Oh dear, too much cancellation eh wot? How did that happen?

Such as…

Oh well. There’s always the wonderful Greta.

Counting twice. (The link is to the Western Standard, a conservative outlet, but you know how this goes. The other team won’t go near the truth.)

A transgendered advisor to the federal Minister of Women claims biological males have no advantage in athletics despite dominating a women’s 5 km race,

Nathanielle Morin advises Liberal MP Marci Ien, Minister of Women, Gender Equality and Youth. In a Wednesday post to X, Morin objected to Trump’s executive order to ban biological males from competing in women’s and girl’s sports in the United States.

…

Morin was favourably profiled by Radio Canada for her diversity, during a run for MP representing the Liberals in the riding of Louis-Saint-Laurent.

“Of the many, Liberal candidate Nathanielle Morin stands out for the uniqueness of her background. A woman and young — she is 28 — she is a rarity in the political arena. A trans woman to boot, although she does not base her campaign on this reality,” wrote Radio Canada reporter Kathleen Lavoie.

Prolonged blast on whistle. Counting twice! Credit for trans and woman! You can’t count both! He’s a “trans woman,” therefore a man, therefore not a woman.

Reduxx has more on the powerful arguer for the absolute truth that men have no physical advantages over women.

The advisor to the Canadian Liberal government’s Minister of Women, who claimed on X that trans-identified men do not have an advantage over women in sports, is a trans-identified male who previously dominated a women’s 5km race.

Nathanielle Morin is currently the advisor to Member of Parliament Marci Ien in her capacity as the Minister of Women, Gender Equality and Youth.

Oh is he now. Why? Why would a Member of Parliament who is Minister of Women want a man who pretends to be a woman as “the advisor”? I would really like to know.

On February 6, Morin took to X to respond to the recent executive order from President Trump that finally banned biological males from competing in women’s and girl’s sports in the United States.

…

Morin shared an infographic made by Schuyler Bailar, a trans-identified male who competes in women’s sports. The infographic reads: “Trans athletes are not a threat; transphobia is.”

The issue isn’t “trans athletes.” The issue is men invading women’s sports. It doesn’t become ok because they call themselves trans.

In the infographic, Bailar claims there is “evidence” to support the claim that “trans women are… NOT biological men” and that sex is “bimodal,” not “binary.” Bilar goes on to state that “trans women do not have an advantage and biological diversity is everywhere.” The supposed evidence referenced by Bailar is not linked in the graphic.

To put it mildly. There is nothing, there is only the absurd assertion.

In response to the post, Quillette editor Jon Kay highlighted that Morin himself had once dominated a women’s race in Ottawa, Ontario.

At the 5km event, organized by BougeBouge in February of 2024, Morin recorded a time of 25 minutes and 32 seconds in the Female 30-39 category. The fasted female in the same category came in second place with 31:16, a whole 5 minutes and 44 seconds behind Morin, followed shortly after by the woman in third place. Morin’s time placed him as the “fastest female” across all categories, nabbing the prestige from a young girl who had competed in the 10-12 age category.

Had Morin been running with other men, he would have come in third in his age category and 10th overall.

And he has the gall to shout that “trans women do not have an advantage.” He’s used that advantage to cheat women himself, and he dishonestly asserts that the advantage doesn’t exist. What a pig.

Oh gosh, it turns out we’ve been wrong all this time, science says trans women are NOT men. The proof is these blue box-thingies with words in them.

And then of course there’s the highlighted third sentence: “Trans women are not men.” Knockout blow. There’s just no arguing with a “not” in all caps and a highlighted “are not men.” Time to pack up and go home.

In the words of a great thinker, “facts have to be also shown.”

Of course he does.

Trump plans to name himself chair of Kennedy Center, fire board members

President Trump says he is taking over leadership of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. He declared himself chairman of Washington D.C.’s long-celebrated cultural institution on Friday. In doing so, he’ll replace billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein, an ally of former President Joe Biden who was set to chair until 2026.

