exprimis

[exprimis]

Please remove me from your mail list. I did not subscribe to the mailing. Thank you.

Hi! If you wish to unsubscribe from @exprimis, you can use Tumblr's native "unfollow" and "block" and "hide tag" features. You may also wish to implement spam filters in your email inbox, and review your subscriptions in your RSS feed reader.

If you wish to unsubscribe from Imprimis, I wish you the best of luck. You may try sending an email to imprimis@hillsdale.edu requesting that they stop sending mail to the addressee, as the addressee has recently passed and the mail is causing distress for their spouse, who has no wish to continue the subscription. This is a suitably polite and conservative message that will hopefully evoke sympathy in the subscription office. If they ask if you would like a copy, politely decline, and do not give them your address.

I do not suggest using the prepaid donation envelopes to send them bricks or lead fishing weights; the USPS will probably not deliver your contributions.

[exprimis]

The author's bio is a treat:

Charles S. Faddis served for 20 years as an operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, including as a department chief at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and as a chief of station in the Middle East. He earned his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from the University of Maryland Law School. He is the author of several books, including Willful Neglect: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security and Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

I wonder what he identifies as the failures of the CIA? Let's see:

The CIA had no sources inside Al Qaeda to tell us about the 9/11 plot.

The CIA didn't immediately attribute COVID-19, known to be descended from bat-borne coronaviruses, to the bat coronavirus gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab.

Bureaucracy and a risk-averse culture.

Loss of skills, but also loss of mystique: "The people who run our government [...] have done their best to turn the CIA into just another federal agency. [...] We act as if anyone can be taught to conduct espionage—as if this is no longer an arcane craft to be practiced by a select group of unique people."

"The CIA has proved unable to put a source inside a Chinese bio lab, within the leadership structure of the Taliban, or next to Vladimir Putin."

The CIA has been politicized: backing Hillary Clinton in the Benghazi inquiries, aiding the Trump dossier investigation, and former intelligence officers decrying the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian propaganda.

The first point is transparently false; read the 9/11 Report and you will learn that the CIA had "real-time intelligence" on Bin Laden as early as 1996, with a plan to capture the known terrorist financier in place by the fall of 1997. That Bin Laden was planning to hijack civilian airliners was known as early as 1998.

The second point is still a matter of contention.

The third point is true of every part of government, but is especially true in international politics, geez.

The fourth point makes Charles Faddis sound like he's been reading too many spy novels where there's no risk of war from getting found out.

The fifth point is false as to Al Qaeda and laughable as to Putin. And if the CIA had any assets in Wuhan, their existence would be so totally classified that the CIA would hesitate to use their information in public, because the CIA prefers to not have its spies tortured and executed.

The sixth point reads like the seething cope of a man whose ideology is opposed by the Deep State, whether or not his facts are right. It is incredibly ironic that he complains that the CIA, which historically reported only to the President, was a political tool of the presidential administration of a Democrat.

So what does he identify as solutions?

Fire a lot of people.

"Recruiting must be completely revamped. Quotas are absurd. Focusing on color, gender, and sexual orientation is at best irrelevant. We want the best, and that means those people who possess the unique blend of skills and abilities that enable them to do what everyone else considers impossible."

Make training tougher.

Flatten the org chart and make it all about ops, not about analysis or support.

... for a man complaining that the CIA wasn't able to put spies in specific locations, he seems awfully invested in removing the ability of the CIA to recruit people who will blend in in those locations due to their color, gender, and sexual orientation.

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Christopher Rufo is a known transphobe, but I read this essay in Hillsdale's Imprimis, adapted from a speech that Rufo gave, and burst into laughter.

The essay contains many serious issues, including:

Uses trans people's post-transition names, but misgenders them in the most amazing ways: "[so-and-so] now identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. [...] She works as...."

Talks about "the transgender movement" as if it was something that only started in the late 1980s

Says that the transgender activists are trying to use transgenderism to support a Marxist revolution, and then does not try to split this gender-political coalition, thereby ceding ground to his ideological opponents

Discusses percentage-based demographic statistics without talking about population sizes

Hypothalamus-produced hormones are effectively the divine spark which grants life and humanity

Describes the evils of minimally-invasive robot surgery

There are also some things which I applaud this essay for:

Discusses MTF, FTM, and non-binary perspectives

Liberally quotes trans and non-binary writers

Provides the first mainstream citation for "nullification" surgery that I've yet seen

But that's not the funny part.

The funny part is Rufo's analysis of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

In [Susan] Stryker’s best-known essay, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage,” he contends that the “transsexual body” is a “technological construction” that represents a war against Western society. “I am a transsexual, and therefore I am a monster,” Stryker writes. And this monster, he continues, is destined to channel its “rage and revenge” against the “naturalized heterosexual order”; against “‘traditional family values’”; and against the “hegemonic oppression” of nature itself. [...]

