It's not just Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or ballet

I finished the book Bewilderment, a novel by Richard Powers. This is the third novel by Powers I’ve read and enjoyed all three very much. The narrator is Theo, an astrobiologist trying to model how we might detect life on exoplanets, those outside our solar system. The other main character is his nine year old son Robin. One doctor says Robin is on the autistic spectrum, another says Robin is ADHD, and his school wants him medicated because of violent outbursts. Theo thinks it wrong to medicate a child so young. Robin’s mother Alyssa died two years before the story opens, though there are flashbacks so we can see who she was. Though marketed as general literature, this is science fiction. That comes through in a treatment of biofeedback offered to Robin that is beyond what can be done now and has side effects that unnerve Theo. The treatment allows Robin, always fascinated with nature, to become essentially Greta Thunberg’s more artistic little brother. Robin can’t fathom why humans are so destructive to nature. At times when Theo needs to calm Robin they take a mental journey to an exoplanet to explore what life might be like there. The description of one of them prompted me to think it was symbolic of the relationship between Theo and Robin, but the symbolism of other planets escaped me. This is the second novel in a row – the other being The End of Eddy – in which dialogue isn’t enclosed in quotes, instead it is italicized. Eddy used it for all characters. This one does it for Robin’s and Alyssa’s words while Theo’s words are put in quotes. In this case it might be appropriate, leading one to wonder whether Robin actually spoke out loud or Theo is imagining what his son is saying. This use of language is not one I would want to see catch on, though it is better than a few novels (the ones I can think of are Australian) where there is no separation of spoken text. There’s just things like this: It’s a cloudy day, he said. Robin is quite the intriguing character, frequently bewildering his dad. The language Powers uses is gentle and evocative. I recommend this one. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data updated Tuesday. We seem to be in a plateau, thankfully a low one. The peaks in the number of new cases per day for the last few weeks are 984, 844, 778, and 764. The number of deaths per day remains at a low level. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted Alan Elrod of Arc Digital discussing the word “groomer,” among others, by the anti-LGBTQ crowd:

What I want to note is the way this idea invites a view of being trans as an illness and, by emphasizing it as a social contagion that can rapidly overwhelm a young person, one that is highly communicable. As to the supposed spreaders of this illness? Well, Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik was unequivocal in her condemnation of LGBTQ advocates, calling them “groomers” and concluding “I think they’re evil.”

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that a bill to ban children and youth from drag shows has been introduced in the Nebraska legislature. It is backed by Sen. Dave Murman, who said, “I think the vast majority of Nebraskans would agree that sexualized dancing and enhanced genitals is not appropriate for children to view.” I agree with Einenkel – “enhanced genitals?” Where is this guy’s brain? Einenkel note this bill may prevent youth from seeing the show “Hairspray” and perhaps a few of Shakespeare’s plays (and in Shakespeare’s time that would be all of his plays because women were banned from acting and men played the female roles). Sen. Megan Hunt added an amendment to the bill, showing two people can play this game. The opening text, likely mimicking the original, says,

The Legislature finds that there is a well documented history of indoctrination and sexual abuse perpetrated by religious leaders and clergy people upon children. Abusers within churches and other religious institutions often use events like church or youth-group-sponsored camps and retreats to earn children's trust and gain unsupervised access to such children in order to commit such abuse.

So kids should be banned from church camps and also from rituals where ceremonial alcohol is present. For my non Christian friends – in the Sunday service, the Mass, in the Catholic Church and in some Protestant denominations the high point is the Eucharist or Communion, which includes a sip of wine. Other Protestant denominations have replaced the wine with grape juice. So, yeah, Hunt’s amendment would ban youth and children from Mass. Einenkel discussed a study released by the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center about 173 mass attacks that occurred between 2016 and 2020. Some of what the study showed: No community is immune from being a target. Guns were the cause of injury and death in three-quarters of the attacks. Less than a quarter of those gun attacks involved a gun acquired illegally. One-quarter of the attackers held a belief (that was important to the attack? Einenkel isn’t clear) that is conspiratorial, topic specific, or hate-focused. More findings:

96% of the attackers studied were male, 3% were female, and 2% were transgender. 57% of attackers were white. 34% of attackers were Black. 11% of attackers were Hispanic. 4% of attackers were Asian. 1% of attackers were American Indian. 72% of attackers experienced some kind of financial stressor sometime prior to the attack. Just under 20% of attackers had an “unstable housing” situation at the time of the attack. Bystanders intervened in about 10% of the attacks. When that happened, the attacker was killed by the intervening bystander only 2% of the time. (Think the mythic “good guy with a gun.”) While there was a large age range, the average age of an attacker was 34 years old. 41% of attackers had a history of “engaging in at least one incident of domestic violence.” And nearly a fifth of attackers exhibited “misogynistic behaviors.”

In a pundit roundup by Chitown Kev of Kos commenter Hugh Jim Bissell wrote:

We need a new metric: a number that describes how many are killed by gunfire in a given election district as a function of how much money the gun industry gives to public office holders and seekers in that district. Such a metric would help us know how much value each representative gives the lives of their constituents. If you take the amount of NRA funding received by each elected representative and divide it by the number of dead kids in their respective jurisdictions during their time in office, you’ll get exactly how much they earned for each killing.