Posting on Truth Social, Trump wrote he was immediately terminating “multiple individuals” from the center’s Board of Trustees “who do not share our vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”

Trump said he would soon announce a new board, “with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!”

A new dawn for Aryan arts and culture!

No advantage, no advantage; what do you mean advantage??!

The advisor to the Canadian Liberal government’s Minister of Women, who claimed on X that trans-identified men do not have an advantage over women in sports, is a trans-identified male who previously dominated a women’s 5km race.

That’s just great. Not only does he lie about male advantage in sports, he is also advisor to the government’s Minister of Women – he insults and steals from women in two ways instead of just one. How impressive. A woman loses top spot in a race, and women in general lose the Minister of Women.

Nathanielle Morin is currently the advisor to Member of Parliament Marci Ien in her capacity as the Minister of Women, Gender Equality and Youth. On February 6, Morin took to X to respond to the recent executive order from President Trump that finally banned biological males from competing in women’s and girl’s sports in the United States.

“Under the Trump administration, we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes, and we will not allow men to beat up, injure and cheat our women and our girls,” President Trump said on Wednesday. According to Morin, this was tantamount to “exclusion… discrimination… [and] promot[ing] hate.”

Dude you’re the one doing the excluding. You’ve excluded a woman from the job of advisor to the Minster of Women. That’s you.

The ugliness on the ground.

The Trump administration’s abrupt decision to repatriate the U.S. Agency for International Development’s overseas workforce has thrust the agency’s global staff into chaos and despair, as workers scramble to uproot their lives and brace for what they fear will be a shutdown of all American aid missions in 30 days.

In interviews, USAID staffers said Tuesday’s recall order hassent them racing to make temporary housing arrangements back in the United States, identify new day cares or schools for their children, and plan for a future in which, as many now believe is inevitable, they are left unemployed.

These employees, some assigned to dangerous “hardship” posts, are attempting to navigate that process with little information from the Trump administration and while many are locked out of all agency computer systems.

And why? Because of anonymous conspiracists on TwitX and Musk’s grotesque credulity toward them.

“We’ve seen this sort of thing happen in evacuations of war zones,” one official said. “I just can’t believe we’re doing it for the flippant kind of political pageantry that this administration seems to be doing it for.”

And based on the beyond-flippant worthlessness of anonymous gossips on social media.

Another official said the most concerning thing wasn’t the personal toll of navigating housing or schools.

“The biggest thing that keeps me up at night is that I see USAID’s destruction as a test case — a practice run — in how far the administration can bend or break the law to get what they want,” the official said. “We are the canary in the coal mine.”

Yeeah.

So it turns out that Musk’s horrifyingly successful purge of USAID is based on his deep knowledge via various pseudonymous conspiracy wackos on his toy X.

Musk’s sudden — and consequential — interest in USAID did not emerge from a vacuum: The agency has long been a target of criticism that its aid programs masked nation-meddling and overspent American tax dollars abroad. Some conspiracy theories alleged that the global humanitarian programs were a cover for biowarfare research or that USAID’s funding enriched an elite few who control the world. 

But until very recently, those claims were largely outside the mainstream, and USAID, which delivers billions of dollars of food and medicine to more than 100 countries, generally enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington.

That is no longer the case: President Donald Trump told reporters Monday that while he appreciated “the concept” of USAID, the people in the agency “turned out to be radical left lunatics.”

Note that “turned out to be.” Always note that when Trump says it. It means some damn fool has been talking to him. This time it’s a damn fool who owns a big social media platform and pays attention to damn fools who use it to conspiricize.

Most of Musk’s more than 160 posts about USAID have been responses to a handful of small but influential verified accounts, many of them using pseudonyms. The most popular — including posts from Wall Street Apes, Kanekoa the Great, Chief Nerd and Autism Capital — have been viewed hundreds of millions of times, amplified by Musk and his 216 million followers, according to X metrics. As the theories spread, they are repackaged, and in many cases added upon, to further the claims.  

