The World Gone Mad

When I saw this headline in the NYT I thought it must be a spoof:

Meteorologists Face Harassment and Death Threats Amid Hurricane Disinformation

 

Nope. It's real. People are actually threatening to murder meteorologists because they're covering up the true fact that the government controls the weather. 

Many of the falsehoods about the hurricanes have been spread by conservatives and supporters of former President Donald J. Trump, including a former Trump administration official and a Republican congresswoman.

Of all the conspiracy theories and disinformation that have circulated, meteorologists say one falsehood that has especially gotten out of hand is the claim that the government is creating or controlling the storms. Forecasters have been harassed for either failing to promote these claims or for disseminating accurate information that counters them.

 

But wait, there's more:

 

Emergency workers have also been targeted with abuse. In the aftermath of Helene, Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel received a significant amount of harassment, including false claims that the agency was stealing donations and diverting disaster aid to Ukraine. Calls were made for residents to form militias to defend against those workers, who also faced antisemitic and misogynistic threats.

 

This isn't even worthy of a headline or its own article, it appears. I have to admit I'm starting to wonder whether electoral democracy can still work. But I can't think of an alternative. 

UPDATE: I cannot believe this:

Some FEMA operations paused in North Carolina after reports National Guard troops saw ‘armed militia’ threatening them

Sunday Sermonette: Now we're prophesying

The Book of Isaiah is important in both Jewish tradition and Christian theology, and therefore a complicated subject. The first thing to understand is that like some other books of the Tanakh, it's really a compilation of material. The current consensus is that it consists of three works. The first, as it purports at the beginning, really was written in the 8th Century BC. The context is that the Assyrian empire, under the Shalmaneser V and his successor Sargon II, had destroyed the northern Kingdom of Israel. Judah survived a siege of Jerusalem but was reduced to a tributary kingdom. (It's not entirely clear whether this was concluded under Shalmaneser or Sargon.) 

 

The writer attributes the kingdom's misfortune to apostasy: Yahweh has removed his protection because the people have failed to follow his laws or do him proper worship. However, Isaiah prophesies that the glory of Judah and its relationship with Yahweh will ultimately be restored. Christian theologians made a huge stretch, interpreting this as prophesying the coming of Jesus, whereas if you simply read it the plain and unambiguous sense is that it refers to the restoration of the kingdom of Judah and its religion.

The second portion of the book we have today was in fact written during the Babylonian exile. In case you've forgotten, the Assyrian empire fell to Babylon in the late 7th Century BC. The Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the kingdom of Judah in 587 BC, and deported its elite citizens, including the royal household, military leadership, and the literate priesthood, to Babylon. It was easy enough for the author of the second part of Isiah to prophesy what had already happened! 

In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon, and he allowed the exiles to return, bringing about the restoration of Judah and the rebuilding of the Temple. The final chapters of Isaiah were written in the post-exilic period. We'll cross those bridges when we come to them.

1 The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

A Rebellious Nation

² Hear me, you heavens! Listen, earth!
    For the Lord has spoken:
“I reared children and brought them up,
    but they have rebelled against me.
³ The ox knows its master,
    the donkey its owner’s manger,
but Israel does not know,
    my people do not understand.”

⁴ Woe to the sinful nation,
    a people whose guilt is great,
a brood of evildoers,
    children given to corruption!
They have forsaken the Lord;
    they have spurned the Holy One of Israel
    and turned their backs on him.

⁵ Why should you be beaten anymore?
    Why do you persist in rebellion?
Your whole head is injured,
    your whole heart afflicted.
⁶ From the sole of your foot to the top of your head
    there is no soundness—
only wounds and welts
    and open sores,
not cleansed or bandaged
    or soothed with olive oil.

⁷ Your country is desolate,
    your cities burned with fire;
your fields are being stripped by foreigners
    right before you,
    laid waste as when overthrown by strangers.
⁸ Daughter Zion is left
    like a shelter in a vineyard,
like a hut in a cucumber field,
    like a city under siege.
⁹ Unless the Lord Almighty
    had left us some survivors,
we would have become like Sodom,
    we would have been like Gomorrah.

¹⁰ Hear the word of the Lord,
    you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the instruction of our God,
    you people of Gomorrah!
¹¹ “The multitude of your sacrifices—
    what are they to me?” says the Lord.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
    of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
    in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
¹² When you come to appear before me,
    who has asked this of you,
    this trampling of my courts?
¹³ Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
    Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
    I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
¹⁴ Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
    I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.
¹⁵ When you spread out your hands in prayer,
    I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
    I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood!

