Joe Lieberman, RIP
Joe Lieberman was always one of the “good ones.” And by that, I of course mean a Democrat with whom I agreed more than most. I was just getting started in my political maturity when he was chosen to be Al Gore’s running mate in 2000 [I wasn’t even old enough to vote, if you can believe it], but even as a Limbaugh-listening, Coulter-reading aspiring firebrand, there was not much about him that I found disagreeable. He and fellow Senator John McCain were fairly similar politically, but what drove me crazy about John McCain as a Republican I found respectable about Joe Lieberman as a Democrat. [They were also similar in the sense that I would not fully appreciate their presence in the Senate, and American politics generally, until they were gone and had markedly worse replacements.]
But it feels a bit crass to put it in such political terms. Because as much as Joe Lieberman was one of the “good ones” in politics, he only managed to be such because he was one of the great ones in his private life. I obviously never knew the man personally, but all indications from the people who did are that he was a mensch in the truest sense of the word. He was an observant Orthodox Jew, which I always respect because there are few religions that require so much from the believer that are at odds with modern conveniences. It requires an uncommon amount of faith and self-advocacy that most people simply don’t have. [To wit, when his duties as a Senator required him to be in the Capitol on Saturdays, he would walk from his home in Georgetown because of the orthodox prohibition of driving on the Sabbath.]
He was a staunch supporter of America abroad, as well as a staunch supporter of Israel and the Zionist project, both of which became anathema to his party as early as 2006 when he lost his primary to a progressive insurgent campaign [who were perhaps most upset that Lieberman had the audacity to have a good relationship with George W. Bush]. He would go on to run as an independent in the election and beat his leftist challenger by double digits, in a rebuke of extremist base politics that I’m not sure is possible in the current environment. He was also willing to stand up to his party and defend ethics in government, when he led an [ultimately failed] effort to censure then-president Bill Clinton for his various misdeeds during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, even at a time when the rest of his party was not inclined to do so.
Most of all, he dealt in good faith, with good humor, and a spirit of public service — a trifecta that is so rare these days that I can’t come up with another example off the top of my head. Would that we had a hundred Joe Liebermans, and may his memory be a blessing.
Are We Just Bad at Math?
A container ship collided with a support pylon of the Francis Scott Key Bridge early Tuesday morning, just outside the Baltimore harbor, causing the entirety of the bridge to collapse into the Patapsco River below. The ship had lost power twice in the seconds before impacting the bridge, during which time they issued a mayday call, allowing authorities to close traffic to the bridge. That in itself is a minor miracle, as there was no traffic on the bridge at the time of the collapse, meaning the only fatalities were from a roadwork crew filling potholes overnight.
It didn’t take long for the grosser elements of our political discourse to assert themselves:
It should be noted that, in seedier corners of the Right, “DEI” — which stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which is basically what we used to call Affirmative Action — has become a thinly-veiled racial slur that basically translates to “unqualified non-white person.” But there’s also this particular species of brain worms:
It’s embarrassing enough that a guy who uses the handle “Catturd” has become a well-known right wing commentator, but it’s a perfect distillation of the reflexive anti-establishment sentiment that has infected much of the populace over the last several years and helped drag us into the incredibly stupid moment in which we find ourselves. There is no reason to believe that this incident was anything but an accident, but paranoid distrust of the government has become so pervasive that a not-insignificant percentage of the electorate spends an inordinate amount of time yelling “bullshit!” at anything that could plausibly be considered conventional wisdom.
I think this evidences a profound ignorance — sometimes literal, sometimes emotional — among many of our fellow citizens. It’s the same reason that there’s a bustling internet community of mooks who think the earth is flat. It basically boils down to: “I can’t see the curvature of the earth with my own eyes, and the media says the earth is round, and anyone who says the earth isn’t round gets mocked, so they must be hiding the fact that the earth is actually flat.” The works for any number of other issues that is bafflingly contentious these days — e.g., the moon landing was real, the 2020 presidential election was legitimate, vaccines work, etc.