Oh that’s just great. People all over the planet suddenly cut off aid because of the gossip of Kanekoa the Great and Chief Nerd. Look behind the curtain and you find…childish idiots. If Musk is so damn smart, as everyone keeps saying he is, why is he getting his information from random anons on social media? Why is he paying any attention at all to random anons on social media?

A review of the accounts’ profiles reveals how a lengthy crusade to paint USAID as a malevolent force built up in recent years in relatively fringe internet circles, only to be suddenly elevated and acted upon by Musk. 

Why??? Why on earth?

On Wednesday, Musk shared a faked video claiming USAID had sponsored celebrity visits to Ukraine. Darren Linvill, a co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, told NBC News the video was manufactured Russian propaganda. 

The impact of false conspiracy theories on USAID — whether they have directly shaped Musk’s actions at the agency or provided a convenient justification — is already being felt. Critical medical supplies, essential medicines and food aid are being withheld from their intended international recipients, and aid workers are scrambling to comply with the ordered shutdown of the agency on Friday. 

Thanks to anonymous randos online.

He doesn’t actually have the authority to do this.

Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly planning to keep just more than [over] 600 essential workers at USAid, according to a notice sent to employees of the US foreign aid agency on Thursday night.

…

The USAid staff reductions are set to take effect at midnight on Friday, as indicated on the agency’s website. But a lawsuit filed on Thursday by the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) seeks to prevent the administration from dismantling USAid, which was established as an independent agency by a law passed by Congress in 1998.

And he can’t just crumple up and throw away a law passed by Congress. That’s not how any of this works. He’s not a dictator. He wants to be, but he isn’t one. The presidency is not a dictatorship.

Which means that if no one stops him we will be living under a dictatorship.

The unions claim that these actions are “unconstitutional and illegal” and have created a “global humanitarian crisis”. The lawsuit contends that the dissolution of USAid exceeds Trumps’s authority as president under the US constitution.

The plaintiffs are seeking both a temporary and a permanent court order to restore the agency’s funding, reopen its offices, and prevent further actions to dissolve the agency.

The “claim” is simply the truth. Trump is exceeding his powers, to put it mildly.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug at Miscellany Room.

…the day is fast approaching when you’ll want to pretend you always saw through the craziness and never believed it for a second.

For years lots of people have been predicting “Peak Tr… (1)”, and lots of people have been predicting “Peak Tr… (2)”.

The former kept expecting Tr… (1)’s outrageous behavior, his lifetime of crime and corruption, his pathological lying, his pussygrabbing, his obvious authoritarianism and illiberalism, his nepotism, his use of the office to funnel money to his private businesses, his theft of classified documents, his attempted coup d’état (!), his endless legal trouble etc. to finally catch up with him.

The latter kept expecting the invasion of women’s sports, toilets, showers, changing rooms, domestic abuse and rape shelters, jails etc. by biological males, the mass-application of experimental medical treatments on vulnerable children and teenagers, the rise of detransitioners, the Forstater case, the WPATH-files, the Cass Review etc. to make people start abandoning Tr…(2) in droves.

We all know what happened to “Peak Tr… (1)”, which, at the very least, should make us hesitant about making confident predictions regarding human motivations and how their attitudes are going to change. The thing about cognitive dissonance, the sunk cost fallacy, the “Oedipus Trap” etc. is precisely that the more steps you take in the wrong direction the harder it gets to turn around without loss of face or self-esteem, which is a powerful incentive to protect your investment, double down on your commitment, and turn even more extreme. Much like the rainbow, your “line in the sand” keeps receding in front of you as you go.

