Geoff > Status Update

Yeah, I read about that case over a week ago. It's surprising they can still travel out now, from wherever it is they are still coming from, for non-urgent reasons

It is indeed surprising. I will ask!

I saw a dude hugging his friends goodbye the other day, and honestly it made me happy even though they're a menace to public health.

As a follow up to what I and others were saying on the last page about stats on apparent reinfection - there may now be an explanation. The most common tests detect genetic material from the virus, and detailed analyses of a sample of these apparently reinfected patients has found they had had *fragments* of virus genetic material - which also explains the earlier finding that they were apparently not infectious. (The full virus would be needed to be infectious.)
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.11...
(pre-print with usual caveats, not yet peer reviewed, small sample size etc)

On the same day he threatened his own people with military action, the POTUS stood in his vast gardens to announce a raft of sanctions against China for its handling of protests in Hong Kong.

I hope the irony of it isn't lost on Americans.

I doubt he'd see it as ironic, more like tit for tat retaliation, as there are allegations in American right-wing media that China has been promoting various protests in the US.

Nice to see you back on GR, Jibran!

In The New Yorker, this piece (paywall; four free stories per month, this is worth using one of them) called "An Abuse of Sacred Symbols" has this very, very telling paragraph in it:

When protests gave way to violence over the weekend, police expanded the {White House's newly established} realm of isolation, sealing off Lafayette Park and pushing the public farther away.

This is appallingly bad PR and indicative of where this kakistocracy is heading.

Antonomasia wrote: "I doubt he'd see it as ironic, more like tit for tat retaliation, as there are allegations in American right-wing media that China has been promoting various protests in the US."

Of course they won't for that would mean acknowledging there's something fundamentally wrong with the system that needs a complete overhaul.

Bernard Lewis writes in one of his books that a nation in crisis may ask two types of questions. 'Where did we go wrong' or 'Who did this to us.' The powers that be in the US have resorted to the second line of thinking for quite some time, which means the real issues are not addressed.

And thank you. Good to be posting again. Hope all's well at your end of the world :)

So, this thing still on?

What a country, huh.

I have always wondered what it was like to live in a tremendously monumental historical moment. Well, it appears to be rather unpleasant.

Peter (Pete) wrote: "I have always wondered what it was like to live in a tremendously monumental historical moment. Well, it appears to be rather unpleasant."

Maybe, but this is unique in US history, unprecedented to be un-presidented, a genuine criminal in chief, who needs a 2nd term to stay out of jail. The 17C Brits warned against democracy, bec “the people” (largely illiterate) would select an idiot. Turns out we avoided that for over 230 years, bec Americans could read (maybe better than the average Brits) maybe bec Protestant Bible reading. My theory, the Idiot in Chief would not have been elected by readers of his chaotic talk, but yes, by TV viewers.

A slight historical note: those "17C Brits" overthrew the absolute monarchy (and killed a king), established representative, accountable democracy, and wrote the Habeas Corpus Act and the Bill of Rights...

Wastrel wrote: "A slight historical note: those "17C Brits" overthrew the absolute monarchy (and killed a king), established representative, accountable democracy, and wrote the Habeas Corpus Act and the Bill of R..."

Things had to evolve after that in the 18th and 19th century which were pretty brutal as well.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...

I wasn't suggesting that 17th century England was some sort of paradise. Just that it's perverse to pick 17th century England as the spokesman for "warning against democracy", when it was one of the times and places in history most defined by its radical progress toward democracy. The people who created America were not refuting the views of 17th century Englishmen when they committed to democracy - on the contrary, it was 17th century Englishmen like Edward Coke, John Locke, John Lilburne and the Earl of Shaftesbury who provided much of the inspiration for them!

Wastrel wrote: "A slight historical note: thosee "17C Brits" overthrew the absolute monarchy (and killed a king), established representative, accountable democracy, and wrote the Habeas Corpus Act and the Bill of R..."
Not exactly: The Cromwellians did, who were not the anti-Democracy I mentioned. My Ph.D. Was on Andrew Marvell, undersecretary of State (“Latin Secretary”) who taught languages to Cromwell’s cavalry head, Lord General Fairfax, who refused to join the beheading trial of Charles I, where about 72 signed the document. Fairfax’s wife, when her husband’s name was called in Westminster Hall, said, “He has too much sense to be here.” He was 33 when he retired. John Milton was Latin Secretary, Marvell’s boss, in the 1650’s.

