J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 10

Graydon: COVID Evolving: Comment���Noted

Graydon: COVID Evolving: Comment https://www.bradford-delong.com/2021/01/briefly-noted-for-2021-01-11.html?cid=6a00e551f080038834026bdeb50696200c#comment-6a00e551f080038834026bdeb50696200c: ���SARS-CoV-2 derives from a bat disease. Bats are weird; bats, unlike nearly all other mammals, have two body temperatures. There's the high, active, flapping around body temperature and the low, resting/estivating, don't starve to death until you can feed again, hanging-upside-down-in-a-cave body temperature...

...Viruses are too simple to have multiple enzymes for different temperature ranges. (This is why lizard genomes are generally larger than mammal genomes; the mammal needs the enzymes for its stable body temperature. The lizard needs a range of enzymes for a range of temperatures. Viruses don't have the room; they've got one set of enzymes at most, often a partial set that relies on specific cellular machinery.) So bat viral diseases tend to have a "burst mode"; copy as much as possible before the temperature regime in this bat changes and we either freeze or burn.

We've known for a long time that the R��� for COVID-19 is highly variable; about a fifth of cases cause the majority of transmission in the wild type fo the disease. (Which is why the Japanese backtracking approach was effective; find the really infectious person and then find everybody they could have infected, rather than worrying about the tested-positive person, who (on the odds) wasn't going to spread the disease.) So maybe that's the burst-mode reproduction mechanism working in humans, some of the time. If that's the case, there's inevitable selection pressure for variants where the burst-mode reproduction works more reliably in humans; it's not so much random mutation as strong selection for any variant where this happens because reproduction is so much more successful for such variants.

Given that there are at least three, and probably more, such variants now known, I am finding this more plausible than I would like to find it���

.#commentoftheday #2021-01-13https://www.bradford-delong.com/2021/01/briefly-noted-for-2021-01-11-1.html

Briefly Noted for 2021-01-11

<https://braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-noted-for-2021-01-11> I feel uneasy today, as most of this is outside my wheelhouse. But, for what it is worth, here is what I have found most worthwhile over the weekend...

Must-Read:

Bernie Sanders: Why Impeach Now?

Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders
Some people ask: Why would you impeach and convict a president who has only a few days left in office? The answer: Precedent. It must be made clear that no president, now or in the future, can lead an insurrection against the U.S. government.
 

 

Ian Millhiser: Minority Rule

Ian Millhiser @imillhiser
When Warnock and Ossoff are seated, Democrats and Republicans will each control half of the seats in the Senate. But the Democratic half will represent 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half. America���s anti-democratic Senate, in one number41,549,808.vox.com
 

 

Joshua Gans: B.1.1.7 <https://joshuagans.substack.com/p/b117>: ���B.1.1.7 has an advantage over older variants in infecting people when the mitigation strategies are in place. In other words, it is getting around them.... My guess is that the new variant can obtain more cases in certain settings���like workplaces that previously were able to keep transmission low���and then people carry the new variant home where fewer mitigations are in place and transmission occurs more easily there.... That means that the fight against B.1.1.7 requires the places that have been the most vigilant need more action. It is hard to know what that is.... The other option���and I will continue to beat this still live horse here���is ramping up testing���

 

Tom Snyder: The American Abyss <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html> : ���When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions. Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around.... Social media... supercharges the mental habits by which we seek emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction between what feels true and what actually is true���

Should-Read: My (Possibly Uninformed) Reflections on the Coup
DeLongTODAY: Why Storm the Capitol Building & Then Do Nothing But Take Selfies?2021-01-08
Project Syndicate: What Next for the MAGA Insurrection? 2021-01-08 
 
BRIEFLY NOTED:

Haley Bird Wilt: The Consequences of Lying to People <https://uphill.thedispatch.com/p/the-consequences-of-lying-to-people>: ���Republican lawmakers misled millions of people into believing the results of a legitimate election could be overturned. Many of them viewed contesting the outcome as a relatively easy way to gain political currency among Trump supporters, knowing all the while that their efforts would have no real impact on who will be sworn into office in two weeks. The deception���primarily led by Trump, yet enabled by members of Congress���set the stage for the violence that unfolded at the Capitol Wednesday. Four people died.... The normally dry procedural affair of counting of the Electoral College votes was viewed by everyday Republicans and zealots alike as the place to make a final stand to overturn the election���even though elected Republicans knew the outcome would ultimately remain unchanged. As my colleague Jonah writes this morning, ���Convincing people they need to prevent a coup when no such coup exists is a recipe for violence.��� This was the energy that fueled the horde on Wednesday���

Nora Caplan-Bricker: An Overlooked Novel from 1935 by the Godmother of Feminist Detective Fiction <https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/an-overlooked-novel-from-1935-by-the-godmother-of-feminist-detective-fiction>: ���A new group biography establishes Dorothy L. Sayers���s ���Gaudy Night��� as a forerunner of works by Gillian Flynn and Tana French���

Edward Luce: America���s Dangerous Reliance on the Fed<https://www.ft.com/content/bcb8d4d9-ca6d-45b7-aafc-9e9ecf672a5b>: ���Alas, the chances are that the Fed will remain ���the only game in town���. This would be both a missed opportunity and pose a severe danger. The opportunity is for the US government to borrow long term funds at near zero rates and invest it in productive capacity. The danger of not doing that can be expressed in a simple equation: QE ��� F = P. Quantitative easing minus fiscal action equals populism���

Wikipedia: Metanarrative <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanarrative>: ���In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), Lyotard highlights the increasing skepticism of the postmodern condition toward the totalizing nature of metanarratives and their reliance on some form of "transcendent and universal truth": ���Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.... The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language���. Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?������ Lyotard and other poststructuralist thinkers (like Foucault) view this as a broadly positive development��� grand theories tend to unduly dismiss the naturally existing chaos and disorder of the universe���. Postmodernists attempt to replace metanarratives by focusing on specific local contexts as well as on the diversity of human experience. They argue for the existence of a "multiplicity of theoretical standpoints" rather than for grand, all-encompassing theories.��� Postmodern narratives will often deliberately disturb the formulaic expectations.��� Others have related metanarratives to masterplots, ���recurrent skeletal stories, belonging to cultures and individuals that play a powerful role in questions of identity, values, and the understanding of life������

Simon Schama: Donald Trump���s Weaponised Lies Blew Up in His Face <https://www.ft.com/content/6cde0715-5506-4c09-a804-538031a667d9>: ���The violent attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the electoral result should be seen in the context of Mr Trump's (not baseless) belief that a sizeable part of the country cares less about the constitution than it does about him. Wednesday saw the most dramatic consummation of what has always been standard operational procedure for Trumpism: the wink to violence and the empire of lies. His 2016 campaign regularly featured invitations to rough up the media���

Salvatore Cerchio & al.: A New Blue Whale Song-Type Described for the Arabian Sea & Western Indian Ocean <https://www.int-res.com/prepress/n01096.html>: ���Blue whales in the Indian Ocean��� 2 or 3 subspecies��� 4 populations, each with a diagnostic song-type. Here we describe a previously unreported song-type that implies the probable existence of a population that has been undetected or conflated���. We label it the ���Northwest Indian Ocean��� song-type.��� Moreover, the potentially restricted range, intensive historic whaling, and the fact that the song-type has been previously undetected, suggests a small population that is in critical need of status assessment and conservation action���

J. A. M. de Sanchez: Stabilizing the Franc <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/france/1928-10-01/stabilizing-franc>: ���Thus almost exactly twenty-three months after accepting the portfolio of Minister of Finance, M. Poincar�� brought to a conclusion the task of fiscal reform which he had set himself. If M. Poincar��'s achievements in his first year were remarkable,[i] those in his second have been no less so. Not only have the measures which were adopted in 1926-1927 continued to be strictly enforced, but new ones have been sought and applied which have resulted in a further strengthening of the credit structure of the State proper and of the national economy as a whole. So careful and complete were the preparations for de jure stabilization of the franc that the event itself was received in France almost phlegmatically���

====

Annalee Newitz: What Ancient Roman Hospitality Workers Can Teach Us About This Moment in Historyhttps://thehypothesis.substack.com/p/what-ancient-roman-hospitality-workers���

Budget Act of 1974 <https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-RIDDICK-1992/pdf/GPO-RIDDICK-1992-34.pdf>���

Robert Keith (2009): The Budget Reconciliation Process: The Senate���s ���Byrd Rule��� <https://budgetcounsel.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/crs-the-budget-reconciliation-process-the-senate_s-e2809cbyrd-rulee2809d-bob-keith-rl30862-july-8-2009.pdf>���

Unemployment Rate: 1890-2009 <https://origins.osu.edu/sites/origins.osu.edu/files/4-3-chart1487_0.jpg>���

Wikipedia: Republic of Artsakh <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Artsakh#Current_situation>���

Gaston J��ze: The Economic and Financial Position of France in 1920 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1883886.pdf>���

Historical Currency Converter <https://www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html>���

Briefly Noted for 2021-01-09

Bernie Sanders: Why Impeach Now? https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1347625769242140675: ���Some people ask: Why would you impeach and convict a president who has only a few days left in office? The answer: Precedent. It must be made clear that no president, now or in the future, can lead an insurrection against the U.S. government���

Ian Millhiser: Minority Rule https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/1346834407626334209 ���When Warnock and Ossoff are seated, Democrats and Republicans will each control half of the seats in the Senate. But the Democratic half will represent 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half���

====

BRIEFLY NOTED:

Edward Luce: America���s Dangerous Reliance on the Fed <https://www.ft.com/content/bcb8d4d9-ca6d-45b7-aafc-9e9ecf672a5b>: ���Alas, the chances are that the Fed will remain ���the only game in town���. This would be both a missed opportunity and pose a severe danger. The opportunity is for the US government to borrow long term funds at near zero rates and invest it in productive capacity. The danger of not doing that can be expressed in a simple equation: QE ��� F = P. Quantitative easing minus fiscal action equals populism���

Wikipedia: Metanarrative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanar... ���In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), Lyotard highlights the increasing skepticism of the postmodern condition toward the totalizing nature of metanarratives and their reliance on some form of "transcendent and universal truth": ���Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.... The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language���. Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?������ Lyotard and other poststructuralist thinkers (like Foucault) view this as a broadly positive development��� grand theories tend to unduly dismiss the naturally existing chaos and disorder of the universe���. Postmodernists attempt to replace metanarratives by focusing on specific local contexts as well as on the diversity of human experience. They argue for the existence of a "multiplicity of theoretical standpoints" rather than for grand, all-encompassing theories.��� Postmodern narratives will often deliberately disturb the formulaic expectations.��� Others have related metanarratives to masterplots, ���recurrent skeletal stories, belonging to cultures and individuals that play a powerful role in questions of identity, values, and the understanding of life������

Simon Schama: Donald Trump���s Weaponised Lies Blew Up in His Face https://www.ft.com/content/6cde0715-5506-4c09-a804-538031a667d9: ���The violent attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the electoral result should be seen in the context of Mr Trump's (not baseless) belief that a sizeable part of the country cares less about the constitution than it does about him. Wednesday saw the most dramatic consummation of what has always been standard operational procedure for Trumpism: the wink to violence and the empire of lies. His 2016 campaign regularly featured invitations to rough up the media���

Salvatore Cerchio & al.: A New Blue Whale Song-Type Described for the Arabian Sea & Western Indian Ocean https://www.int-res.com/prepress/n010... ���Blue whales in the Indian Ocean��� 2 or 3 subspecies��� 4 populations, each with a diagnostic song-type. Here we describe a previously unreported song-type that implies the probable existence of a population that has been undetected or conflated���. We label it the ���Northwest Indian Ocean��� song-type.��� Moreover, the potentially restricted range, intensive historic whaling, and the fact that the song-type has been previously undetected, suggests a small population that is in critical need of status assessment and conservation action���

J. A. M. de Sanchez: Stabilizing the Franc https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/france/1928-10-01/stabilizing-franc: ���Thus almost exactly twenty-three months after accepting the portfolio of Minister of Finance, M. Poincar�� brought to a conclusion the task of fiscal reform which he had set himself. If M. Poincar��'s achievements in his first year were remarkable,[i] those in his second have been no less so. Not only have the measures which were adopted in 1926-1927 continued to be strictly enforced, but new ones have been sought and applied which have resulted in a further strengthening of the credit structure of the State proper and of the national economy as a whole. So careful and complete were the preparations for de jure stabilization of the franc that the event itself was received in France almost phlegmatically���

====

Budget Act of 1974 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/G...���

Robert Keith (2009): The Budget Reconciliation Process: The Senate���s ���Byrd Rule��� https://budgetcounsel.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/crs-the-budget-reconciliation-process-the-senate_s-e2809cbyrd-rulee2809d-bob-keith-rl30862-july-8-2009.pdf���

Unemployment Rate: 1890-2009 https://origins.osu.edu/sites/origins.osu.edu/files/4-3-chart1487_0.jpg���

Wikipedia: Republic of Artsakh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Artsakh#Current_situation���

Gaston J��ze: The Economic and Financial Position of France in 1920 https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1883886.pdf���

Historical Currency Converter https://www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html���

.#brieflynoted #noted #2021-01-09


Briefly Noted for 2021-01-09

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2021/01/briefly-noted-for-2021-01-09.html

Lwatts: Parler Free Speech Social Network https://parler....

Lwatts: Parler Free Speech Social Network https://parler.com/search?hashtag=trump: ���Everyone needs to understand my President: Plays 3 layer chess! What did Trump do?????��� He said walk down 1600 he didn't know the ANITIFA HIRED BY PENCE WAS THERE, HE NEW THE SUPPORTERS were fine!!!! It was the left that jumped first!!!!! Yall killed a VET,,, A HERO" HOW DARE YOU ALL..... Yeah if I f���- up this bad I would be on every TV channel trying to lie your asses off... #millionmagamarch #supremecourt #voterfraud #MEME #PARLER #PARLERUSA #USA #QANON #MAGA #trump2020 #trump #patriots #StopTheSteal #tuckercarlson #tucker #sidneypowell #kag #2020elect

Karl Marx: Theories of Surplus-Value, Chapter 17 Mhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx... 'The Childish Babble of a Say...

Wikipedia: Quarrel of the Ancients & the Moderns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarrel_of_the_Ancients_and_the_Moderns...

Karl Marx (1867): Capital: Primitive Accumulation https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm...

==========

Erik Hornung: Immigration and the Diffusion of Technology: The Huguenot Diaspora in Prussia https://funginstitute.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/HornungDiaspora20141.pdf: ���In 1685, religiously persecuted French Huguenots settled in Brandenburg-Prussia and compensated for population losses due to plagues during the Thirty Years��� War. We combine Huguenot immigration lists from 1700 with Prussian firm-level data on the value of inputs and outputs in 1802 in a unique database to analyze the effects of skilled immigration to places with underused economic potential. Exploiting this settlement pattern in an instrumental-variable approach, we find substantial long-term effects of Huguenot settlement on the productivity of textile manufactories���

The bureaucratic deglobalization blowback from Brexit has begun, making a poorer, weaker, littler England: Dutch Bike Bits: Shipping: Brexit https://www.dutchbikebits.com/shipping: ���Unfortunately, we will not be able to send parcels to the UK from mid December 2020 onward. Quite apart from uncertainty surrounding the shipping cost, taxation etc. after that time, there is also a problem caused by��the British government deciding to impose a unique taxation regime��which will require every company in the world in every country in the world outside the UK which exports to the UK to apply and collect British taxes on behalf of the British government. For providing this service they intend to charge a fee to every company in the world in every country in the world which exports to the UK. Clearly this is ludicrous for one country, but imagine if every country in the world had the same idea. If every country decided to behave in the same way then we would have to pay 195 fees every year, keep up with the changes in taxation law for 195 different countries, keep accounts on behalf of 195 different countries and submit payments to 195 tax offices in 195 different countries, and jump through whatever hoops were required to prove that we were doing all of this honestly and without any error. Therefore from mid December 2020 onward we ship to every country in the world... except the UK���

Trump. But not smart. Can this really be the bottom line on Brazil���s Bolsonaro?: Gideon Rachman: Jair Bolsonaro���s Populism Is Leading Brazil to Disaster https://www.ft.com/content/c39fadfe-9e60-11ea-b65d-489c67b0d85d: 'I had a chat with a prominent financier about the parallels between Donald Trump and��Jair Bolsonaro.�����They are very similar,��� she said, before adding: ���But Bolsonaro is much stupider.��� This answer took me aback since the US president is not generally regarded as a towering intellect. But my banker friend was insistent. ���Look,��� she said. ���Trump has run a major business. Bolsonaro never made it above captain in the army.���... The coronavirus pandemic has reminded me of that observation national unity will not emerge while Mr Bolsonaro is president. In classic populist fashion he thrives on the politics of division. Brazil is already a deeply polarised country, where conspiracy theories are rife. The deaths and unemployment caused by Covid-19 are exacerbated by Mr Bolsonaro���s leadership. But, perversely, a health and economic disaster could create an even more hospitable environment for the politics of fear and unreason���

John McLaren & Su Wang: Effects of Reduced Workplace Presence on COVID-19 Deaths: An Instrumental-Variables Approach https://www.nber.org/papers/w28275: ���Numerous government policies have attempted to keep workers out of the workplace, on the assumption that this will lower transmission of COVID-19. We test that assumption, measuring the effect of aggregate workplace absence on US COVID deaths at the county level through August. Instrumenting with an index of how many local workers pre-pandemic can work from home, based on differences in county occupational mix, we find no effect of workplace absence until mid-May, then a sharply rising effect. By August, moving 10 percent of a county's workers from the workplace would lower deaths there by three quarters one month later���

Wikipedia: Axial Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age: ���Axial Age... is a term coined by German philosopher Karl Jaspers in the sense of a "pivotal age", characterizing the period of ancient history from about the 8th to the 3rd century BCE. During this period, according to Jaspers' concept, new ways of thinking appeared in Persia, India, China and the Greco-Roman world in religion and philosophy, in a striking parallel development, without any obvious direct cultural contact between all of the participating Eurasian cultures. Jaspers identified key thinkers from this age who had a profound influence on future philosophies and religions, and identified characteristics common to each area from which those thinkers emerged���

Substack Blog: Substack Welcomes The Dispatch, a New Type of Media Company https://blog.substack.com/p/substack-welcomes-the-dispatch-a: ���We���ve long believed that people don���t really subscribe to ���content������they subscribe to voices they trust. This collaboration represents what that ���subscribe to a person��� model might look like when pushed a step further, and it gives us an opportunity to further explore how groups of writers can work together on Substack.��We���re also pleased to support The Dispatch���s mission of trying to create a space for discourse that doesn���t have to play by the rules of the attention economy. In their mission statement, Hayes and Goldberg write:��"We think the clickbait model is an anathema to serious discourse. We also believe it is a blight to the eye and a disturbance of the mental peace. So we are rejecting the advertising that makes clickbait seem so necessary. It might seem oxymoronic in the current climate, but we want as many readers as possible, but we do not care a whit about traffic." We believe this reader-first approach to publishing is a smart one for the news industry, and we hope others will see it as a model to follow���

====

Martin Wolf: The Fading Light of Liberal Democracy https://www.ft.com/content/47144c85-5... ���The election of Joe Biden as US president is a relief. But this story is not yet over.... Branko Milanovic.... Capitalist economies go with two distinct political systems in leading economies: the ���liberal��� model of the US and its allies, which is the concern of Messrs Garton Ash and Diamond, and China���s ���political��� model...

...Mr Milanovic argues correctly that liberal democracy is a good in itself and also allows peaceful self-correction. People do desire freedom and US voters have disposed of Donald Trump. The Chinese cannot do the same with Premier Xi Jinping.... A third political version of capitalism exists: demagogic authoritarian capitalism.... The ruler is above the law and democratically unaccountable���elections are a sham. But power is personal, not institutionalised. This is corrupt gangster politics. It rests on the personal loyalty of sycophants and cronies. Often the core consists of the family members, viewed as most trustworthy of all. This is the political system Mr Trump wished to install in the US. Such rulers are like wasp larvae that eat the spider from within. They manage to win an election and then erode the institutional and political bulwarks against indefinite personal rule....

Events in the US have shown two crucial things. First, core American institutions including the courts have resisted.... Second, a huge proportion of the Republican party has abetted his lie that the election was rigged. This has underlined another reality of the past four years: the Republican leadership showed absolute obedience to their leader, almost to the last gasp. This is no accident. It is the logical outcome of the political and economic strategy of the ���pluto-populist���. Mr Trump is a natural outcome of the strategic goal of the donor class���tax cuts and deregulation. To achieve this end, they have to convince a large proportion of the population to vote against its economic interests by focusing on culture and identity. This strategy has worked and will continue to work: Mr Trump may have gone; Trumpism has not. Not entirely dissimilar patterns can be seen in Brexit Britain....

None of today���s dominant systems is working well. Capitalism is innovative, but creates huge social, political and environmental challenges. Liberal democracy is corroded, even at its core. But the authoritarian politics that challenge it are vastly worse. Unaccountable rule by gangsters or brutal bureaucrats is deeply depressing, even if the latter are much less incompetent. Those of us who continue to believe in freedom and democracy hope Mr Trump was the warning we all needed. But I doubt it. There is none so blind as rich egotists who will not see���

 

David French: Debunking the Frivolous & Dangerous Last-Gasp Effort to Overturn the Election https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p... ���One of the most dispiriting aspects of a dispiriting year has been watching the supremely cynical post-election contest by conservative lawyers and conservative politicians who know exactly what they���re doing. Intimidated by Trump and desperate for the approval of Trump���s base, they have lent their own gravitas to utterly frivolous arguments, used their platforms to falsely whip up public concerns about election integrity, and then used the concerns��they helped create��as the justification for continuing a fruitless fight. I could point to any number of public figures, but let���s focus for a moment on two���Sen. Josh Hawley and talk radio host Mark Levin...

..."Issues of mere administration of a general election do not mean there has not been a 'general ballot' at a 'general election.' Plaintiff���s conflation of these potential nonconformities with Constitutional violations is contrary to the plain meaning of the Electors Clause. If plaintiff���s reading of 'Manner' was correct, any disappointed loser in a Presidential election, able to hire a team of clever lawyers, could flag claimed deviations from the election rules and cast doubt on the election results. This would risk turning every Presidential election into a federal court lawsuit over the Electors Clause.")... The time to challenge election procedures is well��before��the election, not after. In fact, this is a matter of basic election precedent. ���Before a court can contemplate entering a judgment that would void election results,��� Judge Scudder wrote, ���it ���must consider whether the plaintiffs filed a timely pre-election request for relief.���...

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals isn���t the ultimate authority on Wisconsin law... neither is the junior senator from Missouri. But he knows this. So does Mark Levin. It must be emphasized that both of these men are smart, capable lawyers. And while they may be drinking so much of their own Kool-Aid that they���re now believing their own nonsense, I doubt it. And if they do believe their own nonsense, their lapse in judgment is inexcusable....

