"[N]o matter the direction of the tragedy, the end result is the same — the right grows angrier at the left, and the left grows angrier at the right...."

"This line of thinking leads in one direction — rationalizing extreme measures in response."

Writes David French in "There Are Monsters in Your Midst, Too" in the NYT.

My ellipsis makes the repetition of the word "direction" seem awkward, but I wanted to highlight directionality.

Since I'm quoting so little of that column, I'm expending one of my gift links on it so you can see the context. 

"And so on the one hand, we have the absolute radical pathological demoralization of young men. And then we have the insistence that although all that masculinity is toxic and patriarchal..."

"... that's precisely what young women should pursue. And so they pursue that in some ways, displacing young men, but more detrimentally for themselves, squandering their youth on service to the evil corporate world — bizarrely enough, given that it's a leftist trope — and the demolition of their, not only of their fertility, but the probability of their... participation in... the long-term partnership of marriage. So, I mean, you can hardly imagine a more toxic brew than that."

Said Jordan Peterson in his podcast talking to the NYT columnist David French. The episode is called "When Does Masculinity Become Toxic?" Here's the Podscribe link (for text + audio). 

The meaning of "And so they pursue that in some ways" might be a little difficult to catch, but it's clear in the context, that he means that women are out in the "evil corporate world" pursuing the kind of career success that they also associate with toxicity in the male.

The conversation continues into a Daily Wire episode, "The $20 Million Mistake Democrats Made with Young Men." You need a subscription for that. I've got one, but there's no transcript to quote, so... maybe a word about that later. Why $20 million?

"Under what theory of the constitution does a single marxist judge in San Francisco have the same executive power as the Commander-in-Chief elected by the whole nation to lead the executive branch?"

Tweet Stephen Miller, quoted by David French in "Trump Is Coming for Every Pillar of the State" (NYT). 

French continues:

As Miller put it in a press briefing last month, “The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president.” He is the only elected official who represents the whole of the American people, and he embodies the people’s general will....  

Trump and his team are furious at the federal judiciary, but they’re to blame for their own legal struggles. Trump has issued a host of poorly drafted executive orders. Trump’s administration has snatched people off the streets without adequate due process. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency is unilaterally wrecking agencies that were established by Congress, usurping Congress’s primacy in America’s constitutional structure.

It is not the judiciary’s fault that Trump has chosen to attack the constitutional order, and it is hardly the case that he’s losing only to liberal judges....

"There is certainly enough anger in the Democratic Party to create its own Tea Party. Democrats loathe Republicans..."

"... just as much as Republicans loathe Democrats, but there are important cultural differences between the parties that make a Democratic Tea Party less practical. For one thing, the Democratic turn toward more-educated voters means that the Tea Party’s anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism would be a poor fit for millions of Democrats.... Do Democrats think embracing Tea Party rage is the path back to power? Do they believe they can control that intense anger, once it’s unleashed?....  The Tea Party became a slave to its own rage. No fury was too great — no contempt was too deep — for the Democratic foe. And now we endure a presidency motivated by vengeance and spite. Opposition is necessary. Anger is natural. Courage is indispensable. But under no circumstances will we be better off if another Tea Party takes the political field."

Writes David French, in "The Last Thing Democrats Need Is Their Own Tea Party" (NYT).

"I also think it’s important to acknowledge that, as much as I detest Trump the man, there are sides of the MAGA movement that deserve respect."

"I don’t think of it as a collection of unadulterated bigots. Most Trump voters I know are decent people who don’t like being condescended to by a morally smug and self-serving elite that fails to see the many ways in which the federal government fails ordinary people. I also think Trump’s voters see things that too easily escape the notice of Trump’s haters, whether it was the farce of many of the Covid rules and restrictions or the double standards by which Trump’s opponents claim to be defending democracy while using every trick in the book to put him in prison."

Said Bret Stephens, in "A Second Trump Term? Three Conservative Columnists Unpack What Could Happen" (NYT). The other 2 columnists are Ross Douthat and David French.

Douthat invites French to say something nice about MAGA. French says:

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality."

Wrote C.S. Lewis, quoted by David French, in "Four Lessons From Nine Years of Being 'Never Trump'" (NYT).

That's a free-access link, so you can see for yourself what 4 lessons French learned.

But I liked the C.S. Lewis quote in the abstract. It's so abstract! The "highest reality," eh?

And now, this blog has a theme today: reality. This is only the second post of the day, but the first post was about a NYT column called "Could Eminem Snap Gen X Voters Back to Reality?"

