Why are we still talking about the draft? Abolish Selective Service.

Baby boomers were the last generation to be drafted. Generation X and Millennials are now too old to be drafted. I have a young Zoomer friend who is too disabled to be of use to a modern military, but he still had to register at the Selective Service website just so he could be eligible for a driver's license. A very minor inconvenience to be sure, but let's go ahead and have this conversation about forcing future generations to fight for dubious causes.

The ACLU is arguing that the male-only draft is unconstitutional. I would agree. But the ACLU is arguing that only requiring men to register violates the 5th Amendment's equal protection clause. I would argue that drafting anybody violates the 13th Amendment's ban on involuntary servitude.

You can't even claim that there is a compelling state interest for Selective Service. In this age of drones, cruise missiles, and nuclear weapons, no foreign country wants to attack the US. Foreign terror groups are still out there, but they are never able to muster up more than a few volunteers to die for their cause. As of this writing, the chief security threat to the US is domestic terror groups and domestic insurrection. Our top notch military wants only the best men and women to serve. People who lack the will to serve voluntarily won't perform as well.

Right now, the Pentagon is trying to screen out right-wing extremists from it's own ranks. A draft would risk drawing in more of the extremists that the military is trying to get rid of. There are policies are in place to keep neo-Nazis and other fashholes from enlisting, so it might make sense to make them ineligible for the draft. Except that a draft might boost the recruitment numbers of these hate groups: just get a 1488 tattoo and you get to stay home while all your liberal peers have to go through boot camp.

In fact, the first time the draft was employed on a national scale was during the Civil War. The Confederacy tried it first. Slaveowners themselves were exempt from the draft, and poor white men were justifiable resentful of being forced to right for the "right" of wealthy men to own slaves. The Union attempted their own draft, and this led to the New York Draft Riots. Union troops had to be pulled from the front to restore order. The Confederacy lost the war anyway, but the Union suffered a net loss in manpower as a result of the draft.

"But Robert, if young men have to register for the draft, isn't it unfair to exclude women from the draft?" If this country lacks the political will to abolish Selective Service, reforming the obsolete institution serves no purpose either. I wish I was excluded from the draft myself. It would have been one less form for me to fill out, and one less thing to worry about. Life is unfair to men and women in different ways, but on the whole life is more unfair to women. Adding this extra burden to young women is an insult at best. To their credit, women have been more inclined to protest wars than to fight in wars. If women are subjected to the draft, many states would force them to either register for Selective Service, or forfeit their driver's license. Even in the absence of an actual war or an actual draft, this can impact their quality of life if they follow their conscience and refuse to register. There are many men who are suffering consequences for failure to register right now, and extending the draft to women would likely more than double the number of people who experience these hardships.

McConnell vs Trump

Mitch McConnell admitted that Donald Trump is responsible for the Capitol Riot. Why did he vote to acquit? Because McConnell made a deal with Trump: if you don’t declassify everything and don’t pardon Edward Snowden, then the Senate will acquit you. It was a tit-for-tat exchange. McConnell very reluctantly held up his end of the bargain. Trump no longer has the authority to declassify anything, but he likely remembers something particularly juicy from an intelligence briefing.

If Trump doesn’t get charged or arrested this year, it will likely be due to greymail: the act of blackmailing the government. Greymail is when a person threatens to release classified intel to the public if he is prosecuted for a crime. It’s also possible that a greymailer might still cause so much problems for a government that they try to find a way to deal with them anyway. On the other hand, Trump has very little credibility with most Americans. If he were to say “Oh by the way, here is a picture of an artifact found in orbit around Earth that definitely NOT created by humans,” most people will assume that the picture is fake. Suffice to say, if you don’t have a security clearance, you don’t know what Trump knows and what he might try to say or do. He might make something up. He might give out actual intel and the government will just say that this crazy old dude made it all up.

But now Trump and McConnell are engaged in a great political pissing contest. This goes to show that if you try to strattle the fence to keep Trump supporters happy, they’re still going to turn on you. They demand that you be as committed to Individual One as they are. If you won’t drink their Kool-Aid, don’t go to their party.

Why Gina Carano had to be fired

 

Gina Carano got fired by Lucasfilm over an Instagram post. After seeing the post in question, I have to agree with the decision that Lucasfilm made. The post contains the following.