¹⁶ Wash and make yourselves clean.
    Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
    stop doing wrong.
¹⁷ Learn to do right; seek justice.
    Defend the oppressed.^[a]
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
    plead the case of the widow.

¹⁸ “Come now, let us settle the matter,”
    says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
    they shall be like wool.
¹⁹ If you are willing and obedient,
    you will eat the good things of the land;
²⁰ but if you resist and rebel,
    you will be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

²¹ See how the faithful city
    has become a prostitute!
She once was full of justice;
    righteousness used to dwell in her—
    but now murderers!
²² Your silver has become dross,
    your choice wine is diluted with water.
²³ Your rulers are rebels,
    partners with thieves;
they all love bribes
    and chase after gifts.
They do not defend the cause of the fatherless;
    the widow’s case does not come before them.

²⁴ Therefore the Lord, the Lord Almighty,
    the Mighty One of Israel, declares:
“Ah! I will vent my wrath on my foes
    and avenge myself on my enemies.
²⁵ I will turn my hand against you;^[b]
    I will thoroughly purge away your dross
    and remove all your impurities.
²⁶ I will restore your leaders as in days of old,
    your rulers as at the beginning.
Afterward you will be called
    the City of Righteousness,
    the Faithful City.”

²⁷ Zion will be delivered with justice,
    her penitent ones with righteousness.
²⁸ But rebels and sinners will both be broken,
    and those who forsake the Lord will perish.

²⁹ “You will be ashamed because of the sacred oaks
    in which you have delighted;
you will be disgraced because of the gardens
    that you have chosen.
³⁰ You will be like an oak with fading leaves,
    like a garden without water.
³¹ The mighty man will become tinder
    and his work a spark;
both will burn together,
    with no one to quench the fire.”

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 1:17 Or justice. / Correct the oppressor
2. Isaiah 1:25 That is, against Jerusalem

Josh Marshall says it well . . .

[Sorry, essay is by Howard Kurtz, but it's on Josh's site.]   He expresses the frustration and, yes, dread that many of us are feeling.  

The current moment is so strange and attenuated in part because the robust public debate we’re accustomed to is shorn of any real meaning when one party to that debate doesn’t give a fuck about debating. You can’t debate democracy with people who don’t believe in democracy, or debating, or empirical evidence, or anything approximating truth or reality.

Most of political journalism fails to meet the moment because it has chosen to maintain – or is unable to break free of – the illusion that the 2024 campaign is another in the long line of great quadrennial public debates engaged in mostly good faith by two sides seeking to coalesce the will of the people around their preferred vision for the country. It’s nowhere more painfully apparent than watching the TV networks continue to try to competitively exercise their convening authority to stage the presidential campaign in front of their cameras. We’ve catalogued at length the ways that using the same old journalistic constructs normalizes Trump, creates false equivalencies, and generally allows the anti-democratic forces to pantomime as democratic while denigrating, undermining and delegitimizing democratic institutions, including news outlets themselves.

 

I'll put it a slightly different way, from the standpoint of an academic, whose profession requires debating according to rules that require my colleagues and I to honor empirical observations, accepted facts, and logic. Now I feel as though all the skills and knowledge I have acquired over a lifetime of hard work have become useless. Facts, even what I would normally consider to be ideas, no longer matter. Somewhere close to half the population has entered another world -- something like what the science fiction writer Van Vogt called Null A -- in which Aristotelian logic does not apply. They have entered into the world of a lunatic, a deranged, damaged and demented person, and chosen to live in his unreality. That the corporate media cannot grasp this certainly compounds the frustration, but I wonder how much it would really matter if they could? These people have simply gone mad.

Wednesday Bible Study: Soft core

As I said, I'm not going to post the whole thing, just a couple of representative chapters. I think Chapter 7 will convince you that this is not some obscure allegory, it's just what it purports to be. But, if you're a Biblical literalist, you think God wants you to read this and make something of it, so go for it.

7 ^[a]How beautiful your sandaled feet,
    O prince’s daughter!
Your graceful legs are like jewels,
    the work of an artist’s hands.
² Your navel is a rounded goblet
    that never lacks blended wine.
Your waist is a mound of wheat
    encircled by lilies.
³ Your breasts are like two fawns,
    like twin fawns of a gazelle.
⁴ Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon
    by the gate of Bath Rabbim.
Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon
    looking toward Damascus.
⁵ Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel.
    Your hair is like royal tapestry;
    the king is held captive by its tresses.
⁶ How beautiful you are and how pleasing,
    my love, with your delights!
⁷ Your stature is like that of the palm,
    and your breasts like clusters of fruit.
⁸ I said, “I will climb the palm tree;
    I will take hold of its fruit.”
May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine,
    the fragrance of your breath like apples,
⁹     and your mouth like the best wine.

