her and she begins to appreciate her step family. I enjoyed the story, though I saw it really wasn’t written for me. I was originally attracted to the story because its idea of a girl dealing with having to hide her Native ancestry. However, her mother being divorced is a bigger concern. The author states that the skeleton of this story is based on her actual ancestors and even included a few photos, though the names in the novel and on the photos were changed. I did not watch or listen to the inauguration yesterday. I had better things to do with my time. Of course, a lot of the important things were in NPR’s news reports, which confirmed I didn’t miss anything. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos listed some strange things that happened at the inauguration yesterday. I’ll mention just a couple. Though Melania held a Bible, the nasty guy did not put his hand on it as he repeated the oath of office. That has some Evangelicals quite perturbed. In the front row were not Congressional leaders, but billionaires. Emily Singer of Kos wrote of nine promises the nasty guy included in his speech that won’t lower the price of eggs. Some of them: He’s sending troops to the border. He said of oil production, “drill baby drill” – but while he can open more land to drilling he can’t require oil companies to drill more. Oil companies don’t want the price to go much lower. He said he will “bring back free speech in America.” The First Amendment already does that. Does he mean free speech for himself and none for his opponents? He declared the official policy of the US government will be that there are only two genders. Nope, no help in egg prices, but a great deal of hurt for transgender people. He’ll change Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. Hillary Clinton had a good laugh. He’ll take the Panama Canal back from China. China doesn’t own or operate it. He’ll put American astronauts on Mars. Musk had a big smile after that one. NPR reported the nasty guy signed dozens, maybe hundreds, of executive orders yesterday. That’s all about fulfilling his promises of doing certain things “on day one.” I haven’t kept a link to a list of them, so maybe I’ll write about them in the future. One item not in all those signed orders is tariffs. The auto industry is quite concerned with tariffs since their supply chain loops over the Canada and Mexico borders many times. Tom Allen, the midday classical music host on CBC Music (that’s the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), had a bit of fun with the idea of tariffs. Early in today’s program he played music performed by an American. He interrupted it three quarters of the way through so the last 25% could be played by a Canadian performer. At the end of the program he did something similar, playing a four movement piece by an American orchestra and interrupting it after three movements to play the last by an orchestra in Finland. Willis reported that one of the things the nasty guy signed is a pardon for those who attacked the Capitol four years ago. This is a pardon for more than 1500 people and included the dangerous leaders of the attack. One of them said now that he’s free and his conviction cleared he will go buy some guns. The Republican Party is no longer the party of Law and Order (if they ever truly were). In a tweet on Bluesky Willis included a photo showing the temperatures at noon at some previous inaugurations. Ronald Reagan's second was 7F and deserved to be indoors. John Kennedy’s was 22F, Barack Obama’s first was at 28F, and Jimmy Carter’s was 28F. Others were warmer than that. So the nasty guy’s second at 22 was not too cold. I had written about speculation that it was moved indoors to avoid him having to see small crowds (definitely smaller than Obama’s and Biden’s). Another excuse I heard was the move was prompted by the invited billionaires who didn’t want to sit in the cold (and with the ceremony in the Rotunda they had exclusive seats in a more exclusive crowd). In contrast to the nasty guy issuing pardons for violent insurrectionists, on the last day Biden issued preemptive pardons to people who upheld the law and earned the nasty guy’s wrath. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported they include Dr. Anthony Fauci who had guided us through the pandemic, retired Gen. Mark Milley who had called the nasty guy fascist, and to members, staff, and testifying police of the House January 6 Committee that investigated the Capitol attack. This last group included chairs Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson. Biden’s pardons said this should not be taken that these people committed crimes, rather that to protect them from threats of prosecution by the nasty guy. Emily Singer of Kos reported that DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency tasked with proposing cuts to the federal government, is likely making it’s first cut – co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy. He’s accused of being lazy and spending too much time trying to get himself elected or appointed to office. He failed at being a candidate for president. He didn’t get appointed to the Ohio senate seat vacated by the new vice nasty. He will now likely run for governor of Ohio. Does he like losing? As for DOGE, it is being sued. The lawsuit says it meets the requirements for being a “federal advisory committee.” As such it needs to be regulated so the government receives “transparent and balanced advice.” And that means it must file a charter with Congress, keep regular minutes, and allow the public to attend. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker of The Atlantic.

Like nearly every entity that has tried and failed to bend Trump to its will—his party, his former rivals, his partners in Congress, and his former aides among them—the tech elites largely seem to have decided that they’re better off seeking Trump’s favor. ... The sheer quantity of money flowing to, and surrounding, Trump has increased. In his first term, he assembled the wealthiest Cabinet in history; this time, his would-be Cabinet includes more than a dozen billionaires. Sixteen of his appointees come not just from the top one percent, but from the top one-ten-thousandth percent, according to the Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer-advocacy organization. Democrats, too, have long kept their wealthiest donors close, inviting them in on policy discussions and providing special access, but never before have the nation’s wealthiest played such a central role in the formation of a new administration.

