Oh about those laws being faithfully executed…

Trump’s fascists are storming Congress.

Capitol Police are ordering two House offices to be evacuated as hundreds of Trump supporters stormed barricades around the building.

Pence is disappointing The Loser. Sad!

Mike Pence has released a letter announcing that he will not attempt to block the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory today.

Citing his constitutional obligations, Pence writes that the vice-president does not have the “unilateral authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted”.

“Our Founders were deeply skeptical of concentrations of power and created a Republic based on separation of powers and checks and balances,” Pence said.

It would be nice if Pence had made that point before the last two weeks of Trump’s reign of terror.

Donald Trump has repeatedly pressured Pence to try to block Congress from finalizing Biden’s victory, even though there is no precedent for doing so.

The president said moments ago at the “March to Save America” rally in Washington, “Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our constitution.”

Funny thing, so is Trump, and he hasn’t been doing it. At all. He’s been counter-doing it. He’s supposed to see that the laws are faithfully executed, and instead he’s been smashing as many as he can.

Philosophy in action.

I’m not a philosopher, so I get to think it does have some bearing. I get to think that and I do think that: I think that the fact that people like Oseroff are doing things like checking to see whether specific individuals have signed an open letter bullying an individual woman colleague is in fact one reason to be very wary about signing that letter.

I think the fact that people like him – especially men like him – do this kind of crap is a sign that there’s something amiss with the whole thing – the issue, the activism, the movement, the campaign, the whatever it is.

The state of this.

Just look at that. Now they’re hunting around to check on WHAT COMMONISST FAGGOT TRAITOR TERF has failed to sign. They’re drawing up A List of People Who Need To Have Signed Because We Suspect Them and then checking the list name by name – have YOU signed the letter Condemning The Witch? And have you, and you, and you?

And, as many have pointed out, it’s pretty striking to see a philosophy academic call it “fussy” to think the facts claimed in the letter attacking a woman and a colleague should be accurate.

It’s knife-edge, but for now…Warnock won and Ossoff is claiming the win.

Democrat Jon Ossoff — who as of 9 a.m. ET Wednesday leads Republican David Perdue by about 16,000 votes in the Georgia runoff that could give Democrats control of the U.S. Senate — claimed victory Wednesday. The Associated Press, which NPR relies on for its results, has not yet called the contest.

Perdue hasn’t conceded.

Tentative celebrations.

A man redefining feminism for us, in such a way that it includes him and doesn’t include feminist women.

As if the social/historical realities had nothing to do with the physical (and, yes, anatomical) ones.

Always the same slogans where an argument should be, always the childish catastrophizing. It’s not cute when Trump does it, why would it be cute when trans activists do it?

I would love to know exactly how kylo knows she/he suffers violence “as a direct result of Stock’s arguments.” How would someone know that? I suppose the violence-source could shout Stock’s name while punching, but that seems pretty god damn unlikely, and short of that – what?

Nothing, which is why it’s wise to be careful about saying things like that, i.e. it’s wise to NOT SAY THEM. It’s stupid, it’s catastrophizing, it’s obviously not something a person could know. Saying it while claiming to be philosophy-backgrounded is a rooky error.

Also, no one is debating anyone’s existence. If there is a particular anyone, that anyone exists. No one is debating whether or not the person who composed that tweets. The debate is over description, and self-description, not existence.

Also no one is debating whether or not trans people are human beings.

There again – how does she/he know the macro- and micro-aggressions are a direct result of Stock’s work? Again I think it’s highly unlikely that anyone footnotes aggressions citing Stock as their source.

Also, speaking of micro-aggressions, there’s calling him “Nigel,” there’s the eye roll emoji, there’s the smirk emoji.

How not to persuade anyone of anything.

The Seattle National Weather Service people get great photos, on account of how their building is a few yards away from Lake Washington (which is the eastern boundary of Seattle).

Oh dear. As many people predicted but Trump apparently forgot to consider, he can’t go bopping off to Scotland for some golf because there’s a wee pandemic on.

US President Donald Trump — just like anyone from outside the country — would not be welcome in Scotland at the moment due to coronavirus-related restrictions, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Tuesday.

Sturgeon was asked during a news conference about unconfirmed Scottish media speculation that Trump could be planning a trip to one of his golf courses in Scotland around the time of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20.

The White House is very indignant over these tyrannical rumors.

“Anonymous sources who claim to know what the President is or is not considering have no idea. When President Trump has an announcement about his plans for January 20 he will let you know,” White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere told CNN on Tuesday of the Scottish media speculation.

But he might lie. We can’t just wait politely for Trump to tell us what’s what, because we know he lies, and conceals, and lies some more, and makes shit up. Given what Trump is and how he carries on, we do need the press to seek independent information about his doings and plans. It’s not wrong of the press to do that. It is wrong of Trump to tell such copious and wild lies.

