Thursday, January 7, 2021

Insights emerging from a strange actor in the US Capitol riot: How some people believe rights and responsibility work

One of the stranger and yet most revealing comments about ethics I have personally seen has appeared in the context of the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Richard Barnett, 60, from Gravette, Arkansas, is one of the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol. He entered the office suite of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and sat at a desk full of papers, a computer, and a telephone. In one photo attributed to photojournalist Jim Lo Scalzo, Barnett gleefully holds up an envelope with Nancy Pelosi's name in the return corner and a typed address for Republican Rep. Billy Long. Barnett removed the envelope from Pelosi's office, replacing it with a coin.

Richard Barnett sits at Nancy Pelosi's desk and gleefully holds up a letter.

[This photo is by Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock and was published by the New York Post.]

As described by the New York Post:

New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg interviewed Barnett and posted video of the interview to Twitter. In that interview, Barnett maintained: “I didn’t steal it [the envelope]."

Here is his argument: "I bled on it because they were macing me and I couldn’t f-ing see." He added: "So I figure, ‘Well, I’m in her office, I got blood in her office, I’ll put a quarter on her desk even though she ain’t f — ing worth it.'"

He also told 5News: "I put a quarter on the desk because I’m not a thief."

His rationalization seems to be: He was injured while storming the Capitol. (He may feel sorry for himself about that.) Because he has bled on the envelope, it now somehow belongs to him or it otherwise ought to be removed. Additionally and separately, the envelope seems to be purchaseable: If he leaves $0.25 in its place, he has paid for it. The envelope at least is worth that much, even if the Speaker of the House herself is not worth anything, in his view.

Rosenberg tweeted that Barnett had bragged: "I wrote her a nasty note, put my feet up on her desk and scratched my balls." He claimed that the note said: "'Nancy, Bigo was here you bitch.'" Inside Edition published a photo showing a sheet of paper inside a manila folder; directly on the manila folder, someone had written: "WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN."

The Daily Dot reported that Pelosi's "office was vandalized by a number of President Donald Trump supporters, who flipped desks, tore pictures off the walls, and rifled through the speaker's property."

Rosenberg added: "[Barnett] claimed that he was politely knocking on the door of Pelosi’s office when he was pushed in by other protesters. It was a story he knew no one would buy — 'I’ll probably be telling them this is what happened all the way to the D.C. jail,' he said."

Richard Barnett kicks up his feet at Nancy Pelosi's desk, leans back, and holds his smartphone.

[Photo credit: EPA]

On January 2, on a Facebook page under a fake name, Barnett had criticized Pelosi "for using the description 'white nationalist' as a 'derogatory term.'" He argued: "I am white. There is no denying that. I am a nationalist. I put my nation first. So that makes me a white nationalist." Thus, he concluded: Anyone who doesn't identify as a nationalist should "get the f--- out of our nation." (Note: The definition of "white nationalism" is not the appreciation of the nation in which one happens to live while simultaneously happening, quite incidentally, to be white. The correct definition is, rather, the ideology of white identity and the desire to build a white ethno-state.) The Washington Post also reported that he has recently shared conspiracy theories online about the coronavirus vaccine and helped fundraise for a campaign tied to QAnon. Though he supported the police in the context of the 2020 George Floyd protests, the storming of the Capitol in which he participated led to the death of a Capitol police officer, Brian Sicknick.

Apart from possible charges of domestic terrorism for breaking into the Capitol, he might face federal charges of stealing mail under US Code Section 1708. He was indicted on seven counts and remained in custody as of March 2021.

In April 2020, Barnett received a PPP loan of $9,300. PPP loans are a form of government assistance that were created to address the economic troubles of the coronavirus pandemic: generally, they are supposed to be repaid, though in certain circumstances they can be forgiven.

One could pull this apart for a long time, if one had time and interest. For me it provokes some insights about how some people believe ethics works and what they believe liberty is about.

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Wednesday, January 6, 2021

The eunuch ambassador in 'The King at the Edge of the World' by Arthur Phillips

The eunuch here is a supporting character (though one who instigates the main character's life conflict) and does not even have a name. The eunuch — originally “born a Christian in Portugal," captured at the age of 11, and converted to Islam — is the ambassador sent by Ottoman Sultan Murad the Great in 1591 to spend several months negotiating with the Queen of England.

