How Many Robert Indianas Are Lost Per Year?

This is Robert Indiana's screenprint "Autumn", from the "Four Seasons of Hope (Gold)" portfolio. Executed in 2012, it was produced in an edition of 82. There were also some printer's proofs and hors commerce proofs set aside, so let's say that a total 100 of these prints were created.

Robert Indiana is a prominent artist and he has an active secondary market. A copy of this piece, for instance, is up for auction next week with an estimate of $3,000 - $5,000. That's far from jaw-dropping by art world standards, but it's definitely something worth keeping around if it's in your house.

So here's my question: of the circa 100 copies of this print that were created, how many do we think are "lost" per year? Or put differently, how many copies of this print still are, functionally speaking, "in existence" in the art world?

By lost, I mean to include things like:

• The work being damaged beyond reasonable repair.
• The work being thrown away or otherwise disposed of.
• The work being in a location where it is forgotten about, or its owner not knowing what it is, such that it is unlikely that it would ever reemerge into the art world.

The last category does not include circumstances where the work is in someone's private collection and have no interest in selling it (but they know what they have), but does include situations where someone just puts it in a box in their garage and forgets about it because they don't realize it is a prominent work by a prominent artist.

Presumably, all editioned art (or all art by a given artist, if we consider their entire career production as a whole) has an attrition rate. Once the edition is produced (or the artist dies), no more is created. Meanwhile, as life goes on and entropy takes its course, work progressively gets lost. Pieces in museum collections are, relatively speaking, safe from becoming "lost". But pieces in private hands are a different story -- it gets gifted to someone who doesn't realize the work is important, or someone dies and the print is tossed while the house is being cleaned up, or it is ruined a natural disaster. Stuff happens, in short, and so practically speaking that 100 figure is going to progressively tick down as time passes.

But I'm curious what people think the rate is. When one sees an editioned work by a prominent artist, how many of those works have disappeared?

Maybe 2012 is too recent for much of this particular edition to have been lost. Robert Indiana was very well-established by then; one would imagine most people who obtained his work would be people who knew what they were getting. The proportion of "lost" pieces for earlier works may be higher -- in part simply because of the passage of time, but in part because earlier in his career his work was more likely to end up in the hands of people who didn't really think of it as an artifact to be preserved.

My parents have a couple of great limited edition prints by some of the most famous artists from the mid-20th century, and last year I did a little project where I tried to "account for" as many copies of those pieces as possible -- looking at auction records, museum collections, gallery inventories, and so on. Even for the most prominent work with the smallest edition size (28 with 7 asides), I was only able to find info on less than half; for most of the works the number was far less. That doesn't mean those unaccounted for prints are "lost" as I defined it above -- I suspect many are in private hands with owners who know full well what they are* -- but it was still interesting to witness how much of even the most famous artwork in the world is, in practical terms, missing.

Anyway, no deep thought here, just a musing of the day.

* For example, my research would not have revealed anything about my parents' ownership of these prints, but for the fact that I obviously knew what they had.

Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Believe Them

 

The above conversation captures two different accounts of why people voted for Trump. In one corner, there are those who voted for him because "he'll do what he says" (unlike, presumably, other more feckless politicians who make big promises but never keep them). In the opposite corner, there are those who voted for him because he won't do what he says -- it's all bluster and trolling and hyperbole to trigger oversensitive woke libs, but in reality he's just playing a transactional game and will be reasonable.

Emma Briant flags these two accounts with the observation that it's interesting how Trump has been able to effectively activate both camps even though they have seemingly opposite priors. I'll suggest, though, that paradoxically these two opinions about Trump are not as far apart as they seem, and can -- albeit with a very healthy dose of self-delusion -- coexist in the same voter.

Start with the premise that Trump "tells it like it is." Obviously, this seems absurd to anyone who spends a half minute listening to Trump -- he's a grade-A bullshitter whose open lies can be spotted a mile away. But for a certain type of observer -- the self-styled cynic who prides himself on knowing that every politician is some type of liar or fraud -- Trump's very brazenness loops back around into a form of trustworthiness. At least he isn't trying to pull the wool over our eyes. The lies are so obvious that they don't even count anymore. But they're deemed to be in service of some greater agenda, an agenda which the listener is confident Trump very much believes in.

