Whereof One Can Speak 🇺🇦

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Category Archives: Life

September Was Much Too Hot — As Predicted

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From The Guardian:

Global temperatures soared to a new record in September by a huge margin, stunning scientists and leading one to describe it as “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas”.

The hottest September on record follows the hottest August and hottest July, with the latter being the hottest month ever recorded. The high temperatures have driven heatwaves and wildfires across the world.

September 2023 beat the previous record for that month by 0.5C, the largest jump in temperature ever seen. September was about 1.8C warmer than pre-industrial levels. Datasets from European and Japanese scientists confirm the leap.

The heat is the result of the continuing high levels of carbon dioxide emissions combined with a rapid flip of the planet’s biggest natural climate phenomenon, El Niño. The previous three years saw La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean, which lowers global temperature by a few tenths of a degree as more heat is stored in the ocean.

Conditions have now rebounded to an El Niño event, which releases ocean heat and drives up temperatures. It’s all but certain that 2023 will be the hottest on record and 2024 may even exceed that, as the heating impact of El Niño is felt most in the year after it begins.

“September was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist, absolutely gobsmackingly bananas,” said Zeke Hausfather, at the Berkeley Earth climate data project.

Mika Rantanen, climate researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, said: “I’m still struggling to comprehend how a single year can jump so much compared to previous years.” Prof Ed Hawkins, at the University of Reading, UK, said the heat seen this summer was “extraordinary”.

Samantha Burgess, at the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, said: “The unprecedented temperatures for the time of year observed in September have broken records by an extraordinary amount. 2023 [is] on track to be the warmest year and about 1.4C above pre-industrial average temperatures. Two months out from [the UN climate conference] Cop28, the sense of urgency for ambitious climate action has never been more critical.”

The heat hit record levels within many countries too, including France, Germany, and Poland. The UK saw its joint hottest September on record, the Met Office reported, in data that goes back to 1884.

In Australia, climate scientist and author Joelle Gergis said: “Observations of Australia’s climate in September are shocking. Figures show where maximum temperatures were the highest on record, with many areas 3C to 5C above average. Rainfall deficits are primed for drought. Summer is going to be brutal.”

While human-caused global heating and El Niño are the biggest factors causing the record-breaking temperatures, other factors may be contributing small increases as well, Hausfather said. These include an uptick in the 11-year solar cycle, cuts in sun-blocking sulphur emissions from shipping and industry and a volcanic eruption in Tonga that released a large amount of water vapour, which traps heat.

In August, the Guardian asked 45 leading climate scientists from around the world about the record-breaking temperatures. They said that, despite it certainly feeling as if events had taken an alarming turn, the broad global heating trend seen to date was entirely in line with three decades of scientific predictions.

Increasingly severe weather impacts had also been long signposted by scientists, although the speed and intensity of the reality and the unexpected vulnerability of many populations scared some. The off-the-charts sea temperatures and Antarctic sea ice loss were seen as the most shocking events.

The scientists said that the exceptional events of 2023 could be a normal year in just a decade, unless there is a dramatic increase in climate action. The researchers overwhelmingly pointed to one action as critical: slashing the burning of fossil fuels down to zero.

One More Answer to a Frequently Asked Question

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You’ve probably never heard a discussion or seen an article about Biden voters. What makes them tick? Why do they support such a person? You have, however, heard lots of discussion and seen too many articles about the people who support the other guy. What are they thinking? What are they like? How can they support an individual who’s so obviously corrupt, egotistical, incompetent, and so on? You’ve probably asked yourself the same question.

There’s a simple explanation for why one group of voters is endlessly analyzed and the other isn’t. Biden voters aren’t mysterious to the people who run the news media. The other guy’s voters are. Weird is interesting.

Journalist Tom Nichols (who goes by @RadioFreeTom) offers an explanation I hadn’t heard before:

I wrote a whole book on why democracies become illiberal, but something about America after [the other guy’s] indictment really strikes me. Yes, MAGA world is about resentment and ignorance and displaced anger and all that. But it’s also a time that seems to me incredibly…juvenile.