That second paragraph is in an image and has a different font. I don’t know if it is original to Bissell or he pulled it from somewhere else. Leah McElrath tweeted a thread about US police traveling to Israel for training. Sometimes the Israeli trainers come to them. The Anti-Defamation League and American taxpayers fund these trips. This kind of training happened before the deaths of George Floyd, Freddie Gray, and Tyre Nichols. Police are also getting surplus military equipment. This is important because:

Our tax dollars are being spent to send US police officials to Israel to be trained to respond to Americans as though we are all terrorists within our own country.

McElrath got significant pushback for her thread.

If you question the activities of Israel, its government, or its security forces, you will be attacked as “antisemitic” or as engaging in “blood libel.” First time I’ve been called a “Nazi” though. FTR, I question the actions of *every* state, government, and security force.

The trolling got so bad she had to lock down her Twitter account for awhile, permitting no one outside of trusted friends to see it. I was one of those who tried to see her tweets during that time and was denied. Sweden and Finland have applied to join NATO. Turkey, already a NATO member, has been holding up Sweden’s approval over what Turkey says are anti-Islamic incidents. Recently there was a new incident of someone burning a copy of the Quran, upsetting Turkey again. Anders Åslund, who has written a book about Russia, tweeted a quote from a TV news report.

"Swedish journalist Chang Frick, affiliated with Russian propagandist channel RT, paid for Danish far-right activist Rasmus Paludan to publicly burn the Quran near the Turkish embassy in Sweden." To block Sweden from NATO...

Also, Alexander Stubb, former Prime Minister of Finland and now a professor at the School for Transnational Governance and a member of an organization promoting conflict resolution, tweeted:

This should come as no surprise. Russia seems to be behind the burning of the Quran in Sweden. This is what hybrid warfare of a rogue state looks like. In today's world everything can be weaponised.

Andrew Michta, dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the Marshall Center, tweeted a thread:

A word of advice for all those "realists" among Western elites who oppose support for #Ukraine: Finally, once and for all bury the Yalta mindset. Understand the Russia is no more entitled to a sphere of influence than a gangster is entitled to keep the spoils of a robbery. Time to set aside our double standard whereby when it comes to #Russia, we don't enforce the rules, but instead hope for a good tsar (Gorbachev, Yeltsin) with whom we can (to quote Lady Thatcher) "do business." We should also set aside the nonsense about Russian high culture. Russian culture must be seen in its totality -- it's not just Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or ballet; it's first and foremost the Gulag, prisons, firing squads, rape and torture. It's the culture of violence and theft as a mode of governance. It's an empire awash in blood.

In a Ukraine update Mark Sumner of Kos included a video that appears to be put out by the Wagner Group, the mercenary group beating against Bakhmut for the last six months or so but not yet taking it (though they might now be close). The video appears to be recruiting Americans to join Russia’s fight, claiming only Russia is fighting against evil. Sumner wrote:

The video may or may not be an actual production of the Wagner Group. To quote pro-Russian bloggers when they’re pretending that Ukraine hasn’t just liberated Kyiv, Kharkiv, or Kherson … time will tell. But whoever put together this “true patriot” video did an admirable job of touching Americans right in the Q-center. From the footage of Jan. 6 “patriots” to the final scenes that crib part of the atomic blast from Terminator 2, it’s a love letter to anyone who ever thought it would be great to scream “Wolverines!” only while working for the Russians. Will this video actually send some Americans looking for the nearest Wagner recruiting station? Unknown. But it’s tempting to wish them success in this venture. Sending Americans to Ukraine who believe in Wagner’s idea of “the patriot” might be the best thing for both nations.

Jon Hawkes tweeted an image of a Full Width Mine Plough – a big device with a tarantula vibe that can plow up mines from fields and wherever else they might be. If I’m decoding the abbreviations right Germany facilitated getting a large quantity of them from a manufacturer in England into Ukraine by the end of the year. How the thing keeps from getting blown up from each mine it encounters is not explained. I’ve collected several cartoons and tweets that all have to do with racism. There is a famous 1964 painting by Norman Rockwell of a black girl being escorted by federal officers to a school in New Orleans to force integration. Two recent cartoons play on that painting. Mike Luckovich tweeted an image of a white girl being escorted by men with “GOP” armbands. She says, “But I don’t wanna be protected from black history.” Andy Marlette tweeted an image of a black girl carrying a Black History book. But instead of being escorted, she is stopped by a man with a “DeSantis” button. Ruben Bolling of Kos showed the covers of several popular children’s books reworked to meet the standards of DeathSantis. The titles include “Harry the White Dog and His Black Friend Who’s Never Experienced Any Racism” and “The Free Market Tree” by Shel Silverstein. Luckovich again, with a child walking through a detector that starts beeping. The cop say, “Halt, is that a book in your backpack?” Incognito Finito tweeted with a photo to prove it:

I bought a bag of M&M's and they don't have M's anymore. They all have W's... for woke.

Professor Bigfoot tweeted in response to Stewardship asking, “Why is the white man so deathly afraid of the black man and our culture?”

A desperate fear of being “ruled over” by their lessers. This cartoon is from the 1870s near the end of Reconstruction, a time when Black men were being elected to Congress. The pathological need to dominate and control stems from fear.

The cartoon shows a white man with a smoking gun with a small black child at his feet, “Ef I hadn’t-er killed you, you would have growed up to rule me.” Someone fearful of being ruled over by their lessers is someone highly invested in the social hierarchy and glad there is someone below him. I think the fear comes from the need to dominate, not the other way around. Their fear is of losing their position in the hierarchy to someone they feel should be below them.