Once one adopts that approach, one can absolutely simultaneously believe that Trump obviously won't do what he says he'll do and that he alone will do what he says he'll do. Simply put, if one doesn't like something he says or if some ramble taken "literally" is acknowledged to go too far, then it is one of those obvious lies that can be discounted -- the listener patting himself on the back for his sophistication in not taken the clearly absurd seriously. And everything one does like is slotted into that greater agenda that is presumed to represent a substrata of absolute, passionate commitment -- the core promises that the listener does want to believe in, desperately, and so is willing to project onto Trump with reckless abandon.

Others have categorized Trump as a classic scam artist, and we see that here too -- the trick is convincing his followers that they're in on the con, as opposed to the marks. Seeing the lies doesn't drive them away from Trump, it makes them feel like they're insiders. Believing they've spotted the ruse, they become more confident that the underlying play is whatever they're being sold.

I've said before and I'll say again: it's no accident that Arendt identified this sort of cynical outlook as a harbinger of totalitarianism, because it leads to worse than believing lies -- it leads to an indifference towards truth. There's no falsifying this outlook, since it can equally and happily accommodate belief and disbelief in equal measure.

Can One Man Really Stop the Senate?

As Donald Trump's disastrous march through America's legal institutions continues unabated, progressives are desperately looking for something -- anything -- that can stem the tide. One possibility folks have seized upon is Senate obstructionism. The line goes that even a single Senator can do a ton of things to throw sand in the gears -- objecting to unanimous consent, slowing down hearings, delaying votes -- that can extract real costs on the MAGA agenda and provide Democrats with some negotiating leverage. So far, no Senator has taken this approach, and that in turn is a source of considerable frustration to progressive partisans who feel that Democrats have been rolling over without a fight.

But for me, the fact that no Senator has done this raises a different question: If this strategy was so effective, wouldn't someone have done it by now?

There are 47 Democratic (or Democratic-aligned) Senators in Congress right now. And as a collective, I absolutely believe there are plenty of plausible explanations for why they're hesitant to adopt the defiant, resistant pose so many of us are thirsting for. If you told me that (too) many still harbor a gut desire for "bipartisanship" and "working across party lines", I'd believe you. If you told me that (too) many remain attached to Senate norms of civility and comity, I'd believe you. If you told me that Chuck Schumer has attempted to unify the caucus around a strategy that, for whatever reason, doesn't include maximal obstructionism, I'd believe you.

But if it's really true that just one Senator has in his or her power the ability to grind Congress' gears to a halt, is it really possible that not one of the forty-seven would try it? There wouldn't be a single defector?

Do you really think Bernie Sanders is afraid to rattle cages? Do you really believe that Adam Schiff has in the past few weeks become enamored by venerable Senate traditions? Do you really imagine that Tammy Baldwin is inclined to cower before any and all Chuck Schumer diktats (do you really believe Chuck Schumer is that good at keeping his entire caucus in absolute ramrod lockstep)?

It just doesn't seem plausible to me. Someone would have defected by now. In fact, even if this strategy was considerably less effective than it's cracked up to be, or even if you think Senate Democrats are all fat cat posers who don't actually care about resisting Trump at all, you'd still think someone would have tried it simply to be a clout-chaser. The fact that nobody has done it suggests that either it is a lot less effective than people think, or there are a lot more (and more serious) hidden costs to it than people recognize.

I won't claim to be an expert on Senate procedure, and reading about the various machinations around blue slips and unanimous consent and holds makes my head spin. So it's entirely possible I'm missing something here. But whatever I'm missing has to explain not why "Senate Democrats", collectively, aren't adopting an obstructionist strategy; it has to explain why every single individual Senate Democrat has so far refrained from using their power as a one-Senator army to bring things to a halt. And I just don't see what that explanation is, aside from this alleged silver bullet not actually being one.

It's "Historical Significance", Not "Contemporary Significance"

A South Carolina rabbi's speech at a Holocaust memorial ceremony was deleted from rebroadcast by the state's Holocaust "Council on the Holocaust". The rabbi took aim at such actions as book bans, anti-immigrant and refugee policies, and anti-LGBTQ policies, and noted the parallels to the run-up to the Holocaust. This, the Council decreed, was far too "political" for an event commemorating the Holocaust, which of course was not enacted by "political" actors but rather was, I don't know, some sort of meteor strike? Who can really say.

The Council's remit is to "instruct their students about the facts and historical significance of the Holocaust." Apparently there's a strong emphasis on the historical in that mission statement.

I'd say that witnessing "anti-woke" politics take aim at Holocaust education was predictable, but that would suggest that this is some sort of new evolution and it definitely isn't.

