What American gender politics has done to my mind.

I wanted to read Maureen Dowd's new column, "Sick to Your Stomach? #MeToo" (NYT). It begins:

Somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind, I can recall a time when the sight of that white dome thrilled me. As a teenager, working for a New York congressman, I felt privileged to walk the same marble corridors where some of America’s most revered leaders had walked.

I swear that when I read that, I thought the "white dome" was the bald head of the white man she was working for. I don't know how many more sentences I had to read before I realized the "white dome" was the Capitol building.

I read the sentence out loud to Meade, to see if he got tripped up in the same way. First, he heard "white dome" as "Whitedom" (which I guess is the dominion of white people). I read it again with better enunciation, and even though he did (he admitted later) know it meant the Capitol, he said, because he knows my mind so well, "I think of the heads of 7 bald men." That is, he knew I pictured a bald head, and he was teasing me about my oft-stated remedy for the hiccups. (It works. Try it. Think of the heads of 7 bald men.)

But enough about my mind. How about Maureen Dowd's mind? Meade got stuck on the first phrase, "Somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind..." Soon, he was singing "In the dim recesses of Maureen Dowd's mind..." to the tune of The Grateful Deads' "Attics of My Life":



Here are the lyrics, in case you want to write your own parody:

In the attics of my life
Full of cloudy dreams unreal
Full of tastes no tongue can know
And lights no eye can see
When there was no ear to hear
You sang to me

I have spent my life
Seeking all that's still unsung
Bent my ear to hear the tune
And closed my eyes to see
When there were no strings to play
You played to me...

2 more verses at the link, to Genius, where there's only one annotation, on the line I bold-faced, above:

You fill to the full with most beautiful splendor those souls who close their eyes that they may see

St. Denis’s Prayer: A fourteenth-century poem from Saint Denis’s The Cloud of Unknowing.

IN THE COMMENTS: Angle-Dyne said:

Nobody knows who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't St. Denis.

I said:

Thanks. I was wondering about that. I've read "The Cloud of Unknowing" — one of the greatest books ever — and when I read it it was anonymous. Somehow I was ready to believed that they'd tracked down the author!

The link in the Genius annotation goes to a page that identifies the unknown author of "The Cloud of Unknowing" as having also written "The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis." That seems to be the source of the confusion.

ADDED: I think the problem is that there's one book with "The Cloud of Unknowing" that also has "The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis" and the text of the St. Denis prayer, which is properly quoted above. Did Saint Denis actually write those words? I don't know. But I did look up St. Denis, and I have a better understanding of the illustration:

Denis is the most famous cephalophore in Christian legend, with a popular story claiming that the decapitated bishop picked up his head and walked several miles while preaching a sermon on repentance....

A cephalophore is what it sounds like — someone who carries his own severed head. You never hear about that happening anymore, but people used to say it did:

A cephalophore (from the Greek for "head-carrier") is a saint who is generally depicted carrying his or her own head. In Christian art, this was usually meant to signify that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading....

[T]he folklorist Émile Nourry counted no less than 134 examples of cephalophory in French hagiographic literature alone....

Aristotle is at pains to discredit the stories of talking heads and to establish the physical impossibility, with the windpipe severed from the lung. "Moreover," he adds, "among the barbarians, where heads are chopped off with great rapidity, nothing of the kind has ever occurred."

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Aside from what I believe about what happened circa 1983, I don't believe this about next Thursday.

The past is different from the future. You can't go to either place, but if you wait around, what you once thought of as the future will for a brief shining moment be the present, and then it will fall off into the past, so you can think about it differently, because you've had the chance to see it once, but from where it will never run by in the present again, so there's no second look, but you can talk about it with the dubious authority of memory.

So here I am in the present, seeing this:



That's a nice graphic depiction of the future, but it's not a picture of the future.

Thursday will look like what it really is when it's Thursday.

I'm not completely a let-the-day’s-own-trouble-be-sufficient-for-the-day person, but I've been jerked around far too much by this will-she-won't-she-testify dance. I'll believe it when I see it.

It feels like a game of chicken:

The name "chicken" has its origins in a game in which two drivers drive towards each other on a collision course: one must swerve, or both may die in the crash, but if one driver swerves and the other does not, the one who swerved will be called a "chicken", meaning a coward; this terminology is most prevalent in political science and economics. The name "hawk–dove" refers to a situation in which there is a competition for a shared resource and the contestants can choose either conciliation or conflict; this terminology is most commonly used in biology and evolutionary game theory. From a game-theoretic point of view, "chicken" and "hawk–dove" are identical; the different names stem from parallel development of the basic principles in different research areas. The game has also been used to describe the mutual assured destruction of nuclear warfare, especially the sort of brinkmanship involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In the movies, it looks like this:

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"I've got to admit that if I had to say right now, who is more likely to be telling us what is closer to the truth — no stakes, no burden of proof, just who is more likely — I'd have to say her."