“He carried for the island’s sultana [a.k.a the Queen of England], among many other gifts, a pair of lions, a scimitar, a unicorn’s horn, and ten English pirates captured by Turkish sailors," so he was "welcomed to London by a torchlight parade through the gawping crowds near St. Lawrence Jewry church, winding to the large house where they would live for five months before returning to Constantinople.” The envoys spent months in negotiations with the English “in matters of sea-lanes and free overland passages, the exchange of captured pirates/sailors, various immunities and protections for Englishmen voyaging in the empire of the Ottomans.”

Among his 14-man entourage are his chief adviser, Cafer bin Ibrahim, and a physician, Mahmoud Ezzedine. The physician is supposed to support the eunuch's health on this journey, but the eunuch is accustomed to the food and climate from his own youth and is not ill, so the physician does little more for him than draw up his astrological charts. Ezzedine is, however, needed to treat an Englishman, the Baron of Moresby. His work so pleases the Queen that the Queen "passed to the ambassador a ring set with a blue stone" with the intent that it be given to the physician as a gift. The eunuch ambassador makes a sudden decision to leave the physician with the Queen, essentially presenting him as a gift to her. The ambassador is described as “the puffy man, lovingly grateful in turn to Ezzedine for having played his role so gently, without any strife.” Being left behind in England is painful to Ezzedine because he had expected to return to his wife and child in Constantinople.

That is the last we hear of the eunuch character. The novel follows Ezzedine for the next ten years.

Other quotes of interest:

“The English knight was, as many of the Englishmen were, so languid and thin in arm and leg, so peculiar and effeminate in affect, that Ezzedine wondered how many of them were eunuchs.”

Ezzedine “was here to protect the health of the ambassador, but somehow that eunuch was, without effort, in good health, unaffected by the English air. …The ambassador was ceremonially protected from the English food, too, and mechanically untempted by the grotesque Englishwomen…”

An actor jokes privately to his friend that he could play “a Turk eunuch…If we put a cushion under your shirt? And tied your eggs back between your legs?”

Later...his wife is jealous that he might treat concubines for menstrual cramps. “…if you do, I will have to make you a eunuch.”

Book

Arthur Phillips. The King at the Edge of the World. New York: Random House, 2020.

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Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Quotes: On lonerism

When geniuses self-isolate:

Peter Higgs is not a fan of modern technology, said Decca Aitkenhead in The Guardian (U.K.) The British theoretical physicist, 84, is so consumed with work that he has never sent an email, looked at the Internet, or used a cellphone. He's so cut off from modes of modern communication that he didn't know he'd won this year's Nobel Prize in physics--for his 1964 paper predicting the Higgs boson, which imbues other particles with mass--until a neighbor congratulated him on the street. His son did buy him a mobile phone two months ago, but he has yet to make a call, and no one outside his family knows his number. "I resent being disturbed in this way," says Higgs. "Why should people be able to interrupt me like that?" Because they want to keep in touch? "But I don't want to be in touch," he laughs. It's an intrusion into my way of life, and certainly on principle I don't feel obliged to accept it."
"The hermit physicist." The Week, Dec. 27, 2013. p. 8.

Anneli Rufus noted that the psychopath warning list usually includes isolation/loner:

Yeah, but that could also be on a list of ways to identify a genius.
Anneli Rufus. Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto. Da Capo Press, 2003. p. 259.

On needing privacy for the creative process:

When I went upstairs a third time--the Bunker bathroom needed extra toilet paper--This Guy said, without looking up, "Go the fuck downstairs and write already."
So I did. I emerged toward dawn and slid into bed next to him with immense gratitude. In the morning, I told him I'd forgotten he was there.
"The ultimate compliment," he said.
I think you can balance writing and a relationship. It helps to have a room of your own...
"The Writer's Life: Advice from the Bunker." Jenna Blum. The Grub Street Free Press. Fall 2004. Vol 1, Issue 2. p. 13.
"'When I talk about my work,' she once told me 'it skids and shatters and gets away.' To this day, I never ask a writer what he or she is 'doing.'"
Perdita Schaffner (daughter of the author). In the introduction to H. D. [Hilda Doolittle] The Gift. New York: New Directions, 1982. p. x.