In 1818, Mary Shelley wrote the famous novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The premise of the book is that modern science, stripped from the constraints of ethics and nature, will end up creating monsters. “Trans-affirming” doctors are the post-modern version of the book’s protagonist, Doctor Frankenstein. [...] Jennifer Pritzker, Maureen Connolly, Blair Peters, and their ilk occupy the heights of power and prestige, but like Doctor Frankenstein they will not be able to escape the consequences of what they have created. They are condemning legions of children to a lifetime of sorrows and medical necessities, all based on dubious postmodern theories that do not meet the standard of Hippocrates’ injunction in his work Of the Epidemics: “First, do no harm.” Although individuals can be nullified, nature cannot. No matter how advanced trans pharmaceuticals and surgeries become, the biological reality of man and woman cannot be abolished; the natural limitations of God’s Creation cannot be transcended. The attempt to do so will elicit the same heartbreak and alienation captured in the final scene of Mary Shelley’s novel: the hulking monster, shunned by society and betrayed by his father, filled with despair and drifting off into the ice floes—a symbol of the consequence of Promethean hubris.

Did Rufo even read Frankenstein? The tragedy did not come from the creation of The Creature, who Dr. Frankenstein and society shunned because of his looks. The tragedy was engendered by social rejection, and by physical attacks upon The Creature. It was this violence that led The Creature to swear revenge on Frankenstein and humanity, not some quirk of monstrous morality.

If Rufo wants to avoid the tragedies brought by shunning and rejection, instead of demonizing trans people and their sculptors, he should advocate for acceptance of ugliness, and for improvements in surgical technique to avoid that rejection.

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John Abramson, author of Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It, writes in favor of:

increasing grant funds from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation

separating the people who make the drugs from the people who test the drugs, or at least requiring transparency and open data in medical research, with accurate and independent peer review

third-party assessment of the efficacy of treatments

decreasing medical industry profits

price controls

A Hillsdale scholar advocating for increased regulation, increased government subsidies, and increased government intervention in the private market? I wasn't expecting it, but I'll take it.

[exprimis]

Not much of note in this one. It's just a shallow review of how Christmas as celebrated in the US has evolved since the British times, with reminders that it's about Christ, not Saturnalia. Then it segues into New Year, with an extended yet uncritical recounting of Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

No calls for action here. It's barely even a sermon.

[exprimis]

is it true that public school district administrators have grown at 87% compared to only 7.6% of student growth!

Since you didn't cite a source for this juicy factoid. I'm going to assume that even if the gist of it is true. the numbers are almost certainly either taken out of context or completely made up. Betteridge's Law of Headlines says that when a headline asks a question, the answer is "no".

Here's the questions I have about this factoid:

"have grown" - Since when? Over what time period?

"public school district administrators" - Is this just district-level administrators, or does it include administrators at lower or higher levels of the public school system? And which system are you talking about? Each state is different.

"administrators" - Is this truly just people with an administrative role, or does it include all non-teaching staff including janitors and bus drivers?

"growth" - Are we discussing the height of the students and administrators, their waistlines, their share of the budget, their population?

"is it true" - even if the raw numbers are accurate. what does "true" mean if you don't have the context for that growth? If this data includes the pandemic years, there was a drastic switch to homeschooling, which may entirely account for the discrepancy.

I haven't found any reports that match your claim, so I'm gonna say "no".

[exprimis]

Fun fact: The New Editor doesn't switch back to your main blog once you've switched your dash. And it doesn't save which blog you're on when you close the editor. It only saves when you post.

[exprimis]

Another factor: Landlords are required by law to provide housing that meets certain standards, to keep that housing in good repair, to promptly repair the housing when it becomes deficient, and so on. Landlords aren't just providing shelter-as-a-service, they're providing a service with contractual and legal obligations with regards to uptime and quality of service. Most landlords are deficient on those obligations to a lesser or greater extent, but poorer (and therefore more likely to be lefty) renters are more likely to only be able to afford the lower-quality landlords. These lefties hate their landlords more than other people because their landlords are worse than the general population's landlords at providing the services that the landlords are self-obligated and legally obligated to provide.

I get the vibe that a lot of, but not all of, vocal lefty landlord hate is because rent is their biggest expense and not out of a principled critique of the concept of owning land.

It would be interesting to see how they reacted to a system where employers issue rent vouchers, particularly in a way that disguises the exact cost of rent.

[exprimis]

is it true that public school district administrators have grown at 87% compared to only 7.6% of student growth!

Since you didn't cite a source for this juicy factoid. I'm going to assume that even if the gist of it is true. the numbers are almost certainly either taken out of context or completely made up. Betteridge's Law of Headlines says that when a headline asks a question, the answer is "no".

Here's the questions I have about this factoid:

"have grown" - Since when? Over what time period?

"public school district administrators" - Is this just district-level administrators, or does it include administrators at lower or higher levels of the public school system? And which system are you talking about? Each state is different.

"administrators" - Is this truly just people with an administrative role, or does it include all non-teaching staff including janitors and bus drivers?

"growth" - Are we discussing the height of the students and administrators, their waistlines, their share of the budget, their population?

"is it true" - even if the raw numbers are accurate. what does "true" mean if you don't have the context for that growth? If this data includes the pandemic years, there was a drastic switch to homeschooling, which may entirely account for the discrepancy.

