News – Page 4 – Difficult Run

The Story Behind Sexual Assaults: Power Corrupts

April 11, 2018October 30, 2017 by Nathaniel

The list of prominent men who stand credibly accused of sexually assaulting women and children just keeps growing. Just today, Kevin Spacey and Neil DeGrasse Tyson got added to it.

In my cynical moments, I agree with Malcolm Reynolds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG6UvDSuoF4

Do you think I’m exaggerating? Well, then you clearly missed the Wall Street Journal’s review of the Gandhi biography Great Soul which described (among many unsavory aspects of his life, from hypocrisy to outright racism) how “when he was in his 70s and close to leading India to independence, he [Gandhi] encouraged his 17-year-old great-niece, Manu, to be naked during her “nightly cuddles” with him.” If this is Gandhi, what did we expect from Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby? Perhaps our world is structured so that the people who get the statues built after them are the people willing to step on others to get there. After all, the blood on the hands of villains and the blood on the hands of saints is still the same color.

But there are two silver linings to the floodgates of accusations we’re now witnessing. The first is the most obvious: these men aren’t getting away with it anymore. For every famous icon who is shamed and punished, I hope there are dozens or hundreds of predators out there who begin to act with decency out of a sense of fear and self-preservation. I hope women are safer today than they were yesterday because of the courage of these women to come forward and name their attackers, and because a complicit and corrupt media has finally been shamed into covering the story.[ref]I should say: partially covering the story. I was disgusted to hear NPR discuss the Kevin Spacey allegations in terms of attacks against men instead of attacks against children. The ideological instinct to manufacture equivalence between genders is truly stunning, and it allows Hollywood pedophilia to remain as much as taboo subject today as Harvey Weinstein’s attacks were a month ago.[/ref]

The second is not as frequently commented on. That is the fact that the perpetrators defy partisan explanation. We’ve got a Republican president, a Holocaust survivor, a famous gay actor (that’d be Kevin Spacey), a scientist known for his views on global warming and atheism (DeGrasse Tyson), one of the mega-pundits of conservatism,[ref]And let’s not get: the entire network that covered for him.[/ref] and of course Harvey Weinstein was a major Democratic fundraiser. Democrat or Republican, straight or gay, black or white, the list of predators confounds just about every conceivable partisan breakdown. And if you think your particular partisan niche is safe, just wait. Because here are a couple of inviolable rules of human nature. The first is that men–yes, men in particular–are driven by sexual desire. The second is that power tends to corrupt. This means that when men have the power to coerce victims and get away with it, quite a lot of them will do so.

This has long been my problem with so-called “rape culture” criticism. The term “rape culture” implies that there is some kind of special, unusual set of assumptions required to create an environment in which sexual assault flourishes. It is a tragically naive view that the default, natural state of human beings is to be kind and nice to each other, and if only we could get rid of these ideological perversions–the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, whatever–and return society to its default, natural state then rape would go away.

But analyzing rape and sexual assault through a political lens has always been a lost cause, because the origins of sexual assault are not political or ideological. It does not require some kind of special philosophy, culture, or ideology to allow sexual assault to flourish. Rape culture is not some kind of aberration. It is the default. Civilization is the exception.

Some people have expressed surprise or even skepticism at the #MeToo campaign. I have not. For whatever reason, when I was growing up I was the kind of person people liked to confide in. So many of my female friends told me of the times they had been sexually assaulted (up to and including rape) that I have long supposed that a woman who hasn’t been sexually assaulted is very, very rare.

The reality is that men as predators are not exceptions or aberrations. It doesn’t take a specific culture for rapists to flourish. That’s the default. It takes a specific culture to counteract the natural tendency towards exploitation and abuse. It takes unnatural institutions like criminal justice systems alongside unnatural concepts such as honor and duty and sacrifice to create an environment where rape is suppressed.

If there’s one thing that I hope we can learn from these horrific revelations: this is it. That the ideas that men and women are interchangeable or that moral violations are political are bad ideas. They are political dogmas that fly in the face of common sense, science, and–most importantly–that consistently sabotage our efforts to build an anti-rape culture. Because we should be less concerned with tearing down rape culture and more concerned with building up anti-rape culture. We should be less concerned with teaching about consent–which is a horrifically low bar–and more concerned with teaching ideals of respect, honor, virtue, and love. We should be less concerned with sexual liberation and more concerned with discipline and self-control. Yes, I realize that the idea of teaching adolescents concepts like chastity and self-control sounds laughable today.