[Him] hawking t-shirts with his mug shot is like some hair band selling posters of their guy getting busted for drugs or waggling his junk onstage or something. It’s beyond unserious. It’s child-like, the political version of Oppositional Defiance Disorder. And yet it’ll sell.

In the book, I argue that peace and affluence have been a big part of America’s slide: Life’s good and people don’t grasp that ghastly decisions can have disastrous effects – including on them. Because other adults make sure the nation functions even when the voters go nuts.

But maybe peace and affluence, in addition to making people bored out of their skulls, also prevents them developing into adults who make democracy possible. This is the world, as I wrote in the book, in which Huxley wins, not Orwell. (I am stealing Neil Postman’s point here.)

I suppose you could call all this *decadence*, but it’s not even gloriously decadent in that grandiose, Weimar, “Cabaret” kind of decadence. It’s just people putting on costumes and hats and being violent and then crying in front of judges when it all goes horribly wrong.

Childishness doesn’t make voters less dangerous to democracy. But even if [he] is defeated (again), this is a serious level of social dysfunction. You can’t sustain a superpower when nearly half of its citizens are mired in eternal petulant childhood.

And millions of our oldest citizens, people my age – [his] most reliable voting bloc – who should be our wisest among us, are the ones most like angry, irrational toddlers (much like [their leader] himself). This is incomprehensible to me, especially as I get older.

In another weird role-switch, these right-wingers are now like the dilettantish countercultural activists of the 60s: well-off would-be revolutionaries who really have no idea what they’re doing and merely want to act on ill-defined, self-actualizing, self-centered emotion.

Adults, however, know that there were people who came before us, and people who will come after us, and that “the moment” is not supreme. We have a civic inheritance, a trust, to hold and to protect, and then to pass on. This used to be central to the American idea. No longer.

All we can do is hope that the generations coming up can learn to embrace civic adulthood. I’m (mildly) optimistic – if we get past these next few elections. But how weird that so many adults now worship – and emulate – a choleric 77 year old toddler.

Please Ignore The Nonsense

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The usual suspects claim the Orange Menace (hereafter OM) shouldn’t be prosecuted for what he did to stay in office. They offer three main reasons, all of them bullshit:

  1. He’s being prosecuted for lying about the election.
  2. He actually believed he won the election.
  3. He relied on the advice of his lawyers

Unfortunately, these excuses are being treated with a degree of respect by people who should know better.

First, he’s not being prosecuted for telling lies.

As the indictment states, [OM] “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been … fraud during the election and that he had won”. He is being prosecuted for the illegal actions he took to change the result.

There are legal ways to challenge an election, both of which OM took advantage of. He demanded recounts. They didn’t change the result. He went to court. All of his lawsuits were rejected, even by judges he nominated.

But OM went much further than that. From Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post:

“The heart of our jurisprudence with respect to the First Amendment is the difference between regulating speech and regulating conduct,” Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), once a constitutional law professor, [explained]. “Everything charged in the indictment involves criminal conduct by [OM] and not the mere expression of political views….

Thus, the indictment doesn’t accuse [OM] of breaking the law by claiming the election was stolen. It asserts, instead, that … [he] pushed state officials to ignore the popular vote; that he organized “fraudulent slates of electors,” including some who were “tricked into participating,” and that he and his co-conspirators [pressured] the vice president to refuse to certify the election results.

Those actions were illegal and have nothing to do with the First Amendment right to free speech.

But what if [OM] truly believed he won the election? From Judd Legum of Popular Information:

[The Washington Post, Axios, CNN and The New York Times] are all “reporting” that, to convict [OM], Jack Smith has to prove [he] knew he was lying about the 2020 election. [His] lawyer is saying the same thing. And so is Fox.

The problem with this analysis is it’s completely wrong.