Some think the failure of “Peak Tr… (1)” is going to accelerate “Peak Tr… (2)”, and, at least as far as the U.S. is concerned, and at least in terms of public policy (if not popular support*), they’re almost certainly not entirely wrong. In the eyes of dedicated supporters of Tr… (2), however, all this does is confirm what they’ve been saying all along: That the world is rampant with out of control levels of Tr… (2)-phobia, and that the people who oppose them are the same people who either actively support or tacitly go along with the atrocities of Tr…(1). I wouldn’t expect this to make them any less dedicated to their agenda any time soon.

* As many other have pointed out, strong support for Tr… (2) was only ever a minority position. But as we all know, a sufficiently motivated and informed minority often succeeds in forcing its agenda on an uninformed or indifferent majority.

Health is non-essential.

The White House is working on an executive order to fire thousands of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services workers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

White House on Thursday denied it is drafting an executive order to cut workers across federal health agencies.

According to the Wall Street Journal, under the order, which could come as soon as next week, the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies would have to cut a certain percentage of employees.

How do Musk and his troops know that there is a “certain percentage of employees” who are useless to public health?

Or is that beside the point? Has he simply decided that bad health and early death are worthy goals?

Confusion.

Tickle v Giggle; remember that?

I went looking for some reporting to refresh my memory, and up popped the ever-diligent BBC.

A transgender woman from Australia has won a discrimination case against a women-only social media app, after she was denied access on the basis of being male.

The Federal Court found that although Roxanne Tickle had not been directly discriminated against, she was a victim of indirect discrimination – which refers to when a decision disadvantages a person with a particular attribute – and ordered the app to pay her A$10,000 ($6,700; £5,100) plus costs.

But so many decisions “disadvantage” people with “a particular attribute.” We all have some particular attributes, right? So we should all keep a sharp eye out for disadvantages, so that we can sue people and get a few thousand plus costs.

Anyway, I just wanted to revisit this sentence, which I think I probably grumbled about when it was first published.

As someone who identifies as a woman, Tickle claimed she was legally entitled to use services meant for women, and that she was discriminated against based on her gender identity.

And he won.

So why doesn’t that apply more broadly? Why can’t people “identify as” people who are legally entitled to whatever they feel like having? As a CEO with a huge salary, as an Olympic athlete, as a rock star, as the host of a popular tv talk show, as your best friend, as a trainer of flying horses? Why isn’t it a blanket rule that if there’s a criterion for something – entrance, membership, an award, a bonus, a promotion, a profession, first place in a contest – then everyone is legally entitled to claim to meet the criterion, and be rewarded accordingly?

In other words, how does this work? It doesn’t work with everything, in fact it doesn’t work with anything except idennifying as a woman, so why does it work with idennifying as a woman? It’s not normal law, it’s the opposite of normal law, so how did we get here?

Lego has bumps and slots. That’s heteronormative AND transphobic.

Lego can be anti-LGBT, the Science Museum has said.

A self-guided museum tour on “stories of queer communities, experiences and identities” includes a display of Lego bricks alongside a guide stating the plastic blocks may reinforce the idea that heterosexuality “is the norm”.

The tour, devised by a Gender and Sexuality Network at the museum, also claims in the “Seeing Things Queerly” guide that Lego adds credence to the view that there are only two genders.

This is because people supposedly describe Lego bricks as having male or female parts that are made to “mate” with each other.

This is “heteronormative”, the guide states…

Ok so how do you connect the bricks without some kind of slot plus slot-fitting protuberance arrangement? Please inform.

Other stops on the Seeing Queerly tour, advertised on the Science Museum’s official website, include a display of the Billy Doll, a toy launched in 1992 that was intended to depict a gay man.

A Spitfire has also been included, because a pilot who flew one of the Second World War fighter planes, Roberta Cowell, born Robert Marshall Cowell, would later have transgender surgery. Cowell “was the first British trans woman to undergo gender-affirming surgery and change her birth certificate”, the guide states.

And the Spitfire proves it. Or something.

The war on truthful reporting is on.

