Hadn’t thought of the Arkansas angle.

This guy seems upset that one of this nation’s standard-issue retarded nazis is a way-proud Arkansan who drapes a Razorback flag behind him whenever he films himself talking.

Apparently, this featherweight champ and all round flat earther – I mean all flat flat earther- “defile[s] the very name of ‘Arkansas'” when he shares his knowledge that the mass killings of children in this country are carried out by the deep state to make us think guns are dangerous, that Hitler was sent by God to kill dirty Jews who were going to make everyone gay, that Jesus is King, and that our greatest state by far is Arkansas.

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Well. We’ve followed the benighted state of Arkansas on this blog for years – a standard-issue brainless drunk sports obsessed southern wasteland – and it’s been on a self-defilement tear for decades. It really needs no help from some fascist clodpole, and he won’t have any effect on the state’s ranking cuz it’s already third from the bottom and it’s hard to get lower than that.

‘The Magnolia State was ranked 49th in U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 Best States rankings. The top ranked state was Washington, and Louisiana was ranked 50th. Arkansas clocked in at number 44, and Tennessee ranked 29th. Of the main categories cited, Mississippi finished dead last in health care, 49th in economy, and 48th in infrastructure.’

And now – ahem! – lemme tell you why yall should reelect me governor.

[A vicious national cabal made up of degenerate liberals] sees our progress on education and the economy and they want to stop it. You see, a successful, thriving, growing Mississippi does not work for them, not if it is also a God-fearing, family loving and truth-believing, hard-working conservative Mississippi … They want Mississippi to be the butt of their jokes …

‘Ms. Lake attacked the news media and campaigned on culture-war issues, barnstorming the state with … right-wing supporters, including Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, and Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri. … At a campaign rally just days before the election, Ms. Lake invited Wendy Rogers, a state lawmaker, on to the stage. Ms. Rogers was censured by the State Senate after giving a speech at a far-right conference with ties to white supremacy.’

Great cast of characters there, and I’m sure she would have won if she’d added John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell. Where were her campaign advisors?

‘Parents Auction AR-15 to Benefit Arkansas School Where 5 Were Killed in 1998 Shooting’

“We were looking for things that were new and exciting,” [one parent] said. “You can only buy so much cookie dough, cheesecake and wrapping paper. We were looking to be unique in our offerings the best we could.”

‘Three-star recruit’ translated into Arkansas is…

* possession of loaded  DPMS Panther Arms model AR-15 Rifle …

* possession of massive amounts of drugs…

* possession with intent to deliver.

 

“[University of Arkansas football coach Bobby] Petrino signed a new seven-year contract in December 2010 after completing his third regular season at Arkansas. The contract … was for an average of $3.53 million annually.”

Ah, but he’s costing them so much more than that.

Lawyers anticipating the severance deal already have stars in their eyes.

Fascinating ongoing story at Arkansas State about…

… what looks to me like a stealth effort on the part of high-ranking administrators there to turn ASU into their own personal for-profit online domain. Here’s the background on the quite astounding story of ASU’s former president – now a professor there as well as (until recently) the president and chairman of an online for-profit educational outfit – who, along with ASU’s interim chancellor, apparently tried to power through a takeover of the faculty for the business.

The faculty have been a bit slow to catch on, but have now passed a “resolution calling for a moratorium on any further involvement with Academic Partnerships until the partnership [can] be investigated…”

You can understand the ex-president’s eagerness, though. Online for-profit is SOOO much better than face-to-face non-profit, he just couldn’t wait to offer its blessings to the youngfolk.

There he is, at the very top of the state organization that protects Arkansans from medical fraud…

… and even though his name still emblazons the Arkansas State Medical Board website (he appears twice!), his apparent practice of billing the government – always at the severest level of illness – for patients he’s reportedly never seen has attracted the attention of the Attorney General.

Maybe update the web page? Maybe not so cool that the just-resigned CHAIR of your state’s medical regulator has all this time possibly been a bigtime Medicaid fraudster?

Only Senator Pat McKeister has the GUTS to go there!

Arkansas Proud!

Accidental Drowning, Fayetteville Style

A parochial school … baptized 100 students without permission from parents—some of whom were left angry by the surprise. “My daughter calls me from the school and says, ‘Mama, can you bring me some dry clothes? I got baptized today,’” the parent of an 11-year-old told the Fayetteville Observer. “I said, ‘WHAT?’” At least three parents complained to the Northwood Temple Academy principal, who said a handful of students were scheduled to receive the sacrament and the others “just began to respond to the presence of the Lord.” 

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The Honey, I Baptized the Kids! problem is more widespread than you might think.

‘The obscene wealth on display at the Yellowstone Club isn’t what draws Sharon and Tom. It’s the sense of normalcy this place brings them. “Other members simply aren’t impressed by what you’ve accomplished outside the club. People don’t need to put on airs.” [Tom] recounted seeing a nationally famous club member tying his own kid’s shoe. “There he was, bent over on one knee. Not his nanny nearby, but himself. It was unbelievable to see.”’