Is there a sense — at the NYT and elsewhere — that reality is at stake, that it's out there, eluding us, and we need to struggle to get a grip on it, and we are losing?

I am reminded of Trump's saying — on the Joe Rogan podcast — that when he became President, "it was very surreal." But: "When I got shot, it wasn't surreal. That should have been surreal. When I was laying on the ground, I knew exactly what was going on. I knew exactly where I was hit.... I knew exactly what happened.... With the presidency, it was a very surreal experience.... And all of a sudden I'm standing in the White House, and it was very, very surreal...."

I am reminded of Elon Musk's "There's no truer test than courage under fire."

And: "Reality, what a concept!"

"Under traditional targeting principle... [the] pager attack... passes that basic test with flying colors.... It might be the most precise targeted strike [on] a military force embedded in a civilian population in the history of war.

Says David French, applying the United States's DOD Law of War Manual, in the new episode of the Advisory Opinions podcast, "The Legality of Israel’s Beeper Attack" (audio at transcript at Podscribe)(I've slightly edited the transcript to match the audio).

Under traditional targeting principles, which require necessity, distinction, and proportionality, necessity means: Is there a military need for this? Distinction means: Are you attacking only military targets? And proportional is: Are you using no more force than is necessary to accomplish your legitimate military aim?

This pager attack under that construct passes that basic test with flying colors.

"Emil Bove, a defense lawyer, is suggesting that the prosecutors, in their proposed jury instructions, has shifted their theory of the case."

"It sounds like he’s talking about the state election law that underlies the felony business records charges against Trump. Justice Merchan doesn’t seem to agree, but in any case, he says, the prosecution’s proposal for jury instructions holds no weight at the moment. It is only a proposal. 'Just relax,' Merchan tells the defense lawyer, as he continues to argue. Nothing, he signals, has been determined yet. Bove continues to argue. He can tell that the judge is frustrated, but it’s clear that Bove is, too. If he believes that the prosecution changed its theory of the case in these final weeks, it would help to explain why he’s irate."

From the NYT's Live Updates of the Trump trial (free access link).

How can it still not yet be determined what law defines the crime?! 

Is it possible that Justice Merchan said "Just relax" to the defense lawyer because he knows that, in the end, he will hold the prosecution to account for failing to define the crime? I know, it's much more likely that Merchan said "Just relax" because it's irritating to listen to an agitated lawyer, even when, as here, outrage is part of his argument.

ADDED: David French addresses this problem in "The Trump Trial Is Disturbing on So Many Levels" (NYT):

"There is a long and honorable history of civil disobedience in the United States, but true civil disobedience ultimately honors and respects the rule of law."

"In a 1965 appearance on 'Meet the Press,' the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described the principle perfectly: 'When one breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust, he must do it openly, he must do it cheerfully, he must do it lovingly, he must do it civilly — not uncivilly — and he must do it with a willingness to accept the penalty.' But what we’re seeing on a number of campuses isn’t free expression, nor is it civil disobedience. It’s outright lawlessness. No matter the frustration of campus activists or their desire to be heard, true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others. Indefinitely occupying a quad violates the rights of other speakers to use the same space. Relentless, loud protest violates the rights of students to sleep or study in peace. And when protests become truly threatening or intimidating, they can violate the civil rights of other students, especially if those students are targeted on the basis of their race, sex, color or national origin."

Writes David French, in "Colleges Have Gone off the Deep End. There Is a Way Out" (NYT).

"I’d been a part of the pro-life movement my entire adult life... But now I’m left wondering how much of the movement was truly real."

"How much was it really about protecting all human life? And were millions of ostensibly pro-life Americans happy with pro-life laws, only so long as they targeted 'them' and imposed no burden at all on 'us'?

Writes David French, in "The Great Hypocrisy of the Pro-Life Movement" (NYT). He's looking at the reaction to the Alabama Supreme Court decision that treated IVF embryos like in utero embryos under the state’s wrongful death statute.

Pro-lifers "caved, almost instantly, on a core philosophical element of the movement — the incalculable value of every human life no matter how small — and the movement is now standing by or even applauding as Trump is turning the Republican Party into a pro-choice party, one more moderate than the Democrats, but pro-choice still...."

"Why Did the Supreme Court Wait So Long to Decide to Set the Trump Criminal Immunity Case for Full Hearing and Argument?"

"It Likely Means No Trial for Trump on Election Subversion Before the Election."

Rick Hasen asks and speculates at Election Law Blog.

Hasen quotes the Supreme Court's order:

The Special Counsel’s request to treat the stay application as a petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, and that petition is granted limited to the following question: Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. Without expressing a view on the merits, this Court directs the Court of Appeals to continue withholding issuance of the mandate until the sending down of the judgment of this Court. The application for a stay is dismissed as moot.