The television news magazine 60 Minutes — the most storied and profitable show in the history of CBS News — currently finds itself as the avatar of President Trump’s onslaught against the media in the courts and the court of public opinion.

Despite brave talk from the news division, CBS’s parent company appears to be inching toward capitulation, as its controlling owner wants to drag CBS out of the headlines and wrap up a corporate sale.

Naturally. News people care about truthful reporting; owners care about profit. Owners, being owners, win conflicts between the two.

Before becoming president, Trump sued CBS over 60 Minutes‘ interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris shortly before the election. Now, Trump’s newly elevated Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, is using the levers of government to put pressure on the network.

Naturally. Trump is 100 times more ruthlessly aggressive than he was the first time around.

Before Carr’s involvement, CBS had refused to release those materials, calling Trump’s demand for them an intrusion on its journalists’ First Amendment rights. Democratic Commissioner Anna M. Gomez called the FCC’s investigation part of “the administration’s focus on partisan culture wars” and urged her fellow commissioners to dismiss it.

Failure to flatter the dictator is a crime. Bend the knee or be squashed; your choice.

The clash at CBS represents just the latest front in a multi-pronged assault on the press waged by the second Trump administration, using litigation, regulatory agencies, budget powers, executive prerogatives and sympathetic lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

The danger is obvious.

More broadly, the president and his allies are seeking to pressure the media writ large, both to inhibit its ability to check the president and to punish it for coverage he views as unfavorable.

ABC News’ parent company, The Walt Disney Co., paid $15 million toward Trump’s future presidential library, plus another $1 million in legal costs, to settle Trump’s defamation suit over inaccurate remarks about him by anchor George Stephanopoulos. The social media giant Meta paid $25 million to settle Trump’s suit over sidelining him from Facebook after the January 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol.

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong stopped their newspapers from endorsing Harris ahead of the 2024 election. They each cited the low esteem in which the media is held by the broader public. Both owners are billionaires with major business concerns before federal agencies; in Amazon founder Bezos’s case, they include contracts worth billions of dollars.

Free enterprise in action.

Beyond CBS, Trump still has lawsuits pending against Gannett’s Des Moines Register for polling ahead of the election that inaccurately found Harris in the lead (Trump won Iowa decisively) and the committee that awards Pulitzer Prizes over awards given to coverage of the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to the Russian regime.

How does that work? How do you sue a committee that awards prizes for giving awards to people you don’t like? Why doesn’t the attempt get laughed out of court?

Under new Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, the Defense Department tossed Politico, NPR, the New York Times and NBC News from their reserved press spaces at the Pentagon in favor of the conservative New York Post, the right-wing Breitbart and One America News Network and the liberal HuffPost, a site that, according to a spokesperson, hadn’t asked for a workspace. No press credentials were revoked; the dislodged outlets can still visit the Pentagon and report there.

Serious adult news media lose their reserved spaces to trashy childish news media.

It’s only going to get worse.

So many outright lies in this CNN piece on getting men out of women’s sports:

President Donald Trump is ready to take his fight against transgender athletes to the International Olympic Committee.

Trump said Wednesday during a signing ceremony for an executive order aimed at banning transgender athletes from women’s sports that his administration wants the IOC to “change everything having to do with the Olympics and having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject” ahead of the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

Liar liar liar. It’s not a “fight against transgender athletes” and it’s not “an executive order aimed at banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.” It’s an executive order banning male athletes from women’s sports.

The order empowers the Secretary of State’s office to pressure the IOC to amend standards governing Olympic sporting events “to promote fairness, safety and the best interests of female athletes by ensuring that eligibility for participation in women’s sporting events is determined according to sex and not gender identity or testosterone reduction.”

Oh look, a paragraph free of lies. Yes: fairness, safety and the best interests of female athletes. You got a problem with that?