I wrote in the comments to a post that linked to a WaPo article and simply quoted Christine Blasely Ford's husband.

He'd said, "Her mind-set was, 'I’ve got this terrible secret.... What am I going to do with this secret?' She was like, 'I can’t deal with this. If he becomes the nominee, then I’m moving to another country. I cannot live in this country if he’s in the Supreme Court'... She wanted out."

I've reflected on why that quote tipped me to have the thought quoted in the post title and to want to reveal that. I've challenged myself: Am I a tool of the patriarchy? The husband says something, and now I believe?!

But I don't believe. I don't take anything at face value. I blog from a position I call "cruel neutrality," and I begin, always, with the prosaic awareness that people don't say everything they think, that they may sometimes outright lie but also almost always shape their telling of the truth, and that memory isn't a video recording that can be played but a mysterious process of the human brain, and that we are all blessedly human.

So I'll forgive all the commenters who misread what I wrote and fought me over the idea they got in their head when they read what I wrote. And let me quote a few commenters who were closer to getting what I was saying.

Henry said:

I've got to admit that if I had to say right now, who is more likely to be telling us what is closer to the truth — no stakes, no burden of proof, just who is more likely — I'd have to say her.

Your key phrase is "closer to".

Kavanaugh's problem is that he can't admit to anything. The most innocuous story will be seen as proof of her most serious allegations. "Closer to" could be "I was at a party and tripped and knocked her over and it was pretty embarrassing." That's closer to her story than "I have never done anything like what the accuser describes -- to her or to anyone" but it's still a long long long long way from "I'm an unsuccessful rapist."

Francisco D said:

I am going to give Althouse the benefit of the doubt.

She feels that Christine Blasey Ford is more likely telling the truth.

Althouse is describing an emotional reaction, nothing more. She is not indicating how she has processed the available evidence and what her thoughts on the matter are.

Walk don't run begins with something that isn't close to describing me at all, because it's about performing the role of juror after all the evidence has been presented, when I specifically hypothesized a requirement to suddenly answer a question when there has been no comprehensive presentation of evidence. At a trial, a burden of proof would apply and a defendant would be facing the consequence of a deprivation of liberty. That's not my hypothetical situation.

Anyway, here's how walk don't run begins:

I was a juror in a rape case some years ago. The case should never have never have been brought to court it had so many holes in it. During the deliberations that took a couple of days I outlined 7 aspects of the case that provided reasonable doubt. All of us agreed except one female juror who insisted that she had to convict the accused. Her explanation was that she had been raped and could not find her way not to convict the accused. The facts did not matter to her. It was all an understandable emotion. I think something similar is going on with Althouse.

But I see that walk don't run only says he/she thinks "something similar" is going on with me. It may be similar, but it's also different. I would never abuse the role of juror in a real legal proceeding. The question with Kavanaugh is whether he should be confirmed to a lifetime position as Supreme Court Justice, but even that is outside my hypothetical because that is what is at stake, and I said I'm telling you what I feel without regard to the stakes, and I'm only saying what I think is more likely.

Notice that I could have gone on to examine what I would do if there were never any more evidence than there is right now and it were my job to vote whether or not to confirm Kavanaugh. Nothing in my statement would prevent me from adding that I thought — given all the other evidence of his excellence and good character and the absence of other negative reports — what we've heard about what he may have done when he was 17 and his possibly false denials are not enough to justify a no vote.

Anyway, walk don't run goes on to say:

On the other hand, to give Althouse some slack, Kavanaugh seems just too good to be true - perfect scholar, perfect athlete, perfect coach, perfect husband, perfect father and perfect jurist. I wish he seemed more human with some failings and frailties like the rest of us. I don’t think Althouse likes or trusts that and that perfection strangely makes him less trustworthy in her eyes.

Yes, that's what I wanted to quote. Kavanaugh is vulnerable precisely because he's presented himself as good all the way through. Any hint of a stain wrecks his purity. He's the opposite of the man who nominated him, who's a crazy tie-dye pattern of stains. Nothing shows on that man. It's so annoying to his antagonists, who keep adding to the stain pattern and making it even harder to see any new problem. What has Trump really done that's so bad?, I ask myself from time to time. There are so many stupid things, like saying a hurricane is tremendously wet. I have trouble remembering what (if anything!) is supposed to be so awful. But with the wonderful paragon Kavanaugh, the accusation stands out like a red wine spill on the cream-colored carpet.

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At the Orange-and-Blue Café...

... you can talk all night.