Down in the comments greg posted a photo in honor of Martin Luther King day of a young black man holding a sign that says:

Dear White People: Stop using Dr. King as an example of a peaceful protest... You shot him too.

In the comments of another pundit roundup Nick Anderson posted a cartoon:

Over a package of candy: Red Dye No. 3 has been banned in the U.S. due to widespread health concerns. Over a MAGA hat: Red Dye No. 47 will be widely available despite concerns about the health effects on democracy.

And way down in the comments Captain Frogbert posted a meme:

Just so everyone is clear Los Angeles is under duress Mexico sends help Canada sends help Ukraine sends help Americans send help Trump elect sends insults Republicans send threats MAGA sends conspiracies Who loves America? Who is the enemy of the people? -- Russ Fraley

In a third roundup Chitown Kev quoted Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times discussing Mark Zuckerberg’s use of the term “masculine energy.”

When Zuckerberg speaks of “masculine energy” and “aggression,” he seems to be imagining the “masculinity” of an older teenager or a younger adult. The masculinity of someone unburdened by duty, obligation or real responsibility. More Jordan Belfort in “Wolf of Wall Street” than Ed Tom Bell in “No Country for Old Men.” There is no apparent interest, from either Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or anyone else bemoaning the current cultural cachet of masculinity, in cultivating an image of responsible manhood. We have a clique of powerful middle-aged men who want nothing more than to be boys. But then this is exactly what you would expect in a country where the standard-bearer for the “return” of masculinity to the political and cultural world is Donald Trump, a selfish, petulant and narcissistic man-child who celebrates his rejection of the traditional masculine virtues of duty and restraint and who has done so for his entire career on the public stage. Trump stands for masculinity as misogyny, dominance, exploitation and — as per Zuckerberg — aggression. More concretely, Zuckerberg and like-minded tech moguls have direct material interests in cultivating Trump’s good favor by performing his brand of manhood. Meta, for instance, wants to undermine its competitors, suppress regulation and free itself from the threat of antitrust enforcement. Other tech billionaires want to leverage state power to secure their investments in artificial intelligence, ahead of a potential collapse in the value of A.I. stocks. If the bubble pops, they want Uncle Sam — and thus the American taxpayer — to be the one holding the bag. Their pose and presentation, then, are all obviously strategic.

Over the last few days I’ve heard news about plans for raids on businesses in blue states to look for illegal immigrants. I’ve heard that executive orders have been signed for mass deportations, beginning with criminal illegals (watch out for their definition of “criminal”). Yet Kos of Kos says Tom Homan, the new “Border Czar” is walking back his promise of mass deportations. CNN reported this week Homan has been telling Republican lawmakers that deporting millions of immigrants might be impossible. There just isn’t the manpower and funding to do it. To deport 20 million people would cost $1 trillion over a decade. Getting $88 billion from Congress to get it started this year is highly unlikely. Also, the current staffing of the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not anywhere near enough to round up and deport millions. There aren’t enough agents to pull off big raids in sanctuary cities where local police would refuse to help. While some Republicans claim that spending $1 trillion to deport 20 million will be a net benefit (based on false assumptions), others are going to look at the loss of the rural labor force and related hit to the economy and decide not to authorize the money. Raids in red states will prompt immigrants to flee to blue states. That will worsen the economies of red states and the shift in population will perhaps shift Congressional seats back to blue states. Lisa Needham of Kos reported on a judge issuing a strange ruling. This is another by Texas judge Reed O’Connor, who is trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act. The case was brought against American Airlines that offered 401(k) retirement plans that included funds that invested in corporations

with environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) goals. [The case is] the newest—and dumbest—front in the war on “woke.” ... What O’Connor’s decision functionally does is say that investments that factor in ESG concerns are a breach of a fund manager’s duty, regardless of whether there’s a financial loss. The mere whiff of displaying a vague consciousness about the planet is simply too much to bear.

O’Connor’s efforts may not be necessary. Since the nasty guy won in November fund managers are fleeing a commitment to supporting net zero greenhouse gas emissions. Companies took on ESG and DEI actions to attempt to be more attractive in a free market. But conservatives are no longer interested in a free market. They want to get rid of “woke” wherever it may be. An Epic Maps post shows maps of Alabama. There is a band of sediments from where the coastline was 100 million years ago that created a band of fertile soil. That maps to a higher slave population in 1860, a higher black population in 2010, and a blue band in a red state from the 2020 election results.