“...the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

That might seem like a rhetorical question in that post, but it actually has an answer. Hating someone for being Jewish is way different from hating someone for their political views. Most Jews don’t choose to be Jews; they are born that way. Nobody is born with a political viewpoint. It’s not exactly easy to stop being Jewish if you are born to Jewish parents. Some people will consider that person to be Jewish even if they convert to another religion. Lots of people have different political views than their parents. Their political views change from time to time. It is normal and healthy to have different political views, but some of these political views are very, very bad.

And who gets to decide which political views are bad? Everybody! Lots and lots of people have strong opinions about other people’s opinions, and it influences the choices they make in what movies to watch, what music to listen to, and what books to read. The entertainment industry can be very picky about who gets to keep working. There are WAY more people who want to be actors than actually will ever get to be actors. If one person gets fired for being a MAGA sympathizer, that frees up a slot for someone who is not a MAGA sympathizer. The MAGA sympathizer can rethink their worldview, seek out a career that appeals to other MAGA sympathizers, or they can seek out income outside of show business. The show goes on, and the world keeps spinning.

That Impeachment Trial!

 So I’m going to do some amateur legal analysis. I’m not a lawyer, but if you are one, feel free to chime in. My own lawyer dad is taking a voluntary social media break. If you’re not a lawyer either, I’m probably going to mock you if your opinion runs contrary to mine. Here we go!

I think that if Trump were a normal crook, he would be found not competent to stand trial. He keeps changing lawyers and defense strategies. The arguments for his acquittal run around several themes. Here’s the three that I’m going to pick on:

1. The trial is unconstitutional.

2. He didn’t actually incite the riot.

3. The election was stolen.

Now let’s say the police find five bodies in your backyard, and you find yourself on trial for five counts of murder. If it’s obvious that you did it, then a good lawyer would try to work out a plea agreement. But you don’t want to spend any time in prison, so you are going to fight this.

You could try saying that the court has no authority to try you. Some defendants do try to make this argument, but I have never heard of a case where it results in acquittal or the charges being dropped. If you are already in front of a judge, it’s a big stretch to say that he doesn’t have authority. Whether it is fair or not, he is the one with the robe and the gavel, and you’re the guy in an off-the-rack suit that your lawyer picked out for you. It’s best to take the proceeding seriously.

You can say that you didn’t kill those people. Every year, millions of Americans avoid being convicted of murder by not actually killing anyone. This is usually a sound defense strategy if it is true, and the burden is on the prosecution to prove that it isn’t true.

You can say that the killings were justified. This is also a good defense if it is true. But it is difficult to convince a jury that the defendant was justified in killing the victims, and that the defendant didn’t actually kill anybody at all. So usually the defense commits to one alibi and sticks with it. To change the alibi during a case damages the defendant’s credibility and makes him look guilty. That isn’t something that a rational defendant wants.

Now let’s swing back around to Trump’s arguments.

Claiming that the trial is unconstitutional might give some pretext for Republican senators to vote for acquittal. This argument is false, but a Senator still needs to say something to his own voters on why he voted the way he did. This isn’t how normal trials with normal juries work, but it is how impeachment trials with Senate juries work.

Trump can totally claim that he didn’t incite the riot. He can also totally claim that he was secretly a Targaryen all this time and he is the one true King of Westeros. You can believe this if you work at it. He did say the election was stolen for two months, he did say Pence would stop the vote certification (he knew this wasn’t true), and he didn’t seem terribly concerned about the riot as it was happening. Still, I suppose you can wedge some reasonable doubt in there if you are inclined to do so.

But his continued claim that the election was stolen only serves to convince people that he is in fact guilty of inciting the riot. We’ve already had all the court cases that we are ever going to have about the 2020 election. That’s it. It’s done. This impeachment case is about something that happened in 2021. If he keeps on trying to rationalize the riot, it makes more folks certain that he actually had a role in starting it.

So, even if he is innocent, he’s doing a horrible, horrible job of convincing the public that he is innocent. At this point, one possible outcome that I could support is if he checked into a residential care facility and got the help that he needs.

Why the Capitol Riot is not an excuse for new gun laws

 1. The rioters almost took the Capitol without firing a shot. No gun law could have stopped them, even if they actually obeyed that gun law in particular.

2. New arbitrary gun laws would mean more sympathy for insurrectionists that they don't deserve.

3. Militia groups already know what to do if their existing guns are outlawed.: before the legislation goes into effect, they will bury their weapons in waterproof containers out in the middle of nowhere. They wait a while, until people give up looking for those guns. Then after everyone else thinks their safe, they will dig their guns up. A gun can stay functional for 100 years if stored right.