On occasionally seeking company:

"But you're not a child and don't have a child's needs," he said without a trace of admonition. "A child is in danger without company because it's helpless, but an adult has access to any need imaginable: food, medicine, companionship. All an adult has to do is to pick up the phone and call a doctor or drive to the supermarket or meet a friend for coffee."
Barbara Feldon. Living Alone and Loving It: A Guide to Relishing the Single Life. New York: Fireside, 2003. pp. 22-23.
“Here is a student, the interviewer told the Harvard admissions committee in his report about the conversation, ‘who has 'fit in' in two places in a short time, and is not a loner (in a circumstance where it could easily happen).’"
Julie Zauzmer. Conning Harvard. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2012. p. 57
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Sunday, November 29, 2020

Articles to read

An assortment of articles spotted online. "To be read."
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Quotes: On reading good books

Christine Weston:

She gazed from the fabulous tides of sunset to the book which she had brought to read on the journey. It still smelled of Dockett’s Book Store. She could see the dusty shelves stretching from floor to ceiling, the long tables stacked with volumes, and the figures which moved like characters in a Kafka novel. That had been in the fall of 1935.
Christine Weston. The Dark Wood. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946. p. 21.

Anne Perry:

A good book changes you, even if it is only to add a little to the furniture of your mind.
Anne Perry, writing on "The Man Who Was Thursday" by G. K. Chesterton. The Book that Changed my Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books that Matter Most to Them. Edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen. New York: Gotham Books, 2007. p. 137.

Virginia Woolf:

Rachel read what she chose, reading with the curious literalness of one to whom written sentences are unfamiliar, and handling words as though they were made of wood, separately of great importance, and possessed of shapes like tables or chairs. In this way she came to conclusions, which had to be remodelled according to the adventures of the day, and were indeed recast as liberally as any one could desire, leaving always a small grain of belief behind them.
Virginia Woolf. The Voyage Out (1915).

Greg Epstein:

Or as the eighth-century Chinese poet Li Po said to his friend and colleague Tu Fu, "Thank you for letting me read your new poems. It was like being alive twice."
Greg Epstein. Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. William Morrow, 2009. p. 189.
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Saturday, November 14, 2020

Quotes: What makes an idea sacred or religious?

Theism? Superstition? Myth? Ritual?

Does it have to teach a fixed dogma, and/or does it have to be undefined and flexible enough to allow for its continuous development and for individuals' ongoing learning?

If it is inherently motivated by politics or if it grows to seek political goals, does it have to contain material that is separate from and more enduring than the political movement?

Michael Ducey in 1977 distinguished “mass ritual” and “interaction ritual” based on whether the audience participates.
(Referenced in William Beers. Women and Sacrifice: Male Narcissism and the Psychology of Religion. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992. p. 164.)

Thought becomes religious when it thinks itself out to the end.
Albert Schweitzer
The psychologist Philip Tetlock(1999, 2003, 2004) identifies values as sacred when they are so important to those who hold them that the very act of considering them is offensive.
Daniel C. Dennett. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York: Penguin Group, 2006. p. 22.
To the rational mind there can be no offense, no obscenity, no blasphemy, but only information of greater or lesser value.
Jennifer Diane Reitz, www.transsexual.org
Then what is religion? If you have wiped the window cleant — which means that you have actually stopped performing ceremonies, given up all beliefs, ceased to follow any leader or guru — then your mind, like the window, is clean, polished, and you can see out of it very clearly. When the mind is swept clean of image, of ritual, of belief, of symbol, of all words, mantrams and repetitions, and of all fear, then what you see will be the real, the timeless, the everlasting, which may be called God. But this requires enormous insight, understanding, patience, and it is only for those who really inquire into what is religion and pursue it day after day to the end.
* * *
Religion is the feeling of goodness, that love which is like the river, living, moving everlastingly. In that state you will find there comes a moment when there is no longer any search at all; and this ending of search is the beginning of something totally different. The search for God, for truth, the feeling of being completely good — not the cultivation of goodness, of humility, but the seeking out of something beyond the inventions and tricks of the mind, which means having a feeling for that something, living in it, being it — that is true religion.
J. Krishnamurti. Think on These Things. ed. by D. Rajagopal. New York: Perennial, 1964. pp. 43, 157.
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Wednesday, November 11, 2020

'Soft coup' and storytelling: A couple threads on Twitter

Sharing a couple threads I spotted on Twitter.

