Justified Faith

This post was originally written for an assignment under a different name.

In the essay “The Ethics of Belief,” W. K. Clifford states that it is immoral to believe without sufficient evidence. Belief motivates action, and wrong beliefs can lead to harmful actions. For Clifford, this is an argument for a skeptical view of religious claims. Religious beliefs frustrate the skeptic by regularly asserting that surprising, out-of-the-ordinary things exist with little material evidence. By Clifford’s principle, one might think that without an indubitable proof to cinch the existence of God, one must presume atheism. However, in his essay “Rational Theistic Belief without Proof,” John Hick argues that even without proof, some people can have sufficient evidence for religious belief just as we have sufficient evidence to believe in the physical world simply by experiencing it, a much more permissive view of faith. Hick is right that many spiritual beliefs can be justified by religious experience, but it’s unwise to discard Clifford’s concern entirely. Some religious beliefs cannot be justified by experience alone, and wrong religious beliefs can have harmful consequences.

For Hick, experience of religious truth is analogous to the experience of an external world. Hick states that the belief in an external, physical world is “a belief on the basis of which we live and the rejection of which…would so disorient our relationship to other persons within a common material environment that we should be accounted insane.” For someone who experiences the external world, no proof of its existence is needed. Hick argues that the same holds true for religious experiences. To demand that believers discard their convictions about the things they experience until they can provide proof is to demand that they deny a core way in which they experience the world.

The nature of our knowledge of the external world can be understood as follows: I undeniably have a perception of an external world. That external world is important to me, so I believe in it. Those who object to Hick’s analogy might point out the many differences between material and spiritual experiences, but these differences don’t actually challenge the way this kind of belief works. Even if the external world were overtly mechanically inconsistent, even if people regularly disagreed about seemingly straightforward facts about it, even if many others lacked the senses needed to observe it, we would still believe in the existence of an external world if we perceived it and lived in it. Our working belief in the external world, then, can be understood as a spiritual relationship with that world. When we act within the physical world, we declare that it is important to us, and thus that we functionally and justifiably believe in it—by rational faith. This is perfectly analogous to Hick’s religious knowledge: I undeniably have an experience of religious truth. Religious truth is important to me, so I believe in it. For Hick, she who believes in God by personal experience already has sufficient evidence.

Then, is the skeptic’s criticism totally unfounded? In his essay, Clifford does not specify what constitutes sufficient evidence for a belief, but it is easy to imagine a skeptic following Clifford’s principle who denies that experience as defined by Hick is sufficient evidence for religious belief. But such a skeptic must then have a standard for belief that is incompatible with our everyday lives. The beliefs which ground us and enable us to live aren’t always achieved by proof or even material evidence. For example, the belief in the concept of the self as an entity is certainly not without any doubt and is not rooted in material evidence, but many people hold that foundational belief because they experience the world through the idea of the self and because they cannot live without it. It’s ridiculous to withhold the license to this belief from anyone who has not yet rationally grappled with every reasonable doubt.

If “it is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence,” and anything short of a fully-considered proof or hard material evidence cannot qualify as sufficient, then most of our operating beliefs are held immorally. Clifford acknowledges that his standard may be seen as harsh, but under this interpretation, his standard is impossible. Clifford understands that beliefs are “that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being,” but if we each become the man with no time to believe by our inability to rationally evaluate the underlying reality of all of our experiences, then can our will not make decisions? Do the compacted energies of our being become entirely unknit?

So we have good reason to reject this extremely uncharitable interpretation of Clifford and to accept the notion that religious experience can justify certain beliefs even in the absence of proof or material evidence. But it would be unwise to disregard Clifford’s motivating concern, that insufficiently justified belief can mislead our actions and cause real harm. Religious experience is a valid source of knowledge, but we do not have reason to think that religious experience is a valid source of any knowledge. Throughout history, incompatible views rooted in deep religious conviction have led to bloody conflict. If we claim that any religious belief supported by religious experience is justified, then it becomes difficult to resolve or challenge this kind of conflict as well as other sources of harm.

Clifford opens his essay with a clear expression of this concern about an overly permissive standard of belief with the example of a shipowner. Though the shipowner has reason to doubt the seaworthiness of his ship, he is fully convinced that Providence will carry her safely on its voyage, so he casts out doubt from his mind. The ship, of course, is not in working order, and ends up at the bottom of the sea with its passengers. The notion that the shipowner’s personal experience of the nature of Providence justified his belief that Providence would protect the passengers is, at the very least, quite unpalatable. So, if we admit religious experience as a valid kind of evidence, we should take care with how we answer this question: Which kinds of rational believings can be justified by religious experience?