The new episode of the Advisory Opinions podcast begins with a discussion of the cert grant, and co-host David French observes that the motion for a stay would have required the Court to opine on the likelihood of success on the merits. The Court avoided that by granting cert. 

The request to treat the stay application as a petition for a writ of certiorari came from Special Counsel and reflects the interest in speeding things up. The Court granted that request, but those who want speed wanted the cert grant denied. Now that cert is granted, the speed demons criticize any taking of time. The Court should be neutral and at least has self-interest in appearing neutral. It shouldn't be for or against speed — rushing or dragging its heels.

IN THE COMMENTS: Kevin surprises me with "Rushing or dragging? That cannot be allowed":

"Why is the political right so hostile to Ukraine?"

"It seems like the kind of freedom-fighting, Western-tilting country they’re supposed to adore."

Asks Gail Collins, in "The Conversation" at the NYT.

Her interlocutor, Bret Stephens, answers:

Our colleague David French offered what I think is the smartest answer to your question in a recent column. It comes down to this: general nuttiness connected to sundry Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden conspiracy theories, plus a belief that Putin (a former K.G.B. agent) somehow represents manly Christian values in the face of effeminate wokeness, plus a kind of George Costanza 'do the opposite' mentality in which whatever Biden is for, they must be against."

"The hosts seem to pride themselves on making [the podcast] 'Advisory Opinions' a venue for 'abject legal nerdery,' separate from partisan politics..."

"When the Colorado Supreme Court issued a ruling, in December, that blocked Trump from the Republican primary ballot, [Sarah] Isgur and [David] French convened an 'emergency pod' to discuss the case. French argued that the court was probably correct to disqualify Trump, in light of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that former officeholders who have 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion' after taking an oath of office are ineligible to serve. Isgur, by contrast, was wary. 'The whole point of the Fourteenth Amendment was to strip the states of power, because they had, y’know, not behaved well,' she said—the Amendment was ratified three years after the end of the Civil War. 'So the idea that we then empowered each state to decide who’s qualified to be on the ballot seems insane to me.' But both were dismayed by the idea that Republicans might be able to retaliate by disqualifying Biden, perhaps by claiming that he had failed to protect the country from invading immigrants. 'Give me an effing break,' French said during a recent episode, coming about as close as he ever does to cursing. Isgur reacted as if she had just unwrapped a thoughtful birthday gift. 'Wow,' she said. 'I got an "effing" from David!'"

Writes Kelefa Sanneh, in "Sarah Isgur’s Majority Report/On 'Advisory Opinions,' the lawyer and former Trump Administration spokesperson argues that the Supreme Court is good, even—or especially—in its current incarnation" (The New Yorker).

I have a tag already for David French. He's a NYT columnist. I'll make a tag for Sarah Isgur. I hadn't noticed her until this New Yorker profile came out, and now I've listened to a podcast and a half, and I intend to keep listening. Nice work! Listen to them here.

"Enough. It’s time to apply the plain language of the Constitution... without fear of the consequences. Republics are not maintained by cowardice...."

"You don’t have to be a lawyer to comprehend those words. You simply need some basic familiarity with American civics, the English language and a couple of common-sense rules of thumb. First, when interpreting the Constitution, text is king. If the text is clear enough, there is no need for historical analysis. You don’t need to know a special 'legal' version of the English language. Just apply the words on the page. Second, it’s crucial to understand that many of the Constitution’s provisions are intentionally antidemocratic.... Yes, it is undemocratic, exactly as it was intended to be...."

David French expounds on legal interpretation in the NYT, in "The Case for Disqualifying Trump Is Strong."

"For decades now, we’ve watched as campus administrators from coast to coast have constructed... a network of speech codes, bias response teams, safe spaces and glossaries of microaggressions..."

"... that are all designed to protect students from alleged emotional harm. But not all students. When, as a student at Harvard Law School, I was booed and hissed and told to 'go die' for articulating pro-life or other conservative views, exactly zero administrators cared about my feelings. Nor did it cross my mind to ask them for help. I was an adult. I could handle my classmates’ anger. Yet how sensitive are administrators to student feelings under other circumstances? I had to chuckle when I read my colleague Pamela Paul’s excellent column on the Columbia School of Social Work and she quoted a school glossary that uses the term 'folx.' Why spell the word with an 'x'? Because some apparently believe the letter 's' in 'folks' renders the term insufficiently inclusive. I kid you not...."The rule cannot be that Jews must endure free speech at its most painful, while favored campus constituencies enjoy the warmth of college administrators and the protection of campus speech codes.... "

Writes David French, in "What the University Presidents Got Right and Wrong About Antisemitic Speech" (NYT).