First, here's Frank Figliuzzi, formerly a top FBI official, now a national security analyst for MSNBC, saying that Trump is behaving like a "barricaded subject" in a hostage negotiation. He says that Biden is handling the situation correctly, staying calm and allowing Trump an opportunity to vent, while letting Trump keep his options open for resolving the standoff "the easy way" rather than "the hard way."

On November 10, the New York Times published a large article explaining that no significant election fraud has been found. This has been the most secure U.S. election ever, according to a November 12 New York Times article.

Yet Trump has been refusing to cooperate with the Biden team (see these articles from CNN and Huffington Post). He's making the moves of a dictator (CNN). To the extent he ever performed normal presidential responsibilities, he has now stopped working altogether. (CNN) To maintain the illusion that his administration expects to continue, issued a directive that "any political appointee searching for a new job should be fired."

On November 11, Jennifer Rubin mentioned in the Washington Post that "six pre-election and seven post-election lawsuits by the Trump camp have all been tossed out" by judges who say that the allegations are not based in fact. "Interestingly," she notes, "Trump’s lawyers refuse to say before a real judge that they have found fraud or other reasons to overturn results." The problem, she says, is:

Trump is receiving support from a range of Republican figures, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who says congratulations to Biden are premature; a flock of members of Congress from Georgia, who baselessly attack their state’s Republican secretary of state and inexplicably claim their own election victories valid while Biden’s is fraudulent; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who declares the transition will be to a “second Trump administration”; and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who perpetuates the fiction that the outcome is in dispute. The aim is not to steal an election, but to sow doubt about the legitimacy of our democracy — just as the Russians intend. These Republicans aim to keep their base in a constant state of anger and crazed denial.

On Friday, November 13, "nine cases in key states were denied or dropped in one day," CNN reported. The next day, in the evening, Trump tweeted that he was putting Rudy Giuliani in charge of the Trump campaign's legal fight. Giuliani replaces campaign adviser David Bossie, who, in addition to not being a lawyer, was diagnosed with COVID-19 soon after he was appointed to the role. On Monday, November 16, another four lawsuits were dropped.

On November 11, NBC reported that "there is a growing expectation among President Donald Trump’s advisers that he will never concede that he lost re-election, even after votes are certified in battleground states over the coming weeks," while other advisers believe that "the president is coming around to the fact that the election result won’t be reversed." Regarding Trump's lawsuits over the election, a White House official said, “It’s not wrong for the Biden team to call it theater.” A November 12 article from CNN found sources close to Trump who believe that Trump will indeed give up eventually.

Republican leaders are starting to give up on Trump's narrative and his false expectations for a win, according to a November 12 New York Times article.

On November 16, White House national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien said that Biden appears to have won.

Also on November 16, attorneys quit the Trump lawsuit in Pennsylvania. Trump then hired Marc Scaringi to represent him there. But this attorney doesn't seem to believe in the cause. Scaringi, a radio show host, had told his listeners on November 7: “In my opinion there really are no bombshells that are about to drop that will derail a Biden presidency including these lawsuits." Scaringi had also previously blogged that Biden was “president-elect” and “the 46th president," though he subsequently deleted the post.

By November 18, General Services Administrator Emily Murphy was still refusing to release transition funds. She says there is precedent to wait for some formal "ascertainment" of the election results; she also says she has received death threats. No legal process seems likely to change the election results at this point. "It's not clear what specific actions Murphy is waiting on before granting ascertainment," CNN reported, as "Murphy has not publicly said what the definitive line will be."

On November 19, state judges in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia threw out more of Trump's lawsuits.

Natasha Turak's CNBC article on Nov. 12, "What if Trump never concedes? The Constitution will end his term, conservative lawyer John Yoo says": Yoo says it is unlikely that his lawsuits will succeed in changing the vote count. First, Trump has no proof of systematic fraud. Secondly, while recounts can boost public confidence in the vote accuracy, they will not bridge the size of the gap between Biden and Trump, so Yoo recommends that Trump "start allowing the transition to occur." On January 20, constitutionally, "all of the allegiance of the government, of the military, of the civil service" will belong to Biden.

This thread:

Also, this one:

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