The post-truth era indeed


AI image by DALL-E 3

Google for the term “post-truth era” and you’ll find a great many hits, many of them in the most august of publications. For example, just a couple of weeks ago, The Atlantic ran a piece with the headline “We’re already living in the post-truth era.” This morning, in a review of an HBO documentary about Alex Jones, the Washington Post writes “A new HBO documentary about the right-wing conspiracy theorist behind Infowars explores the mainstreaming of ‘grift’ in a post-truth era.”

The irony is that, even as the mainstream media write about the post-truth era as though they had nothing to do with it, they deny their own ongoing guilt — providing an unlimited amount of space and air time for the repetition of disinformation, as though intentional disinformation is just another side of the story and something to be taken seriously. And thanks, of course, for all the hits and ratings.

It’s encouraging that there does seem to be some limit on how far media people are willing to go. Executives at NBC News must have been surprised at the blowback over their hiring of the Republican disinformation agent Ronna McDaniel as an “analyst.” Even Chuck Todd, who was notorious for allowing Meet the Press to be used as a platform for the unchallenged dispensing of right-wing disinformation, suddenly acknowledges that McDaniel has been gaslighting us.

But even if the blowback causes Ronna McDaniel to lose her sinecure at NBC News (it was reported that she’s getting a retainer of $300,000 a year), we’re still all on our own in a post-truth era.

It’s nothing new that NBC News provides a platform for right-wing gaslighting. What’s new is that with Ronna McDaniel they made it so brazenly obvious.

Television and cable news are a zone where it’s not safe to go without gas masks for protection from the gaslighting. Even those print publications with the most respected of names allow themselves to be used by people with agendas, agendas that are often disguised. For example, The Atlantic regularly prints articles by people who have accepted money from the Koch network, and The Atlantic even has Koch people on its staff. We mustn’t forget that the new publisher of the Washington Post used to work for Rupert Murdoch. We learned a great deal about the New York Times after James Bennet was forced out as editorial page editor. Members of the Koch network spilled a lot of ink about that. Their version of the story was that a bunch of young new “woke” members of the New York Times staff were intolerant of conservative voices on the editorial page. I see it differently. It’s that those young “woke” members of the New York Times staff haven’t normalized, as so many older journalists have, providing a free platform for right-wing disinformation and gaslighting. Conservative voices are one thing (Liz Cheney, for example), but intentional disinformation is something else.

The New Republic, in a blurb this morning about a new podcast, writes, “The revolt among NBC personalities is extraordinary — and could force a real debate about all the ways the media enables Donald Trump and MAGA.”

I wish I could be that optimistic. Even after Trump is in prison, I’m afraid the media will look for ways to keep the MAGA bonanza (of hits and ratings) alive.

Update: This evening, NBC News announced that they have reversed their decision, and NBC won’t be taking on Ronna McDaniel after all. Now we will get to see whether the mainstream media and its pundits can explain and defend the principles that justify its existence.


Ronna McDaniel. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Feðgar á ferð


Click here for high resolution version.

The Old Man and His Sons. (In the Faroese edition, the title is Feðgar á ferð.) By Heðin Brú. Published in Faroese, 1940. English translation by John F. West, 1970.

I got from this book just what I hoped to get — an impression of life in the Faroe Islands before the modern era. Given that the novel was published in 1940, I would assume that the novel’s period would be the 1930s.

Ketil and his wife are old, old-fashioned, and very poor. They live in a cottage with a turf roof. Their chickens roost on the ceiling beams at night, and the cow lives on the other side of the wall. In their fireplace they burn peat. They don’t like eating with forks. When the weather is bad, they stay in by the fire to spin wool and knit sweaters to sell. They have grown sons, all of them married and living nearby, and all of whom want a more modern and more comfortable way of life.

There is not much plot in this novel, and no doubt that’s how it should be. The range of experience available to a Faroese villager born around 1865 is not going to be very great. Village life is everything. People look out for each other, but they also gossip and condemn. A cow, an old boat for fishing, and a place to grow potatoes are enough to subsist on. Money is hard to come by. One is always aware of the sea and the weather.