In his essay, Hick primarily considers the theist’s rational believing in the existence of God, but he doesn’t outline any clear limitations to rational religious believings. This lack of imitations might mislead us into accepting any religious convictions as rational. Hick’s view most clearly defends beliefs about how one relates to God by means of religious experience. When someone says, I spiritually dialogue with God about my personal growth, for example, we should not dismiss her as irrational. Her believing follows the pattern by which we believe in the material world: She has a meaningful experience of a dialog with God and so she reasonably believes that this dialog is real. She can be certain because her belief is in the actuality of her experience as she experiences it. Just as our perceptions of the material world inform us about what can be perceived within the material world, her experience of a spiritual world informs her about what can be experienced in that world.

But now consider the shipowner’s belief that Providence will guide the ship to safety. For the sake of argument, suppose the shipowner’s believing is not motivated by simple wishful thinking but by a profound experience of a providential God, one who would certainly not allow an occupied ship to sink. This shipowner, then, does not only assert that his experience is real but also proclaims a certain relationship between the spiritual and material worlds he perceives. He proclaims that the spiritual experience of the reality of Providence guarantees that God will intervene in the material world. This does not actually fit our model for experiential belief. Simply by perceiving an external world and then living within it, we are able to justify certain beliefs about that external world. But our experiences of the material world cannot by themselves justify beliefs about things which are not perceived materially. In other words, it’s just as irrational to expect Providence to preserve one’s ship as it is to expect God to fall down from heaven due to our perception of gravity in the material world. Hick cannot defend this shipowner.

So, people can come to know religious truth by way of religious experience, but the kinds of spiritual beliefs which can be rationally justified from spiritual experience are strictly limited. This limitation does not only exclude the reckless shipowner. Many very common religious views do not meet the standard. For example, the belief that God created the real, material Earth in six days asserts a relationship between spiritual and material perception which cannot be confirmed from religious experience alone. Other kinds of evidence are needed to support this claim. Clifford’s standard for justified belief is untenable if his demand for sufficient evidence is interpreted as a universal demand for proof or material evidence, but an appropriate skeptical view of religious claims enables us to avoid the harm that wrong religious beliefs can cause.

Confucianism and Traditionalism

This post was originally written for an assignment under a different name.

In Confucius’ view, thinking outside the context of study might be compared to randomly banging on a piano in ignorance of the conventions of music: a million monkeys given a million years might produce something, but it is better to start with the classics.

—Edward Slingerland, History of Chinese Philosophy

For Confucius, an understanding of and adherence to ritual is essential to living well. The above passage refers specifically to his attitude about learning—that individuals must think in the context of study, internalizing and living out the wisdom of the ancients. This view of the past is closely connected to all of Confucius’s traditionalist views as described by Slingerland. For Confucius, ritual is analogous to language: fluency is necessary to living one’s life meaningfully and occupying one’s proper place in the world. Ritual enables us to achieve and effectively express virtuous internal and external spiritual states throughout our lives. To author one’s life without attention to tradition, like thinking without the context of study properly understood, is to bang on the keys of a piano.

But the language that Confucius advocates isn’t strictly expressive. It’s restrictive by design. For Confucius, an important part of understanding tradition is to understand one’s proper role in society and to live according to and within that role. Though in some cases ritual may be amended by the gentleman who understands and is in harmony with the ritual—as Confucius does when he wears a ceremonial cap of silk rather than a ceremonial cap of linen—the rituals must not be amended in such a way that changes their meaning or disrupts the proper hierarchy and order of things.

Confucius makes this limitation clear when he discusses rectifying names as they label appropriate social roles. He says, “Let the lord be a true lord, the ministers true ministers, the fathers true fathers, and the sons true sons” (12.11). Each of these roles mandates certain kinds of attitudes and behaviors. For the individual, mastering ritual enables one to live sensibly and to appropriately express from within his role, but it does not enable one to deeply change his role or to move beyond it. Tradition isn’t merely restrictive in order to enable real meaning in life. Its restrictions place a strong limitation on personal expressiveness and liberty.

It’s here that I worry that Confucius’s conservatism goes too far. I value the kind of cultural language that uses social restriction to enable people to live more meaningfully and to influence people into living well. But these restrictions can become elitist when they are so rigid as to limit real expressiveness, as Confucius’s does. When someone is aimlessly banging a piano, it’s wise to teach her music theory. It’s not so wise to demand that she only play classical.

Another Nightmare

Content advisory: The following post contains a description of an attempted child murder.

I had such a terrible dream last night. I can't get it out of my mind. What a particularly terrible way to kill a child: to evaluate that she is smaller than you and that if you both were to get “lost” in the woods, she would starve or freeze long before you would. You wouldn't even have to touch her. Only once she'd succumbed would you, a child yourself, “find” your way back and cry real tears—for yourself.