That’s why we’re here.

There will never come a day when rape does not exist in our society for the same reason that there will never come a day when theft and murder do not exist. But that doesn’t mean we are doomed to tolerate this degree of profligate harassment and exploitation, either. It doesn’t mean we have to do nothing or accept the status quo. We do not.

What does this look like in practice? I don’t think Weinstein was confused about consent. Teaching him the concept would have accomplished nothing. But teaching him about chastity would not have done an iota more good than teaching about consent. However, a society that still had some appreciation for ideals of chastity, fidelity, self-control, and what used to be called “decency” would be a much more hostile environment for predators. We live in a country where the President of the United States could coerce a young intern into a sexual relationship[ref]Don’t try and tell me that there is such a thing as consent across that power differential.[/ref] and instead of being viewed as a universal affront to civilization it became a partisan issue. The day we decided Bill Clinton’s abuse and exploitation of women was somehow his personal business and decided to rehabilitate a serial sexual abusesr and accused rapist into some kind of grandfatherly political icon was the day that we told every Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson in the world: go ahead. It’s open season. As long as you’re powerful enough, we’ll look the other way.

If we returned to old-fashioned concepts of honor, propriety, and decency maybe some boys would grow up to be better men and never assault women. I believe that would happen. But–worst case scenario–at least we could take away the horrific sense of entitlement that men of power are currently operating under. Because, as great as it is for the current crop of serial abusers to get taken out, as long as the underlying assumptions of our society remain unchallenged, the only thing that will change is that the next generation of predators will be smarter than the last.

New Draft Report Covering a Decade of Refugees

April 6, 2018September 23, 2017 by Walker

A draft report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that between 2005 and 2014, refugees brought in $63 billion more in government revenue than they cost. As reported by The New York Times,

The draft report…contradicts a central argument made by advocates of deep cuts in refugee totals as President Trump faces an Oct. 1 deadline to decide on an allowable number. The issue has sparked intense debate within his administration as opponents of the program, led by Mr. Trump’s chief policy adviser, Stephen Miller, assert that continuing to welcome refugees is too costly and raises concerns about terrorism.

Advocates of the program inside and outside the administration say refugees are a major benefit to the United States, paying more in taxes than they consume in public benefits, and filling jobs in service industries that others will not. But research documenting their fiscal upside — prepared for a report mandated by Mr. Trump in a March presidential memorandum implementing his travel ban — never made its way to the White House. Some of those proponents believe the report was suppressed.

Well, when you build an entire campaign on anti-immigration/refugee rhetoric, what else can you do?

Image result for trump shrug gif

Houston, Hurricanes, and History

April 11, 2018September 1, 2017 by Walker

Economic and policy historian Phillip Magness has an enlightening post on Houston’s Harvey situation:

Older generations remember earlier storms and hurricanes that produced similar effects going back decades, although you have to return to December 6-9, 1935 to find an example that compares to Harvey’s stats.

Houston was a much smaller city in 1935, both in population and in geographical spread. But by some metrics the 1935 flood was even more severe. Buffalo Bayou – the main waterway through downtown – peaked at over 54 feet. Harvey, in all its devastation, hit “only” 40 feet by comparison. The 1935 storm dropped less rain, the maximum recorded being about 20 inches to the north of town where Houston’s main airport now sits. But it was also complicated by the problem of severe storms upstream that flowed into town and caused almost all of the other creeks and bayous that flooded last weekend to exceed their banks. Reports at the time noted that as much as 2/3rds of what was then rural and unpopulated farmland in surrounding Harris County saw flooding. Those areas are now suburbs today.

The effects of the 1935 flood on populated areas are also eerily similar to what we saw on television over the weekend. I recommend watching this film of the aftermath for comparison. All of downtown was underwater, as the film shows. People were stranded on rooftops as rivers of water emerged around them. There are even clips of rescuers navigating the streets of neighborhoods in small boats and canoes as water reached second and third stories on nearby buildings.