The book includes an excellent introduction by the translator, John F. West. The introduction includes a brief history of the Faroe Islands and a somewhat more detailed history of Faroese literature. West writes:

“The reader may well ask how it happens that a miniature nation of 38,000 people [now about 55,000] manages to throw up such a wealth of literary talent. It is a result, I think, of the vivid sensation of community membership that a citizen of such a small nation inevitably feels. Anyone with talent tends to shoulder his artistic responsbility, whereas in a larger community, many a potential author is prepared to leave it to the other fellow.”

In other words, in such a small nation, nothing can be wasted, including people and their talents.

The bleak island beauty of the Faroe Islands, and its location in the wild North Atlantic, appeal to me. I have a fantasy of visiting there someday. But the food! I suspect that the Faroese diet can’t have changed all that much. The only crops mentioned in the novel are potatoes and barley. Everything else comes from the sea, or from the sheep, or from the cow. Today there are regular ferries to the Faroe Islands from northern Denmark, but Denmark does not have the best soil (or the best cuisine) in the world. I will not be looking for a Faroese cookbook.

3 Body Problem

Last night I watched the first episode of Netflix’s new “3 Body Problem.” It looks very promising. It’s smart and complicated, and it focuses on dialogue and drama rather than action.

The series is based on a book by the Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin. The Netflix project was done by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who produced “Game of Thrones” for television.

My only complaint is that some of the dialogue sounds mumbled and muddy, which makes it tempting to turn on subtitles.

By the way: The three-body problem has to do with the physics of predicting the motions of a group of three masses in space (such as stars). When only two masses are orbiting each other, their motion is easy to predict. When there are three (or more), it’s almost chaos. This idea is introduced in the first episode of the Netflix series, but how it relates to the plot is still a mystery.

Neither here nor now, please


Faroe Islands sheep. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Click here for high resolution version.

I was on jury duty all of last week. It was educational, but it also was suffocating. There were more than a hundred people in the jury pool, and sometimes we were obliged to sit in a too-small holding room for more than two hours at a time, waiting to be called into the courtroom when it was time to pick a jury. By the time the judge dismissed the jury pool on Friday, I was burned out.

The more I’m involuntarily exposed to what the French call trop de monde — too much world, or, too many people — the more I try to compensate with some form of escape. Friday evening I was bored with the bleak last episode of “Masters of the Air,” so I found one of those relaxation videos on YouTube and played it on the (pretty big) television screen. It was seascapes in the Faroe Islands, beautifully shot from drones, good medicine for a jury duty hangover:

I can’t imagine landscapes more thrilling than places where steep mountains come up against the sea. There is some of this in California. But some of the best of such landscapes on the planet, and the most accessible to travelers, are to be found in Ireland and Scotland. I’ve been to the west coast of Ireland, and to some of the Scottish Islands including the Outer Hebrides. Now I’m trying to figure out how, and when, I might be able to work in a trip to the Faroe Islands someday.

The Faroe Islands are a Danish territory, more or less midway between northern Scotland and Iceland. In reading an overview of the islands’ history on Wikipedia, one of the things that surprised me was just how quickly the church reached a place so remote and so far from Rome. According to Wikipedia, that was in the late 10th or early 11th centuries. Unsurprisingly, it was conquerers who brought the church to the islands, offering “salvation” while seizing the land. As remote as the islands are, the population today is surprisingly great — more than 50,000 people.

I also learned on Wikipedia that there is a remarkably rich literary history in the islands’ language, Faroese. Some Googling led to a Faroese writer named Heðin Brú, who died in 1987. One of his novels, in an English translation, was published in 1970 as The Old Man and His Sons. The novel was first published in Faroese in 1940. I found a copy of the 1970 translation on eBay and have ordered it.