It's an impotent way to kill someone. That's why when he was found out, he didn't argue. He bit me. He didn't bite me hard. He toothed me like a small dog. I don't think he ever seriously considered getting away with it. I think he was just willing to suffer that much to watch her die that way. Stranglers assert the superiority of their bodies over those of their victims. That boy did the same, just more slowly, with more restraint. 

Maybe before he got hungry and meaner, he thought he'd never drop the act. Maybe for weeks he fantasized about holding her and crying with her as her body failed. But she lived, and we know that he became overtly cruel, even if their mother doesn't want to accept it. I cannot imagine that he will accept her survival. I'm convinced that, given the opportunity, once they have both recovered, he will kill her. No one is listening to her, and I can't stay here forever.

Nonoverlapping Magisteria

This post was originally written for an assignment under a different name.

 The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way(theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value.

—Stephen Jay Gould, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria”

In his essay “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” Stephen Jay Gould tries to make a truce in the conflict between science and religion. He argues, that, properly understood, these devices have distinct and separate domains, and so cannot truly be opposed to one another. He calls this view “nonoverlapping magisteria” or “NOMA.” This view is much better than, say, Richard Dawkins’s,¹ who, in drawing science and religion as fundamentally opposing forces, fails to acknowledge the role that faith plays in his view of science which clearly extends beyond mere methodological naturalism, but NOMA still fails to totally explain or resolve the tension we observe between these two modes of inquiry.

First, regardless of what jurisdictions Gould believes science and religion ought to stick to, it’s clear that religion and science often do ask questions about the same issues. Religion and science both generate stories about the origin of the world and its people. They both try to explain the phenomena we observe in the world. They both tell us stories about what we are. People take the narratives created by both science and religion in these areas very seriously. To suggest that religion informs us of meaning and value separate from the mechanics of the natural world is to deny the well-established role religion often has in deriving meaning and value through interpretations of the natural world. Likewise, to suggest that the role of science is strictly empirical is to deny the social role it plays and the ethical implications of the philosophical naturalism that it advocates.

Second, the NOMA view is only plausible in a narrow slice of human history. Religion is much older than science, and its domain was not always bordered at all. Religion wasn’t a mode of inquiry. For many societies, religion was the mode of inquiry; it was how truth-finding was done. And before scientific inquiry cast serious doubt on religious doctrine, the goals of science and religion were not clearly separate. We study moral truth to understand God and His creation. We study the natural world to understand God and His creation. Only a world in which the narratives created by science and religion are not totally compatible does NOMA even seem meaningful.

I don’t mean to say that NOMA is meaningless or useless, but I think it’s important to understand why NOMA is meaningful and useful right now. The standoffish relationship between science and religion as we perceive today has not always existed and will not always exist. The social importance of scientific inquiry has changed the domain of religion, and our society is still adjusting to that change. Science and faith may not necessarily be at odds, nor are they necessarily totally separate, but today, for many people, they are in conflict, and that conflict is real and important. I think it’s wise for religious scholars and scientists to consider the appropriate domains for their work according to the NOMA hypothesis, but this will not itself resolve the tension in our social fabric. NOMA is a ceasefire, not a peace treaty.

The Value of the History of Philosophy

This post was originally written for an assignment under a different name where it was presented in a different format.

It can be easy to accuse philosophers of disregarding the important issues of their day and wasting their efforts debating issues of little to no practical use. I find that people feel pretty ambivalent about philosophers. This critique might be even easier to apply to those who study the history of philosophy. And I can’t really argue that these kinds of criticisms are always necessarily unwarranted. But philosophical thought, even that of the past, is often much more relevant to today’s issues than it may seem. To limit our thoughts to only “useful fields” is to miss useful knowledge. And those who demand that we focus solely on matters they deem important demand that we live less full lives.

The 17^th-century philosophers we studied were engaging meaningfully with contemporary issues. Although not all their views seem plausible today, when we read Robert Boyle, Margret Cavendish, and John Locke disagreeing about the utility of microscopes, for instance, we see them trying to answer practical questions. Without these discussions, we could not know how, why, or even if to use these instruments. We shouldn’t take what seems like common sense today for granted—or for certain. We also saw philosophers dealing with social change. Locke’s Essay was motivated in part by an increase in religious and political conflict. Discussing how to handle intractable disagreements was—and is—deeply important to managing diversity of thought.