4. The Capitol police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt has been cleared of any wrong doing. A good guy with a gun saved democracy that day.

The Libertarian/Alt-Right Litmus Test

 For a while now, members of the alt-right pose as libertarians. But the alt-right’s goals aren’t compatible with libertarianism. They care way more about their ideals of race and culture than our ideals of liberty. The alt-right uses our label as a cover to promote their own agenda. Two notorious examples of this are Christopher “Crying Nazi” Cantwell and Jared “Lumberjack Jesus” Howe. Alt-right guys are sneaky. They avoid saying racist crap right away. They will be polite and funny at first to get you to like them. They will talk about how much they hate socialism, just like libertarians do.

So let’s say that you have a guy sitting in the room with you who says he is a libertarian. How can you tell if he is alt-right? I created the Libertarian/Alt-Right litmus test. Just ask the person “What do you think of Section 230?”

If he doesn’t know what it is, it’s fine that he doesn’t have an opinion on it. If he has an opinion on it without knowing what it is, he got his opinion from somebody else and doesn’t think for himself. But this is something that people need to brush up on.

If he thinks Section 230 is a good law, it is reasonable to assume that he is a libertarian. Not everyone who supports Section 230 is a libertarian (bear in mind this law was passed by Congress in the 90’s) but a libertarian understands that social media companies have a right to moderate content on websites that they own. These websites typically ban things like spam, nudity, and hate speech. They might have a different definition of hate speech than you do, but it’s still the company’s decision. Often their moderation policies are applied unfairly or arbitrarily, but Section 230 still gives them the legal right to moderate content as they see fit. Social media companies have a service that they provide to their users, and there are things that many people really don’t want to come across when they are scrolling.

If he thinks that Section 230 is a bad thing, he is probably alt-right. He might say things like conservatives are being unfairly singled out for censorship. He might talk about globalists or cultural Marxism. What he really wants is the right talk about “race realism” and post made-up crime statistics without getting banhammered. Or he might be miffed that his favorite political allies keep getting banned too. He might say “if you moderate content, you’re a publisher, not a platform!” When he says that, he is trying to imply that since newspapers can be sued for libel if they print defamatory articles, a social media site should bear the same liability if they try to restrict content. But because there is SO much user generated content on a social media site, it’s just not practical for a company to screen out posts where the user is trying to defame someone. So Section 230 does protect social media companies from being sued over user content.

Yes, there are people on the left who also oppose Section 230 for their own reasons, but they rarely pose as libertarians.

Any grown adult knows that without content moderation, social media will just get way worse than it already is. There are always someone who wants to ruin everyone else’s fun by posting gross pictures. And sometimes a perfectly good post might get banned by mistake. These things happen, and Section 230 literally keeps people from making a federal case about it. The alt-right might feel like they are being singled out. They are correct about this, because nobody likes the alt-right. Fuck those racist authoritarian shits with both barrels.

Capitol Riot deniers

Capitol Riot deniers should be treated like Holocaust deniers. Yes, the Holocaust was way worse. But I feel that it takes a higher level of willful ignorance to deny the intent of the Capitol Riot. History from 80 years ago is easier to lie about than recent events. Capitol Riot deniers are stepping up to the challenge. They will admit that there was a riot, but they will lie about the scope, the perpetrators, and the intent of the riot.

We all saw what happened. It wasn’t just broken windows. Five people died.

We all saw who did it. It wasn’t Antifa, it was Trump supporters. They weren’t hiding who they were. They weren’t wearing masks.

We all know what they were trying to do. They were trying to kidnap and murder Congressmen and Congresswomen. You can’t say it was just a protest out of hand when they made it to the House and Senate floors just minutes after Congress was evacuated. They were screaming “Hang Mike Pence”, and they talked about shooting Nancy Pelosi.

Capitol Riot deniers will moan about soldiers being stationed in Washington DC, as if it were Baghdad or Kabul. The National Guard’s job is to guard the nation. That’s what it says right there in the name. So it kind of makes sense to me that they would be placed near an important building that was attacked and might be attacked again.

When you have a Holocaust denier, you know you are dealing with a person who wishes that all Jews were wiped out. When you have a Capitol Riot denier, you have someone who wishes that the coup attempt succeeded. You have someone who wanted Congress to be subjugated to the will of Donald Trump, so that he could rule as a dictator.

Germany in the 21^st Century is a prosperous and respected nation, and this would not be possible if they failed to acknowledge the horrors of the past. America’s future depends on us acknowledging not only what happened, but also what almost happened.