Ben Sasse.... "When we talk in private, I haven���t heard a single Congressional Republican allege that the election results were fraudulent���not one. Instead, I hear them talk about their worries about how they will 'look' to President Trump���s most ardent supporters."... We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there���s a quick way to tap into the president���s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage. But they���re wrong���and this issue is bigger than anyone���s personal ambitions. Adults don���t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government���

.#brieflynoted #noted #2021-01-08


Briefly Noted for 2021-01-08

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/12/briefly-noted-for-2021-01-08.html

My Daughter's Big Brother Talking About Big Brother���Noted

Gianna Marciarille: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/: Gianna Marciarille is with Michael DeLong.
Just now: 'My literal big brother talking about big brother:

.#equitablegrowth #insurance #noted #2021-01-07

My Daughter's Big Brother Talking About Big Brother���Noted.

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2021/01/my-daughters-big-brother-talking-about-big-brothernoted.html

Why Storm the Capitol Building & Then Do Nothing But Take Selfies?���Grasping Reality Newsletter @ Subsstack

Over at Substack: Why Storm the Capitol Building & Then Do Nothing But Take Selfies? https://braddelong.substack.com/p/why-storm-the-capitol-building-and: What did the people who stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 think what���s going to happen?

Let us look at what happened at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue before the insurrection. At the beginning of Donald Trump speech, he tells his audience that they are the overwhelming majority of America, and that the corrupt media are trying to hide that fact:

Donald Trump: Speech ���Save America��� Rally Transcript January 6: 'The media will not show the magnitude of this crowd. Even I, when I turned on today, I looked, and I saw thousands of people here, but you don���t see hundreds of thousands of people behind you because they don���t want to show that...

(Parenthetically, there weren���t hundreds of thousands of people. The permit was for a rally of 30,000. OANN claimed ���thousands���. Eyeballing the pictures after the march to the Capitol, my guess is 10,000. I see no reliable numbers on those who got into the building with intent to commit or threaten violence, and no reliable numbers on those who got into the building intending to peaceably assemble and petition for a redress of grievances.)

Hundreds of thousands of American patriots are committed to the honesty of our elections and the integrity of our glorious Republic. All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats, which is what they���re doing and stolen by the fake news media. That���s what they���ve done and what they���re doing. We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesn���t happen. You don���t concede when there���s theft involved.

Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that���s what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal.... We won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election. I say sometimes jokingly, but there���s no joke about it, I���ve been in two elections. I won them both and the second one, I won much bigger than the first.... I was told by the real pollsters, we do have real pollsters. They know that we were going to do well, and we were going to win. What I was told, if I went from 63 million, which we had four years ago to 66 million, there was no chance of losing. Well, we didn���t go to 66. We went to 75 million and they say we lost. We didn���t lose....

In the middle of the speech, he says that the problem is that the Republican congressional leadership is not strong and courageous:

Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections, but whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country....

We���re going to see whether or not we have great and courageous leaders or whether or not we have leaders that should be ashamed of themselves throughout history, throughout eternity, they���ll be ashamed. And you know what? If they do the wrong thing, we should never ever forget that they did. Never forget. We should never ever forget. With only three of the seven states in question, we win the presidency of the United States���

He says that the stakes are very high���much higher because Mitch McConnell (whom he has just denounced as weak) is about to be replaced as Senate majority leader by Chuck Schumer:

And by the way, it���s much more important today than it was 24 hours ago. Because I spoke to David Perdue, what a great person, and Kelly Loeffler, two great people, but it was a setup. And I said, ���We have no back line anymore.��� The only back line, the only line of demarcation, the only line that we have is the veto of the president of the United States. So this is now what we���re doing, a far more important election than it was two days ago���

And he says that there are many members of the Republican caucus fighting very hard for truth, justice, and the American Way:

I want to thank the more than 140 members of the House. Those are warriors. They���re over there working like you���ve never seen before, studying, talking, actually going all the way back, studying the roots of the Constitution, because they know we have the right to send a bad vote that was illegally got.... I also want to thank our 13 most courageous members of the US Senate, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Shadowless, Kelly Loeffler. And Kelly Loeffler, I���ll tell you, she���s been so great. She works so hard. So let���s give her and David a little special head, because it was rigged against them. Let���s give her and David. Kelly Loeffler, David Perdue. They fought a good race. They never had a shot. That equipment should never have been allowed to be used.��� Mike Braun��� Bill Hagerty, John Kennedy, James Lankford, Cynthia Lummis. Tommy Tuberville���. And Roger Marshall. We want to thank them, senators that stepped up, we want to thank them....

But there are the weak leaders who do not want to use their constitutional powers to do the Right Thing:

For some reason, Mitch and the group, they don���t want to put it in there. And they don���t realize that that���s going to be the end of the Republican party as we know it, but it���s never going to be the end of us, never. Let them get out. Let the weak ones get out. This is a time for strength.... We got to get rid of the weak congresspeople, the ones that aren���t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world, we got to get rid of them. We got to get rid of them. She never wants a soldier brought home. I���ve brought a lot of our soldiers home.... Remember I used to say in the old days, ���Don���t go into Iraq. But if you go in, keep the oil.��� We didn���t keep the oil. So stupid. So stupid, these people. And Iraq has billions and billions of dollars now in the bank. And what did we do? We get nothing. We never get...

For, remember, the election was stolen:

If Georgia had merely rejected the same number of unlawful ballots, as in other years, there should have been approximately 45,000 ballots rejected, far more than what we needed to win, just over 11,000. They should find those votes. They should absolutely find that just over 11,000 votes, that���s all we need. They defrauded us out of a win in Georgia, and we���re not going to forget it���

At the end there is the call to action:

Donald Trump: (01:12:43) So we���re going to, we���re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue���. We���re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don���t need any of our help, we���re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let���s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I want to thank you all. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you all for being here, this is incredible. Thank you very much. Thank you���

Suppose that you believed that the President of the United States was a serious person, rather than a demented, lying clown? Suppose that you believed he was telling the truth���or at least not exaggerating things more than your typical politician in a fit of enthusiasm? What would you conclude?