By studying how these thinkers thought about the world, we engage with today’s world as well. Some of the ideas we read are more directly applicable to the present than others: The value of self-knowledge is timeless; intractable disagreements don’t seem to be going away any time soon; et cetera. But all the ideas we read influenced ideas in the present including those which seem implausible today. When we understand past thought, we better understand present thought. When we, like those in the past, try to address timely, practical concerns, we are well served to understand how this has been done before and how the ideas created then are influencing the ways in which we think today.

Every time period has had major pressing issues. If people throughout history had focused only on considering those directly, they would have cut themselves off from the knowledge that enabled real progress. The philosophers we read certainly drew from and considered older ideas to address the issues of their times. The truth is, we cannot know where we will find ideas that help us. We have no reason to believe that all useful ideas will be found by engaging with what seem like useful fields. So many of the ideas that created the things we value about today’s world in philosophy, in technology, in medicine emerged from a broader inquiry not limited to only considering that which was pressing at the time.

Those who would broadly criticize anyone who studies the history of philosophy make a timeless error: They forget that people and groups of people can focus on multiple things. It’s possible and also wise for us to take on the issues of our time directly and also study fields that aren’t clearly related to those issues. People aren’t productivity robots. For us, meaning is not limited to constantly taking the set of actions that will materially improve the world at every minute. We can’t all live full lives without engaging with the world more broadly, and that includes engaging with the world’s history. I’m not actively fixing the wider world when I read a novel, when I with friends, when I learn a skill, but I think it’s ridiculous to declare these activities meaningless, and we have reason to think that engaging with philosophy and its history may be an even more useful activity than these.

Sor Filotea demanded that Sor Juana rein in her curiosity and focus on useful matters. For Filotea, those matters were those which served the church as an institution. Sor Juana responds that, among other things, her curiosity allows her to live a full life, in part for her own sake.¹ She could not live well and only ever consider those things that others deemed important. I think many of us are better at identifying what matters are important today. But when we demand that others put an end to their curiosity to solve the problems we identify, even those we identify rightly, we treat others as a means to our ends. We imagine the minds of others as mere resources expended to solve a certain set of tasks. But when we encourage curiosity as well as social action, we encourage people to live full lives for themselves as well as for others. We can criticize those who use philosophical inquiry as a shield to hide from big problems, but to actually solve those problems, to progress, we should think broadly.

Week of September 27th, 2020

Howdy,

Somehow these weeks seem to be flying by at lightning speed, but at the same time, the first events of the week feel like they took place months ago. I hope you're doing well.

College COVID Recap

This might be the last of these for a while. Things are going better than I expected. We finally passed that 1000 number I had so feared, but we've done it so slowly that about 800 of them have already recovered. Of course, this could all go bad fast, but so far it hasn't gotten totally out of hand. I'll bring this section back if it does. This isn't exactly related, but did you hear about the otherwise healthy App State basketball player who died of COVID last week?

Election Recap

Welp. This week is the story of the White House getting Coronavirus. It all starts with the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court. As I predicted in my last message, I was dead wrong about her. I still think it's odd she wasn't on that list, but it is what it is. I've read a bit more of her writing, and I'm not unsatisfied with the pick, though I have a lot more to read. With how quickly they're trying to confirm her, I don't know if I'll have the time to study her in full before she takes up the ninth seat. Her nomination was also quite possibly ground zero for the recent White House COVID breakout. Just look at this behavior at the event. Judge Barrett couldn't get it since she's already had it. But we'll get to all that later. As far as I can tell, she's got a very clean record. I've seen two strange attacks on her. The first is against her Catholic Charismatic religious group, the People of Praise. I've seen a lot of people who are very disturbed by this affiliation. Though I disagree with it, I can understand some of this fear. Members of the People of Praise must submit themselves to the church covenant and be subject to the organization's discipline and spiritual direction. I get how these words can sound very scary to those who aren't familiar with religious communities! David French wrote a great article about this issue which I highly recommend. But I see this fear manifesting as a sort of sick religious bigotry which secular people think they can get away with. There's a myth going around that the novel The Handmaid's Tale and the Hulu adaptation of it are based off of this community—a claim with no basis in reality. Liberals just really like that show. People call it a cult and suggest that Judge Barrett is unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court because she's a crazy Christian who's pledged allegiance to a cult. I think some of this reaction is just rooted in “Charismatism weird.” Bill Maher was particularly shameless about this. On his show, he suggested she was unqualified for believing in speaking in tongues, a bog-standard Charismatic belief but one that's usually held by Protestant Charismatics, not Catholics like the majority of the People of Praise. Not only do these people have no understanding of religion, they do not even try to understand. While I certainly wouldn't want to be a Person of Praise myself, this kind of anti-religious fear-mongering pisses me off. The other insult relates to her black adopted children. I shit thee not, some folks have called the Judge racist for this. The funniest part is that Richard Spencer—who still has a Twitter account somehow—agrees wholeheartedly.