Nothing Else Like It

In one sense, what we're going through in America is highly reminiscent of other countries which have recently gone through authoritarian regresses. Hungary, India, Israel, the Philippines, and Brazil, to name a few, all have seen liberal democratic institutions decay in the face of far-right populist demagogues.

I've found this weirdly comforting -- not because what's happened in those countries hasn't been awful, but because somehow knowing this sort of thing doesn't stand outside history is reassuring. It's not the end of time, it is a thing happening in time.

Yet even this reassurance is, I fear, somewhat misleading. Because while it may be true that Hungary, India, Israel, etc. have gone through this before; and even true that (some of) these countries have or will come out the other side, what we have not ever seen is a global hegemon going through this sort of regression. Without understating the havoc that a recklessly authoritarian India or Israel can wreak on a local or even regional scale, they're unlikely to take down the entire international order with them. An out-of-control America could tank the global economy, could cause anarchic chaos to break out all over the planet, could set off a literal World War III. There's literally been nothing like it.

And domestically, with the possible exception of the Redemption-era South, we haven't in American history seen as rapid an authoritarian rollback of democratic equality and rule of law as what the Trump administration has inaugurated in its first week(!) in office. Every aspect of our constitutional order feels like it under attack, all at once, and nobody really knows how to respond.

This uncertainty, unfortunately, is sometimes paired with a strangely confident certainty that purports to know exactly how to respond -- which is to say, "something not what we're doing now."

At one level, I understand where this frustration is coming from -- "what we're doing now" can't be the right response, because it's not stopping things that need to be stopped. At another level, it really does elide the brute reality that nobody knows exactly what the most effective response is to Trump's blitzkrieg fascism. For example, I saw a report that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was taking the stance that Democrats should ignore Trump's "flood the zone" tactics and focus, laser-like, on the economic damage he was wreaking. I also saw many panning this tactic as leaving many critical issues unaddressed while missing opportunities to make hay out of massively unpopular oversteps that weren't clearly economic. I certainly see the weight of this critique, but I also understand the other side -- that trying to cover everything will inevitably result in an unfocused, chaotic response that lacks a clear narrative and just reinforces a "Dems in disarray" sensibility. How do I resolve that tension? I'm not sure -- and to be blunt, I think most people are unsure too.

My best proposal is this: the important thing is to keep fighting. The where or when or how is far less important than that it happens at all. This means I do agree wholeheartedly with the stance that Democrats' job is to be the opposition party and not give any free inches to Republican policies. But beyond that, I'm not sure the best use of our energy is engaging in internal sniping regarding who is prioritizing what messaging or narrative point best.

Is that a possible line to hold? I don't know. Is it even the best line to hold? I don't know! We're in new territory here. There's been nothing else like it.

Constitutional History

My baby's bris was yesterday. The Rabbi came -- the first time we met him, in fact (we joined the synagogue in December) -- and asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, teaching constitutional law. "Are they going to move you to the history department?", he quipped.

Ha ha ha [sob].

For many, many, many reasons, I'm glad I'm not teaching this semester. But for a while now, I've been reflecting on how I teach constitutional law, and in particular how I triage the limited time I have each term. New law keeps being made and the length of a semester stays the same, so there's always a question of what to drop in order to make room for new material.

In my classes, I actually teach a fair amount of constitutional law "history" -- that is, going through doctrinal periods whose prevailing law is no longer valid (alongside, of course, the "current" doctrine" as well). For example, I devote substantial attention to the Lochner era of substantive due process and the pre-New Deal federalism/commerce clause cases. More recently, I've kept teaching Roe and Casey even after Dobbs, and Gratz/Grutter after SFFA. I teach the new cases too, of course, but I do think it is important to trace where we came from, and I don't shirk on allocating time to that project. 

At one level, these cases are the easiest to prune for space. They aren't good law anymore; one does not need to know them in order to know what "constitutional law" is today. And I suspect there will soon be even more venerable old cases whose holdings are going to be overturned or superseded in the coming years, to be replaced by new upstart doctrines.

But as we prepare to enter what in all likelihood will be a very grim period in our constitutional jurisprudence, I increasingly believe that teaching the history is more important than ever -- simply because it demonstrates that the law does not have to be this way. There is nothing inexorable about the choices that will be made, they are not simply the way the constitution is. Keeping alive the flame of alternative possibilities -- legal regimes that once prevailed and could prevail again -- is going to matter, and it is a way of not surrendering to the totalitarian darkness that is attempting to consume us.