And do think of using the Althouse Portal to Amazon. One thing I bought recently is "Educated: A Memoir" by Tara Westover. I recommend it. Here's an excerpt, something that I was listening to as I walked on Willy Street today:

I had grown up preparing for the Days of Abomination, watching for the sun to darken, for the moon to drip as if with blood. I spent my summers bottling peaches and my winters rotating supplies. When the World of Men failed, my family would continue on, unaffected. I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical. The same sun appeared each morning, swept over the valley and dropped behind the peak. The snows that fell in winter always melted in the spring. Our lives were a cycle—the cycle of the day, the cycle of the seasons—circles of perpetual change that, when complete, meant nothing had changed at all. I believed my family was a part of this immortal pattern, that we were, in some sense, eternal. But eternity belonged only to the mountain.

There’s a story my father used to tell about the peak.... From a distance, you could see the impression of a woman’s body on the mountain face: her legs formed of huge ravines, her hair a spray of pines fanning over the northern ridge. Her stance was commanding, one leg thrust forward in a powerful movement, more stride than step. My father called her the Indian Princess. She emerged each year when the snows began to melt, facing south, watching the buffalo return to the valley....

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"My siblings who chose to film ads against me are all liberal Democrats who hate President Trump."

"These disgruntled Hillary suppporters are related by blood to me but like leftists everywhere, they put political ideology before family. Stalin would be proud. #Az04 #MAGA2018"

Tweeted Congressman Paul Gosar (AZ-4) after 6 of his siblings made an ad endorsing his opponent.

Here's the ad:



Here's a WaPo article with more details:

In January, he drew bipartisan rebukes after he said he asked the Capitol Police and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to check IDs at the State of the Union to arrest and deport any undocumented immigrants in attendance...

The next month, Gosar said FBI and Department of Justice officials such as Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, former acting attorney general Sally Yates and former FBI director James B. Comey should face “treason” charges because of developments in the Russia investigation. In the summer, he spoke at a rally in London for one of Britain’s most notorious anti-Muslim campaigners, Tommy Robinson, drawing rebukes from Muslim American groups.

But perhaps his most notorious moment came in 2017 in an interview with Vice News, when he spread a baseless conspiracy theory that the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that summer had been “created by the left.” He also brought up the common right-wing falsehood that the liberal philanthropist and financier George Soros, who survived the Holocaust, had collaborated with Nazis.

There are 3 more siblings who didn't appear in the ad. The parents support Paul. Paul is quoted: “To the six angry Democrat Gosars—see you at Mom and Dad’s house!”

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How to Make a Viral Map

The most popular interactive map of this week has to be the New York Times' How Connected Is Your Community to Everywhere Else in America?. The NYT interactive map visualizes the connections people have on Facebook and comes to the conclusion that we are much more likely to know people who live near us than those who live a long way away.

I know! You're shocked, right?

The conclusion that we

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"Men, Tell Us About Your High School Experience."

Fill out this form, just in case you want to tell on yourself before anybody else does.

The NYT wants you to trust it with your information:

We want to hear from men about their high school experiences. A Times editor may contact you with follow-up questions. No information you provide will be published without your permission.

But Christine Blasely Ford didn't want her name to come out, and yet it did. Is the Times more trustworthy than Dianne Feinstein?

Given the stakes these days and the low standard of what counts as sexual abuse — like Cory Booker's reaching for a breast a second time — why would anyone volunteer anything? I understand the value of having an open and honest conversation about these things, but hasn't that route been closed off by the shocking dire consequences to Brett Kavanaugh (and Al Franken and Louis CK, etc.)?

But the NYT has a form it would like you to fill out. The first question is:

Did you ever, as a teenager or younger man, behave toward women in ways you may now regret? If so, how? And how has that experience stayed with you over the years?

Won't this drag in a thousand "Cat Person" and Cory Booker stories? If you've got anything in the Kavanaugh-as-told-by-Blasey category, you'd have to be irrational to put it in writing. Or maybe just old or dying and not looking for another step of professional or social advancement.

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"Her mind-set was, 'I’ve got this terrible secret.... What am I going to do with this secret?'"

"She was like, 'I can’t deal with this. If he becomes the nominee, then I’m moving to another country. I cannot live in this country if he’s in the Supreme Court'... She wanted out."

Said Russell Ford, the husband of Christine Blasey Ford, quoted in "Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford moved 3,000 miles to reinvent her life. It wasn’t far enough" (WaPo).

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"The drinking was unbelievable," said Bernie Ward, who was the sex-ed teacher at Georgetown Prep in the Kavanaugh years...

... and who — according to "'100 Kegs or Bust': Kavanaugh friend, Mark Judge, has spent years writing about high school debauchery" (WaPo) —  "later spent two decades as a radio talk-show host in San Francisco and served six years in federal prison for distributing child pornography."

