"The comment from the Feds is absurd. These are car-sized drones that have flown over New Jersey, New York, and military bases in Virginia."

"If the Feds know who is doing this, they should say so. If they don't know, they should say that. To say that they 'pose no threat,' but we can't tell you what they are is the height of bureaucratic arrogance."

That's the most sensible comment at the WaPo column "New Jersey needs to get a grip. But our drone defenses need work. There’s no need to panic about drones." The column — not the comment, the column — is by Max Boot.

And here's the statement from the Feds the commenter is reacting to: "We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus."

And then there's this:

Yes father, use grok to generate an image of the New Jersey drones delivering McDonalds to that fat slob Chris Christie.

Perfect, now post it on 𝕏 https://t.co/gvnetk4faA pic.twitter.com/JbRCvjRgDo

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 14, 2024

Is the biggest story in the world today the Postal Service?

That's how it looks in The Washington Post. The top left 2/3s of the home page:



You may wonder: What about Trump's Middle East deal? Isn't that the big news? Well, it is over there on the right-hand side under the heading "Opinion," the 4th item down, a column by Max Boot: "Despite the UAE-Israel deal, Trump will leave the Mideast a bigger mess than he found it."

It's easy to understand. Whatever happened, it's bad for Trump, and it's important to the extent that it's bad for Trump.

I see I have a tag "going Washington Postal." I'm adding it because it seems randomly appropriate and because I want to publish and click on it to see what it really is.

"So it was a shock on Monday afternoon to see myself attacked in National Review as, essentially, a traitor to the white race."

"'Max Boot Fans the Flames of Racial Hatred' was the headline of an article by John Hirschauer. This was a response to a Post column I had written last week taking aim at the 55 percent of whites who in a 2018 poll said that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minority groups.... In reply, Hirschauer labeled me one of 'the self-loathing whites' who has adopted 'the politics of self-hatred.' He accused me of 'speaking in … totalizing racial language' that 'is stoking the flames of race hatred.' So telling whites not to be racists is an incitement to race hatred? How Orwellian.... I have no idea what 'totalizing racial language' means; it’s the kind of cant that [National Review founder William F.] Buckley, a stickler for precise language, would have mocked. What I do know is that this article employed the language of 'race treason' against me. Yes, Hirschauer attacked white supremacists in passing but he also engaged in moral equivalency and implied that, by denouncing racism, I was driving whites into their arms. ('Boot sets up a Faustian choice for ‘white’ readers: Side with the white supremacists and their detestable program, or sell your political soul to Max Boot and become one of the self-loathing whites.') This is part of a rhetorical strategy also employed by Trump, who occasionally denounces white supremacists but more often promotes racism while insisting his critics are the real racists."

From "National Review’s ugly attack on me reflects the Trumpification of conservatism" by Max Boot (in WaPo).

"... your clearest signal for fake new[s]."

Putin puppets #CNN and Max Boot do Russia's bidding by destabilizing the U.S. with "Laundry List" Persuasion, your clearest signal for fake new. (If they had one good reason, that's all you would see.) pic.twitter.com/oIKCXXYjf8

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 15, 2019

Obstructing injustice.

A Twitter dialogue between Max Boot and Scott Adams:

Boot:

The White House is the one that’s doing the stonewalling. As I write today, Trump is imitating a tried and true authoritarian tactic—investigate the investigators—to escape accountability: https://wapo.st/2IUWtlb

Adams:

What was the alternative?

Boot:

The alternative is pretty simple: don’t obstruct justice. Let the lawful investigation proceed unimpeded. Uphold the oath of office. Defend the Constituon [sic].

Adams:

Obstructing justice would be bad. Obstructing INJUSTICE is why voters hired him. It's his job to know the difference, and he's showing his work. I appreciate his transparency on this. Presidents have freedom of speech too.

Ah! Now, I'm seeing that Adams is in the middle of a live Periscope. I'll just put this post up and watch this later when I can start at the beginning. I like this term "obstructing injustice," so let's see where Adams goes with it:

Scott Adams teaches you how “obstructing justice” is thinking past the sale. Plus Iran, NOrth Korea, and coffee. https://t.co/MUrxxwlfvP

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 22, 2018

ADDED: I'm going to read Boot's WaPo column, linked in the first tweet, because I really don't understand that investigating the investigators is "a tried and true authoritarian tactic." It seems to me that in an authoritarian governmental system, the leader controls the investigators, so how can they be investigated by any governmental authority that is in a position to impose consequences? You've only got private citizens — notably, journalists — trying to do investigations. The ability to investigate the investigators seems to me to be an attribute of a free and open society.