On Monday, Sturgeon ordered most of Scotland into a harsh new lockdown for the rest of January, as Covid-19 cases and deaths spike across the United Kingdom. The order imposes a legal requirement on Scottish residents to stay at home except for essential purposes, including caring responsibilities, essential shopping, essential exercise and being part of an extended household.

Essential exercise is going for a brisk walk, not riding a golf cart around a course.

“I have no idea what Donald Trump’s travel plans are,” Sturgeon responded. “You’ll be glad to know I hope and expect … that the travel plan that he immediately has is to exit the White House. But beyond that I don’t know.”

“We are not allowing people to come into Scotland without an essential purpose right now. And that would apply to him just as it applies to anybody else,” she added.

“Coming to play golf is not what I would consider to be an essential purpose.”

Oh but the essential purpose is not the golf, it’s the avoiding arrest.

Misogynist philosophy bro strikes again.

Womanphobia on the other hand will be firmly ignored on pain of further punishment from Jonathan Ichikawa.

The Letter:

We are professional academic philosophers committed to the inclusion and acceptance of trans and gender non-conforming people, both in the public at large, and within philosophy in particular. We write to affirm our commitment to developing a more inclusive environment, disavowing the use of professional and cultural authority to further gendered oppression.

So we’re supposed to think that feminist women are “using professional and cultural authority to further gendered oppression.” Meaning what? Feminist women are bullying men? That’s what he’s saying?

Last week the UK’s Conservative government designated Kathleen Stock, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sussex, and a prominent critic of trans-inclusive stances and policies, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. This award was ostensibly given for services to higher education. Stock is best-known in recent years for her trans-exclusionary public and academic discourse on sex and gender, especially for opposition to the UK Gender Recognition Act and the importance of self-identification to establish gender identity, and for advocating that trans women should be excluded from places like women’s locker rooms or shelters. She used the occasion of her OBE award to post on Twitter, calling for UK universities to end their association with Stonewall, the prominent LGBTQ+ rights charity, describing its trans-inclusive stance as a threat to free speech.

This is such shabby dishonest manipulation, especially shabby coming from philosophers. The dishonesty is using “exclusion” to mean not counting men as women, and “inclusion” to mean counting men as women, and not just women but women who are vastly more oppressed and subordinated and subject to violence than actual women. That’s just a silly way to use the words – silly but also malicious and destructive. It’s exactly comparable to telling black people to “include” white people as black people if they demand it. That’s not a reasonable or fair way to define “inclusion.”

And then the “importance of self-identification to establish gender identity” bit – well sure it’s important to people who want to perpetrate the fraud, but the rest of us don’t have to cheer them on. The reality is that “self-identification” can’t “establish” that a man is a woman because that’s how he self-identifies. Again the claim is just silly, and also malicious and destructive and strikingly misogynist.

There’s more in the same familiar vein.

Interesting…

The murk surrounding Donald Trump’s likely whereabouts on his last day as president has thickened considerably with news that an official plane he has used in the past is due to fly to Scotland the day before Joe Biden’s inauguration.

…

Scotland’s Sunday Post has reported that Prestwick airport, near Trump’s Turnberry golf course resort, has been told to expect a US military Boeing 757 that has occasionally been used by Trump, on 19 January.

He’s more than stupid enough to think he’ll be able to order up the plane again a few days or weeks later. He’s also more than stupid enough to think rules about travel during the pandemic don’t apply to him.

O…..kay.

…the American people – regular people that are out there working every day, hard-working Americans – they’re getting trampled by a system that is rigged against them.

So it’s the Democrats who grind the faces of the poor, and the Republicans who have their interests at heart. (Mind you, the Democrats do very little more than Republicans to help working people, but that’s partly because they keep having to claw back a little of the ground Republicans have grabbed.)

The other day I saw a bit of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession, and stared with the usual surprise. The things people can convince themselves of: they surprise me.

Let’s see:

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Does it leave you reeling? It did me.

Oh I see, only “the black race” can put up with being in the tropical sun. Ok well a few questions occur to me. One, what about all the members of the white race who lived there too? They weren’t all rich, they didn’t all own slaves, they couldn’t all stay inside when it was hot. How is it that they could put up with it?

Two, even if that were true and made sense, it most certainly doesn’t follow that therefore the answer is to force members of the black race to do backbreaking work from dawn to dusk FOR NO PAY and under threat of being whipped or worse. It doesn’t follow that the answer is to decide white people get to own black people and force them to do hard dangerous exhausting work for the profit of those white people.

Three, even if the products have become necessities of the world, it doesn’t follow that plantation-havers can’t provide them by paying workers a salary in the normal way.

It boils down to saying “We’re making a good thing (for us) out of this system of forcing other people to do our work and you can’t stop us.”

Another step into the sunshine of utopia: we now get to know what pronouns courtroom lawyers “use.” Well, we don’t, but the lucky people of British Columbia do.