This, after all, is one thing that conservatives did very well with their "constitution in exile", and I have no shame in following their example. And while the arc may be long and the path may bend, ultimately, mir veln zey iberlebn -- "we will outlive them."

What Will Go Wrong Hardest, Fastest?

It's hard to keep track of the firehose of sewage the Trump administration has already started pumping out in its first few days. From civil rights to cybersecurity, the administration has been taking a wrecking ball to the American governmental project, with consequences that will likely reverberate for years, if not decades.

But I don't want to wait that long. I'm curious: which of Trump's endeavors are likely to blow up hardest, fastest, in a way that is noticeable to the broader public?

For example, take the cancellation of scheduled funding meetings at the National Institute of Health. This is a terrible thing, that will needlessly obstruct critical medical research. But while it's certainly noticeable to the doctors and scientists on the inside, the public impact of it won't be felt for a long time. It's not like there's a cancer cure that was scheduled to come out tomorrow that now is being shelved.

Ditto Pete Hegseth likely getting confirmed as Secretary of Defense. It is very bad that an alcoholic sexual predator is overseeing America's military, but we're not going to lose Buffalo to a Canadian invasion in the short-term. The fallout -- in terms of military readiness, efficiency, professionalism, and so on -- will occur over a longer timescale.

By contrast, the myriad governmental hiring freezes Trump has announced do seem to be breaking out of containment, insofar as they are kneecapping many people who in many cases were all set to move long distances to start a new job, only to have it abruptly pulled out from under them. I'm already seeing a few "leopards ate my face" posts by Trump supporters who are sure that Trump couldn't possibly have meant to do exactly what he said he was going to do.

Tariffs are another good candidate for something that will immediately, dramatically, and noticeably impact American pocketbooks -- especially if they set off another bout of inflation.

But maybe there's something else that will explode harder, faster, and stronger than I anticipate. I would say I can't wait to find out, but I suspect my preferences will have little to say on the matter.

Does the ADL Care That Republicans Admire Hitler?

Shortly before the election, I posted about the alarming fact that (a) Trump seems to admire Hitler and (b) Republicans don't seem to care that Trump admires Hitler. In the course of that post, I asked rhetorically what the ADL's response to this news was going to be, observing that the actual answer appeared to be covering their eyes with a "lalala" see-no-evil approach. This was of a kind with the new direction Jonathan Greenblatt had taken the organization, which was steadfast and resolute in never, ever, giving offense or more than the most mealy-mouthed critique to the American right no matter how open their antisemitism became.

Fast forward a few months and some increasingly pathetic acts of ADL supplication, and we reach inauguration day, where Acting President Elon Musk appears to have given a Nazi stiff-arm salute (the Nazis sure think so). 

Is the ADL on the case? Only if dismissing the case counts!

On possible basis is there to extend any sort of "grace" or "benefit of the doubt" to Elon Musk of all people? He's basically a modern-day Henry Ford (oops, bad comparison)! He's been one the leading figures injecting extreme-right antisemitism back into mainstream discourse! There are few people -- even including Donald Trump -- who have been more open than Elon Musk about wanting to resurrect the reputations and the political influence of the modern-day Nazi movement. Extending "grace" to Elon Musk should be like extending "grace" to, I don't know, the Alternative for Germany party.

But of course, none of that matters. The ADL has, over the past few months, made it abundantly clear that it views the American far-right as its friend, and so will extend infinite grace to them no matter how obvious their antisemitism becomes. It's disgusting. It's despicable. It is a grotesque abdication of the ADL's core mission. And the worst part it is, it's no longer even surprising.

I spent today taking care of my newborn, doing my best to keep him fed, warm, and safe. My only thought on the inauguration I wanted to have was that it was a shameful, shameful day. Which it was -- but it didn't occur to me that the ADL would add to that shame. 

Maybe it should have.

What a shameful, shameful display.

New Frontiers of Darkness

The Washington Post has unveiled its new slogan to supplement (in practice, supplant) the old "Democracy Dies in Darkness": "Riveting Storytelling for All of America."

I can't tell you how much I hate this.

First of all, even out of context, it sounds both comically corporate and unbearably patronizing. "Riveting storytelling for all of America" sounds like how to market the Scholastic Book Fairs for emerging readers, not one of America's papers of record.