“It was part of the culture. A parent even bought the keg and threw one of the parties for the kids.”..,

[Mark] Judge wrote that he came to view Ward as an example of his school’s fall from Catholic orthodoxy and traditional discipline into a New Age emphasis on feelings and liberal notions about faith and politics.

Like Kavanaugh, Judge grew up in a Catholic Washington that formed its own social world, centered in the big old houses of Chevy Chase, Bethesda and Potomac.... The big houses were perfect for large Catholic families....

Judge spent two decades in Catholic education, from Our Lady of Mercy to Prep and on to Catholic University. But he came to believe that he had been “cheated out of a Catholic education,” failing to be assigned the great theological works, the rigorous texts he devoured later in life. Rather, he wrote in “God and Man” that at Prep he was “bombarded with drugs, alcohol, widespread homosexuality among the clergy.” The faculty at Prep, he said, had morphed from “tough guys” to “hippies and leftists.”...

“I was a Catholic illiterate kept that way in a Catholic school,” he wrote in “God and Man.”

Judge spent years struggling with his faith. He relished boxing with God, questioning and testing his beliefs. He read his father’s copies of books by G.K. Chesterton and Thomas Merton, works that embraced the mystery of faith, an idea that appealed to Judge’s belief that the most complete people are those who, as Chesterton wrote, have “permitted the twilight . . . with one foot in earth and the other in fairyland.”...

In 2003, a student named Eric Ruyak reported to school authorities that a Jesuit priest who was a teacher at Georgetown Prep had touched him inappropriately. Some Prep alumni, including Judge, rallied around the teacher, the Rev. Garrett Orr, according to several Prep graduates.

“Numerous alumni told me that Judge was going around saying I was emotionally unstable and a sexual deviant,” Ruyak said Thursday. “He told people that the only reason I wasn’t being expelled was my dad was a powerful lawyer and president of Prep’s board.”

An investigation by Jesuit authorities later confirmed Ruyak’s account....

Ruyak's name is familiar from this post, written earlier this morning (which expressed a desire for more articles like the one I'm blogging in here).

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"25 years ago today, on September 21, 1993, Nirvana released its third and last studio album, In Utero..."

"... the defiantly raw and noisy follow-up to Nevermind, their much slicker breakthrough album... And if you really want to feel old, think about this: In Utero is an older album today than the Beatles' White Album was on the day In Utero was released!"

Writes my son John on Facebook, with audio and commentary on various album cuts. [ADDED: Also presented in blog form, here, where it's easier to read and enjoy.] Example:

“Radio Friendly Unit Shifter” is one of my favorite Nirvana songs, with manically oscillating guitar noise over relentlessly thumping drums. Most of the song is not quite “radio friendly,” but it gets most melodic in the bridge, with Kurt Cobain offering uncharacteristically straightforward advice: “Hate, hate your enemies/Save, save your friends/Find, find your place/Speak, speak the truth.”

As I wrote in the comments over there:

“Hate, hate your enemies/Save, save your friends...” made me think of a book I just read, which identified that sort of thinking as one of the "three great untruths" that are ruining the American mind...

The book is "The Coddling of the American Mind," which identifies "The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life Is a Battle Between Good People and Evil People." From Chapter 3 of the book:

The bottom line is that the human mind is prepared for tribalism. Human evolution is not just the story of individuals competing with other individuals within each group; it’s also the story of groups competing with other groups—sometimes violently. We are all descended from people who belonged to groups that were consistently better at winning that competition. Tribalism is our evolutionary endowment for banding together to prepare for intergroup conflict. When the “tribe switch” is activated, we bind ourselves more tightly to the group, we embrace and defend the group’s moral matrix, and we stop thinking for ourselves. A basic principle of moral psychology is that “morality binds and blinds,” which is a useful trick for a group gearing up for a battle between “us” and “them.” In tribal mode, we seem to go blind to arguments and information that challenge our team’s narrative. Merging with the group in this way is deeply pleasurable—as you can see from the pseudotribal as you can see from the pseudotribal antics that accompany college football games.

But being prepared for tribalism doesn’t mean we have to live in tribal ways....

It's not easy to forget that Kurt Cobain committed suicide, but, reading those lyrics, I feel that it's worth reminding you that he shot himself to death less than a year after writing that.  It's hard to know, reading lyrics, whether the writer is speaking in his own voice or inhabiting a persona whose views he hates. Lyrics Genius, annotating those lyrics, says:

Kurt Cobain was not about forgiving one’s enemies. In his personal journal, he wrote:

John Lennon has been my idol all my life but he’s dead wrong about revolution… find a representative of gluttony or oppression and blow the motherfuckers [sic] head off."

And then he blew his own head off, and somebody else blew out John Lennon's heart.

ADDED: Perhaps the Cobain suicide expressed the terrifying old realization: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

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