In the aftermath of the 1935 flood, the federal government commissioned an extensive study of Houston’s rainfall patterns. They produced the following map of the Houston storm’s effects, showing unsettling similarities to what we just witnessed (note that this map does not include the areas to the north of town, where rainfall in 1935 was significantly higher. These are the suburbs that flooded along Cypress and Spring Creeks last weekend and the farmland that similarly flooded in 1935)

And therein lies the importance of history to understanding what we just witnessed in catastrophic form this weekend. Houston floods fairly regularly. In fact, downtown Houston has suffered a major flood on average about once a decade as far back as records extend in the 1830s.

He continues:

…tropical storms and hurricanes throughout the 20th century revealed Houston’s continued vulnerability to storms.

The reasons have to do almost entirely with topography and geography. Houston sits on the gulf of Mexico in an active hurricane zone that attracts large storms. But more significantly, Houston’s topography is extraordinarily flat. The elevation drop across the entire city and region is extremely modest. Most local waterways are slow-moving creeks and bayous that wind their way through town and eventually trickle into the shallow, marshy Trinity bay. Drainage is slow on a normal day. During a deluge, these systems fill rapidly with water that effectively has nowhere to go.

We’ve seen a flurry of commentators in the past few days attributing Houston’s flooding to a litany of pet political causes. Aside from the normal carping about “climate change” (which always makes for a convenient point of blame for bad warm weather events, even as environmentalists simultaneously decry the old conservative canard about blizzards contradicting Al Gore), several pundits and journalists have opportunistically seized upon Houston’s famously lax zoning and land use regulations to blame Harvey’s destruction on “sprawl” and call for “SmartGrowth” policies that restrict and heavily regulate future construction in the city.

According to this argument, Harvey’s floods are a byproduct of unrestricted suburban development in the north and west of the city at the expense of prairies that would supposedly absorb rainwater at sufficient rates to prevent natural disasters and that supposedly served this purpose “naturally” in the past.

There are multiple problems with this line of argument that suggest it is rooted in naked political opportunism rather than actual concern for Houston’s flooding problems.

And here they are:

“flooding has been a regular feature of Houston’s landscape since the beginning of recorded history in the region. And catastrophic flooding – including multiple storms in the 19th century and the well-documented flood of December 1935 – predates any of the “sprawl” that has provoked these armchair urban designers’ ire.”
“the flooding we saw in Harvey is largely a result of creeks and bayous backlogging and spilling over their banks as more water rushes in from upstream. While parking lot and roadway runoff from “sprawl” certainly makes its way into these streams, it is hardly the source of the problem. The slow-moving and windy Brazos river reached record levels as a result of Harvey and spilled over its banks, despite being nowhere near the city’s “sprawl.” The mostly-rural prairie along Interstate 10 to the extreme west of the city recorded some of the worst flooding in terms of water volume due to the Brazos overflow, although fortunately property damage here will be much lower due to being rural.”
“the very notion that Houston is a giant concrete-laden water retention pond is itself a pernicious myth peddled by unscrupulous urban planning activists and media outlets. In total acres, Houston has more parkland and green space than any other large city in America and ranks third overall to San Diego and Dallas in park acreage per capita.”
“a 2011 study by the Houston-Galveston Area Council…actually measured the ratio of impervious-to-pervious land cover within the city limits (basically the amount of water-blocking concrete vs. water-absorbing green land). The study used an index scale to measure water-absorption land uses. A low score (defined as less than 2.0 on the scale) indicates a high presence of green relative to concrete. A high score (defined as greater than 5.0) indicates high concrete and low levels of greenery and other water-absorbing cover. The result are in the map below, showing the city limits. Gray corresponds to high levels of pervious surfaces (or greenery). Black corresponds to high impervious surface use (basically either concrete or lakes that collect runoff). As the map shows, over 90% of the land in the city limits is gray, indicating more greenery and higher water absorption. Although they did not measure unincorporated Harris County, it also tends to be substantially less dense than the city itself.”

In short,

Houston’s flood problems are a distinctive feature of its topography and geography, and they long predate any “sprawl.” While steps have been taken over the years to mitigate them and reduce the severity of flooding, a rare but catastrophic event will unavoidably overwhelm even the most sophisticated flood control systems. Harvey was one such event – certainly the highest floodwater event to hit Houston in over 80 years, and possibly the worst deluge in its recorded history. But it is entirely consistent with almost 2 centuries of recorded historical patterns. In the grander scheme of causes for Harvey’s flooding, “sprawl” does not even meaningfully register.