Not exactly: not one of Coke, Locke, Lilburne or Shaftesbury whom I mentioned were Cromwellians. Shaftesbury began the war as a Royalist, switched sides as a result of Anti-Catholicism, tried to make Cromwell king, then split with Cromwell. Locke was a royalist throughout the conflict and despised Cromwell. Coke died before Cromwell became famous. Lilburne was a personal friend of Cromwell, but that didn't stop him from saying that he'd have preferred to live seven years under Charles than one under Cromwell, and attempting to gather funds from Royalists to overthrow Cromwell and his government. Cromwell variously had him imprisoned in the Tower, on Jersey, in Dover Castle and in exile abroad, and put him on trial for his life.

Similarly, neither of those documents I mentioned were written by Cromwellians. Nor were the Petition of Right (Coke), nor the Agreement of the People (Lilburne), which were so influential on the American founders.

While there were certainly anti-democrats around at the time - both Royalists and Cromwellians - we should bear in mind that they were the minority. They lost. Repeatedly.

Wastrel wrote: "Not exactly: not one of Coke, Locke, Lilburne or Shaftesbury whom I mentioned were Cromwellians. Shaftesbury began the war as a Royalist, switched sides as a result of Anti-Catholicism, tried to ma..."
All familiar. But those whodisapproved democracy WON. Charles II executed 17 regicides, though he’d promised not to...by drawing and quartering, not an easy death. Throughout the following century, the English contempt for the renegade N Americans grew,ending of course in the tea party and my ancestor fighting under Daniel Shays, shooting unlike the redcoats from behind stone walls...so unfair, un-European.

[huh? shooting from behind stone walls was extremely European. You've been here, yes? That's what all the castles are for! these are the sorts of walls we were building at that time (close up of similar walls here).]

And no, clearly the anti-democrats did not win. England began the century with an absolute monarchy that ruled by fiat, supported by a secret police conducting arbitrary arrests. It ended the century with a parliamentary democracy, a government accountable to and drawn from parliament, a bill of rights prohibiting executive abuses of power, and a monarch with virtually no remaining powers (although it would take at least another half century before this was settled completely). Unambiguously, this was not a good century for those who opposed democracy!

Yes, Charles executed a dozen people. He (or rather, the prime minister, Hyde) also gave a general amnesty for all the thousands of others who had been involved in the civil wars, including setting countless anti-monarchists free from prison (most famously Milton).

English-American relations in the 18th century hardly have anything to do with the democratic revolution of the 17th. "Contempt" is hardly accurate as a general term either, although as in any dispute between nations there was of course a hateful minority on each side.

No, no, the Redcoats marched in open fields, as in Concord up the street from me— Emerson’s great poem, “By the rude bridge that arched the flood...Here the embattled farmer stood,/ Who fired the shot heard round the world.” Emerson started the Unitarian movement in America, his bust in my New Bedford UU Church, with the Flentrop tracker organ. Firing down from a castle is NOT firing from behind a stone wall. The English officers considered the Massachusetts militia cowards for hiding behind stone walls, not standing and fighting. My ancestor Stephen Powers of Shutesbury fought in that war, a century after our forbear Walter Power arrived in Littleton, MA, probably from Springfield, England. You may excuse me for thinking that English attitudes toward democracy in the century of our Revolution ( the British “war of Rebellion”) have much to do , and of course they derive from the suppression of Cromwellian representative gov. Milton’s grave is largely lost, though maybe a wall witness— not as great as that in St Giles in the Fields, that memorial plaque to Marvell written by his nephew. Marvell’s parliamentary membership may well have saved Milton’s life, since his Tenure of Kings certainly endangered it.

Meanwhile in 21st C America...

I'm just glad Wisconsin went blue again.

Here we are again, fellow travelers to the grave. My bomb shelter's larder shelves are empty; the door is ajar and clapping softly in the wind.