French concludes (and I agree): "[P]rotect students from harassment... But do not protect students from speech.... The answer to campus hypocrisy isn’t more censorship. It’s true liberty. Without that liberty, the hypocrisy will reign for decades more."

"Workism tells older Americans who might think otherwise that their job is core to who they are."

"Likewise, workism tells younger Americans that their job will define them. It is core to who they’re becoming. Read in this way, it is easy to see why older Americans are reluctant to simply 'step aside.' If they feel able... then the demand to leave is an attack on their essential identity...."

Writes David French in "The Hidden Moral Injury of ‘OK Boomer’" (NYT).

The wrong masculinity.

The photo, the headline, and the caption say it all, don't you think? Must we go on to read this thing? I've come this far without reading it. Why are we called to loathe this man, Josh Hawley, as he "gestures toward a crowd of Donald Trump supporters"? 

Well, Josh Hawley wrote a book called "Manhood," so he's asking for it and I'll give you a little of what French has to say:

What does a man want? A wife and children who are happy to see him at the end of the day?

Recently, Matt Walsh tweeted: 

All a man wants is to come home from a long day at work to a grateful wife and children who are glad to see him, and dinner cooking on the stove. This is literally all it takes to make a man happy. We are simple. Give us this and you will have given us nearly everything we need.

That prompted David French to write "Men Need Purpose More Than 'Respect'" (NYT). 

French ties Walsh's statement about the joy of family life to "the demand for respect," which, he tells us is "a hallmark of much right-wing discourse about masculinity." If it's "right-wing," most NYT readers are going to think, okay, then, it's bad, so just tell us why it is bad.

At first, French gives an answer that's like the answer I came up with when I was a teenager and my father let me know he wanted respect: "[A] demand for respect or honor should be conditioned on being respectable or honorable."

He continues:

"Snopes, however, was not content with performing its vital public service of debunking crazy rumors and easing childhood fears."

"It had pretensions to be something more. It took the cultural goodwill built up over years of truth-telling and decided to make a real difference. It kept fact-checking urban legends... but it also began fact-checking politicians and news sites, and conducting its own investigative reports... And that brings me to one of my favorite websites, the Babylon Bee. It’s distinctly conservative, it’s distinctly Christian, it’s very, very funny (especially if you’ve grown up as an Evangelical Christian), and it’s obviously, clearly satire.... Snopes has fact-checked whether Democrats demanded that 'Brett Kavanaugh submit to a DNA test to prove he’s not actually Hitler.' It’s fact-checked whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez repeatedly 'guessed "free" on TV show "The Price is Right,"' and whether Ilhan Omar actually asked, 'If Israel is so innocent, then why do they insist on being Jews?'...  [L]ast week Snopes... fact-checked an article called 'Georgia Lawmaker Claims Chick-Fil-A Employee Told Her To Go Back To Her Country, Later Clarifies He Actually Said "My Pleasure."'... [I]t questioned whether the article was satire, accusing the Bee of 'fanning the flames of a controversy' and 'muddying the details of a news story.'... [If Snopes] wants to serve its purpose, it must not use its remaining cultural power and its remaining commercial influence to target the satire that stings its allies. Hands off the Babylon Bee."

Writes David French in "Hands Off the Babylon Bee" (National Review).

First, let me disclose my bias. I loathe The Babylon Bee. I don't try to read it. I encounter it because Instapundit puts up the attention-getting headlines so I'm forced to read them and do the half-second-long mental work of seeing that it's just a joke and I never find the joke funny. It's always, oh, no... it's The Babylon Bee. It's like Instapundit is Rickrolling me. But David French says "it’s very, very funny." Not to me, it isn't. Admittedly, I did not grow up as an Evangelical Christian, but I don't know why that would make me more open to attaching nasty fake quotes like "If Israel is so innocent, then why do they insist on being Jews?" to a real name like Ilhan Omar.

It doesn't sound as though Snopes is confused about The Babylon Bee and thinks it's purporting to be a real news site. But even when you completely understand the format is satire, like The Onion, you believe that the satire relates to something real. You have to wonder what is the real thing that happened that this is a satire of. So, for example, in the case of "If Israel is so innocent, then why do they insist on being Jews?," you'd have to assume, if that's supposed to be funny, Ilhan Omar must have said some anti-Semitic things. The presentation of the quote as satire implies that there is something out there that is being satirized. You extrapolate.

