Ben Kesling details the U.S. military’s profound recruiting shortfalls. “The children of military families make up the majority of new recruits in the U.S. military. That pipeline is now under threat, which is bad news for the Pentagon’s already acute recruitment problems, as well as America’s military readiness,” he writes. “‘Influencers are not telling them to go into the military,’ said Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an interview ….
TMD.
I’ve often felt twinges of regret that we abolished the draft and went all-volunteer. (Whether the volunteers are truly acting without compulsion is a separate question.)
Rest assured, though, that if we must reinstate the draft, they’ll make it easier than ever for the children of Congressmen and Senators to evade it, so the unending wars can go on.
In other words, my twinges of regret aren’t a basis for any policy prescriptions.
If you read me for foreign policy expertise, you’re misguided. But for some personal reasons, I’ve paid some attention to the Russo-Ukrainian war.
I do not believe that Ukraine can win this war in the sense of driving the Russians out of all of pre-2014 Ukraine. Maybe they can save Western Ukraine, but they may need to give up the Donbass to save the rest.
I deeply regret my nation’s role in “poking the bear.” Without denying Ukrainians the dignity of their own agency, I feel as if they’re dying in part for our sins.
This is not a new conviction, but it was strengthened by the necessity of the US shipping cluster bombs to Ukraine.
Could I have been dogmatically wrong about Florida Man?
I have a different take on Trump’s behavior: Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which begins in childhood, explains most of his deviancy. The distinct feature of this disorder is the refusal to follow any directions requested by anyone. Those with ODD see an order or request as someone trying to control them, and it feels like life or death.
I have a nephew who manifested this condition as a child — and now, at 55 years old, he hasn’t changed a whit. If you ask him a simple thing like to pick a piece of paper off the floor, he would refuse. He would not outright refuse, but he would avoid doing it and just ignore the request. God forbid you asked him why; he would say you were a controlling person and sulk off. He has been divorced twice because his behavior drove the women crazy.
Trump could not draw his sword at military school, and he cannot return the boxes, because to be controlled feels like life or death in his psyche. It really is a mental disorder — but that excuses nothing, especially in a president.
A reader responding to Andrew Sullivan.
I’ve always liked the story with the punchline “What the hell is water?” But I don’t think I’d ever read the full commencement address from which I got it.
Quite good, with anticipations of Iain McGillchrist and of “pay attention to what you’re paying attention to;” but David Foster Wallace’s way may be better.
Eugene Volokh, Public School Likely May Ban Student from Wearing “There Are Only Two Genders” T-Shirt.
Note that Volokh disagrees with the judge and notes again the slippery slope of the trangender distortion factor (my term, not his) in the law.
Lisa Borden is credited with the oft-bumper-stickered aphorism “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Maybe not, but I would counter that, if you’re not rejoicing, you’re not really paying attention either.
Eric McLaughlin, Christ Mirrors Back Our World
I implore my conservative readers to consider two ideas:
- Donald Trump is unfit for the Presidency of the United States.
- The Democrats (and substantial portions of the civil service) have treated Donald Trump very shabbily. For sake of argument only, I’ll include the federal criminal indictment in that.
Now here’s the point, which doesn’t seem subtle to me but seems to be widely overlooked: Idea 2 doesn’t negate Idea 1.
Can you see that?
Should we inflict Donald Trump upon ourselves and our children just to get back at those who’ve wronged him? Couldn’t we just throw him a giant pity party? (Sorry: I’m expecting an emergency phone call that evening.)
Gaslit by machinery that calls itself a person :: Writing Slowly
Excerpt
“I’m Bard, your creative and helpful collaborator. I have limitations and won’t always get it right, but your feedback will help me improve.” Let’s be clear. There’s nobody home. There is no first person singular in this introduction from Google’s new Large Language Model interface. We’re being gaslit. There is no “I”, only a complex, inhuman system of computer servers spread across anonymous data centres, dotted around the globe.
“I’m Bard, your creative and helpful collaborator. I have limitations and won’t always get it right, but your feedback will help me improve.”
Let’s be clear. There’s nobody home. There is no first person singular in this introduction from Google’s new Large Language Model interface. We’re being gaslit. There is no “I”, only a complex, inhuman system of computer servers spread across anonymous data centres, dotted around the globe. Yet this is what the system is now trying to pass off as a personality.
There’s been a lot of talk about pronouns, and these pronouns are just wrong. The “I” here is entirely phony. It’s not phony in the way it was in the movie, Her, where the gullible introverted guy believes he has a unique and specially intimate relationship with the talking computer, only to realise it’s been multitasking with thousands of lonely gullible men at the same time.
No. It’s much worse.
Google’s Bard, Chat GPT and the rest of the so called AIs, are no more individual people than a beehive in a raincoat is a person.
Or even less. At least the bees are alive. The AI processes aren’t alive. And they don’t have any kind of personality except for marketing purposes. We need to resist and reverse the metaphors that trick us into thinking otherwise. Why? Because they’re simply not true. And what do you call it when someone insists on maintaining and extending an untruthful description of reality, when they know exactly what they are doing? In the old days we used to name that for what it is: a lie. And perhaps it’s not too late to recognise this lie now.
The Queers Versus The Homosexuals is the probably the best thing I’ve ever read from Andrew Sullivan, a real crie de couer.
Confirmation bias? Maybe. I had more or less intuited (there certainly were hints in print) that some “trans” kids are flailingly trying to cope with homosexuality. Now it appears that it’s “most”, not “some.”
it is because … political discourses … are so detached from the prospect of actual violence that they can afford to be so extreme.
Alexis Carré, 💬 in the concluding essay in a series on the “coalition of the sensible” at Public Discourse.
Middleborough school district is going to get slaughtered in this case. Prof. Friedman highlights the reasons why. Why do schools, after getting cogent pre-litigation demand letters, persist in flipping off the constitution?
Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne, Why Are We In Ukraine?: for some, this may come as a surprise; for others, it’s a reminder. Those who might be surprised most need to read it.
Where it leaves me is “so what?” As in, “so, what can I do to get the US to come off its high horse voluntarily?”
We’ve acquired, by chance, some cheap entertainment for our cat. A nuthatch has been picking over a cherry tree close to our sunroom, but then flies over and pecks a casement window (screen inside, not out). It excites the cat mightily.
[W]here CNN went wrong was in the audience it assembled, a generally adoring crowd who laughed heartily at Trump’s jokes, clapped lustily at his insults and thrilled to his every puerile flourish. When several of them had their turns at the microphone, their questions were air kisses, which is why Collins had to keep stepping in to slap Trump around with her own. The contrast — her righteous firmness, their star-struck flaccidity — was disorienting and repellent. Between now and November 2024, we’re in for a stranger and scarier ride than in any other presidential election in my lifetime, and there’s no telling how it will end.
Frank Bruni
How much mischief can be done by a stochastic parrot if many people believe it’s a god?
A stress test for the First Amendment
Wayne State University Professor Steven Shaviro’s Twitter post is more nuanced than has been generally reported by pearl-clutchers (click the image to see the full text).
Test your free speech commitment: should this public university have suspended Shaviro?
UPDATE: Wayne State Professor Steven Shaviro Volunteers As First Amendment Tribute
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