In an effort to be more inclusive of transgender people, the Provincial Court of B.C. has created a new policy asking lawyers to provide pronouns when introducing themselves and their clients in court.

While some lawyers have already started including pronouns in their introductions, the court will now expect everyone to share how they wish to be referred to.

In a press release, the provincial court provided an example of such an introduction: “My name is Ms. Jane Lee, spelled L-E-E. I use she/her pronouns. I am the lawyer for Mx. Joe Carter who uses they/them pronouns.” (Mx. is a gender-neutral title.)

The stupidity kind of takes my breath away. Talk of “using” pronouns is gibberish anyway, and likely to be incomprehensible to many of the people who will hear such an introduction. “Using” pronouns is saying them yourself, it’s not telling other people which ones to say when talking about you. That’s not what “use” means.

Besides which people are there to pay attention and make important decisions. Pointless distractions are pointless distractions.

The court said the policy change will improve the experiences of gender diverse people in the legal system and would help avoid confusion and the need for corrections when someone is misgendered.

Oh yes, I’m sure that’s going to help avoid all confusion.

Wednesday’s policy change is a step in the right direction, according to barbara findlay, a queer feminist lawyer with more than four decades of experience in B.C. courts who does not capitalize her name.

I DON’T CARE. I don’t care what queer blah blah does with her its their howloo name. Nobody cares, really, but some people pretend to. In grown up world we don’t spend our time finding out about the little quirks of strangers, because we don’t have time or attention or energy to spare for such a footling pursuit.

Hindu nationalists are still trying to bully the much-admired historian Romila Thapar.

Romila Thapar is the preeminent historian of ancient India, an octogenarian feted the world over for her scholarship excavating answers to questions at the heart of the country’s past. She holds honorary doctorates from top universities including Oxford, is the recipient of the Kluge Prize — akin to the Nobel in social sciences — and has lectured at colleges across the world.

All this makes her a fine target for religious fanatics.

At the age of 89, Thapar is the subject of attacks by supporters of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, who view her as an opponent to be discredited.

“In the early days, I used to get a little upset,” she said. Accusations of ignorance about ancient Indian history quickly devolve into “pornographic and sexist” remarks. “But it’s happened so frequently and regularly that it doesn’t distress me anymore,” she said.

…

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pursuing an agenda that emphasizes Hindu primacy in India — a vast, multireligious democracy founded on secular ideals. History is a key part of that vision.

For Hindu nationalists, India’s past consists of a glorious Hindu civilization followed by centuries of Muslim rule that Modi has described as a thousand years of “slavery.”

Thapar considers such assertions both simplistic and incorrect. Based on extensive research of Sanskrit and Prakrit texts and drawing upon archaeological data, she presents a more complex picture of Indian history. Her research and writings undermines the ruling party’s efforts to project a unified Hindu tradition stretching back thousands of years and to paint Muslim rulers of India as nothing more than invaders or tyrants.

This all too familiar brand of murderous bullshit is a powerful reason for thinking the very idea of a god or gods is absurd. What kind of god or gods would arrange things this way? With centuries upon centuries of inter-religious hatred and violence? Only a sadistic kind, in which case let’s stop worshiping them.

Thapar said attempts to humiliate her for her work have come from even trusted institutions. In 2019, Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, where Thapar spent decades teaching, sent her a letter asking her to submit her curriculum vitae so officials could “review” her status as an emeritus professor, an honorary title normally given for life.

That’s grotesque, and disgusting.

(She didn’t comply, and the university dropped the “review” plan.)

Thapar and others said the incident is reflective of declining academic freedom as Modi’s party has sought to seize control of progressive, left-leaning institutions of higher education by appointing loyalists to key administrative positions.

You can see why Trump likes him.

Historians like Thapar have “undervalued and consciously rejected many of the achievements of ancient India,” said Rakesh Sinha, a right-leaning academic associated with Modi’s party. Sinha said Thapar was guided by Marxism and had a Eurocentric view. “They take only those parts of history which undermine India’s image as a cultural and intellectual society,” he said.

Uh huh, Marxism, right. Don Junior couldn’t have said it more stupidly.

But being a political target for over three decades has not slowed Thapar. In October, her 30th book title, “Voices of Dissent,” tracing the history and evolution of dissent in the Indian subcontinent, was published. Critics of the government, including Thapar, say dissent is increasingly being criminalized.

It’s a trend.

Yo FBI listen up.

Well then.

A felony violation of Georgia law, she says (to underline the obvious). State crime. State crime=not federal crime. Trump can’t pardon himself out of this even if he does try the self-pardon thing (the legality of which is a matter of dispute).

And…you know…it’s not as if this is some triviality. It’s actually very non-trivial. He committed the felony in aid of trying to steal an election.

This is amusing:

The blockbot that blocks all the terven:

The column farthest to the right is followers. You can see that Keir Starmer and the Labour Party have quite a few.