But of course, we must take this slogan in context. And the context is the Post spending the last few months humiliating itself and dynamiting its journalistic credibility by repeated acts of groveling towards the MAGA movement.

And I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but this slogan really encapsulates the media's self-delusion that it is part of the liberal family. Again, recall my thesis here: the media thinks its main audience is liberals, and so it sees its job as to challenge liberals with "alternative perspectives" or "competing views" (as opposed to just telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they may). One implication of this is that conservatives are a growth audience (because of course the Post in its prior manifestation couldn't be speaking to them) -- this is what "for all of America" means. We're no longer speaking just to the latte-sipping coastal elites, but to all of America. And lest you think I'm projecting, they're being quite explicit that this is what they mean:

Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has made comments in line with the new mission statement in conversations with Post journalists in recent years, according to two people familiar with those discussions. Mr. Bezos has expressed hopes that The Post would be read by more blue-collar Americans who live outside coastal cities, mentioning people like firefighters in Cleveland. He has also said that he is interested in expanding The Post’s audience among conservatives, the people said.

Now nominally, recognizing that conservatives are part of the audience could mean that the Post starts committing to telling them things they don't want to hear. For example, they could be informed, in no uncertain terms, how Trump's tariffs will crush working families with spiraling grocery bills. Or they could be told, in clear-eyed fashion, of how Trump's inner circle is proposing increasingly fascistic and lawless abuses of government power. Or they could be shown, without varnish or spin, how the Republican Party has begun to view sexual assault and rape as virtues in its political leaders -- not even a secret to be ashamed of, but as an affirmative basis for support and promotion.

But of course, we all know that is not what Bezos and his cronies have in mind. "Riveting storytelling" suggests that what they want is sensation and soothing -- to reaffirm their (new) readers' priors, never to challenge them with something as dirty and discomforting as the truth. Conservatives can't tolerate hearing that Donald Trump was a grotesquely unsuitable choice for the presidency, and so the Post (even in its editorial endorsements) won't aggravate them. The Post knows that many if not most of Trump's cabinet picks fail the most basic (by the Post's own lights!) criteria of qualification for office in a democratic society -- respecting the outcomes of a democratic process -- and so the Post will just pretend it doesn't matter.

The Scholastic Book Fair analogy is more than snark, for this is of a piece with the broader trend of infantilizing the American right. Conservatives, once again, are being treated as children, and spoiled children as that -- whatever junk keeps their attention, that's what will be provided. 

A once great newspaper, reduced to an entertaining diversion for spoiled, coddled brats. Maybe the slogan isn't so bad after all.

The Best Publication Ever!

 

Nathaniel Carl Schraub came into the world late last night, clocking in at 8 lbs 2 ozs and a whopping 21 3/4 inches long! He had no interest in arriving whatsoever, but he's here now and we love him to pieces.

Mom and baby (and dad) are all tired but doing well, and we can't wait to introduce him to all the amazing things in the world!

The Midpoint

I'm turning 39 next month.

That's not necessarily the halfway point of my life -- most of my grandparents lived well into their eighties, if not beyond -- but it's probably reasonably close.

I'm writing from the labor and delivery room in Sunnyside hospital, where Jill and I are very much in a "hurry up and wait" mode. The next time I return home, I'll be a parent. That also feels very much like a line that divides one's life in half -- before and after kids.

And of course, we're coming up on a major change in American history, one that also feels like it could become a historic before-and-after line -- this time for American democracy itself. The hope is obviously that this is just ("just") four years that need surviving (and I've been reminded that there are worse times to be distracted from the woes of the world by a 0 - 4 year old than 2025 - 2028). But it does not strike me as implausible that the damage that is about to be unleashed upon America is not something that will be contained to just four years. It may not be something that can be healed in my lifetime, or ever. It's very possible we have reached an epochal pivot point, in which much of which many of us have taken for granted about America will lie forever in the "before" time.

I'm basically saying what Alexandra Petri said already, only much less eloquently. But indulge me a little.

It's not often that life so neatly divides itself into such distinct eras. Normally that's a function of narrative convenience or arbitrary labeling. But right now, it really does feel like I stand on a precipice -- for myself, for my family, for my country. It's staggering, and glorious, and terrifying.

It's time for Part II.

Tech Bros Are Weak Men

When I look at men like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, I see men who are fundamentally weak.

That sounds judgmental. And it is, to an extent. But maybe not quite to the extent one thinks.