Given how quickly the world is getting warmer, if I were young and born south of, say, the 40th parallel, I think I would try to figure out how to migrate farther north. Nothing much happens in Canada. But I suspect that Scotland, and the Nordic and Baltic countries, have a bright future, as long as Putin and whoever succeeds him can be contained.


⬆︎ eBay photo


⬆︎ Google Books

A snapshot of Scottish cooking, 1925-1946


Newly rebound in cloth, with the old cover used as a label

I hope I am wrong, but I am reluctantly inclined to conclude that traditional Scottish cooking is almost completely lost, just as my native cuisine, Southern American cooking, also is almost completely lost. Though there are older people who remember it (both here and no doubt in Scotland), and though there are even a few living souls who can still cook that way (both here and probably in Scotland), few people do (both here and probably in Scotland). As for Southern American cooks, most have thrown in the towel and, in the name of cost, convenience, and saving time, even use ultraprocessed foods. Others, like me, clean it up to make it healthier — even better. I’m not by any means suggesting that good cooking is a lost art. In many ways, the state of the art has gotten much better (though by no means cheaper), thanks largely to the great cooking schools, to travel, and to the better sort of restaurants.

Still, one can’t revise a traditional cuisine without knowing what it used to be. My reasoning was that, if the 1943 edition of Irma Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking is a good reference for American cooking, then there might be a reference on Scottish cooking from the same period. I scoured eBay for old books. A book that is frequently mentioned in references on Scottish cuisine is from 1909, The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie. That book, though, seems to be both rare and expensive. I wonder, too, if it isn’t a reference that is too fancy, given that Virginia Woolf wrote about it in the Times Literary Supplement in 1909. I’m also much more interested in provincial cooking than in the cooking that was done in the big houses of lords and ladies.

I came across a couple of copies of a more humble, and much less expensive, reference: The Scottish Women’s Institutes Cookery Book, sixth edition, 1946. Though this book went through multiple editions after 1925 and clearly sold well, I suspect that few copies survive because the book was cheaply bound, with heavy staples and a paper cover. People probably just threw them away after they fell apart. The book was conceived and printed in Edinburgh. The gathering of recipes was about as honest as you can get. Members of the Scottish Women’s Institutes from all over the country were asked to send in recipes.

After I received my copy, I resolved to rebind it and try to preserve it. To have used it in its tattered condition would have caused further tattering. Preserving it meant removing the staples (which had gotten rusty), improvising with heavy sting to hold the pages together, and making a new cloth cover.

I have often said that the best soup I ever had in my life was a Scotch broth that I had in a small restaurant in Edinburgh. That was in 1985, on Princes Street, I believe, downhill from the castle. That soup probably was the most authentic Scottish cooking I’ve ever had. Though the barley is essential, I suspect that Scotch broth can’t really be made without bones. I remembered the Edinburgh soup as green but probably misremembered that the green came from peas, since the green in this recipe comes from leaves and leeks. A runner of beef, I believe, is a lean piece of steak from the shoulder. A Swede turnip is what Americans call a rutabaga.

This cookbook, as well as the eleven Waverley novels that I have read so far, strongly suggest that much of the Scottish pride in its cuisine relates to game. The treatment of vegetables, though, is barely short of cruel. I am very curious about a vegetable that appears to be still common in Scotland but which is hard to find in the U.S. That’s celeriac, which this book calls heart of celery or just celery. I’m still looking for some celeriac because I’ve never had any. But a friend who recently found some in the Asheville Whole Foods said that it’s smooth, like potatos, and reminded him more of apple and pine than celery. Sooner or later, I will find some celeriac.


The front cover was intact, but …


… I had to remove it to restore the binding.


Having removed the rusty staples, I improvised on the rebinding, using string.


Click here for high resolution version

Falling for Figaro

Would it be possible to go wrong with a smart and sweet romantic comedy set mostly in the Scottish Highlands with an operatic soundtrack? Not to my taste!

Some of the critics didn’t like it as much as I did. For example, the Wikipedia entry quotes someone at RogerEbert.com: “The performances are what make Falling for Figaro an entertaining distraction, even as the film plays out exactly as you would expect.”