The order also calls for the Secretary of State and the Department of Homeland Security to “review and adjust, as needed, policies permitting admission to the United States of males seeking to participate in women’s sports.” There is no evidence that male athletes have competed in women’s Olympics events.

OH yes there is.

It never ceases to amaze me how happy guys like this are to brush off women’s right to fairness as completely irrelevant and insignificant. Easy for you, dude.

Musk continues to bully federal workers.

Elon Musk has declared war on the bureaucracy. And as a Thursday deadline nears for federal employees to take a “buyout,” he is looking to demoralize and wear down his enemy.

Across the government, officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have fired off message after message pushing staff to accept the deferred resignation program, coaxing them with promises of paid vacations and threatening that there will be layoffs if they don’t leave. At the same time, Musk has bullied them with online taunts.

…

According to Trump allies, the intimidation campaign is deliberate as the president pursues an unprecedented purge of the federal workforce.

“They realized that you can kind of turn up the heat in a lot of these departments and people will leave, especially because the federal workforce is older,” said a former Trump official who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to speak freely. “You have a glut of Boomers now and they’re reaching retirement age. And if you can force them out of the door, you don’t have to replace them, and it’s one way to reduce the government.”

Well, yes, and another way would be to lock them in and gas them.

Musk and Trump officials have increasingly turned the screws on career employees as Thursday’s deadline has neared.

Musk boasted to his 216 million followers on his social media platform X that DOGE is “the wood chipper for bureaucracy.” He accused Treasury employees of “breaking the law every hour of every day,” attacked the U.S. Agency for International Development as a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America,” and shared a post belittling government workers as dumb.

…

Musk’s moves at DOGE mirror his purge at his social media company previously known as Twitter. He said he cut 80 percent of the staff there, and was sued by employees alleging that he did not pay them all of the severance that they were owed. A U.S. judge dismissed one such case, but others are working their way through the courts and arbitration.

And now Musk’s highly publicized history at Twitter is coming back to haunt him. Some federal employees and union leaders representing them said that they are not taking the offer because they don’t trust it will be upheld.

They also have dug in as they’ve felt smeared.

“The offer that we’ve been presented with is not something I see a lot of people taking,” said Sheria Smith, union president of Local 252 at the American Federation of Government Employees. “It was really, really insulting, frankly. It insulted our work ethic and insulted our commitment to our jobs.”

Smith said that of the 2,000 members she represents, fewer than 10 have asked the union questions about the offer. She added that she is “aware of a handful of people who are taking it because they already had plans to leave the agency.”

I like that “fewer than 10.” Artistic.

But…

But that’s just nonsensical. People don’t have to be “biological experts” to know which people are female and which are male. If we did, we wouldn’t be here, because mating would never happen so there would be no people.

More simply, it’s not a matter of biological expertise, it’s just a matter of knowing the names for things. We learn the names for things so early in childhood that we don’t remember doing it. Trans ideology wants to change the meanings of the names “woman” and “man” but that’s a fatuous thing to want, and a deeply obnoxious thing to demand, insist on, try to enforce via shouting and bullying and lawyering.

Oh, you have to be an expert to know whether people are women or men.

Huh. So how have so many people managed to reproduce over the past thousands of years? Just wild guesses, roughly half of which were wrong?

Also there’s that whole definition thing – male adults are men by definition: that’s what the word means.

You really don’t need to be a “biological expert” or even an expert biologist to know that male adults are men, unless you’ve been raised by computers while living in a self-contained box.

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on Signing a truce with starvation and disease.

I’d like to try highlighting one small reason our political discourse so often feels frustratingly fruitless.

Our dominant political factions represent opposed paradigms of government, and the arguments one side finds compelling simply cannot and will not move the other. In order to make an argument that is compelling to the other side of a conversation, one must understand what matters to them. Unfortunately, we tend to simply repeat ad nauseam arguments that address questions that matter to us, rather than consider the questions motivating our interlocutors. This is a kind of fallacy of irrelevance—one that’s often hard to see, because the premises are relevant to us and therefore salient.