All of these men were at one point self-identified Democrats. Zuckerberg flirted with a run for President before he realized that nobody, you know, liked him. Bezos positioned the Washington Post as a guardian of democracy before taking it dark.

As these men, and others in their cadre, have pivoted to the right, one narrative one often hears is that they were effectively bullied into changing their views by mean anti-big tech sentiments amongst progressives. This is far too pat (not the least because Republicans certainly held their own in highly publicized attacks on the big tech companies), but what is fair to say is that these men see themselves as having promoted liberal causes and they did not get the adulation and adoration from Democrats that they felt they deserved. They were not feted as heroes. They were not recognized as titans of industry. They were not handed the reins of leadership. They weren't even generally recognized as progressive allies. They continued to face pressure and mockery and criticism -- much fair, some not -- and they were deeply, deeply resentful for it. 

It's most obvious in the case of Musk, whose desperation to be liked is transparently obvious and who has transformed an entire social media platform into a Potemkin village of praise for the new tsar. But one sees it across the cohort -- this frustration at not being loved, and the beckoning temptation that if they just sold out then at least somebody would cheer them and make them feel like part of the team.

In theory, this shouldn't matter. For those with requisite moral fiber, one does the right thing because it's the right thing, not because one gets plaudits and cookies from it. But in practice, it is a very ordinary vice to thirst for validation and gravitate towards whatever community seems most liable to hand it out. In the face of that temptation, it takes a strong man to align with a given set of values when others holding those same values can't or won't provide that respect.

And our big tech bro leaders? They are not strong in this way. They are weak -- weak in a way that is very familiar and very human, but weak nonetheless. And we all must unfortunately live with the consequences of their weakness.

The Last Lazy Weekend

"Do you have any plans?" "Not really, just having a lazy weekend."

I cannot count the number of times I've had this conversation. I love lazy weekends. I like sleeping in and just vegging on the couch with my wife more than 99.9% of possible "activities" I could plan out in the wider world. 

This weekend is set to be a wonderful lazy weekend. We have no major tasks to do, no major outings planned. We might grab brunch and drop something off at the post office. I'll watch football. She'll probably play Mario Kart.

On Monday, we go to hospital to begin an induction. When we return, we'll have a baby. He will bring joy, and laughter, and growth, and no doubt many sleepless nights.

But I suspect we won't be having any lazy weekends for a while.

Goodbye, lazy weekend. You will be missed.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LXXIII: Los Angeles Wildfires

The raging fires that have torn through the Los Angeles area are gripping the world's attention. Natural disasters like these don't typically have a direct culprit to blame, though of course, in a more abstract sense changing weather patterns brought on by global climate change play a role.

Or, you know, it's a Jew thing.

Jewish control over the weather is well-known trope to readers of this series, and few can forget congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene contributing "Jewish space lasers" to the antisemitic dictionary. But a variety of far-left groups now are making their own entry into the genre by tying the fires to America's support for Israel. For some, the rhetoric seems to be one of divine retribution, akin to how Mike Pence thinks of hurricanes ("When US taxes go to burning people alive in Gaza, we can’t be surprised when those fires come home."). Others play the game where America's foreign aid budget is presented as dollars out of hard-working American pockets, or, in this case, the Los Angeles Fire Department budget -- never mind that those pots of money have nothing to do with one another and in any event the widespread meme that the LAFD faced a draconian budget cut last year appears to be false (the fire budget is actually $53 million more than it was last year, but if I fact-checked every subclaim in this series I'd never get any sleep at all).

More broadly, I was just thinking about how the immediate right-wing pivot to blame the fires on "DEI" (by which they mean, the fire department has women in its leadership) reminded me of classic antisemitic conspiracy theorizing -- the immediate impulse to find the Jewish connection and shriek "this explains everything!" Whereas some pin every bad thing in the world on "the Jews", others do the exact same thing but plug in "diversity" or some other analogous buzzword as their "explanation of first, middle, and last resort". Remember when the Wall Street Journal blamed the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank on the fact that it had one (one!) Black director in its board? It's the same play. The conspiracy theory "explains everything" because it always "explains everything", because that what a conspiracy theory is -- it is a way to immediately, reflexively, and automatically explain anything and everything by reference to whatever it is you hate.

The "wildfires are caused by DEI" takes the rhythm of an antisemitic conspiracy theory and applies it to a new context. But while I certainly enjoyed basking in that familiarity, it is always reassuring to know that someone would go the OG route and blame the Jews and Jewish institutions directly. Not that I had any doubt it would go that way -- it always does, sooner or later.