You would conclude that you should march down to the Capitol, and get in their face, and so give Vice President Pence, Majority Leader McConnell, and all of the senators in the Republican caucus who were not the brave thirteen the backbone to halt the certification, send the fake certificates back to the states, and ask the states to send the real certificates.

And you would be willing to push past police, break windows, ascend scaffolding, and keep pushing as long as you could to get into the face of the legislators and give them backbone.

And you would succeed.

But then you would find that, even though you had done your job, you still had not given the senators backbone���that in fact your actions caused the number of ���brave��� senators to fall in half, to seven. (But do note that you would neither increase nor decrease the numbers of the 130 Republican House caucus members on your side���although it is not clear how many of those voted for the objections just because they knew they were not going to pass).

And then you would go home, puzzled. You are the real majority of the nation. You gave the cowardly Republican legislators and cowardly Vice President Pence the opportunity tol do the Right Thing. You showed them in ways that they could not mistake that the people were behind them. And yet they did not pick up the baton.

So what do you conclude? What will you do next?

.#fascism #highlighted #insurrection #orangehairedbaboons #2020-01-07

Briefly Noted for 2021-01-07

Time to de-escalate and read and watch something totally unrelated to bad political actors destroying norms of republican political conduct in an attempt to further entrench a plutocracy: Plutarch: Life of Tiberius Gracchus http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Tiberius_Gracchus*.html���

Perhaps the second best romance novel I have ever read. Not at all bad as a mystery either: Dorothy Leigh Sayers: Gaudy Night https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQiVYVBRO7U���

I am happy not getting 3/4 of the illusions that Dorothy L. Sayers makes to history and literature. But if you are not, this is essential: Bill Peschel: Annotations to Gaudy Night https://planetpeschel.com/the-wimsey-annotations/gaudy-night/���

Heron of Alexandria was a BOSS: Jeremy Norman: Automata Invented by Heron of Alexandria https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=10

I do know not whether I should be amazed at how much or depressed at how little computing can be done without semiconductors: Wikipedia: Mechanical Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_computer#Examples���

The start of the positive utopian apocalyptic mode in "western literature": Isaiah: 10-11 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+10&version=KJV...

Continuing the positive utopian apocalyptic mode in "western literature": Daniel: _7 & 12 HCSB https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel%2012&version=HCSB...

Good for helping people to understand the place of Aristotle in the medieval and early-modern "western civilization" intellectual mind: Dante: Inferno https://www.danteinferno.info/translations/canto4.html: ������Canto 4-Compare Side by Side Translations by Longfellow, Cary, and Norton...

And what little the Spartans said: Plutarch: Apophthegmata Laconica http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Sayings_of_Spartans*/main.html...

Charlie Sykes: Trumpageddon https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/trumpageddon: ���January 6: The Fire Rises: Chris Truax provides a preview for this remarkable day: "This effort to interfere with the Electoral College count is going to fail, but it has created a blueprint for the next time. The next aspiring authoritarian���and there will be one���will be smarter, smoother, and more organized. Today will be truly dangerous because it will demonstrate that under the current system, a party that controls both houses of Congress can install their candidate as president regardless of the election results. All they need is the political will to do so." Or to put it another way: All they need is to believe that overturning the election is what the majority of their base voters want���

Charlie Sykes: Trumpageddon https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/trumpageddon: ���The GOP���s Georgia meltdown: First a confession: I thought the Republicans would hold both seats and was, frankly, stunned by last night���s results. So, apparently, was much of what���s left of the GOP. There���s no mystery about what happened: Donald Trump happened: Erick Erickson: "Very clear there's been voter suppression in Georgia. The Georgia Republican Party Chairman, the President of the United States, and the Georgia GOP congressional delegation are the culprits..." Based on the early numbers, Democratic turnout���especially among African Americans���was phenomenal. Republican turnout was meh..." Dave Wasserman: "It's tempting to put it this way: Perdue/Loeffler embrace of Trump in the runoff phase of #GASEN may have alienated suburban Biden/R (Nov.) ticket-splitters, and it's not clear it did as much to drive up turnout in deep red rural GA..." How bad is all for the GOP? On a scale of 0 to 10, Nate Silver tweeted this morning, it���s probably a 9 ���not just because of the immediate implications, but also because it may imply that Trump is sort of a poison pill for how the party navigates its future.��� The big question now is whether the GOP has learned any lessons from this debacle? Probably not: McKay Coppins: "Republicans lost the White House, the Senate, and stayed out of power in the House this cycle, and a sizable faction of the party will continue to argue that the solution is 'More Trump'���

.#brieflynoted #noted #2021-01-07


Briefly Noted for 2021-01-07

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/12/briefly-noted-for-2021-01-07.html

Briefly Noted for 2021-01-06

BRIEFLY NOTED:

Mary Boykin Chesnut: Mary Chesnut's Civil War https://archive.org/details/marychesnutscivi0000ches_c1c9/page/36/mode/2up���

Fourn��e Bakery: 2912 Domingo Ave https://www.fourneebakery.com/new-page: ���Berkeley, CA, 94705��� Tu-Sa 08:00-18:00 Su 08:00-15:00���

2005: The Lowest Deep on Hoxby-Rothstein https://web.archive.org/web/20050419010702/http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000735.html: ���Rothstein makes a convincing case that Hoxby doesn't satisfy (3), if his definition of "small tweaks" is correct���

Rory Muir: Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune: How Younger Sons Made Their Way in Jane Austen's England https://www.amazon.com/Gentlemen-Unce...���

Peet's Coffee: Domingo https://locations.peets.com/ll/US/CA/... ���2916 Domingo Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94705 (510) 843-1434 :: Mo-Su 05:30-18:00...