She

May the wine go straight to my beloved,
    flowing gently over lips and teeth.^[b]
10 I belong to my beloved,
    and his desire is for me.
¹¹ Come, my beloved, let us go to the countryside,
    let us spend the night in the villages.^[c]
12 Let us go early to the vineyards
    to see if the vines have budded,
if their blossoms have opened,
    and if the pomegranates are in bloom—
    there I will give you my love.
¹³ The mandrakes send out their fragrance,
    and at our door is every delicacy,
both new and old,
    that I have stored up for you, my beloved.

Footnotes

1. Song of Songs 7:1 In Hebrew texts 7:1-13 is numbered 7:2-14.
2. Song of Songs 7:9 Septuagint, Aquila, Vulgate and Syriac; Hebrew lips of sleepers
3. Song of Songs 7:11 Or the henna bushes

What all the lying is really about . . .

Jamelle Bouie kicks off a column with a couple of specific, vile and destructive recent lies of the Republican nominees for president and vice president. (Gift link.) They're immediate effect is bad enough, but this is his ultimate take:

Whether it is Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, or native-born Americans in North Carolina, Donald Trump and JD Vance are doing whatever they can to destabilize the capacity of ordinary people to trust any information that comes their way. They are asking their supporters and followers to ignore their senses, to ignore their experience, in favor of a constructed reality. They are telling the country that nothing — not the impartial judgments of trained observers nor the words of the storm victims themselves — counts as much as the story they want to tell.

As strategy goes, this could work. Trump and Vance might win the election with a message that is far more fantasy than it is reality. But whether they do or don’t triumph in the end, the damage will be done. Trump has successfully trained millions of Americans to think of the truth as an obstacle to winning power. He may not be able to capitalize on that victory. Eventually, someone will.

He says it better than I could . . .

This essayists, who prefers to remain anonymous, takes on Faux News. (You can track down his identity if you want to but I'll honor his preference.) I find the title he uses for his site a bit off, but maybe he means it sardonically or something. Anyway, here it is: Fox News, the Engine of Disinformation:

From the moment it launched, Fox News wasn’t interested in being a conservative counterweight to the so-called liberal media. It set out to create an alternate universe where facts were malleable, and the truth was whatever kept its audience hooked. Think of it as a political reality show, except instead of roses, viewers were handed fear, outrage, and lies. It wasn’t about keeping the public informed; it was about keeping them addicted. . . . 

Fox News isn’t just a media outlet—it’s the sharpest cultural weapon ever wielded in American politics. It didn’t just fracture families; it reshaped the very DNA of the nation, turning neighbors into enemies and citizens into foot soldiers for disinformation. Fox News has left an indelible mark on America’s psyche, undermining trust in the very institutions that hold the country together. Scientists? They’re shills. The government? Corrupt. The media? The enemy of the people. Fox has turned collective action—whether it’s tackling climate change or improving healthcare—into a dirty word, equating it with government overreach and the loss of personal liberty.

And here’s the thing: Fox knows exactly what it’s doing. It has conditioned an entire segment of the population to live in a state of perpetual grievance and distrust, tuning in night after night for their daily fix of outrage. America’s real problems—like wealth inequality, systemic racism, and the existential threat of climate change—take a back seat to the latest culture war Fox chooses to manufacture.

 

Anyway, read the whole thing.

And for what? As Rupert Murdoch himself admitted during the Dominion lawsuit: “It’s not about what’s true—it’s about what sells.” And Fox, in the end, is in the business of selling fear.

Sunday Sermonette: Hot stuff

The Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, is notable mostly because there's no good explanation for what the heck it's doing in the Bible. It makes no reference whatsoever to Yahweh, any concept of a god or gods for that matter, to the law, to the covenant, or even to morality or wisdom. It's purely an erotic love poem. The date of composition is uncertain, but most scholars put it on the Third Century BCE based on linguistic evidence. The ascription to Solomon is, as always, entirely fanciful.

 

Apologists try to read it as a metaphor for the relationship between God and Israel, or Christ and his church. But that makes sense only if they want to have a sexual relationship, because that is entirely what this is all about. The structure has a man and a woman alternately expressing their physical desire for each other, with interpolations by a chorus. And believe me, this is not about the marriage of two minds, it's 100% about their bodies. Some scholars believe this is actually the script for a pagan fertility ritual. I'm not going to post the whole thing here because it would be pointless. Here's the first chapter, to give you a flavor. If you want to read the whole thing (which you probably don't), you can go to Bible Gateway.