I would say it’s the result of a lack of education, but I’m not sure that’s it. Because the evidence isn’t even that difficult to understand:
You can see the curvature of the earth with the naked eye, as evidenced by the fact that you can only see about three miles at a time while standing on the ground. Whether you’re standing on a beach or in a cornfield in Iowa, the horizon is about three miles away. Viewed from an airplane, the horizon is about 200 miles away.
We know the moon landing was real, if nothing else, because they left reflectors up there that we can shoot lasers at which then reflect back to earth. That would be impossible without humans having been there.
Do you notice how few people die from small pox, measles, diphtheria, tetanus, etc., these days? Vaccines. And if vaccines caused autism [which is the catalyst for much of the anti-vaccine movement], there would be way more instances of autism than there are. It’s similar to the idea that the COVID vaccine was fatal — if even .1% of people who got the COVID vaccine died from it, it would be obvious. Because some 200 million Americans got the COVID vaccine, and .1% of 200 million is 200,000.
Not a single court case succeeded in alleging the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate. In most instances, those cases didn’t even allege such things because there are consequences for knowing lying in court, and even Donald Trump’s crank lawyers knew better than that. There’s a reason that people like Mike Lindell and organizations like Fox News have had to pay millions of dollars in defamation suits, but not a single judge found compelling evidence of a stolen election.
As for the bridge, I think it’s similar to the flat earth/vaccine nonsense in the sense that people simply don’t appreciate the scale of the numbers we’re dealing with. It’s worth noting that when the Key bridge was built in 1972, the ship that hit it would have been 10 times larger than the largest ship that existed at the time. The ship would have been the largest ship in the world as recently as 2005. It was [is?] almost a thousand feet long, almost 160 feet wide, and was stacked with shipping containers eight rows high, making it roughly 150 feet tall. In other words, about the size of nine-story office building. And given the efficiency with which the containers are stacked on it, I would venture a guess that it’s probably more dense than an office building. Now, show me any bridge in the world that could maintain its structural integrity after having an office building thrown at it.
I think a lot of people just have a psychological need to feel like they have a deeper understanding of things because the truth is unsatisfying — either it’s boring, uncomfortably random, or would mean that the conspiracists are not actually put upon by nefarious outside forces and have to take responsibility for their own shortcomings.
No Room for Ronna
Former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna [Romney] McDaniel had a short-lived stint as an on-air analyst for NBC News. And by “short-lived” I mean the move was announced last Friday, there was an unprecedented on-air revolt on Meet the Press the following Sunday, and by Tuesday the network announced that [Romney] McDaniel would no longer be contributing to the organization.
As you might imagine, there was great consternation among some of the Right, as if this was just the most recent example of a conservative getting ousted from a liberal news outlet because snowflake staffers pitched a fit. I don’t think that’s quite right.
The original instance of such a thing came in 2018 when the Atlantic quickly reversed its decision to hire conservative writer Kevin Williamson after staff revolted upon having learned of some of Williamson’s [admittedly tongue-in-cheek] writings regarding abortion. Then in 2019, CNN briefly hired Sarah Isgur [currently of the Dispatch] to be their political editor in their Washington bureau, but reneged on the offer after staff complained that she had, uh…worked for Jeff Sessions, mostly. Then in 2020, the New York Times opinion page editor resigned after sparking outrage among the NYT staff for…running an opinion piece from a sitting United States Senator. As you can probably gather from my tone that I don’t think much of any of those decisions. I find them all varying degrees of egregious and ridiculous. Kevin Williamson is one of the best conservative writers going these days, and even if you disagree with him [which you shouldn’t], he’s at least informative and interesting. Sarah Isgur is one of the best legal analysts in the game and does so without being a predictable hack. And it’s just utterly silly to me that the staff of the country’s premiere newspaper would revolt over having published an opinion piece from a sitting Senator.