Of course it plays out exactly as we would expect. Most good drama does. About one-third into this film, after we meet the Max character, who, like the heroine Millie, is a singing student with dreams of success, it’s easy to guess that we’re going to end with a duet, on a stage somewhere. That’s not a spoiler. That’s just the way it has to be done in a smart and sweet romantic comedy set mostly in the Scottish Highlands with an operatic soundtrack.

The opera selections are chosen to appeal to everyone, not just opera fans. The musical performances are as good as the acting. The Scotland gags are hilarious, especially the ones involving Scottish plumbing and the pouring of Scotch. There’s a brief trip to Edinburgh, and some scenes in London. According to Wikipedia, the stage scenes were filmed in Glasgow. This film has a timeless charm that somehow reminds me of Princess Bride.

Falling for Figaro is on Netflix.

The arc of justice


U.S. marshals escort Ruby Bridges to school. New Orleans, Louisiana, November 1960. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.”

–Theodore Parker, 1810-1860

We could say that we believe in the arc of justice, but that would be a useless statement, because our beliefs, whatever they may be, have no effect on the reality outside our own minds. Even if our beliefs guide our actions in the real world, the effect is weak and indirect. As much as we might like to, we can’t change the world simply by wishing and by thinking. Beliefs may indirectly lead to change, especially when lots of people hold similar beliefs and act in accord with them. But beliefs alone don’t change anything. I’ve had a saying about this for many years: You can believe until you’re blue in the face, but that doesn’t change anything.

But we can make an if-then proposition that I think is sound and reasonable. It’s this: If there is such a thing as the arc of justice, then to stand in its way, inevitably, sooner or later, is to be found wrong. Not only does that mean that one’s thinking was wrong. It also means that, at some point in the future, one will enter into a state of shame for having stood in the way of the arc of justice.

We could cite many examples of this proposition, from Rome to the present. Religion’s track record is especially damning. For example, the largest Christian denomination in America, the Southern Baptist Convention, militantly supported slavery during the 19th Century. During the 20th Century, it supported racial segregation. In 1995, though it took 150 years, it apologized for its history. Even after the apology, some of the meanest people in the country remain in control of the Southern Baptist Convention and still stand in the way of the arc of justice. But at least, as the arc of justice moved on, church people had to admit that they were wrong. It’s because of the arc of justice that we don’t burn people at the stake anymore, or put people like Oscar Wilde in prison, or hang people for stealing a crust of bread, or beat our children.

Over the centuries, moral error after moral error by the church, in spite of its claim to speak for God, shows that the arc of justice — and this should be no surprise — is and always has been more powerful than religion. Not only that, looking toward the future, religion weakens as the arc bends toward justice. The arc bends. To the degree that it is ossified and refuses to bend, religion inevitably breaks. Church people see the decline in church membership as a moral emergency. I see it as moral progress.

As liberals, this is where our confidence can come from, as well as our optimism. It can be the basis of a politics. It’s why I say that the entire spectrum of conservatism, from dishonest both-sides centrism to the neo-Nazis, is wrong, wrong-headed, and causes harm. And for many people, merely to stand in the way of the arc of justice is not enough. They work to reverse moral progress and roll back the clock.

Theodore Parker, a theologian, is sometimes referred to as a heretic. He saw long ago that the church is not an instrument of moral progress. Rather, far more often, it has been the opposite. I can’t take seriously the claim that religion has ever been on the leading edge of the arc of justice. Classical philosophy, if the church had allowed it to evolve rather than repressing it, would have brought far more light to the Dark Ages than the church ever did. The Enlightenment might have come sooner, had there not been so much resistance. It is ideas, and an expanding concept of justice and fairness, that lead the arc of justice toward greater justice.