Then came the tax scandal. Headlines stated that President Trump paid only $750 annually in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017. Ten of the last fifteen years, he paid nothing. Understandably, people were pissed. It felt like this was the big secret the President was trying to hide all along by not disclosing his tax returns. Unfortunately, a lot of folks were pissed at the wrong people. The correct response to hearing that school teachers are taxed less than billionaires is to say that school teachers should be taxed far less, not to rage at the billionaires. The IRS is not a charity—though they do accept donations. Of course President Trump is going to pay as little in taxes as possible, as he should. Tax avoidance is one of the few cool things about President Donald Trump. It's appropriate to be angry at the President for not being transparent about his tax returns or for not doing enough to fix our federal budget and tax policy which allows the very wealthy to make everything they do look like a net loss, but it is ridiculous to be angry at him for paying as little tax as possible as a private individual. When President Trump manages to deduct $70,000 in hair styling expenses, I'm not angry; I'm impressed. Of course, he still paid a positive shitton in business taxes and property taxes as well as social security, medicare, etc. Many of the comparisons people are making aren't apples to apples. The bigger problem in this leak is the President's failing businesses, something which doesn't surprise me, but doesn't look great for his “businessman in the White House” pitch. The whole Times story is worth reading for all the details. Biden supporters celebrating being robbed by the Federal government as a mark of pride are embarrassing.

There was a debate! It was terrible! President Trump managed to dominate the event, which was clearly part of his plan, but he failed to do anything to save his ass. He tried to do what's worked for him in the past. He tried to make Joe Biden get in the mud with him, and Biden didn't fall for it. Sure he called the President a clown and told him to shut up, but otherwise he stayed on message and did a good job at communicating the kind of exasperation a lot of America is currently feeling. Also, as we already discussed, President Trump lost hard on race. Your average President Trump supporter isn't half as racist as the coastal liberals believe them to be, and they're deeply uncomfortable with President Trump on race. Anytime race is mentioned to a general, non-partisan audience, even if it includes rhetoric attacking rioters and looters, President Trump loses and Joe Biden wins. I saw a lot of folks point out that President Trump straw-manned Biden as a Socialist with some saying that it looked as if President Trump wanted to be debating Senator Sanders. I think that those pointing this out are missing one of the more successful parts of the President's debate strategy. He wanted to get Biden to disavow highly popular left-wing ideas such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, and alienate the leftmost side of the Democratic party which isn't sure whether they want to vote for him. I don't think that it was enough to make a meaningful difference, but Biden took the bait here. If this sounds like 4D-chess bullshit to you, I think that these two tweets from the President make it a bit more obvious.

By far the most disturbing part of the debate was President Trump declining to disavow white supremacists, instead saying, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” I've seen some idiots on the right asking whether it matters that the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacy since it should be obvious. But, like, that's seriously in doubt right now! If I were asked in seriousness whether I would disavow murder by someone who honestly wasn't sure whether I was against it, of course I would disavow murder! And this kind of rhetoric does have a real-world effect. I saw Richard Spencer celebrating immediately after the debate. The Proud Boys have been bolstered. These are the people President Trump is enabling. I highly recommend watching this timely video interviewing many members to get a sense for the vibe of the group. Of course, a lot of other things were said during the debate, including Joe Biden making up total lies about US manufacturing, but you watched it, too, so I'll leave that here. Honestly, the most important detail from the debate is that President Trump didn't infect Joe Biden.

And that leads us to the biggest happening of the week. Yes, somehow I've talked about a Supreme Court nomination, a tax scandal, a Presidential debate in which a President refuses to denounce white supremacy, and I haven't even gotten to the biggest story: The President is in the hospital as I type this, reportedly having been on oxygen. And he's not the only one who's gotten sick. Take another look at this image from the Supreme Court nomination. How many more red circles do you think we'll get? How far has it spread? So far, we have the President and the First Lady—but notably not Baron—Bill Stepian, Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway (more on her in a bit), Chris Christie, Senator Mike Lee (lol remember this video?), Senator Thom Tillis, Senator Ron Johnson, Ronna McDaniel, John Jenkins, and at least eleven staff from the first debate. It's a full-scale breakout. It seems like the D.C. Republicans have been outright irresponsible. Hope Hicks tested positive on Thursday morning, but it didn't stop the President from going mask-less to a fundraiser in New Jersey that same day. This stupid, conspiratorial tweet from Congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine is hilarious. Of course, many people on all sides are coming up with outlandish conspiracies about the infection. Also, many are celebrating the President's illness and praying for his death. You already know how I feel about this, so I won't waste keystrokes here. At his age and with his health, he has about a 94% chance of survival, which is wild for this stage in a Presidential election, but let's not dig the grave quite yet. We don't know much about the President's status, and Twitter has been arguing all day about HIPAA (or “HIPPA,” as they tend to call it) which no one on the site remotely understands but on which everyone considers themself an expert. The video President Trump posted last evening was strange to watch. He really wasn't looking great. I've never seen him look like this.