Theodore Sturgeon: The World Well Lost https://bristolsf.files.wordpress.com...���

Ver Brugge Foods https://www.facebook.com/vbfoods/: ���Mo-Su 09:00-18:00���

====

Chris Best & al.: Substack���s View of Content Moderation https://blog.substack.com/p/substacks... ���We favor civil liberties, believe in democracy, and are against authoritarianism of all kinds. We also hold a set of core beliefs that are reflected in every aspect of the company:��We believe that subscriptions are better than advertising.��We believe in letting people choose who to trust, not having click-maximizing algorithms choose for them. We believe that the prevailing media ecosystem is in disrepair and that the internet can be used to build something better.��We believe that hosting a broad range of views is good for democracy.��We believe in the free press and in free speech���and we do not believe those things can be decoupled.�� These beliefs inform how we have designed Substack, which is why, for instance, we don���t support advertising in the product despite many calls to do so, and it���s why we will never use algorithms that optimize for engagement. However, we believe that our design of the product and the incentive structure we have built into it are the ultimate expression of our views. We do not seek to impose our views in the form of censorship or through appointing ourselves as the judges of truth or morality���

Paul Campos: If the Rule You Followed Has Brought You to This, of What Use Was the Rule? https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/... ���I was talking yesterday to a prominent person about potential steps that might be taken to deal with the fact that the president of the United States is a delusional autocrat, who has no intention of leaving office just because he lost an election he has apparently now sincerely���or ���sincerely������convinced himself he didn���t lose.... Trump and his enablers were, to use the relevant wrestling terminology, engaging in a ���work��� that was likely to morph into a ���shoot��� eventually. This does seems to have happened in Trump���s case specifically, with one result being that the vast majority of Republicans now believe that the election was in fact stolen.... Neither Trump nor much more important the tens of millions of Americans who now actually do believe the election was stolen are going anywhere for the foreseeable future.... The person I was speaking with... pitched the following idea to me: Trump should be impeached again, immediately.... Trump is still president, and what Trump has been doing to attempt to overturn and discredit the election makes him as much or more deserving of impeachment and removal as anything any president of the United States has ever done, including, remarkably enough, himself. So why not do it?... This will not, of course, ���work��� in the sense that Trump will be removed from office, but it will emphasize that what Trump has been doing for the past several weeks is or rather should be utterly beyond the pale.... What, my correspondent pressed me, is the argument against doing this? It���s a good question���

R��ka Juh��sz, Mara P. Squicciarini, & Nico Voigtl��nder: Away from Home & Back: Coordinating (Remote) Workers in 1800 & 2020 https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28251/w28251.pdf: ���This paper examines the future of remote work by drawing parallels between two contexts: The move from home to factory-based production during the Industrial Revolution and the shift to work from home today. Both are characterized by a similar trade-off: the potential productivity advantage of the new working arrangement made possible by technology (mechanization or ICT), versus organizational barriers such as coordinating workers. Using contemporary data, we show that organizational barriers seem to be present today. Without further technological or organizational innovations, remote work may not be here to stay just yet���

John Naughton: Control Shift: Why Newspaper Hacks Are Switching to Substack https://www.theguardian.com/commentis... ���The biggest surprise, though, was how popular the audio diary was: it was consistently the most clicked-on link. And slowly, it dawned on me that audio seems to reach parts of the human psyche that other media cannot. Because the email was coming from a mailing-list server, some subscribers��� spam filters would occasionally block it, and on several occasions I received alarmed emails from readers who wondered if I had succumbed to Covid. But there was clearly something about the regularity of hearing a familiar voice every morning that was important. One reader used to play it during breakfast every morning; one day his wife observed that it was ���like Thought for the Day but without the God stuff���. Recording it was quite hard work, and after 100 days I had to stop, as the demands of my day jobs began to ramp up, but the transcripts are now available as an e-book���

====

Martin Wolf: Five Forces That Will Define Our Post-Covid Future https://www.ft.com/content/dd359338-6... ���First, technology. The march of computing and communications technology continues.... Now, broadband communications, together with Zoom and similar videoconferencing software, has made it possible for a huge number of people to work from home.... Inevitably, this will not only include workers in their home countries, but workers sourced from abroad, too, usually on lower salaries. The result is likely to be a destabilising increase in what might be called ���virtual immigration���. Second, inequality. Many higher-paid office workers have been able to work from home, while most others could not.... The likelihood is that the inequalities exacerbated in the pandemic will not have reduced by 2025.... Third, indebtedness.... The pandemic has dramatically increased borrowing by private and public sectors.... Fortunately, government debt is now extremely cheap.... Fourth, deglobalisation. The plausible future is not that international exchange is going to die. But it is likely to become more regional and more virtual.... After the global financial crisis, trade ceased to grow faster than world output.... Covid-19 reinforced these trends. A marked result has been a desire to shift supply chains back home, or at least out of China.... Finally, political tensions... a decline in the credibility of liberal democracy, the rise of demagogic authoritarianism... the rising power of China���s bureaucratic despotism... the rise of populism in core western countries and especially the US. While the victory of Joseph Biden represents a defeat for populism, president Donald Trump���s large share of the vote shows it has not disappeared.... The biggest challenge will demand a global co-operation that will not exist. Sustaining a dynamic world economy, preserving peace and managing the global commons were always going to be hard. But an era of populism and great power conflict will make this far more difficult���

.#brieflynoted #noted #2021-01-05


Briefly Noted for 2021-01-06

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/12/briefly-noted-for-2021-01-06.html

Briefly Noted for 2020-12-30

Wikipedia: Aelius Aristides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aelius_Aristides#cite_note-4���

Doris Groshen Daniels: Theodore Roosevelt and Gender Roles https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/article-groshen-roosevelt-gender.pdf: ������

Jeremy Norman: Automata Invented by Heron of Alexandria https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=10

Wikipedia: Dialogus de Oratoribus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogus_de_oratoribus: ���A short work attributed to Tacitus, in dialogue form, on the art of rhetoric. Its date of composition is unknown, though its dedication to Lucius Fabius Justus places its publication around 102 AD���

Wikipedia: Rota Fortunae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rota_Fortunae#Origins���

Paul Campos: The Last Days of Donald https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/12/the-last-days-of-donald: ���This report from Jonathan Swan reminds us that the presidency is still in the hands of a mentally ill aspiring despot who is decompensating quickly���

Wikipedia: New Atlantis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atlantis: ���[Francis Bacon] portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge. The plan and organisation of his ideal college, "Salomon's House", envisioned the modern research university in both applied and pure science. The end of their foundation is thus described: "The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible"���

Scott Lemieux: Our Grifter Problem https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/12/our-grifter-problem: ���As you are hopefully unaware of, a bunch of Twitter/YouTube grifters on the broad anti-anti-Trump ���left��� are ginning up a hate campaign against AOC because she won���t go along with their incredibly dumb campaign to ���force a vote��� on M4A, a tactic which (as AOC points out) has zero chance of making the enactment of M4A or any roughly equivalent program more likely on any time horizon. As Eric Levitz explains, this is very bad.��� The idea that structural barriers can be easily overcome by individual politicians who just want it badly enough���like politics is a bad sports movie���is incredibly pernicious���

James McGrath: Teaching Cyborg Students https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionprof/2020/12/teaching-cyborg-students.html: ���Rather than prohibiting students from using technology, we need to realize how many ways they already are that we take for granted, and how many they ought to be yet are not or at least are not doing so wisely, efficiently, or effectively. We need to design activities and assessments that teach them and then evaluate them on their ability to do the things we have always been trying to train them to do���write, read, research���in a manner that does not rely on technology to tell them whether they write well or how to format a reference, but teaches them what they need to know in order to create a bibliography using Word���s built-in function, discern which search results are relevant and credible, and whether the words they have strung together make good sense regardless whether their word processing software has things underlined or not. Currently they are like Joey Tribbiani using the thesaurus function writing a letter���

Bruce Gyory: How Biden Won: Six Hard Truths https://thebulwark.com/how-biden-won-six-hard-truths/: ���Digging into the exit poll data on gender, education, age, and more.... 1. Women Won the Election for Biden. Women outvoted men���by 4 percent in the Edison data and 6 percent in the AP VoteCast survey���and rejected Donald Trump, denying him re-election. According to the AP VoteCast, Biden carried women by 55-44, while Trump carried men by 52-46.... 2. The ���Education Gap��� and Its Link to Race and Sex.... White men without college degrees (19 percent of the total vote), gave Trump a landslide margin of 64-34, while white women without college degrees (24 percent of the total vote) gave Trump a large but lesser margin of 60-39.... Among non-white voters, by contrast, Biden won regardless of education status (or sex): among non-white non-college-educated men (7 percent of the vote), he won by 68-30.... 3. Location, Location, Location.... The suburbs cast 45-47 percent of the total vote in high-turnout elections and 48-50 percent of the electorate in low-turnout elections.... 4. The Young and the Faithful. Fourth, the youth vote helped Biden win, even as it did not expand its share of the total vote from 2016.... 5. The Real Enthusiasm Gap.... Among the 46 percent of voters who reported in the AP VoteCast survey that they ���disapprove strongly��� of President Trump, Biden won 97-1. On the flip side, meanwhile, the voters who said they ���approve strongly��� of Trump, who voted for him by 98-2, amounted to a much smaller 31 percent of the electorate.... 6. Big Turnout But No Big Shift to the Left.... The one thing Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could agree on was that the impact of Never Trump Republican initiatives���like Republican Voters Against Trump and the Lincoln Project���would be minimal. That assessment was flat-out wrong���

.#brieflynoted #noted #2020-12-30


Briefly Noted for 2020-12-30

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/12/briefly-noted-for-2020-12-30.html

Sexual Domination, Large-Scale Rape, & American Slavery: Mary Boykin Chesnut vs. Garnet Wolseley���Noted

Garnet Wolseley (1862): The American Civil War: An English View https://books.google.com/books?id=Qu4nCB-cVoYC: ���The slaves in large towns are inferior in moral character to those upon plantations; and amongst the former there is always a large admixture of white blood, which is very rare, indeed, amongst farm hands. In many, or I might say in most States, if a woman upon a plantation gives birth to a child of any but ebony hue, it is considered a sort of slur upon the owner of the estate; and she is usually sold to some city master as soon as the fact becomes known, in order, if possible, to hush up the scandal certain to arise in the neighbourhood from the circumstance. I have been informed by many planters that, as a rule, the negresses on estates are a moral class; and as their appearance is repulsive in the extreme, I can well understand there being so few half-caste children in neighbourhoods where the only white men are those of the better classes���

Mary Boykin Chesnut (1861): Mary Chesnut's Civil War https://books.google.com/books?id=WojvfHAX4lgC: ���I wonder if it be a sin to think slavery a curse to any land. Men and
women are punished when their masters and mistresses are brutes, not when they do wrong. Under slavery, we live surrounded by prostitutes, yet an abandoned woman is sent out of any decent house. Who thinks any worse of a Negro or mulatto woman for being a thing we can't name? God forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system, a wrong and an iniquity! Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines; and the mulattoes one sees in every family partly resemble the white children. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody's household but her own. Those, she seems to think, drop from the clouds. My disgust sometimes is boiling over. Thank God for my country women, but alas for the men! They are probably no worse than men everywhere, but the lower their mistresses, the more degraded they must be...

.#books #garnetwolseley #history #maryboykinchesnut #noted #racism #slavery #2020-12-30


Sexual Domination, Large-Scale Rape, & American Slavery: Mary Boykin Chesnut vs. Garnet Wolseley���Noted

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/12/sexual-domination-large-scale-rape-american-slavery-mary-boykin-chesnut-vs-garnet-wolseleynoted.html

https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f080038834026be430e957200d/edit