The Enlightenment, of course, brought a revolution in moral philosophy. Still, for a hundred to two hundred years, utilitarianism was the state of the art in ethics — the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number. There are still utilitarians, but ideas about justice and fairness have expanded. I am among those who see utilitarianism as obsolete after John Rawls’ justice as fairness (1971). The course of the arc of justice in our time, I believe, is best described by John Rawls’ justice as fairness. As Theodore Parker says, our sight, in any era, may reach but little ways. But from what we can see now, the arc of justice is bending in the direction described by John Rawls.

Rawls’ philosophy may be complex and a challenge to read, but its key idea boils down to something simple, and, to most minds, obvious: We cannot justify being unfair to anyone (usually the poor, the stigmatized, and the weak), even if others want to gain (usually wealth and privilege and power) from that unfairness. This idea is steadily being integrated into liberal politics. Meanwhile, the interest of conservative politics in wealth, privilege, and domination increasingly finds so much fairness threatening. Most people have never heard of John Rawls. Still, as though by magic, Rawls’ philosophy is in the Zeitgeist. Conservatives feel it as clearly as liberals feel it, which is why they are in such a panic to resist it. It puts wealth, privilege, and power in a different light, light that is not to conservative liking.

Thomas Piketty caused quite a stir in 2013 with Capital in the Twenty-First Century. His second book, A Brief History of Equality, got less attention. But in this second book Piketty argued that there has been a steady improvement in equality since 1780, and he explains why he is optimistic about future progress. Given that millions have died since 1780 in the struggle against domination, Piketty’s optimism may seem misplaced. But I think he is right, because even when those who crave domination win, they don’t — can’t — win for long. Just ask the enslavers of the 19th Century, or the Nazis of the 20th, or the racists of the Civil Rights era. In a decade or two, ask Putin. Ask Trump, once the courts are done with him.

We have just been through one of those times, when those who work together to block and reverse the arc of justice get the upper hand. This is what happened when, in 2016, Donald Trump was installed in the White House by wealthy elites whose domination is threatened by fairness, aided by “populist” subjects who were all too easy to deceive.

Now the arc of justice is catching up with them. For some, prison. For others, only shame. Still, some of them are so hardened that will never feel any shame for the ugliness of their actions and their ideas. But the children of the future, from what we already can see now from the direction in which the arc of justice bends, will see things differently.

At last, daffodils


iPhone photo. Click here for high resolution version.

The winter seemed long and cold, and February brought no early spring. And yet, for the first time in my 16 years here in the Appalachian foothills, I didn’t see a snowflake all winter. A few days of warmish rain in early February brought up flocks and flocks of tiny red clover sprouts from the seed I spread last fall. But the return of colder weather caused the clover leaves to shrink and wait for the next warm rain before they start growing again.

For months, I didn’t look at the National Weather Service’s long-range forecasts, knowing that they’d forecast nothing but more winter. But just now I took a peek. All the long-range forecasts — 10-day, 14-day, 30-day, and 90-day — are for warmer and wetter than normal. If those forecasts hold, then we should have a beautiful spring here and a good start for the vegetable gardens.

And there’s the fox…

Foxes aren’t uncommon here. But I’m flattered that a fox is now hanging out in my yard. I got my old game camera working again and got a shot of the fox last night. I’ve also seen it on my security camera, and once I’ve seen it from an upstairs window.

During the past 48 hours, the camera caught lots of deer, two happy rabbits that are frequently seen, one possum, one raccoon, and the fox. Three or four wildlife trails lead out of the woods into the yard. There is plenty of cover in the yard, and, even in winter, lots to eat. Some critter, probably the raccoon, has been making little holes while digging for grubs. The fox, no doubt, catches voles. Ten years ago, a fox raised two pups in the woods just behind the house. I would love to have fox puppies in the yard again.

There are coyotes in the woods, but they never come close to any houses. I understand, and it seems plausible, that foxes sometimes stay close to human houses because they’re safer from the coyotes. As for the deer, they’re so well known here that most of them have names. We have bears, but they stay up on the ridge and down in the branch bottom. A year or so a neighbor saw a bobcat down at the footbridge that crosses a branch on my land.

It’s good to live where the wild things live.