A Washington Post bot tweeted this at an inopportune time.

Alright, as a final, lighter bit of election-related news, I want to talk about how we learned that Kellyanne Conway caught COVID. Most people found out when she tweeted about it, however, the news first broke on TikTok. (By the way, if TikTok does get banned, I'll talk about it, but I've been holding off). Kellyanne Conway has an odd family life. Her husband George Conway is one of the founders of the Lincoln Project, a conservative anti-Trump organization that's gained some traction. Her 15-year-old daughter Claudia is also vocally anti-Trump (and anti-Kellyanne for that matter), has accused her parents of abuse, and is trying to get emancipated to live on her own. Claudia Conway posted this highly irreverent TikTok (sound on) to share the news. Honestly, her whole TikTok is wild. She posted another immediately after which says, “im furious. wear your masks. dont listen to our idiot fucking president piece of shit.” I feel bad for this girl. I can't imagine being in her shoes.

Everything Else

Steve's in Smash. That's pretty weird. I like it. Also Minecraft is getting the cave update. I remember people asking for that when I was playing the game in middle school.

Cream of Wheat is removing the black chef from their packaging for no reason.

Hillary Clinton was more oppressed than President Obama because she was called “bitch” whereas Obama was rarely ever called “nigger.” There's some real white, liberal feminism going on here. I don't know how some of these people have stayed so online and yet so detached.

Terrible online magazine Queerty published this unbelievably cringy article calling Dr. Jill Biden a gay icon—you know, despite being married to Joe Biden. This article is absurd. It deserves a read. Why is every gay magazine like this?

After the President's Proud Boy shenanigan, some trans men started (or possibly continued, I'm not sure) using the term to refer to themselves just to fuck with the Proud Boys. George Takei apparently had a different idea: “I wonder if the BTS and TikTok kids can help LGBTs with this. What if gay guys took pictures of themselves making out with each other or doing very gay things, then tagged themselves with #ProudBoys. I bet it would mess them up real bad. #ReclaimingMyShine.” He's literally begging teenagers to produce softcore with a hashtag he can easily search for under the guise of owning the Orange Man. Every time I look at this guy's twitter, he's saying something super cursed. And there are a number of replies basically saying, “Haha, I'm totally straight, but we we should make out on camera to own Drumpf lol.”

Finally, here's a spectacular hour-long deep dive into a facet of the authorship of the infamously terrible 2006 Harry Potter fan-fiction My Immortal. I share this because it reminds me quite a lot of a movie I've wanted to write for some time now featuring a character who for no straightforward motive makes dozens of online accounts pretending to be different people who all talk to each other. I'm fascinated by this kind of internet history.

Thanks,

Jacob Morris

Week of September 20th, 2020

Howdy,

My semester has finally kicked into gear as tests roll around and projects ramp up, but I think my hardest semester is behind me. I'm really just trying to stay sane and graduate and see what professional has to offer. Oddly enough, my social life is kind of flourishing during the pandemic semester. It's a bit easier to manage when the standard for a positive social interaction is a Zoom call where I don't have to go anywhere, and folks don't seem to have much else to do, so they tend to be down for longer conversations. By a total fluke, I've been talking quite a bit with a girl my year in CS, a partner on a project, whom I discovered lived only a few miles from my house! I didn't think this would be the semester to meet new people. Film club is fine, but, obviously, we can't really make the same kinds of movies, so we've been trying to do other things. I ran for president of the club, and I'm pretty glad that I lost by a vote to be honest. I hope you're finding good ways to occupy your time, and I'd love to hear from you. A great deal has happened this week, so I'll jump into it and try not to ramble on about anything. This'll probably be a pretty unfocused one.

College COVID Recap

I don't have any big update here. There were over 1,500 tests this week, a great deal above average, due at least in part to the mandatory random testing they've implemented, though I'm still not sure it's enough. We're nearly at a thousand positive cases since move-in. Growth certainly hasn't stopped, but it's still not blasting off in the way that I had feared. Hopefully, I'll have pretty much the same non-story next week.

Election Recap

To try to repeat what I did last time, I'll start with something funny that doesn't make me want to die. Joe Biden—or, more accurately, his campaign—actually made a funny Twitter campaign ad. Orange Man Bad™ really is a perfectly fine campaign method in this election and being even a little self-aware about it helps.