Unbelievable.

Wyoming, UD comes to think, is our most peculiar state. In 2013, it was our fifth richest. It’s bilious with billionaires, but also boasts plenty of brick and mortar industry.

It’s got guns up the wazoo: “Wyoming has, by far, the highest number of guns per [shot off] capita. Of Wyoming’s 581,075 people, there are 132,806 registered guns.”

Shot off? What’s UD mean?

Waaal, you know… all them guns….

In 2020, 181 Wyomingites killed themselves. That’s a rate of 31 deaths per 100,000 residents, up from 29.4 in 2019, the highest suicide rate in the nation. The state’s suicide rate has remained high for years…

Round these parts, people say Let a smile be your umbrella. In Wyoming, they say Let a Colt be your bolt.

Or, as they say at the NRA: Guns don’t kill people; people with guns kill themselves.

And here’s another peculiar Wyoming statistic: It’s almost smack-dab at the bottom of states with the lowest covid vaccination rates. Only some of our poorest states (Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi) rank lower than wealthy Wyoming. (“Wyoming is currently ranked 4th in the United States for its economic outlook.”) Ain’t dat something? I mean, when you put it all together: A gorgeous, well-off state with everything to live for, whose most noteworthy output is suicidal gun-hoarders who don’t give a shit about their health or yours. Paging Cormac McCarthy.

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And hey maybe UD finds all of this arresting because maybe she’s looking at the future. Where America’s cutting-edge, paranoid, venture capitalists go, there go I. There go all of us. To quote the title of that funny book about grammar: Eats, shoots, and leaves.

The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel: Nihilism.

It’s not – as Samuel Johnson claimed – patriotism. Months ago we got past whatever muck-sweat heavery the president thought might convey love of country to his rallies. We’re now into the final scenes (which, faithful UD readers know, I believe have a small but real chance of featuring executive self-slaughter), and these begin with institutional nihilism: All of our elections are rigged, including the one I won last time. Every operating part of America is bullshit: The law, the constitution, the FBI, the CIA: It’s all NOTHING. NOTHING! Nothing but global communist interstellar Soros machinations against me and you and there’s NOTHING we can do. None of it means anything. It’s pure murderous malignancy.

Here, Arkansas is the cutting edge. Got there a long time before everyone else.

So now the Republican party is worried that Republican voters will sit out the Georgia run-offs because why not? Why the hell not? Nothing matters. Nothing means anything. It’s all rigged. I don’t want to be a sucker.

Listen to Mitch McConnell lead his fellow Republican senators in singing the national anthem here.

So that’s the institutional final scene. We’re gonna get Trump’s personal nihilistic endgame pretty soon. Hold onto your hat.

Life of the Mind Update, from…

Mike Bianchi.

[Florida State University] decided to fire Willie Taggart after a year-and-a-half and pay him nearly $20 million NOT to coach for the four years remaining on his contract. That was followed up by the Arkansas Razorbacks firing Chad Morris in less than two years and having to pay him more than $10 million NOT to coach. This is on top of the $12 million in buyout money the Hogs are still paying their previously fired coach, Bret Bielema…

[W]hen did it become OK for public educational institutions to simply fritter away millions of dollars like this? Think about it: In what other profession could you cost your company $17 million over two years — which is essentially what Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek did by hiring and firing Morris — and keep your job? Can you believe Arkansas will actually end up paying $17 million for a coach who never won a conference game?…

Why, for example, did Tennessee feel the need to hire Jeremy Pruitt and give him a six-year contract worth nearly $4 million a year. Couldn’t the Vols have signed him Pruitt to, say, a four-year contract worth $2 million a year? …

Before hiring Pruitt, Tennessee fired its former coach Butch Jones and had to pay him an $8 million buyout. Why? Because Tennessee extended Jones’ contract after he went — wait for it! — 6-6 in his second season…

Why did the Florida Gators extend Jim McElwain’s contract in June 2017 and fire him four months later? When McElwain was hired away from Colorado State, the Gators had to pay most of McElwain’s $7.5 million contract buyout with his former team. When McElwain was fired, he negotiated another $7.5 million buyout settlement from the Gators. In other words, the Gators paid millions for McElwain both coming and going.

“[T]he impeachment scandal will not hurt Mr. Trump — and … Democrats who promise to make the lives of people like my neighbors better might actually help him.”

Her neighbors live in rural Arkansas, ground zero for nihilism, American-style. Their worst enemy is Elizabeth Warren, the Plan lady who not only thinks she can improve rural education and health care, but who thinks people in rural Arkansas want to improve them. Au contraire: they appear to like the chaotic destructionism of Trump. “[M]any here seem determined to get rid of the last institutions trying to help them.”

The intense hostility to political establishments of all kinds among what could be called “chaos voters” helps explain what Pew Research and others have found: a growing distrust among Republican voters of higher education as well as empirically based science, both of which are increasingly seen as allied with the liberal establishment.