 

In fact its acceptance into the Canon was controversial, but it's there. Make of it what you will.

1 Solomon’s Song of Songs.

She^[a]

² Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—
    for your love is more delightful than wine.
³ Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
    your name is like perfume poured out.
    No wonder the young women love you!
⁴ Take me away with you—let us hurry!
    Let the king bring me into his chambers.

Friends

We rejoice and delight in you^[b];
    we will praise your love more than wine.

She

How right they are to adore you!

⁵ Dark am I, yet lovely,
    daughters of Jerusalem,
dark like the tents of Kedar,
    like the tent curtains of Solomon.^[c]
6 Do not stare at me because I am dark,
    because I am darkened by the sun.
My mother’s sons were angry with me
    and made me take care of the vineyards;
    my own vineyard I had to neglect.
⁷ Tell me, you whom I love,
    where you graze your flock
    and where you rest your sheep at midday.
Why should I be like a veiled woman
    beside the flocks of your friends?

Friends

⁸ If you do not know, most beautiful of women,
    follow the tracks of the sheep
and graze your young goats
    by the tents of the shepherds.

He

⁹ I liken you, my darling, to a mare
    among Pharaoh’s chariot horses.
¹⁰ Your cheeks are beautiful with earrings,
    your neck with strings of jewels.
¹¹ We will make you earrings of gold,
    studded with silver.

She

¹² While the king was at his table,
    my perfume spread its fragrance.
¹³ My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh
    resting between my breasts.
¹⁴ My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms
    from the vineyards of En Gedi.

He

¹⁵ How beautiful you are, my darling!
    Oh, how beautiful!
    Your eyes are doves.

She

¹⁶ How handsome you are, my beloved!
    Oh, how charming!
    And our bed is verdant.

He

¹⁷ The beams of our house are cedars;
    our rafters are firs.

Footnotes

1. Song of Songs 1:2 The main male and female speakers (identified primarily on the basis of the gender of the relevant Hebrew forms) are indicated by the captions He and She respectively. The words of others are marked Friends. In some instances the divisions and their captions are debatable.
2. Song of Songs 1:4 The Hebrew is masculine singular.
3. Song of Songs 1:5 Or Salma

There is one fairly simple explanation . . .

I've been making phone calls for my local Democratic party committee (I'm the chair). The phone list is generated by our voter database. It consists of registered Democrats who have given to Democratic candidates or party organizations in the past, so I'm not supposed to get a lot of nasty surprises. The idea is to turn out the vote, find people who want to volunteer, and who want yard signs. 

Sigh. It turns out some of them have gone down the rabbit hole. Here's an exchange from yesterday. This is a man in his 40s. He likes his congressional representative, but he isn't going to vote for the candidate at the top. Why not? She's a socialist. Why do you say that? Open borders.

[I didn't want to complicate things so I didn't say that the idea of open borders has nothing to do with socialism . . . ] We don't have open borders, the U.S. border with Mexico is one of the most heavily patrolled borders in the world. What about all those illegal immigrants being bused to cities?

 

They aren't illegal immigrants, they're asylum seekers. Because of international treaties and  U.S. law, when people enter the country with a credible claim for asylum we have to give them a hearing. Congress hasn't appropriated money for enough judges so there's a backlog. They're waiting for their hearings, and most of them will have their claims denied and they'll be deported.

[No answer to that.] The economy is terrible.

Why do you say that? The U.S. economy is the envy of the world. We have low unemployment, the highest growth rate in the developed world . . .

Inflation.

[Again, I'm not getting the socialism. I didn't want to overcomplicate by pointing out that the recent inflation was a global phenomenon, actually worse in most of the world than in the U.S., so I just said . . . ] But that's over. Have you been watching Fox News?

Well I'm definitely not going to watch ABC News. Yeah, I watch Fox some.

 

I think you should try getting information somewhere else. They're lying to you, man.

 

Well, maybe I'll do some of my own research. [Yep, he literally said that.]

I hope you will and I hope you'll think again about things.

END

So, what's the moral of this story? A whole lot of the blame goes to Rupert Murdoch. That's the necessary condition for this to be happening. 

Addendum: This.

 

Wednesday Bible Study: In conclusion

In the final chapter, Koholet wraps up his counsel of despair, seemingly conflating what he sees as the inevitably deteriorating and meaningless dotage of individuals with what seems to be a declining society. Get it while you can, while you are young, and while the society is vigorous, seems to be the meaning. Then the scribe wraps up with an interpretation that doesn't accurately reflect what has gone before, at least as far as I have understood it. In particular, the scribe states the Just World Fallacy, which Koholet has repeatedly denied.