Group L sees government as an expedient means of accomplishing good things, so its most important question is, “Is this thing beneficial?” When this group argues for or against government action, it means that the action is either good or bad. If something is good and not within government’s purview, then government’s purview should be extended to include it.

Group R sees government as a dangerous means of accomplishing necessary things, so its most important question is, “Who or what should do this thing?” When this group argues for or against government action, it argues that the action is or is not within government’s purview. If something is good and not within government’s purview, responsibility to do it should be left to the people.

On R’s view of the social contract, government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, constituting a fiduciary relationship and obligation. Government fulfills its fiduciary duty to the extent that it uses the resources it extracts to serve the interest of the citizenry, and it betrays that duty to the extent that it uses those resources to serve the interests of anyone else. To R, justification for a government action consists in its benefit to the citizenry. Thus, if L were to attempt to justify a government program by reference to the good it does for people in foreign nations, R would find that argument not merely unconvincing but completely perverse. L’s argument amounts to demonstrating that the program would be a violation of the government’s role as fiduciary. If, however, the program does have domestic benefits, then those are what L should marshal as evidence.

In this case, that’s exactly how USAID was sold in the first place. Its nominal goal was to bolster national security by means of foreign assistance programs, on the understanding that nations receiving aid would be more economically stable and less likely to serve as vectors for Soviet influence or action. Benefits to foreign peoples function as the cost we pay to benefit ourselves, and the government is acting within the proper boundaries of its power. As long as the benefits we receive outweigh the costs we pay, that is.

On the L view, sufficient justification for maintaining USAID is found on the grounds that it does good in the world. Saying, “Health programs like those credited with helping end polio and smallpox epidemics and an acclaimed HIV/AIDS program that saved more than 20 million lives in Africa already have stopped. So have monitoring and deployments of rapid-response teams for contagious diseases such as an Ebola outbreak in Uganda,” is sufficient. We can accomplish this and other goods through government action, and therefore we should continue to do so.

On the R view, however, it is simply impossible to justify USAID’s existence by reference to foreign benefit. Even a literally infinite list of laudable accomplishments would fail to make even the first step toward justification. It is entirely reasonable for someone who subscribes to something like R’s view to ask whether the original justification for USAID still holds and whether a similar case can still be made for it.

Of course, dichotomous (and brief) analyses always trade in simplification, and while they’re useful abstractions for capturing broad tendencies, L and R don’t describe everyone, as real political attitudes are messier and more complex. People on the political Left do care about governmental overreach and consent, and people on the Right do make utilitarian arguments about government action. The R perspective might not even account for the majority of those who support dissolving USAID, as many on the Right would say that government should have no role in charity at all, regardless of how it might benefit the nation. The L perspective, likewise, doesn’t represent the entirety of the Left, many of whom also argue for moral, constitutional, and institutional constraints on government action. In fact, if you’d asked me thirty years ago, I might have said that the fiduciary view of the social contract was core to both Republicans and Democrats.

As I said, it’s a simplification.

It’s odd how oblivious journalists (and no doubt the people who read them) can be about misogynist insults. CNN for instance:

Darren Beattie, a former Donald Trump speechwriter who was fired in 2018 after CNN revealed he spoke at a conference attended by White nationalists, has been elevated to a top job at the State Department, multiple sources familiar with the move told CNN.

…

Beattie also has made a series of racially charged comments, writing in one tweet last year, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”

Yes, that’s “racially charged,” aka racist, but it’s not only racist. I wonder if you can spot what else it is. Take your time. You may consult a dictionary.

And it’s not just CNN – I quoted the passage to Google News and all the hits I got did the same thing. Apparently nobody noticed the “men” bit.

It’s so annoying. Hello??? We’re right here. We’ve been pointing out this crap for more than half a century, and still you just blank us?

Or maybe you just agree that we’re uniformly incompetent.