Later, in a classic Biden gaffe, he stated that over the course of his speech 200,000,000 people would die. Okay, I guess elder abuse isn't that funny, but let me have this. Okay, onto the existential dread.

I should start where I left off: the vacant seat in the Supreme Court. At this point, I have to acknowledge that I might have been dead wrong about Judge Amy Coney Barret. I thought that President Trump wasn't considering her very closely since she didn't appear on the list of considerations published mere days before Justice Ginsburg's death. And I still hold that early speculation about her nomination was totally unfounded. However, reportedly, there are now inside sources confirming that she has already been selected and that an official announcement will be made today. If he does select her, I'll eat my words and discuss her views and record, but I'll wait until there's an official statement one way or the other. Perhaps more important than the selection itself is the question of whether the Senate will actually fill the seat. Folks were very angry with Senator Romney this week after he said that he would consider whomever President Trump nominates. Everyone angry with him is way off base. Senator Romney never said any of the stupid shit other Senate Republicans said about the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, so it isn't hypocritical. He's just doing his job as a Senator. And we shouldn't expect that he would assent to anyone President Trump could nominate. Senator Romney voted to remove him from office for Christ's sake. There's no way President Trump wants to cut this vote any closer than it already is, and with Senator Susan Collins now joining with Senator Murkowski to dissent from any nomination before the election, albeit with some vague and ambiguous language, President Trump really wants to keep Senator Romney's vote, which may force a more moderate nomination. This is how the system is supposed to work. Of course, a whole lot of people have lost their minds over this whole thing and understandably so. Here's a positively deranged video of Speaker Pelosi.

President Trump did quite a bit of campaigning this week and said quite a bit of crazy shit while he was at it. Here's an unbelievably racist clip in which he discusses Congresswoman Omar. Here he is praising police for shooting MSNBC Contributor Ali Velshi with a rubber bullet. But the biggest Trump story this week was probably his comments, or lack thereof, about a peaceful transferal of power come January. When questioned about the subject, he said, “Well, we'll have to see what happens,” and made the same bullshit complaints about mail-in ballots he's been making since the start of this pandemic he's helped to prolong. Obviously, no one backed him up on this, but even as empty words, this kind of shit genuinely degrades our republic. It's not just empty rhetoric just because it's an empty threat. That being said, if he refuses to leave office when Biden is elected—okay, okay, I should say “if,” but Biden is going to win—whether by force of will or by some hypothesized elector bullshit, I'll be taking a road trip to Washington D.C. with a gun or two, and I won't be the only one. It isn't going to happen, but it isn't really an overreaction to prepare for it when the President indicates that it's a possibility.

Police

A grand jury made a single indictment in the Breonna Taylor case: wanton endangerment for shooting into a window with the blinds on without a line of sight. No charges were made for shooting a totally innocent woman in her own home. Obviously, people have taken to the streets once again. I'm not going to be able to discuss everything in this email, but I want to take a minute to talk about this case since I wasn't writing these when it first became well-known and since it's so important to the way we talk about police accountability. This case has already had an impact on police procedure, including bans on no-knock warrants, which is a good thing. In case you're not familiar with the details of the case, I'll run through the gist. I think that's important to do since so much of the information getting spread around is unverified or flatly false. A judge signed off on a search of Breonna Taylor's apartment as part of an investigation into her ex-boyfriend who had never lived there whom they believed was selling drugs out of a house about ten miles away. They were speculating that drugs had been delivered to or stored in the apartment. Her ex had been seen taking a package from her apartment to the house they believed drugs were being sold from. There were other crimes that the ex had committed that related to Taylor, but they were not the evidence given for this warrant, so I don't give a fuck. An hour before the planned raid, the cops tell the ambulance on standby to leave, counter to standard practice. Apparently, they don't think anybody could get hurt. Around midnight, three plainclothes officers started pounding on the door with a fucking battering ram. Obviously Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who like Taylor herself has absolutely nothing to do with the run-of-the-mill drug case taking place ten miles away, and Taylor, who was not asleep despite the popular narrative, think they're being robbed, so he grabs his legally-owned pistol. And then the three men in plain clothes break through the door, so he shoots one of them in the leg—one shot. Remember that Kentucky is a stand-your-ground state. Then the three jumpiest cops in America indiscriminately fire 32 shots between the three of them into the apartment—just unloading those mags—and with Star Wars Storm Trooper precision, manage to hit Walker a grand total of zero times and hit the unarmed Taylor standing in the hallway five times. So the cops render medical assistance... to the police officer who had been shot in the raid. They call back the ambulance. Not only do these cops have terrible aim, but they claim that they didn't even notice that they'd shot Taylor until at least 5 minutes after they did it. 5 minutes is a long time not to realize you've shot someone. The cop was fine. The woman trying to sleep in her own apartment was not. They charged Walker with assault and attempted murder. Those charges were dropped, obviously.