DR Editor in GBR: The Economic and Moral Case for Good Management

September 8, 2017August 30, 2017 by Walker

Image result for graziadio business review

I’m excited to announce that my article “The Great Escape from Global Poverty: The Economic and Moral Case for Good Management” was published in the latest issue of Pepperdine University’s Graziadio Business Review. From the introduction:

Poverty has been a moral issue at the center of philosophical, theological, and social thought for millennia. However, over the last two centuries, much of the world has experienced what Nobel economist Angus Deaton calls “the great escape” from economic deprivation. As a 2013 issue of The Economist explained, one of the main targets of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) was to halve extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015. That goal was accomplished years ahead of schedule and the credit largely lies with one thing: “The MDGs may have helped marginally, by creating a yardstick for measuring progress, and by focusing minds on the evil of poverty. Most of the credit, however, must go to capitalism and free trade, for they enable economies to grow—and it was growth, principally, that has eased destitution.”

If this economic narrative is to be believed, then managing well is even more important in the fight against poverty. Research over the last decade finds that management—the day-in, day-out processes of everyday business—matters. As this article will show, economic growth has lifted billions of people worldwide out of extreme poverty via pro-growth policies (especially trade, property rights, and moderate government size). Good management, in turn, plays a significant part in this growth by increasing total factor productivity (TFP) and could therefore be considered a pro-growth policy. In short, those in management positions have the potential to improve the well-being of the global poor by learning to manage well.

Check it out.

Increasing Alcoholism: A Follow-Up

August 22, 2017 by Walker

I posted an article a week or so ago on a new study claiming a rise in alcoholism. The study has been met with some major criticism. From Vox:

some researchers are pushing back. They argue that the data used in the study is based on a federal survey [NESARC] that underwent major methodological changes between 2001-’02 and 2012-’13 — meaning the increase in alcoholism rates could be entirely explained just by differences in how the survey was carried out between the two time periods. And they point out that the study’s conclusions are sharply contradicted by another major federal survey…That survey has actually found a decrease in alcohol use disorder from 2002 to 2013: In 2002, the percent of Americans 12 and older who qualified as having alcohol use disorder was 7.7 percent. In 2013, that dropped to 6.6 percent.

One key difference is the NESARC used data of people 18 years and older, while NSDUH used data of people 12 years and older. But even if you isolate older groups in NSDUH, the rates of alcoholism still dropped or remained relatively flat — certainly not the big rise the NESARC reported.

Now, the NSDUH isn’t perfect. For one, it surveys households — so it misses imprisoned and homeless populations, which are fairly big segments of the population and likely to have higher rates of drug use. But NESARC also shares these limitations, so it doesn’t explain the difference seen in the surveys.

Here are some of the major changes to the NESARC:

The NESARC changed some questions from wave to wave, which could lead survey takers to respond differently.
In the 2001-’02 wave, NESARC respondents were not given monetary rewards. In the 2012-’13 wave, they were. That could have incentivized different people to respond.
No biological samples were collected in the first wave, while saliva samples were collected in the second. What’s more, respondents were notified of this at the start of the survey — which could have led them to respond differently, since they knew they’d be tested for their drug use.
Census Bureau workers were used for the 2001-’02 survey, but private workers were used for the 2012-’13 survey. That could lead to big differences: As Grucza told me, “Some researchers speculate that using government employees might suppress reporting of socially undesirable behaviors.”

The article continues,

Researchers from SAMHSA told me that they would caution against trying to use the different waves of NESARC to gauge trends.

“Given these points, we would strongly caution against using two points in time as an indicator in trend, especially when the data for these two points in time were collected using very different methods and do not appear to be comparable,” SAMHSA researchers wrote in an email. “We would encourage the consideration of data from multiple sources and more than two time points, in order to paint a more complete and accurate portrayal of substance use and substance use disorder in the nation.”

In short, it looks like the JAMA Psychiatry study was based on some fairly faulty data.

When I asked about these problems surrounding the study, lead author Bridget Grant, with NIAAA, shot back by email: “There were no changes in NESARC methodology between waves and NSDUH folks know nothing about the NESARC. Please do not contact me again as I don’t know NSDUH methodology and would not be so presumptuous to believe I did.”

But based on SAMHSA’s and Grucza’s separate reviews of NESARC, its methodology did change.

