Andrew Sullivan on the Katzenjammer Kids. (No link.)

What is arguably the book’s most important claim — that liberalism is beset by an insuperable tension between a conservative mass public and an insular liberal elite — is never established with a single empirical study or even a simple piece of polling data…

In Deneen’s thinking, it is axiomatic that the central divide in Western politics is between the villainous liberal elite (the “few”) and the culturally conservative mass public (“the many”). The liberal elites wish to impose their cultural vision on society and attack the customs and traditions of ordinary people; the many, who are instinctively culturally conservative, have risen under the banner of leaders like Trump to oppose them.

Except how do we know that liberals really are “the few?”

Deneen doesn’t cite election or polling data to support his theory of a natural conservative majority. Trump has never won the popular vote while on the ballot; his party performed historically poorly in two midterm elections since his rise to power. Polling on the cultural issues Deneen so cares about, like same-sex marriage, often finds majority support for liberal positions.

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While reading the book, Beauchamp emailed Deneen asking what he thought of some of Beauchamp’s reactions to his arguments. Deneen completely refused to engage:

“I’m quite certain you’re unlikely to deviate from any conclusions you’ve already settled upon, regardless of what I might try to convey in response to any questions.”

Beauchamp sees in this refusal Deneen’s revolutionary commitment to “conflict” rather than conversation with the liberal enemy. UD sees it as far more insidious, the sort of snobby/nihilistic reaction you get from a person who left a position at Georgetown University because it’s not truly Catholic and “insulated” himself (to use a word Deneen constantly uses to characterize out of touch liberal elites) at the University of Notre Dame, and who – should God grant him long life – will eventually leave Notre Dame for Ave Maria University, and then Ave Maria for a pontifical campus in Rome within walking distance of the Vatican. It don’t get no more cluelessly elite than an intellectual shut-in uniquely possessed of the truth.

The garden seems so much about tending, weeding, selecting, digging, watering, trimming, transplanting, gazing… Then some neighbors come over for lunch and you realize wait I can do fresh flowers myself! They’re right out there!

SECULAR = PROSTITUTE

Something very strange and interesting happened at the hair salon today. A woman came in with head scarves and shawls for sale. One of the salon’s stylists jokingly told her that people don’t buy scarves anymore, that it is no longer profitable and that she should change her job. In response, the woman said that was not true and that certain people are trying to promote secularism and prostitution in society. We were all stunned, but nobody said anything to her.

XXXX

One officer told a teenage girl to move and stand somewhere else. The young girl looked at him coldly and said, “Are we bothering you?” Another guy came and said to the policeman, “Reza, let it go,” and took him away. I looked at the young girl and blew her a kiss. She blew a kiss back.

BEAUTIFUL

 Now we can eat in restaurants without wearing the hijab, and not a single person says, “Madam, put your hijab back on.” The university security no longer pesters students about their attire. People don’t defend this regime in classes anymore. It doesn’t matter that we don’t protest in the streets. People are kinder and look out for one another every day. If a guard or a security person bothers a student, everyone will come to the rescue. I think it’s beautiful.

BEAUTIFUL

There was one beautiful girl with short blond hair. At the start of the uprising, women were cutting off their hair as an act of protest and a sign of mourning. Seeing her got me emotional. For years we had fantasized about the day we would take off our scarves and let the wind blow through our hair. But now that we can be unveiled, we no longer have our long hair. We cut it for that very basic freedom. Our dreams are always one step ahead of us.

COOL

Today I was talking to my family about how much people check you out in Iran and how much time you spend thinking about what to wear. It feels like you’re under constant surveillance. But I’ve noticed a change in attitude among men. Before this movement, if I went out with my red hair showing or wearing a cool outfit, some men would follow or harass me. Cars would slow down and honk their horns. Now we go out without hijab, we wear what we want and men don’t say anything. They nod in approval. They smile.

THEOCRATS NEVER LEARN

A Twitter friend posted something interesting. Until four or five years ago, he wrote, he never missed a single prayer, but now every time he hears the call to prayer, he starts cursing. Many people around me are turning away from Islam. Some religious families have stopped practicing and even asked the women in their families to take off their hijabs. What will happen to those who no longer pray and are irritated by the call to prayer? Or those who even make fun of religion? How are they going to feel once their anger has subsided? What will happen when people are no longer humiliated and threatened in the name of Islam? When religion is merely a matter of the heart?

… Never in my life have I been so eager for a day to come. The government has announced that as of tomorrow, women cannot appear in public without a hijab, and those who do will be dealt with brutally. The problem is that they cannot force us anymore. I can’t wait for tomorrow.