A Lawsuit is Not a Press Release

If I were a judge, I think I'd be a lot more sanctions-happy than most judges.

Bad legal arguments bother me. And more specifically, lawsuits that are filed not because there's an actual colorable legal claim, but as a form of press release -- a ritualized airing of grievance trying to drape itself in the seriousness of a lawsuit -- strike me as intolerably obnoxious and abusive. Many defamation suits fit this profile (who needs SLAPP when there's Rule 11?), but there are others. And too often I see people cheer these suits (at least when they fit the right ideological profile), and I hate to see it -- these lawsuits serve no purpose other than to allow gloryhounds to chest-thump their virtue while wasting time and resources, not just of the judiciary, but of the very social movement they claim to be advocating for.

One example is the "class action" lawsuit recently filed against two Bay Area Democratic Representatives claiming that their votes in favor of aid to Israel caused emotional distress to constituents who believe that Israel's conduct in the Gaza war constitutes a genocide. As a matter of law, the suit is patently frivolous -- it is obviously foreclosed by the Speech and Debate Clause, and a moment's reflection should make anyone with half a brain recognize that enabling disappointed constituents to sue their representatives for their congressional votes is a capital-B Bad Idea. The suit has no chance of succeeding and serves no purpose other than to generate headlines, and that is not the purpose of the judiciary. I don't know if the named plaintiffs are willing participants in the charade or are genuinely deluded into thinking there is valid legal claim here, but if it's the latter, then they're being exploited in a terribly grotesque fashion. Either way, I hope the lawyers who filed it are sanctioned.

But lest anyone get too smug, this is not a sin with any particular ideological proclivity. A federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania just dismissed a lawsuit filed against Haverford College alleging a hostile environment against Jews on campus. The dismissal was based on the fact that the pleadings were, in so many words, a sustained rant rather than an attempt to communicate a cohesive legal complaint.

At this stage, a court would typically review the relevant facts. I cannot cogently do so here due to the sprawling and disorganized character of Plaintiffs' Amended Complaint, which appears to detail every frustration and disagreement of Jewish students and faculty that has occurred at Haverford over the last year. It spills pages of ink on lengthy frolics about events on other college campuses and about ideological debates. Rather than isolating instances of harassment and logically relating them to the elements of a hostile environment claim, Plaintiffs set forth a running list of grievances that reads more as an opinion editorial than it does a legal complaint.

I am familiar with this sort of "legal" writing, and I am glad to see a judge call it for what it is. It's written by lawyers who forget that their job is to craft a legal complaint and instead view the courts as a suitably august forum for airing every point of grievance and riding every ideological hobbyhorse they've ever encountered. In some ways, the Haverford case is worse than that Bay Area one, because in the former the judge agreed that some of the allegations might have presented cognizable claims under Title VI but couldn't move forward on them because they were buried inside such an amalgam of irrelevant ranting that they failed to present an actionable complaint. The (potentially) valid grievances of the Jewish plaintiffs at Haverford were, in effect, sacrificed so that their lawyers could play soapbox orator. They treated the lawsuit as one big press release, and everybody -- their clients included -- is worse for it.

The lawyers suing Haverford aren't stupid, at least in the traditional sense (they attended Harvard and U. Chicago Law).* But they decided that this issue was too important for them to act as lawyers, and instead decided to act as demagogues. That's despicable. It's an abuse of the judicial process, it's unfair to Haverford College, and it disserves the Jewish community they nominally purport to defend.

* They literally just took down the link to the bios of all their attorneys,

Loving the Sinner

When someone commits a crime, or otherwise breaches the moral code, there are expanding circles of victimhood.

First and foremost, there is the actual, literal victim -- the person robbed or cheated or abused -- followed by the victim's family and loved ones.

But I think after that, the persons hurt most, and hurt in a distinctive and devastating way, are the perpetrator's family.

When someone is arrested for a serious crime, it is normal for the media to seek commit from the perp's loved ones. On occasion, you'll see someone seize upon a letter written by perpetrator's mother to the judge pleading for clemency, juxtaposing the letter's description of the perp (which is, of course, written through the lens of parental love) against the usually vicious facts of the underlying offense. How out-of-touch, how classless, how blind.

