Blackcap Blog

Published at 15:44 on 29 September 2024

I have, to my knowledge, never written about this, despite my having grown up Roman Catholic.

The above means that this in a sense affects me personally; however, it really doesn’t affect me personally, since neither I nor (so far as I know) anyone close to me was ever directly affected by child sexual abuse in the Church. The closest it got to me was one parish I was a member of as a child of age six having one of its priests (this was long enough ago that it was common for multiple priests to be assigned to a single parish) suddenly depart the parish under a cloud. That particular priest, Fr. Mark, was responsible for ministering to children.

The Church has historically had no role whatsoever for openly queer Catholics. Sexual orientations other than heterosexual and cisgendered have been considered evil and sinful, period. This has changed some in recent decades, but there is still very little role for queers in the Church.

Approved life paths in the Church have historically been limited to heterosexual marriage and family life, or if “called,” to pursue a vocation in the Church. Given that, it is pretty obvious where queer Catholics, uninterested in heterosexual marriage, have traditionally tended to end up. The lack of interest in heterosexual family life gets interpreted as the “calling.”

A friend of mine who dropped out of seminary reports that a large majority (I believe he said 70% or more) of his fellow seminarians were gay. Those who don’t drop out (nowadays a distinct minority) end up becoming clergy.

I have written before of why I do not personally consider myself gay, and my incompatibility with gay male subculture. But that’s just me. Most queer men are gay, and have the typical (i.e. irrepressibly strong) male sex drive. Put it all together and you have a real problem: men with strong sex drives and no acceptable official outlet for them.

Parish priests do, of course, have some unofficial outlets available for them. They can visit gay sex clubs or cruisy parks, public washrooms, and/or highway rest areas. They can masturbate. Or they can take advantage of their ready access to underage boys, priests having traditionally being trusted to work unattended with children.

To reiterate, that’s a real problem.

It is made all the worse by there being a shortage of priests. Because of course there is. The sexual revolution gave queer Catholics other more honest options for living, and most of us have availed ourselves of such options. What’s left is the worst of the closet cases… and a persistent and growing shortage of priests.

So when the Church hierarchy learns of yet another pedophile priest in their midst, they have every incentive to cover it up, because reporting the priest’s crimes to the authorities would exacerbate the already severe shortage. So of course there are recurring sex scandals in the Roman Catholic Church. It would be a surprise if, given the general parameters outlined above, it was any other way.

Published at 15:46 on 26 September 2024

This is but one example of why. And it is also a disaster for: accuracy (it can’t even admit when it doesn’t know an answer); intellectual property rights (it is based off unauthorized use of content created by others, which the AI engines then charge for access to; and even from a purely business standpoint (it is merely the latest tech bubble, as most AI ventures are running a loss and burning through VC funding).

Published at 09:00 on 16 September 2024

Those who deny the peaceful transfer of power to others should not be surprised when others deny the same to them.

No, it doesn’t help the situation. It is more likely to help Trump than it is to help Harris, but it is more likely yet to help neither and to quickly get buried in the fast-moving news cycle, just like the last assassination attempt (which got a lot closer to achieving its goal) did. Assassination attempts don’t have a good track record of achieving their desired goals, but they are not surprises in the current political context, either.

Those who deny the peaceful transfer of power to others should not be surprised when others deny the same to them.

To look at it from an Eastern philosophical perspective, it’s karma. The one who threatens violence on others himself becomes a victim of violence.

Or, to look at it from a more Western perspective, it’s norm erosion, something self-professed conservatives used to be concerned about. But Trump is a fascist, not a conservative.

• Conservatism is not about inciting a putsch to stay in power.
• Conservatism is not about stringing together bald-faced lies demonizing immigrants and minorities.
• Conservatism is not about clinging to those lies even after they are shown to be lies, because at least the lies rally your base, the ends always justifying the means.

Fascism, by contrast, is all about norm erosion. The Nazi Party enthusiastically did all of the above (well, their putsch was to get into power, not to stay in it). Fascism is all about the ends justifying the means.

And, not surprisingly, they tried to kill Hitler, too. Multiple times.

In a further historical parallel, it seems that Ryan Wesley Routh is a disgruntled conservative. At least one of Hitler’s erstwhile assassins, Claus von Stauffenberg, was a disgruntled conservative.

Those who deny the peaceful transfer of power to others should not be surprised when others deny the same to them.

Published at 20:04 on 10 September 2024

She did exactly what she needed to do: goad Trump into ranty old man mode.

The problem is, she also came across looking very much like she was doing just that. Would have been a significantly more effective tactic if she had been more subtle about it, then the ranting would have appeared unprovoked and thus been more jarring.

Overall though, Trump did do damage to himself, albeit not as much as he would have if Harris had been more subtle.

An imperfect win is still a win. Sure beats a self-immolation like what happened in July.