So, in the case of the insist-on-being-Jews quote, Snopes tried to find the factual basis for the satire:

In this case, the website’s intent was to ridicule Omar’s reaction to escalating violence on the Gaza Strip (“The status quo of occupation and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unsustainable,” she tweeted, emphasizing the plight of Palestinians) by attributing barely coherent anti-Semitic quotes to her. Earlier in the year, Omar was accused by members of both parties of using “anti-Semitic tropes” in criticizing Israel’s influence over U.S. politics. She has made no public statements resembling those in the Babylon Bee article, however.

That is an unusual form of fact-checking, but it is real fact-checking. Snopes also fact-checks The Onion in the same way. For example, there's: "Did ICE Hurl a Pregnant Woman Over a Border Wall?/In June 2018, a piece of satire from 'The Onion' became more confusing to social media users":

The Onion is, of course, a satirical web site that was founded in newspaper form in 1988.

Readers’ mistaking The Onion's humorous material for real news is not uncommon on social media, as demonstrated by questions we’ve received from readers about warring cruise ships and a photograph of Cuban people clinging to the wings of Air Force One.

It's not that people believed the photograph that showed a crowd of people on the wings of Air Force One as it flew, but some readers imagined that something happened, that at least some Cubans clung to the wings of the plane while it was still on the ground.

It's not just this inference that something underlies satire, but that headlines get decontextualized in social media. This is what's I've found so irritating encountering The Babylon Bee at Instapundit. And, yes, I know that lately Instapundit includes some note that the quoted headline is satire — sometimes with a reference to Snopes but also with a nudge that it's awfully close to what's true. For example: "Note to Snopes: It’s the Babylon Bee, so this is satire — or is it?"

So, yeah, I'm defending Snopes. I don't see the problem with what it's doing. I'm sure it leans left, but those who are attacking it lean right. Websites have political leanings. Big deal. So what? That's not worth getting excited about. Who's doing anything wrong here? I don't see much of a problem anywhere. The Babylon Bee isn't very good, in my opinion, and I can't avoid it because it's constantly linked on Instapundit, and I'm not going to quit Instapundit, but I completely own that as my problem.

Linda Greenhouse has noticed "a meme in conservative media" that liberals are using the idea of the Supreme Court's "legitimacy" to flip John Roberts to the liberal side.

She says, in "Who Cares About the Supreme Court’s ‘Legitimacy’?" (NYT).

“There’s a wooing going on,” David French warned in National Review in March under the headline “The Temptation of John Roberts.” His focus was not the census case but abortion and the Mueller report. “According to this construct,” Mr. French wrote, “it’s Roberts the ideologue who would vote to restrict abortion rights. It’s Roberts the conservative who would back the Trump administration. But a chief justice who cared about the institution of the Supreme Court? Well, he guards Roe. He checks Trump.”

In The Wall Street Journal last month, under the headline “John Roberts’s ‘Illegitimate’ Court,” the newspaper’s editorial columnist, William McGurn, wrote: “For those not fluent in modern Beltway, let us translate: It’s a threat, aimed at John Roberts. If the chief justice does not produce the desired progressive outcome, the Roberts court will find itself attacked as institutionally illegitimate.” This week, The Journal’s editorial board took aim at the new development in the census case under the headline “Census Target: John Roberts.” “Whenever you read ‘legitimacy’ in a sentence about the court, you know it’s a political missile aimed directly at Chief Justice John Roberts.”...

[T]he steady flow of right-wing commentary mocking concerns about the Supreme Court’s legitimacy (and I readily admit to having added my voice to those concerns) leaves me with this thought: What about the other justices? Why is it assumed on the right that Chief Justice Roberts is the only conservative on the court who has its welfare in view and who worries about the loss of public confidence if the justices come to be seen as mere politicians in robes?

Maybe the question answers itself....

No, the question shouts out, I'm not the question!

And the "right-wing commentary" is not "mocking concerns about the Supreme Court’s legitimacy." Everyone on the Court is concerned about its "legitimacy," a concept that includes, among other things, a lot of fretting about whether the Court will be perceived as deserving the power it wields, which is, ironically, a very political concern.

"Legitimacy" is a category of rhetoric, and everyone uses it. The most frustrating thing for liberals is that non-lawyer people tend to think that the conservative approach to constitutional interpretation is the right way to do it and that the liberals seem to want to use the courts as an alternative to the legislative process.

The wooing of Chief Justice Roberts that Greenhouse quotes is an effort to get the legitimacy talk working in the liberal direction. It's not a new subject. It's a big, long, old conversation.