But this isn’t merely a reaction to a liberal news outlet hiring a conservative. Ronna [Romney] McDaniel isn’t fit to edit Williamson’s, Isgur’s, or Cotton’s copy, much less provide news analysis on a major network. She is the most sniveling of hacks, starting with the fact that she dropped her family name [Romney] at the behest of Donald Trump, because he simply didn’t like it. Anyone willing to debase themselves to that extent for the sake of keeping a political job is not fit to hold said job. But worse than that, McDaniel indulged Trump’s egregious “stolen election” narrative to the point that she is quite likely an accessory to a crime [due to her role in the “alternate electors” scheme to prevent the certification of election results in Michigan]. This is not a difference in degree from Williamson, Isgur, or Cotton, it’s a difference in kind.
It’s also a difference in kind from the fact that many former Democrat operatives — most notably George Stephanopoulos, Jen Pskai, et al. — have prominent “straight-news” positions in media. [That makes them hypocrites for complaining about Sarah Isgur, not for complaining about Ronna [Romney] McDaniel.]
At a certain level, I feel a twinge of pity for NBC News. They apparently feel a professional obligation — and a noble one at that — to represent on their airwaves the point of view of one of the most dominant political factions in the country. Some 74 million people voted for Donald Trump in 2020 [again, much to my befuddlement], so it’s not unreasonable, per se, that such views be reflected in the political analysis of a major news network. The problem that NBC News faces — and all other outlets, for that matter — is that Donald Trump has made indulging in his “stolen election” fantasy and his abrasive anti-constitutionalism the price of admission into Republican politics. It is impossible to be a Republican in good standing, or to genuinely represent the MAGA movement, without believing [or at least being willing to say publicly] that the 2020 election was stolen and that January 6th was fine. Ergo, anyone toeing the Trumpist line on television is, by definition, either a liar, a crazy person, or a coup supporter [or at-best pretending to be one, thus I once again refer you to Popehat’s Rule of Goats]. And news outlets are not obligated, out of some sense of “balance” or “fairness,” to “platform” liars, conspiracy theorists, or coup supporters simply because a large percentage of the electorate considers themselves represented by liars, conspiracy theorists, or coup supporters.
It’s the most recent example of how the American system isn’t really meant to handle someone like Donald Trump [or, more accurately, it isn’t really meant to handle a large percentage of the electorate supporting someone like Donald Trump]. As I’ve been telling anyone who will listen [and, failing that, screaming into the void] for damn near nine years at this point, Donald Trump has no business being president of the United States. After his actions following the 2020 election, he should be disqualified for office in the minds of any right-thinking American. But what is there to do when a critical mass of voters are determined not to be right-thinking?
As of now, I have to imagine that Donald Trump is a slight favorite to win in November. If that actually remains the case, we have much more to worry about as a country than the propriety of paying a seditionist hack like Ronna [Romney] McDaniel to provide news commentary.
What’s a Little Blasphemy Among Friends?
These days I feel a little like Bob Dole toward the end of his losing campaign in 1996. The writing was on the wall well before votes were actually counted, so in late October, Dole was basically reduced to muttering “Where’s the outrage?” Similarly, I look at the most recent gross thing that Donald Trump has done, and I just sort of sulk “Shouldn’t more people be mad about this?”
The dude is selling Trump-endorsed Bibles for $60 a pop. That’s just gross to me. Luckily, the Dispatch’s Nick Catoggio has articulated why much better than I was going to, so I’ll let him explain:
The sheer laziness with which Trump has courted evangelical voters since 2015 has always betrayed a degree of sincere disdain for them that’s unusual in a man not otherwise known for honesty. It would have been trivially easy for him to brush up on Christian dogma after he entered politics in the name of convincing the Republican base that he’d seen the light after a dissolute adulthood. But … he couldn’t be bothered to do so.
He’s never cared enough about the faith espoused by most of his supporters to even pretend to take it seriously.