… The number of hijabless women is increasing by the day. Boys are coming out with shorts now, too. People boycott stores that don’t offer services to unveiled women. The shawls that women used to have around their necks in case they were spotted by security forces are now in the back of wardrobes. Short shirts are replacing long coats. Skirts are replacing pants. Short pants are replacing long ones. There is more and more unity. People have the upper hand. The other side is nothing but bluffs.

… A  few teenage girls with long hair hanging over their shoulders were standing [near me,] taking selfies in the mirror, without the hijab. It made me laugh. I rejoiced at their beauty and courage, in their simple and harmless way of exclaiming, “I exist!” The government is not afraid of women’s hair or the length of their skirts. They are afraid of our existence.

Set a mousetrap, catch a mammoth.

It all started innocently enough; the diligent staff at Seeger sought to end the practice of sanitizer theft by installing cameras.

The cameras right away picked up a Penn State professor fucking his dog.

Around 8 p.m. the following day, the camera captured multiple brief videos that allegedly showed a man later identified as [Themis] Matsoukas — who was naked, except for a ski mask, wrist watch, boots and backpack — masturbating near the women’s restroom and then engaging in a sexual act with a dog. The videos also showed that Matsoukas appeared to be recording himself with an iPad.

… Owners of two private camps surrounded by Rothrock also contacted state forest staff when they discovered images from their trail cameras of a man who was nude from the waist down, a ranger wrote. The six photos dated back as far as 2014 and investigators identified Matsoukas as the man in each, according to the affidavit.

Matsoukas again appeared on the DCNR trail camera on May 16 and he was identified by his vehicle registration.

Investigators executed a search warrant for Matsoukas’s State College-area home on June 9 and found an iPad, backpack, ski mask, watch and boots, all of which appeared to match those observed in the video. A dog at the home also had identical characteristics of the one in the video …

Matsoukas allegedly denied having the items when investigators first arrived, but then became upset and said “I do it to blow off steam.”

It’s not quite Sandusky in the showers, but Matsoukas in the park will no doubt take its own small place in the history of the school…

UD‘s wondering about that ski mask… You’re going to the trouble of repeatedly taking your sex life out of the privacy of your home and into a big public park (“Matsoukas’s location was within viewing distance of a road frequently used by visitors to the Alan Seeger picnic area, leased camps, Penn Roosevelt State Park and the Greenwood Fire Tower”) because (I guess) the risk of discovery heightens your excitement. Why then the ski mask? Do you use it at home too because you’re ashamed of what you’re doing? Surely the dog harbors no doubt of your identity.

You don’t pay any attention to Hastings, Nebraska. Hell, you don’t pay any attention to Nebraska. But it’s itty bitty news stories like this one out of Hastings that tell you what’s going on in gun-blast USA.

Time was a punk revving his car a million miles an hour up and down the street where he lives would respond to complaints about that behavior by spitting on complainants or kicking the air and saying fuck you. Now, however:

Anthony Copley, 20, pulled a rifle on one of his neighbors, threatening to kill them.

The dispute came after one of the neighbors complained about Copley speeding through the residential area.

Police arrived on scene and arrested Copley for terroristic threats and use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony.

“Terroristic threats” is a new one; I guess it allows the court to increase jail time. But anyway, the wee lad no doubt owns lots of big guns and this is no doubt far from the first time he’s pulled the rifle he has on him at all times and stuck it in the face of someone bold enough to confront him about his behavior.

So this describes the new normal inside the blast furnace: Terrifyingly, terroristically, no place in America is safe from a rifle in your face because no place in America is without guns in everyone’s hands. You always have to assume that any complaint you make to any stranger or neighbor under any circumstance could eventuate in a rifle in your face.

Every locality in America has tons of stupid angry assholes like Anthony Copley, and almost every asshole has a rifle. Certain states – Alaska, Wyoming, Louisiana, Montana, New Mexico, Mississippi, Alabama – pretty much guarantee you’ll get a rifle in your face at some point. Everybody’s got guns and I guess everybody’s an asshole in those states. Enter at your own risk.

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And yet our bloodiest gunniest states, like Texas, absolutely refuse to blame all the guns for all the blood. Too dumb to grasp correlation, they cannot see that the gunniest states are, overwhelmingly, the bloodiest states. So here’s the poor desperate mayor of Bryan, Texas begging citizens to help him at least slow the gun bloodbath.

“If you see something, report it. If you know something, report it. The problems we are having right now is with youth with guns. It’s not the guns that are bad, it’s the person holding the gun, pulling the trigger,” [Bobby] Gutierrez said. “Please, I’m asking on behalf of our council here. Do your part as well and report and make sure the police aren’t there by themselves to do this by themselves cause if everyone is there during a shooting in the middle of a park, and no one sees anything, and no one’s giving them anything, they can’t do their job.”