As for caring whether Trump betrays Kurds and Ukrainians: “It’s an attitude that is against taxes, immigrants and government, but also against helping your neighbor.” If they’re not going to care about their neighbor, imagine how they feel about Kurds and Ukrainians.

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Matt Taibbi puts it like this:

Implicit in this campaign of bureaucratic dismantling has been the message that pandemonium is a price Trump is very willing to pay, in service of breaking the “disaster” of government. Many of his top appointees have been distinguished by their screw-it-all mentality.

  The world is ending, so fuck it, let’s party. As crazy as it is, it’s a seductive message for a country steeped in hate and pessimism. Democrats still don’t understand it.

Think of the final scenes of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. The world is ending (nuclear annihilation), so the inhabitants of the last city the fallout will reach stage endless insane suicidal car races, where drivers who have nothing to lose gun their engines until the final spectacular flame-out.

Leaving nuanced definitions to the philosophers, I would define nihilism as a combination of three basic elements: a refusal to hope for anything except the ultimate vindication of hopelessness; a rejection of all values, especially values widely regarded as sacrosanct (equality, posterity, and legality); and a glorification of destruction, including self-destruction—or as Walter Benjamin put it, “self-alienation” so extreme that humanity “can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure.” Nihilism is less passive and more perverse than simple despair. “Nihilism is not only despair and negation,” according to Albert Camus, “but, above all, the desire to despair and to negate.”

A nihilist is someone who dedicates himself to not giving a shit, who thinks all meanings are shit, and who yearns with all his heart for the “aesthetic pleasure” of seeing the shit hit the fan. Arguing with a nihilist is like intimidating a suicide bomber: The usual threats and enticement have no effect. I suspect that is part of the appeal for both: the facile transcendence of placing oneself beyond all powers of persuasion. A nihilist is above you and your persnickety arguments in the same way that Trump fancies himself above the law.

Another go at it:

[Evidence suggests a] significant share of Trump supporters are as nihilistic and destructive as Donald Trump himself, [which] supplies a sort of Occam’s-razor answer to all the questions about why they put up with him: His worst traits are a feature, not a bug, for those who take pleasure in chaos.

Democrats still don’t understand it, says Taibbi. Okay, so let’s zoom in a bit:

Self-destruction is apparently many Arkansans’ middle name. If they’re not panting piously after the end of days, they’re offing themselves with opiates, or putting one of their abundant guns to their heads. They make the Sex Pistols look like the Lennon Sisters. The Donald Trump Show is what they’re laughing at on tv while kissing their ass goodbye, exactly like their fellow end-stagers from states with similarly massive gun ownership/suicide rates (Montana, Alaska, Wyoming). We’re killing ourselves! But before we do, we’re voting Trump.

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And on that chaos thing. UD has always liked William Arrowsmith’s comment about an education in the humanities:

[The] humanities are largely Dionysiac or Titanic; they cannot be wholly grasped by the intellect; they must be suffered, felt, seen. This inexpressible turmoil of our animal emotional life is an experience of other chaos matched by our own chaos. We see the form and order not as pure and abstract but as something emerged from chaos, something which has suffered into being. The humanities are always caught up in the actual chaos of living, and they also emerge from that chaos. If they touch us at all, they touch us totally, for they speak to what we are too.

So, you know, distrust higher education all you like. But be aware that it’s trying to make some serious moves against your chaos, that its novels and poems both acknowledge the foundational reality, and exploit the generative energy, of that chaos as we seek to emerge from it, on occasion, into form and order. Into organized life.

‘After years of bond-financed stadium expansions, [the University of] Alabama will replace some student seating with a massive video board as part of a 2020 capital project.’

They really don’t get it, do they? Here’s an article about how people are abandoning football games in droves – even in Alabama (enjoy the photo of a recent game) – and Alabama thinks the solution is to take out seats and replace them with a massive screen incessantly screaming advertising in the faces of people there to watch football. Another important part of the solution is to sell booze so that already pretty obnoxious people in the stands will become much more so, driving the few families that still attend games way far away from the stadium.

When your school can’t think of anything else to do with money, and when it’s run by dumb guys, you get this result:

Moody’s rated the University of Arkansas’ athletic revenue bonds for stadium expansion Aa2 with a stable outlook in 2016, citing 200% revenue coverage of the debt service. Since then, Razorbacks football attendance has slumped. The university saw a dramatic drop in attendance in 2018, a 2-10 season that ranks competitively as the worst in the team’s history.

“Something has changed,” said … an Arkansas native. “In a state like Arkansas where there is no professional team, the Razorbacks are the major attraction. To see attendance down like that is tough. It could squeeze them a little bit in a very competitive conference.”

… The university’s Athletics Department in 2016 issued $25 million of tax-exempt and $90 million of taxable bonds to expand Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium by more than 4,000 seats to a capacity of 76,212. The once-rabid Razorbacks fans never came close to filling the stadium in six home games in 2018, hitting a maximum of 50,988 for the team’s loss to the University of North Texas.

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