When I pressed on this, Grant again responded, “Please do NOT contact me again.”

After this article was published, Grant confirmed NESARC went through some methodological changes between 2001-’02 and 2012-’13. But she argued that there’s no evidence such changes would have a significant impact on the results.

It concludes,

None of that means America doesn’t have an alcohol problem. Between 2001 and 2015, the number of alcohol-induced deaths (those that involve direct health complications from alcohol, like liver cirrhosis) rose from about 20,000 to more than 33,000. Before the latest increases, an analysis of data from 2006 to 2010 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) already estimated that alcohol is linked to 88,000 deaths a year — more than all drug overdose deaths combined.

And another study found that rates of heavy drinking and binge drinking increased in most US counties from 2005 to 2012, even as the percentage of people who drink any alcohol has remained relatively flat.

But for now, it’s hard to say if a massive increase in alcohol use disorder is behind the negative trends — because the evidence for that just isn’t reliable.

Far-Right Terrorism

April 11, 2018August 17, 2017 by Walker

Last year, I linked to a Cato study on the likelihood of a foreign terrorist attack (TL;DR: it’s astronomically low). With Charlottesville in the news, this piece from Foreign Policy was particularly interesting:

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in May warned that white supremacist groups had already carried out more attacks than any other domestic extremist group over the past 16 years and were likely to carry out more attacks over the next year, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by Foreign Policy.

Even as President Donald Trump continues to resist calling out white supremacists for violence, federal law enforcement has made clear that it sees these types of domestic extremists as a severe threat. The report, dated May 10, says the FBI and DHS believe that members of the white supremacist movement “likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year.”

…The FBI…has already concluded that white supremacists, including neo-Nazi supporters and members of the Ku Klux Klan, are in fact responsible for the lion’s share of violent attacks among domestic extremist groups. White supremacists “were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016 … more than any other domestic extremist movement,” reads the joint intelligence bulletin.

The report, titled “White Supremacist Extremism Poses Persistent Threat of Lethal Violence,” was prepared by the FBI and DHS.

The bulletin’s numbers appear to correspond with outside estimates. An independent database compiled by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute found that between 2008 and 2016, far-right plots and attacks outnumbered Islamist incidents by almost 2 to 1.

Now, granted, when we consider that the Southern Poverty Law Center “estimates that [today] there are between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members, split among dozens of different – and often warring – organizations that use the Klan name,” that’s a huge improvement over the 4 million in the mid-1920s. But I find it ironic that groups that worry about the influx of immigrants in part due to potential terror attacks are more likely to commit said attacks in recent years.[ref]Recent is important since Islamic terrorism still comes out on top when the last 3+ decades are considered. Either way, the chance of dying at the hands of a terrorist is still extremely small.[/ref]

DR Editors in Dialogue: Worship Through Corporeality

July 13, 2017July 13, 2017 by Walker

Dialogue, a Journal of Mormon Thought I’m excited to announce that the newest issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought features an article by yours truly and fellow DR editor Allen Hansen. The piece is titled ““All Things Unto Me Are Spiritual”: Worship Through Corporeality in Hasidism and Mormonism.” As we explain in the introduction,

[W]e seek to draw useful parallels between Hasidic Judaism and Mormonism by presenting the former’s concept of “worship through corporeality” as a theologically rich source for understanding and describing Mormonism’s materialist merging of heaven and earth, sacred and mundane. If, as one scholar has stated, “an examination of other revival movements and their characteristics will also provide a new background against that which is distinctive in Hasidism will stand out in clear relief,” the same holds true for the study of early Mormonism. In this paper, we will outline Hasidism’s concept of “worship through corporeality” and its roots in Enochian folklore. We will also briefly touch on the Mussar movement’s connection to these Enoch stories and how it shaped their ethics and worldview. Finally, we will explore multiple sources throughout early Mormonism that similarly demonstrate an overlap of the spiritual and temporal in the minds of many Saints, leading them to view their labors as sacred tasks in the building of Zion (pgs. 59-60).[ref]Let it be known that many of the Hasidic sources were only in Hebrew and Allen provided the English translations.[/ref]

It’s a relief to finally see this in print. The seeds of it were sown with a comment by Allen on a 2013 post at The Slow Hunch. The idea eventually became a two–part blog post at Worlds Without End, which evolved into a presentation at the 2014 conference for the Mormon Transhumanist Association and later the 2015 Faith & Knowledge conference. It sat at Dialogue for a long time due to management changes. We withdrew it and submitted to BYU Studies Quarterly, which deemed it “too specialized and not right for a large enough segment of our target audience.” So we resubmitted a more focused version to Dialogue, much to the enthusiastic support of the editor.