That’s how we ended up with him once famously rendering “2 Corinthians” as “Two Corinthians” rather than “Second Corinthians.” And listing “an eye for an eye” as his favorite Bible verse instead of something from the Gospels. And admitting at an evangelical forum that he couldn’t recall ever having asked for God’s forgiveness. […]
How can it be that they haven’t wised up, though? […]
The fact that some of the revenue he earns from this very pious gambit is likely to go towards legal expenses in a matter related to his dalliance with a porn star or towards compensating a woman whom he was found liable for sexually abusing is the icing on the evangelical cake. Come to think of it, the only other time I can recall Trump touting the Bible in public was during his infamous photo op in 2020 after protesters were cleared by force from Lafayette Square. The Good Book, as something to be monetized or to be wielded as a cudgel against political enemies: Like I said, it’s the man distilled to his essence. […]
His first political priority, even above maximizing his chances of reelection, is purging the Republican Party of anyone who would question his right to rule. He doesn’t want independent-minded Christians in the GOP any more than he wants the traditional conservatives who preferred Nikki Haley in the primary. He’ll win without them—and if he can’t, he’ll at least have consolidated his power over one-half of America’s political establishment in the process.
In that context, whether by design or by happenstance, the “Trump Bible” operates as a sort of litmus test for evangelicals who have stuck with him this far through thick and thin. You won’t abandon me if I make a mockery of your faith, will you? No, of course you won’t. […]
It’s a loyalty test, as practically everything in a cult of personality is. He’s testing their faith—in him, not in Christianity. And insofar as those two faiths conflict, he expects them to choose more wisely than the Frenches and Moores of the world have. Those who refuse will find the doorway to exile from the Republican Party that-a-way.
Hawking Bibles emblazoned with an American flag during an election season suggests he’s very confident about how they’ll choose. […]
The devolution of evangelicalism in the Trump era is itself an interesting mix of radicalism and transactionalism, mirroring Trump’s personality. Many Christians made a cynical bargain with him in 2016, suppressing their moral discomfort and offering him their votes in exchange for guarantees that he’d enact their agenda, starting with limits on abortion. Insofar as his poor character and irreligiosity troubled them, some may have idly hoped that their influence over him, and the influence of figures like Mike Pence, would turn his heart toward God in time. He might be remade in Christianity’s image.
That transaction didn’t pan out the way they’d hoped. For many, Christianity has been remade in his image. […]
Trump’s movement is driven by nostalgia for America before it was ruined by “wokeness”; flouting feminist norms by acting like a horndog is a small act of rebellion against the liberal tribe that dominates the political establishment. Insofar as that conflicts with Christian morality, that morality must yield.
No wonder, then, that Trump would feel comfortable tangling up Scripture with the founding documents and slapping flag iconography on the cover. Those are all tribal signifiers of the right against the godless, lawless, unpatriotic left. To nationalists, they have no meaning of any consequence apart from their tribal symbolism. So why shouldn’t they be conflated?
I thought more Christians would take umbrage at Donald Trump making a joke of their faith and wouldn’t be such cheap dates with their votes, particularly after they spent most of the 90s complaining about what a sinner Bill Clinton was. Joke’s on me, I guess.
Occasional Trivia
Answer from last time:
Category: U.S. Geography
Clue: This state is the only one to share a border with Maine.
New Hampshire
Today’s clue:
Category: Rock Musicians
Clue: This leader of the Heartbreakers backed Stevie Nicks on her 1981 solo album “Bella Donna.”
Dispatches from the Homefront
My wife was on spring break this week, so she and her mother and sister took the kids for a little mini-vacation in the mountains, while I stayed home with the dog. I’d forgotten how little I have to do when I’m the only one in the house. Normally I don’t have time to myself for at least two hours after I get home. But when it’s just me, I can put some effort into a nice dinner, watch Jeopardy as it airs [rather than on the DVR after the kids are in bed], and…then go to bed, I guess? I can’t believe I used to live this way for years.