A successful prosecution does not hinge on what [he] BELIEVED about the 2020 election. If [he] is convicted, it will be based on his ACTIONS….

Creating a fake set of electors and then pressuring your VP to declare them valid is not one of your legal options. [Attorney Marc Elias] explained it this way: “I walk into a bank, and I think they are wrongfully holding my money. I think my balance is $5,000, and they think my balance is zero… That doesn’t excuse me from robbing the bank. I can’t pull out a gun and take the money”.

Smith spends time on evidence establishing [OM] knew he was lying to show [his] motivation. He is not required to prove motive under the law, but juries generally are looking for a motive. In this case, Smith is showing [OM] was trying to remain in power. But the media coverage is confusing a trial tactic with a legal requirement. Proving [OM] knew he was lying will be helpful to Smith, but it’s not central to his legal case. The coverage suggesting otherwise is wrong.

Finally, was the defendant simply relying on the advice of his lawyers?

One of the ways OM has successfully avoided prosecution in the past is that he’s insulated himself behind teams of lawyers and accountants. There is always somebody else to blame for whatever he did. Returning to that earlier example, your lawyer telling you it’s okay to rob a bank doesn’t make it so. You need to use your common sense. What happened in this case is that OM was desperate to overturn the election, so he looked for lawyers who’d help him, ignoring all the ones who wouldn’t. From Greg Sargent of The Washington Post:

The indictment contains lots of ammunition against this defense. For instance, it shows Pence repeatedly told [OM] he had no such authority. On one occasion, [OM] blithely suggested he would “prefer” to believe otherwise. On another, [OM] rebuked Pence for refusing to abuse his authority: “You’re too honest.”

It wasn’t just the Vice President who told OM the truth. His Attorney General and others in his administration told him the same thing. On top of that, judges, lawyers and law professors all over the country were saying there was no way to stop or pause the counting of the electoral votes on January 6, 2021. For example, from NBC News at the time:

A federal district court in Washington recently ruled against a last-ditch effort suit by [OM] supporters against Pence, Congress and the Electoral College that sought to stop the certification of Biden’s win.

The plaintiffs’ theory “lies somewhere between a willful misreading of the Constitution and fantasy,” a judge ruled Monday, denying the motion.

From Salon in December 2020:

“Pence’s constitutional role is to ‘open’ the certificates. That’s it,” said Harry Litman, a former Justice Department official and constitutional law expert at UCLA. “Not to certify. Not even technically to count. He has no way even to purport to change the count. It’d be like saying the Oscar presenters get to decide who wins best picture.”

“The idea that Pence is going to overturn the election in January is pure fantasy-land nonsense,” Justin Levitt, an election law expert at Loyola Marymount University, told Vice News.

From the right-wing National Review on January 5, 2021:

I’m starting to wonder if this is a gag: Like, in order to amuse himself, President [OM] is trying to see how far erstwhile “constitutional conservative” Republicans are willing to beclown themselves … Whatever it may be, it’s time to stop. It was actually time to stop a few weeks ago, but this has gotten so irrational it no longer rises even to the level of farce.

The president now says Vice President Pence has the unilateral authority to invalidate state electoral votes that he decides are fraudulent. That is a ridiculous claim. 

OM preferred to ignore a national chorus of legal experts and people with common sense who said he lost and there was nothing he could do about it. He preferred to work with a tiny minority willing to tell him what he wanted to hear. It’s no surprise that the leading members of that tiny minority are now known as his co-conspirators, numbers 1 through 6.

Let Justice Be Done

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Our former president has finally been charged with committing four felonies in order to remain in office after losing the 2020 election. The government has identified six co-conspirators who will presumably be charged at a later date. Charging the former president alone will allow the proceedings against him to go more quickly. He wasn’t charged with a crime like seditious conspiracy, no doubt because the other charges are easier to prove (and he didn’t personally break into the Capitol building). The case has been  assigned to Judge Tanya Chutkan, who was nominated by President Obama. The defendant is schedule to appear in court on August 3.