And now, at long last, it’s here. Enjoy!

The Second Amendment is for All Americans

April 11, 2018June 19, 2017 by Nathaniel

Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) investigators process the scene of where a St. Anthony Police officer shot and killed 32-year-old Philando Castile (Tony Webster from Minneapolis, Minnesota; CC BY-SA 2.0)

Last week, Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted of manslaughter after shooting Philando Castile to death. Yanez was a police officer. Castile was a law-abiding citizens with a concealed carry permit who followed Yanez’s instructions and was killed anyway.

I didn’t comment right away, because I wanted to study the issue more before commenting. Everything I’ve read since then has confirmed my initial impressions.

First of all, the verdict is a travesty of justice. If police officers can kill law-abiding, compliant citizens just because the officer is afraid, then we live or die basically at the discretion of police officers. “Sorry for killing somebody again, your honor, but I felt scared.”

Secondly, either constitutional rights apply to all citizens or they are not “rights”. Several outlets–like the Washington Post and the New York Times–have pointed out that if Philando Castile had been a white man instead of a black man, then the NRA would have gone into overdrive defending him and fundraising off of this story. The fact that they apparently can’t do the latter explains why they are not doing the former. It certainly appears that the NRA’s leadership, it’s base, or both simply don’t care about black concealed carry permit holders the way they do about white concealed carry permit holders. This is inexcusable. The time has come to decide if you’re defending the Second Amendment, or just perks for white folk.

This story is yet another example of the widening divide on the American right. The reaction to the verdict shows that Trump’s base is populist, nativist, but totally devoid of any consistent principles. Meanwhile, the derided “establishment Republicans” are turning out to be the ones with the real principles after all. That’s why it’s folks like David French writing for the National Review who are willing to say what needs to be said: “The jury’s verdict was a miscarriage of justice.”

We live in strange times. Antipathy between the red and blue tribes within the United States are at an all-time-high, with each suspecting–and sometimes relishing–the worst in each other. But in this atmosphere of partisanship and tribalism, there are also opportunities to bridge that divide over matters of shared principle.

If you care about social justice and equality, then clearly you will be passionately opposed to this injustice. But if you care about gun rights and the Second Amendment, then reason calls you to be just as passionately opposed. In this tragedy, conservative and liberal philosophies align, and all Americans of principle can say: this is not right.

An Upside to Trump?

April 9, 2018May 15, 2017 by Nathaniel

It’s no secret that I was, am, and will remain #NeverTrump. But two stories I saw today made me think of a possible upside to the Trump presidency.

Now, I’m not saying Coulter is turning on Trump because he endangers our relationships with allies by handing over intel that has been trusted to us to a third-party without permission[ref]And not just any third-party, but our strategic opponent in Syria![/ref]. She’s mad he hasn’t built that wall yet or what-not.

Still, the depth, breadth, and stunning intricacy of Trump’s incompetence is such that all those who backed him–the Ann Coulters and Sean Hannitys of the world–may take a serious, serious hit as Trump’s once bright star turns into a screaming, self-annihilating meteor crashing from the heavens.[ref]Let’s just hope it’s small enough not to take us all with it, yeah?[/ref]

This occurred to me today as I was driving around after 7pm when NPR has started playing weird jazz instead of news and talk, and so I flipped to AM radio and hear Sean Hannity. I’ve always disliked Hannity–even when I was at my right-wingiest–but tonight was different. I only caught a few minutes, but he was interviewing a guest about Hillary Clinton and (as far as I could tell) her emails.

Seriously. In 2017. With the election over. And Trump as president. And he was talking about Hilary. Clinton’s. Emails.

If that’s not the definition of sad irrelevance, I don’t know what is. The fever-swamp of paranoid right-wing alternative media conspiracy theory peddlers is a major reason we ended up with Trump. The idea that he takes a few of them down when he falls has a pleasing symmetry. Oh, I’m sure his hard core will praise him until the end, but their audiences will be much, much smaller.

Or so we can hope.

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