It’s not the guns that are bad, folks! It’s the person pulling the trigger. Plus we have a moral issue with all the people standing around watching a shooting in the middle of a park who don’t say anything to the cops about what they saw.

Wonder why witnesses don’t talk. Wonder why blast-furnace states have large populations of silent terrorized people too afraid of all the assholes with guns even to give police a description of someone depraved enough to shoot guns in a public park.

“The person holding the gun” has always lived in Texas; assholes are always around. What’s changed is exactly the number, the normalization, the open carry, and the ease of purchase, of guns. What’s changed is the breakdown of civility and the emergence of paranoia in regard to all other people.

Sing it.

Your arraignment’s today
I don’t know if it’s sunny or gray
For I only have eyes for you

The judge sits on high
But I can’t see a thing but your tie
For I only have eyes for you

I don’t know if we’re in a garden

Or on a crowded avenue

You are here and so am I
Maybe millions of people go by
But they all disappear from view

And I only have eyes for you

Huh? UD‘s colleague Jonathan Turley (who, you recall, “wants one boy to have many girlies,”) says a funny thing.

Plenty of people, including Mike Pence, are now openly worrying that harm may indeed have occurred; and as to motive: Scads of responsible onlookers have no trouble wondering out loud whether an established anti-democrat with a striking fondness for dictators and a real bad sore spot over losing an election might be tempted to share valuable secrets.

And not to pile on, but: Trump’s mother was not only born in the Outer Hebrides but grew up speaking only Gaelic! A lot of people are saying that Trump himself is actually Scottish and holds no allegiance to the United States. Birth certificates can be faked, just the way the FBI planted hundreds of boxes of fake documents in Trump’s bathroom.

I’m not necessarily saying his not even holding American citizenship is true; it’s only that a lot of people are saying it is true but the deep state won’t look into it because of the power of the Scots lobby.

Even without influence peddling, there’s a lot of troubling evidence (“It’s great to be home”?) here.

How Are Things in Mar-a-Lago?

Thirty loos in Mar-a-Lago
Or is the number thirty-three?
It's a security farrago
Where our guests are wont to pee.

So we ask each crapping MAGA
While you're crapping, look away
For the boxes by your caca
Vital secrets could betray.

A feminist activist, who has been arrested since the protests began but is out on bail, told the BBC: “From what I have seen in the past few months, women will not surrender. Women seem to be unfazed by these new threats.”

So far the cat wants only to watch as UD gardens; so far it has managed to stay clear of UD‘s dog. Eventually it will creep up and push its face against my leg. But so far it’s only about watching.

This is the nature of bathrooms: They are inherently intimate and embarrassing places. I have always regarded the human acts that occur behind their doors to be the great equalizer, a moment of parity for our species. There, every king and queen, every president, every rock star, every billionaire who has been to space and the rest of us mere mortals behave in the exact same, unspeakably disgusting human way. They are one of the places we are most vulnerable; this is why so many of them have locks. The chandelier hanging in [Donald] Trump’s toilet was his dynasty in a microcosm: something opulent and gaudy, a caricature of wealth that screamed for our attention, while hoping we would not notice any potentially dirty deeds happening below.

Deja Taylor admitted to lying on a federal form about her drug use, which would have barred her from owning a firearm, when she purchased the gun [her six year old son] used [to shoot his teacher]. Documents filed with the plea also appeared to undercut Taylor’s claim that the gun was safely stored, asserting that investigators found no lockbox or trigger lock while searching homes where she stayed. She is still facing state charges of child neglect and recklessly storing a firearm so a child could gain access to it.

Wonder why your kid’s so fucked up he’s shooting people with your gun at the age of six. Wonder why his public school system kept accommodating you and the shooter. Wonder why you didn’t give a shit when drugs messed you up so badly you left your gun lying around. Wonder why you still have custody of the shooter. He’s young enough that with other people raising him he might not, at the age of eighteen, spend his life in prison after killing a bunch of people.

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With one thing and another, she’ll get, maybe, one year in jail. During which, with luck, her son will benefit from being in the care of a non-negligent non-liar.

His last words.

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The tributes start pouring in.

… leads us, at the end of this year’s GP Musicale, in a Take Me Out to the Ballgame singalong.

That’s the organizer/piano accompanist, Sue Petito, in the foreground.

UD sang You’ve Got a Friend in Me with the Garrett Park Singers.

UD is a Randy Newman fanatic, but doesn’t like that particular song. Oh well. You do things for the good of the group.