Special Counsel Jack Smith recommended that we read the 45-page indictment, which is available here.

What follows is the indictment’s introduction. It describes the three counts involving conspiracy (the other count is non-conspiratorial Obstruction of, and Attempt to Obstruct, an Official Proceeding—18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(2), 2, which is based on the same evidence).

1. The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020. The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election.

2. Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway—to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.

3. The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the
election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.

4. Shortly after election day, the Defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results. In so doing, the Defendant
perpetrated three criminal conspiracies:

a. A conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371;

b. A conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified (“the certification proceeding”), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k); and

c. A conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241. Each of these conspiracies—which built on the widespread mistrust the Defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud—targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election (“the federal government function’).

He’s Calling It the “John Roberts Two-Step”

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One thing about getting old is that you don’t often encounter new ideas. You’ve heard them before expressed one way or another. Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times is one of the best columnists writing today. Here he discusses an idea called “racecraft”:

In 2007, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion in Parents Involved v. Seattle School District No. 1, which struck down race-based “tiebreakers” in school admissions programs in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race,” Roberts famously wrote, “is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Last week, in his opinion for the majority in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended race-based affirmative action in college admissions, Roberts echoed his earlier self with a similar assertion which I also discussed in my column on Friday: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

Both lines encapsulate Roberts’s view that the Constitution is colorblind and sees no racial distinctions.

One thing I noticed, reading both opinions, is that while Roberts may mention “race,” “discrimination based on race” and “racial discrimination,” he doesn’t discuss racism. In both opinions, Roberts underpins his argument with the court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

“Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin,” the chief justice wrote in Parents Involved. Similarly, in Students for Fair Admissions, Roberts writes that in Brown, the court had finally determined that “The time for making distinctions based on race had passed.”

The issue here is that Brown v. Board of Education was not about states making distinctions based on race. The question before the court was whether state governments could use racial classifications to separate Black Americans from white Americans in order to deny rights to the former and extend privileges to the latter. The question, in other words, was whether racism was a legitimate state interest.

“Brown did not raise the issue of whether states could use race-conscious classifications to integrate schools,” wrote the legal scholar Joel K. Goldstein in a 2008 analysis and critique of Roberts’ opinion in Parents Involved. “With one pertinent exception, the briefs and oral arguments focused entirely on the way in which the government then used racial classifications — to segregate and demean blacks.”

I want to highlight Chief Justice Roberts’s avoidance of racism as a prime example of “racecraft,” the term coined by the historians Karen and Barbara Fields to describe the transmutation of a set of actions (racism) into a set of qualities or characteristics (race).

Racecraft, the Fieldses write in “Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in America,” “transforms racism, something an aggressor does, into race, something the target is, in a sleight of hand that is easy to miss.” They offer a useful and pertinent example:

Consider the statement “black Southerners were segregated because of their skin color”— a perfectly natural sentence to the ears of most Americans, who tend to overlook its weird causality. But in that sentence, segregation disappears as the doing of segregationists, and then, in a puff of smoke — paff — reappears as a trait of only one part of the segregated whole.

This, you might say, is the Roberts two-step. He takes racism, a system of subjugation and social control, and removes the racists. What’s left is the mark of racism, that is, race. A landmark case about the legitimacy of race hierarchy — Brown v. Board of Education — becomes, in Roberts’s hands, a case about the use of race in school placement.

To remove racism and racists from the equation is to pretend that there’s no social force to push against — no inequality to rectify. Instead, there is only a quality, race, that Roberts says the Constitution cannot recognize.

The result is a society that continues to reinforce and reconstitute these previous patterns of domination, except hierarchy is now hidden from law, and what is a feature of society becomes, instead, a quality of the people afflicted.

Unquote.

There may be other examples of this phenomenon. Discuss bad behavior but somehow make the subject something to do with the victims, not saying outright that it was the fault of the victims, but making something about the victims the subject. It’s an interesting and, to me anyway, new idea.