So much stuff went wildly wrong here. First, none of this happens without the war on drugs. This isn't that much of a hot take these days, but the war on drugs is one of the great evils of American domestic policy and leads inevitably to deaths like this one. When more shit is criminalized—for unambiguously racist reasons, I might add—there are more crimes to investigate, warrants to sign, and doors to knock down. Even people who don't commit these victimless crimes inevitably are harmed by and die due to their enforcement. We cannot be blasé about this. Second, holy shit that was a stupid warrant, but not an uncommon one. All over this country, too many warrants are getting approved. We can't just trust the judgment of state judges to dictate when it's acceptable to break into someone's house in the middle of the night. Remember, they were investigating her ex-boyfriend who had never lived there for doing shit somewhere else, and their evidence connecting the crimes to that apartment was video of him at the apartment holding an unidentified box. It's good to eliminate no-knock warrants (though police say they announced their presence in this case, though none of the neighbors heard it), but we need to eliminate no-good-reason warrants, too. Third, the officers were in plainclothes. Why? I'm actually asking here. Why on earth were they in plainclothes? They were performing a raid. If someone breaks into your house in plain clothes, you're going to think you're being robbed. There's a certain kind of presumption of guilt here. Walker's mistake was aiming at their legs. Fourth, these police officers were incompetent. I don't know what kind of readiness training these dudes go through, but they emptied their magazines and hit just about everything but their target. Per the indictment, one of them was shooting totally randomly. It's fucking pathetic. This part in itself is an indictment on police training and culture.

So the outrage about this case is totally justified. But calling to end policing in America isn't a solution. We need to resolve the actual problems here. I also understand anger at the lack of other indictments, but that's where this case gets a lot trickier. I believe that self-defense is #1. It's among the most fundamental rights a person has. However—putting aside the indiscriminate gunfire for a moment—we want law enforcement to be able to respond when they get shot at while carrying out a warranted search. That starts with not signing bullshit warrants and not wearing plain clothes to a raid, but should these officers really be charged with murder? According to precedent, no. We afford a huge amount of leeway to cops in these kinds of situations. And supposing that it were Walker who died, I'm not sure the officers should have been charged with anything—though I would certainly hope they would be fired. Of course we want to make these situations as rare as possible by decriminalizing nearly everything, signing far fewer warrants, uniforming all officers executing warrants, and ending no-knock raids. However I think that higher charges were justified in this case since the unarmed, non-aggressive Breonna Taylor was the one who died. Three men broke into a house and recklessly shot an uninvolved third party. In Kentucky, I don't think that meets the standard for murder, but it should absolutely be considered first-degree manslaughter. This case is the perfect counterargument to qualified immunity.

So hopefully you can understand when I fucking seethe when I read right-wing shills writing shit like this. Yes, the liberals who get the facts wrong and call for overblown murder charges are annoying and sometimes destructive, but they're reachable (note that I'm not talking about the communists looking for any opportunity to burn cities down). I've lost interest in sharing a planet with people like this. I think that the civil unrest this year has greatly clarified my political allegiances. I have no place on a side that houses these folks. They are utterly unconcerned with truth. The shit they say can be discredited by a Google search. I'm still typing words to fit more links. THE DRUG-DEALING EX WASN'T THE ONE WHO SHOT AT POLICE, YOU FUCKING MORONS. All these people want to do is protect the police and the status quo where innocent black people die. I have even more links, but I don't want to type about this anymore.

This wasn't the only police-related story this week. A mom called 911 when she lost control over her white, autistic 13-year-old Linden Cameron who was having a mental breakdown and making violent threats. She told police he didn't have access to a real gun. Police showed up, chased him down, and shot him eleven times in the back when he didn't follow commands to get on the ground. He's currently hospitalized. I'm not going to discuss this case in any more detail because it makes me feel ill. A lot of right-wing idiots have been saying, “Hmmmm, why isn't BLM talking about this?” They are. BLM are kinda the only people talking about this. Imagine a world where these people actually took a stand in this case instead of using it as a nonsense prop to attack BLM. These people literally think this is a race war.

Everything Else

Fucked-up new FDA policy.

Fucked up “LGBT-free zones” covering a third of Polish households.

Finally, you gotta watch this cringe Jimmy Kimmel video where he lets himself be totally walked over to score woke points.

Thanks,

Jacob Morris