For my part though, I have no idea what we expect them to say. The position they are in seems unbearably cruel, and I hate -- hate -- the people who treat the family as an easy target. It is of course true that a serious crime doesn't become less serious because a person you love committed it. And yet, it strikes me as unreasonable to demand a parent partake in what would otherwise be the obvious, perhaps even obligatory, practice of condemnation. In concept perhaps there is a tightrope one can walk of still expressing love while in no way diminishing the underlying offense; in practice I doubt it's possible to anyone's satisfaction. A columnist who concentrates on a convicted arsonist's volunteer work and urges others to see him in the light may be guilty of himpathy; the arsonist's father is not. The acquaintance who remains friends with the serial catfisher may be judged harshly for not cutting someone who hurts others out of his life; the swindler's mother should not be. This doesn't mean we abide by the parental perspective -- we know full well it is skewed -- but they're not wrong to hold it. They are in a fundamentally unfair and cruel position; the best thing we can do is just ignore them.

And that, too, is part of the cruelty. At least the primary victims have an obvious claim to our empathy, care, and concern. The perpetrator's family has, at best, a much shakier claim to emotional support. The fact that this order of prioritization is obviously justified -- of course we care more about the immediate circle of victims than we do about the feelings of the perpetrator's family -- in some sense compounds the wound; they don't even have the salve of knowing that their social abandonment is unjust. Or worse -- we know families come in for attack by people who think they must in some way be culpable too, looking for ways to accommodate a thirst for retribution that cannot be solely slaked on the body of the actual wrongdoer. They are blamed for not anticipating the misconduct, or they are blamed for somehow facilitating it, or they are blamed for not cutting loose the bad guy once his crimes became clear. 

Of course, occasionally the family really will have been complicit in a direct way (the parents who give their obviously disturbed teenager free access to firearms, for instance). But more often than not, they are victims who are not treated as victims. And I suspect there is, lying underneath everything else, a feeling of betrayal -- surely, they had to know that doing these dreadful things would hurt us; was our relationship of love not enough of a reason to refrain? What a terrible thought, and how much more terrible to have to endure it alone.

I'm soon going to start raising a son. I hope he turns out to be kind and smart and generous and every other quality one would hope to have in a person. I hope that for all the obvious reasons (I'd hope that everyone turns out that way!), but also for the more (selfish?) reason that if he doesn't turn out that way it would be heartbreaking, and I don't know what I would do. Brining a child into the world means committing to unconditionally love someone you haven't even met yet -- that is a terrifying vulnerability, when you think about it. To be sure, the overwhelming majority of the time it goes fine -- most people, whatever foibles and missteps they might make as part of a normal human existence, don't do anything so egregious as to provoke this sort of crisis. But if it goes wrong, boy does it go wrong.

As one moves away from the most intimate circles -- parents, spouses, siblings -- the obligation to be clear-eyed about the wrong waxes, while the indulgence we might concede for one who loves the perpetrator probably fades. But in any relationship of love -- familial, romantic, platonic, even political -- it hurts when someone or something you love does something objectively cruel, shameful, or even monstrous. It hurts because it is wrong, and it hurts because nobody's empathic attention will be focused on you, and it hurts because you know at some level that this loneliness and abandonment isn't even unjust, and it hurts because all of that means that even trying to articulate this sense of loneliness and abandonment and pain is inevitably going to be viewed as trying to wrongfully redirect care and concern from those who need and deserve it more.

What a terrible cruelty to endure.

Deepest Darkness

In the latest blow to the Washington Post's dying credibility, editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes has resigned after management killed a cartoon she was slated to run depicting various tech moguls (including WaPo and Amazon.com owner Jeff Bezos) prostrating themselves before Donald Trump. Telnaes says it is the first time one of her cartoons was killed because of its point of view in her tenure. The official Post line -- that they had already published or planned to publish two columns on the subject, and so Telnaes' cartoon was redundant -- is even more pathetic than the last defense they gave of obvious political interference in the editorial team's work (two whole columns!).

As Dell Cameron writes, what we're seeing now is a pattern of interference, which in turn amply justifies readers assuming the worst in future incidents -- and that sort of skepticism is toxic to a healthy relationship between a newspaper and the public it serves. Cameron suggests that there may need to be a "mutiny" in the Post in order to restore this confidence. I've written before about how these evermore overt acts of right-wing pandering by media leaders could finally disabuse the journalistic community of their illusion that "everyone" (who matters) already knows and agrees with liberal perspectives (so their main goal is not to present the truth but rather to present "the other side" -- i.e., the conservative view). It hasn't happened yet, but the stress has to eventually reach a breaking point.

Right?