Published at 10:40 on 10 September 2024

It will be one of:

1. No substantive change, or
2. Trump inflicts significant damage on himself.

It is unlikely to be either candidate significantly burnishing their candidacy. It is unlikely to be Harris damaging herself. It is unlikely to be either candidate directly damaging the other to any significant degree. This is because the candidates are mostly known quantities and the voters have mostly made their minds up.

The only wildcard is whether and how effectively Trump can keep a lid on his ranting, rambling old man mode, which has been manifesting itself to an increasing degree in recent months. If he can, he will prevent further damage to his cause.

If he can’t, he will damage his cause. He’s been ranty and incoherent in his own rallies many times recently, but that’s his rallies, attended by his loyal base, the folks he wouldn’t lose support from even if he shot someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue. This time, however, more than that base will be watching and paying attention. In the worst case, it could be self-inflected damage that approaches the damage Biden did to himself last July.

I was initially skeptical that Trump could keep a lid on it. And I’m certain that he can’t do so in general. But the debate is a mere 90 minutes. There is a chance he could keep a lid on it that long.

Harris’ job, therefore, is to try and trigger that mode in Trump. She needs to pay as much or more attention to how she says things as what she says. Goad Trump without it being immediately transparent she is goading him. This should be possible, given Trump’s general nature (but if Trump resists being triggered, he resists doing damage to himself).

If Harris successfully does the above, she will by her own actions increase her chance of winning, but she will have done so as a result of getting Trump to tarnish his. It will, in the final analysis, be more what Trump said than what Harris said. Hence my phrasing in the list above.

Published at 07:46 on 6 September 2024

The Keys to the White House

Alan Lichtman has finally called it: Harris will win in November.

But that’s just one metric, and although it has had a remarkable run of being accurate, no metric is infallible. Plus, there are always judgement calls, and many of Lichtman’s calls are in retrospective only, when confirmation bias can enter the picture (e.g. Lichtman wasn’t around when McKinley was running against Bryan).

However, there are other signs in Harris’ favour.

Trump Is No Longer a Purely Theoretical Threat

In 2016, he was. Nobody so extreme and so unqualified had won before. Therefore it was easy for voters to wave it off as a purely theoretical threat and cast protest votes against Hillary Clinton (a historically unpopular and weak candidate).

This factor helped Biden in 2020, and given that Trump is running again, it helps Harris this time as well.

Trump Is More Tarnished than Ever

This is the first election Trump has run in after he tried to instigate a coup to remain in power. That coup attempt cost Trump; some top Republicans like Liz Cheney who had reluctantly gone along with him until that point broke with him.

Moreover, Trump is older than ever and his age is now exacting an increasingly visible toll on him. Mental decline means Trump is more rambling and erratic than ever. (This, after Trump spent months making age a campaign issue when he was running against Biden.) Yet more tarnish.

Because of how polarized and how fascism-friendly many Republicans are, this won’t cost Trump very much support. However, it doesn’t have to cost Trump very much support. Because the electorate is so closely divided, every little bit of lost support measurably hurts Trump. For every Cheney and Kinzinger there are thousands of GOP-leaning voters in swing states who won’t be voting for Trump this time.

Harris Excites Her Base the Way Biden Did Not

There is a real Obama vibe about Harris. Like Obama, Harris is a groundbreaking candidate; she would be the first female president. Left-leaning (and even many centrist) voters are real suckers for such things. Yes, it is petty and not policy-based. So what. We are talking about actual voters in actual US elections, not hypothetical voters in some hypothetical ideal republic.

Atypically, Democrats are Campaigning Competently

One of the most frustrating things about US politics is the rank incompetence of the Democratic Party. Election after election, they make stupid campaign mistakes that leave easily winnable votes on the table. Sometimes they manage to win regardless, which goes to show just how badly Republican administrations sometimes manage to mess things up.

Not this time. For the first time in literally sixty years, Democrats are doing a good job at campaigning (yes, LBJ, whatever his flaws, was the last Democrat both willing and able to play political hardball).

Also Atypically, Republicans are Campaigning Incompetently

A lot of this is due to just how much the GOP has become an inward-looking political subculture. The rest of it is due to the Harris campaign’s competent nature. Republicans just can’t process how well the whole “weird” rhetoric worked against them. The idea that they might be the political weirdos and not, as their mythology insists, the voice of the Real America, the Middle America (Harris’ choice of a Midwesterner as a running mate really paid off), just makes their brains explode.

For once, it is the Democrats that are setting the terms of the debate, while the Republicans are assuming the role of suckers by responding to the term-setting (whenever the Republicans talk about not being weird, the debate is still over whether the Republicans are weird, i.e. the debate the Democrats want).

Conclusion

Odds really do seem to favour Harris. This is not to say it won’t be close (given polarization, it probably will). This is not to say that Trump could not win (odds favoured Hillary Clinton in 2016). But the odds do really seem to be in Harris’ favour; this is not just wishful thinking on my part.