I haven't found any reports that match your claim, so I'm gonna say "no".

[exprimis]

Please remove me from your mail list. I did not subscribe to the mailing. Thank you.

Hi! If you wish to unsubscribe from @exprimis, you can use Tumblr's native "unfollow" and "block" and "hide tag" features. You may also wish to implement spam filters in your email inbox, and review your subscriptions in your RSS feed reader.

If you wish to unsubscribe from Imprimis, I wish you the best of luck. You may try sending an email to imprimis@hillsdale.edu requesting that they stop sending mail to the addressee, as the addressee has recently passed and the mail is causing distress for their spouse, who has no wish to continue the subscription. This is a suitably polite and conservative message that will hopefully evoke sympathy in the subscription office. If they ask if you would like a copy, politely decline, and do not give them your address.

I do not suggest using the prepaid donation envelopes to send them bricks or lead fishing weights; the USPS will probably not deliver your contributions.

[exprimis]

If it's not obvious, I've kind of let this project drop. I've found better uses of my time.

[exprimis]

Inflation in the United States.

I don't really have an opinion about this one; I don't know enough about historical economics to tell whether it's redefeining the whole history of the country or not.

[exprimis]

"The Way Out" — Larry Arn, Imprimis, November 2021

Skipping a link to see if that improves discoverability this time 'round. I trust your search-fu.

Dr. Arn starts with a question, and an answer:

Here are two questions pertinent to our times: (1) How would you reduce the greatest free republic in history to despotism in a short time? and (2) How would you stop that from happening?

Dr. Arn starts with the usual points in his answer for reducing a great republic to despotism: the bureaucratic-regulatory state and the proliferation of unelected government agencies. He talks about how it's a bad thing for the state and the elections apparatus to be controlled by a single party.

How to defeat this system? Dr. Arn tells the story of a restaurant that sued its governments, and parents who yelled at their school board a lot.

What's fascinating is that Dr. Arn doesn't identify any other ways to prevent despotism. While he seems to think that elections have been stolen, he doesn't talk about ways to counter that, or things that can be done with the legislators you do get into poffice. He doesn't discuss ballot initiatives or referenda. He's solely interested in lawsuits (which use a captive branch of government) and protests.

Has he lost faith in the system? Or is this a popular recipe, with the specialist recipes privately circulated to those who can make changes from within government?

[exprimis]

Critical race theory

I haven't seen any Imprimis issues specifically about Critical Race Theory or its boogeyman relatives recently.

[exprimis]

This July 220, 2021 speech by Mark Morgan (former acting commissioner, 2019-2021, US Customs and Border Protection, the guy in charge) has about three redeeming points:

It identifies physical barriers are somewhat more reliable than non-physical barriers to passage

It connects a decrease in cruelty in the asylum system to an increase in the number of women, children, and whole families attempting to immigrate to the US from Central America and the world

It criticizes immigration policy for being set by the courts and by the executive, instead of by Congress.

The rest of it is a laundry list of "Biden is preventing ICE and CBP from doing their jobs, which is why there are more people applying for asylum, more border-crossers being caught, and more asylum applicants being settled." I think Mark Morgan believes that the role of ICE and CBP is to just unilaterally reject people who apply to enter the country, no matter who they are or what their circumstances are, or where they're applying from.

He disses the Biden administration's idea of "root cause analysis", instead pinning the root cause of increased documented and undocumented immigration and asylum cases as the US being more willing to let people in without first exposing them to a Kafkaesque bureaucracy. He dismisses any discussion of changing situations in lands south of the Rio Grande, and does not appear to consider that changes in US foreign or domestic policy could alleviate the immigration pressure.

In short: he really reads like a career CBP employee, and I do mean that as an insult.

[exprimis]

I would like to respond to the recent issue of Imprimis regarding the Jan 6th insurrection. How do I do that?

Well, you could send your response to me. I can't guarantee that I'll publish it.

Or you could try getting booked as a speaker at Hillsdale.

[exprimis]

There is one point in the latest edition of Hillsdale College's publication Imprimis, "Gender Ideology Run Amok" by Abagail Shrier, which was not addressed by @voxette-vk's review of Shrier's book. I shall quote that point here:

The gender ideology behind these lies is a sibling of critical race theory. While critical race activists are teaching kids that they are largely define by their skin color, gender activists are teaching kids that there are a great many genders, and that only they know their true gender.

I'm not sure if Shrier was listening to what she was saying. In what ways are "this is a feature of yourself which everyone can see and you can't change or escape" and "this is a feature of yourself which only you know the truth of, and which you can change" at all similar ideologies? How are they siblings?

The only similarity that Shrier identifies in this essay/speech is the fact that they're pushed by the same general set of people, and objections to these ideologies are lazily tarred as -phobic bigotry. Is that enough to say that they're sibling ideologies? Or is Shrier jumping on the latest bandwagon to gain some brownie points?

The quoted point fits the general character of Voxette's description of Shrier's other works: incoherent, inconsistent, unexamined, unpersuasive.