So, Boot's column begins:

Remember that old adage that a frog will jump out of a boiling pot but won’t notice if the temperature is slowly raised until it’s boiled alive? 

Well, that's not an "adage," but I know the analogy you're talking about. Thanks for letting me know up front that attention to accurate language isn't important to you. It would make more sense to call it a "fable," which is the term used at the Wikipedia article, "Boiling frog." I love Wikipedia. I'm abandoning the project of reading Boot's blather so I can dive into a delightful hot bath of Wikipedia:

The boiling frog is a fable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of threats that arise gradually.

While some 19th-century experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true if the heating is sufficiently gradual, according to contemporary biologists the premise is false: a frog that is gradually heated will jump out. Indeed, thermoregulation by changing location is a fundamentally necessary survival strategy for frogs and other ectotherms.

As part of advancing science, several experiments observing the reaction of frogs to slowly heated water took place in the 19th century. In 1869, while doing experiments searching for the location of the soul, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain removed will remain in slowly heated water, but an intact frog attempted to escape the water when it reached 25 °C.

I see good potential for metaphor, because it is kind of like America has had its brain removed. When did that happen? Pop culture, fake news, too much fixation on screens, drugs — sorry, I can't pursue that brain(ha ha)storm right now. But you see the idea. If we're the frog that doesn't jump out of the boiling water that means we've had our brain removed — the soul-search Friedrich Goltz ghoulishly figured that out for us. What would we do without German physiologists?

Anyway, there's more science detail at that Wikipedia article, and when I get back to Boot, I see he knows his "adage" about frogs is wrong:

It turns out that it just isn’t true. In fact, frogs will hop out when the temperature turns uncomfortable.

Then why start a column with that bullshit?

Which suggests that we may not be as smart as slimy green amphibians. 

Only if we don't jump out of slowly heating water.

President Trump is throwing one democratic norm after another into a big pot and rapidly raising the heat, and we’re too busy watching the royal wedding to notice. 

This metaphor is annoying me. Are the "democratic norms" supposed to be the frogs that won't jump out? They sound like ingredients being added to a soup, but what's bad about soup? Something that could be killed and that has the power to save itself needs to be in the pot. Are we in the pot, and are democratic norms being put in there with us? I think a metaphor should be abandoned if you can't get the moving parts right!

Boot proceeds to enumerate Trump's transgressions on "significant norms." The headings are: "Revealing intelligence sources," "Politically motivated prosecutions," "Mixing private and government business," "Foreign interference in U.S. elections," "Undermining the First Amendment."

Boot's point is that we're not getting upset enough. We should be jumping at these early transgressions, like the nonexistent frog.

Republicans approve of, or pretend not to notice, his flagrant misconduct, while Democrats are inured to it. The sheer number of outrages makes it hard to give each one the attention it deserves. But we must never – ever! – accept the unacceptable. Otherwise our democracy will be boiled alive.

But in real life, the frog does jump out when it gets too hot. The slow heating does not interfere with that capacity. Using the real-life analogy, we're not getting terribly upset yet because we don't think it's too hot yet, and we will be able to jump when we decide that it is. That last sentence forgets the science and screams at us to jump now because otherwise we'll be boiled alive. But that's alarmism. Frogs don't live like that, so why should we?

Boot wrote "we may not be as smart as slimy green amphibians," but maybe we are, and we don't fritter away our life's energy by abandoning one acceptably warm pool on the theory if it turns out to be a fatal boiling pot we will die.

By the way, here's another Wikipedia article about a reaction-to-heat metaphor, "Out of the frying pan into the fire."

University of Colorado appoints a "Visiting scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy."

Is this a good thing?

While [Steven Hayward's] presence will provide some additional viewpoint diversity on the Colorado campus, it also smacks of the sort of tokenism many on the Right condemn.  Peter Lawler sees the appointment as “conservative affirmative action” and Max Boot fears this sort of thing will encourage the further academic ghettoization of conservative thought.... Half of the country may have right-of-center views, but a single token is supposed to constitute balance?  How sad is it that a major university would have to create a position like this to ensure a minimal range of viewpoint diversity on campus.  Through all this, Hayward is keeping things in perspective.

"How to Win in Afghanistan We tried the 'offshore' strategy before. The result was 9/11."

Max Boot boots George Will.