Next is the so-called Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs. I'm not going to go through the whole thing, because it would be pointless. It's an erotic love poem, and why the heck it's in the Bible is a puzzle. But I'll discuss that next time.

2 Remember your Creator
    in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
    and the years approach when you will say,
    “I find no pleasure in them”—
² before the sun and the light
    and the moon and the stars grow dark,
    and the clouds return after the rain;
³ when the keepers of the house tremble,
    and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
    and those looking through the windows grow dim;
⁴ when the doors to the street are closed
    and the sound of grinding fades;
when people rise up at the sound of birds,
    but all their songs grow faint;
⁵ when people are afraid of heights
    and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
    and the grasshopper drags itself along
    and desire no longer is stirred.
Then people go to their eternal home
    and mourners go about the streets.

⁶ Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
    and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
    and the wheel broken at the well,
⁷ and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
    and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

⁸ “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher.^[a]
    “Everything is meaningless!”

The Conclusion of the Matter

⁹ Not only was the Teacher wise, but he also imparted knowledge to the people. He pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs. ¹⁰ The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true.

¹¹ The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails—given by one shepherd.^{[b] 12} Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them.

Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.

¹³ Now all has been heard;
    here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
    for this is the duty of all mankind.
¹⁴ For God will bring every deed into judgment,
    including every hidden thing,
    whether it is good or evil.

Footnotes

1. Ecclesiastes 12:8 Or the leader of the assembly; also in verses 9 and 10
2. Ecclesiastes 12:11 Or Shepherd

I admit I am totally baffled

I believe I may have posted here, but in any event I concluded a while ago, that the Great Pumpkin's mental deterioration was happening fast enough that he would not be presentable in public well before election day. On the one hand, that turned out to be true. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to matter. All he does is spout gibberish and insanity, but his cultists actually cheer for it, and they still tell pollsters they will vote for him.

 

Here are just a few examples.  Digby calls out the people who claim to like his "policies." So, he is asked a specific policy question: What actions will you take to ensure that our jobs stay in America? Here is his response, verbatim:

Actually, he was not honored as Man of the Year, but that's beside the point. Then there's the "crime" issue. Just for background:

One of the central narratives of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is that America is awash in violent crime, much of it from migrants deliberately invited across the border by the Biden-Harris administration in order to harvest their illegal votes, and that a Trump restoration will put an abrupt end to all this carnage. It’s quite a false narrative, to be sure, since (1) crime rates are actually dropping steadily; (2) so too are border crossings by migrants; (3) there’s is virtually no evidence of noncitizen voting in any recent national election; and (4) Trump has no real plan to address this phantom menace other than bringing peace and order via his awe-inspiring “strength.” But he keeps saying these things and a lot of people believe them.

 

And, to add some additional fact checking:

 

Mr. Trump claimed that shoplifters in California are allowed to steal up to $950 from stores without consequence. It’s a reference to a criminal justice measure that state lawmakers passed overwhelmingly in 2014, while Ms. Harris was the attorney general. She was not responsible for the law, which changed how prosecutors treated certain lower-level offenses — shoplifting remains illegal, but is treated as a misdemeanor below the $950 threshold.

California’s $950 felony threshold for shoplifting is the 10th strictest in the nation. States such as Republican-led Texas, Alabama and Mississippi allow even higher levels of theft before a felony is triggered.

 So here's what he said. (I tried to find a transcript but haven't been able to so far.)

Speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania, the ex-president said the key to preventing crimes like shoplifting is state-sanctioned police beatings, which he lamented the “left” does not allow. “You see these guys walking out with air conditioners, with refrigerators on their back. The craziest thing,” Trump said. “And the police aren’t allowed to do their job. They’re told, if you do anything, you’re gonna lose your pension…. They’re not allowed to do it because the liberal left won’t let ’em do it. The liberal left wants to destroy them, and they want to destroy our country.” Then he unveiled his big idea: “If you had one really violent day…one rough hour, and I mean real rough, the word will get out and it will end immediately.”

During his remarks, Trump also falsely claimed one can steal up to $950 worth of goods with no consequences in California, which appeared to be both a reference to Proposition 47—which downgraded some theft offenses to misdemeanors from felonies—and an attempt to tie the law to then California attorney general Kamala Harris. But as Politico notes, while Harris was in office when the ballot initiative was approved, “she remained neutral on the matter.” Meanwhile, “the dollar threshold Trump referenced actually became law four years earlier, signed by then governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.”

 

This is just insane. This man is delusional and demented. But it doesn't matter. I just don't get it.