I have been interested in conspiracy theories for some time. I suppose there has always been a dissenting point of view on about everything, but some of these theories fly in the face of Occam’s Razor with impunity. Although at times a complex explanation is correct, almost always the simple, direct explanation, when supported by facts and proof, is correct.
1384 – Hongwu Emperor Dong of Ming China hears case of a couple who tore paper money bills while fighting over them (equal to act of destroying stamped government documents – by law necessitated one hundred floggings), but he pardons them
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“Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called for a system of ‘extreme vetting’ for immigrants that would include an ideological test”
“‘In the cold war we had an ideological screening test … The time is overdue for a new test. I call it extreme vetting,’ Trump concluded.”
Countrywide Financial Corporation‘s loyalty bracelet bearing the slogan “Protect Our House”.[1] CFC employees were issued the wristbands upon signing a loyalty oath. According to a senior CFC officer, the consequence of not getting such a wristband was “I will lose my job.”[2]
Loyalty Oaths have been around since the War of Northern Aggression, but were most active recently during the aftermath of the Great Patriotic War. And now the new challenge to loyalty comes with a Trumpian proposal to test immigrants, calling it “extreme vetting”.
But could approved loyal Americans pass such an exam? There already are in tehDonald’s mind, “secret Muslims” in the government since 2008, especially in the Oval Office, at least until January 2017. Could Larry Craig pass the exam, or even Franklin Graham. And if you score less than 70%, do you get to take it again or are you restricted in terms of travel or residency to Blue states. In 2012 only 65% of native-born Americans could pass a sample civics test given to immigrants, but don’t feel too bad, only 21% of Americans know that Woodrow Wilson was POTUS during The Great War.
According to The Associated Press, the Republican presidential nominee plans to present a proposal during an address in Youngstown, Ohio, to create an ideological admissions test that would question potential immigrants on positions such as religious freedom, gender equality and gay rights. The test, in addition to combing social media and interviewing friends and families, would be used to determine whether potential immigrants support American values.
So if we swear on Bibles, make pledges before flags, sign loyalty oaths to get jobs, double-secret probation is over except where we look like the wrong ethnicity/race — whatever that means in the USA, since in 1962 drunk libertines might be refused admission and until 1990, your politics could affect your ability to visit the US.
During the American Civil War, political prisoners and prisoners of war were often released upon taking an “oath of allegiance”. Lincoln’s Ten percent plan featured an oath to “faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the union of the States thereunder” as a condition for a Presidential pardon. During Reconstruction, retroactive loyalty oaths were proposed by Radical Republicans, which would have barred former Confederates and Confederate sympathizers from federal, state, or local offices.
1281 – Kublai Khan’s Mongolian fleet destroyed by “divine wind” in Battle of Kōan against the Japanese
1519 – Ciudad de Panamá is founded
1769 – Napoleon Bonaparte born in Corsica, future self-crowned Emperor of France
1790? – Nicolas Chauvin * possible French soldier, so blindly devoted to his idol Napoleon and all things French that chauvinism was coined from his name, originally meaning over-zealously patriotic and disdainful of all other nations. Now used to describe anyone insisting on superiority of whatever they espouse by disparaging its opposite. There is no birth record for him, so he may be apocryphal. Napoleon’s birthday was chosen as Chauvin Day to remind us that anything taken to extremes becomes ridiculous
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Meanwhile, a grizzly bear in another part of British Columbia decided to see the world through the eyes of nature photographer Jim Lawrence. Not surprising that this photo went viral as soon as Lawrence posted it.
Australian skiers in Kashmir got a lot more adventure than they bargained for when they spotted a legendary Snow Leonard, almost hidden in the snow.
It’s estimated that there are only about 4000 snow leopards left in the world, due to loss of habitat and poaching. About 500 of them are in India’s high elevations. Part of why they have survived until now is because they are so wary of people – many biologists trying to track them have never seen one.
It’s a mystery why this one would be so close to a ski run.
In a general election campaign, Mr. Trump’s loose talk is treated differently. Donald Trump is the presidential nominee of a major political party. He is one of two people in this country with a realistic chance of becoming commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military. His words have greater weight and consequence. What was entertaining is understandably being called unpresidential.
Probably what is most distressing is the claim of precision using the example of Trump’s utterance of “Second Amendment people” and the potential of violence toward public officials.
Rolling Stone and now Vox have seized on the growing generalization of a neologism:
In other words, what Trump just did is engage in so-called stochastic terrorism. This is an obscure and non-legal term that has been occasionally discussed in the academic world for the past decade and a half, and it applies with precision here. Stochastic terrorism, as described by a blogger who summarized the concept several years back, means using language and other forms of communication “to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.”
Let’s break that down in the context of what Trump said.
Predicting any one particular individual following his call to use violence against Clinton or her judges is statistically impossible.
But we can predict that there could be a presently unknown lone wolf who hears his call and takes action in the future.
Stated differently: Trump puts out the dog whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesn’t know which dog.
Those of us who work against anti-abortion violence unfortunately know all about this. Valerie Tarico wrote about this form of terrorism following the Planned Parenthood murders in Colorado Springs last November. The pattern she noted there is 100 percent applicable to Donald Trump and his supporters right now – except that we haven’t yet had the major act of violence at the end of the string.
“1. A public figure with access to the airwaves or pulpit demonizes a person or group of persons.
2. With repetition, the targeted person or group is gradually dehumanized, depicted as loathsome and dangerous—arousing a combustible combination of fear and moral disgust.
3. Violent images and metaphors, jokes about violence, analogies to past ‘purges’ against reviled groups, use of righteous religious language—all of these typically stop just short of an explicit call to arms.
4. When violence erupts, the public figures who have incited the violence condemn it—claiming no one could possibly have foreseen the ‘tragedy.'”
With respect to the above four criteria, as terrorism, it would be better to characterize it as a mediated terrorism rather than a stochastic terrorism, since it is less about the probability of terrorism than it is about the mediated (1,2,3) elements that are antecedent and terminology over-emphasizing a statistical concept of stochastic randomness where (4) after the (violent) fact, is premature in terms of a research program in “predictive ‘individual unpredictability’”.
It may simply reinforce another mediated fear by even calling such violence what some might not call terrorism per se, as we seen with the “pledge of allegiance on Facebook” spree killings that are less about political terrorism than they are about mass homicide where mediated causes are less than predictive (see the media effects literature).
For example if one drives around blowing a dog whistle, how liable for mayhem caused by affected dogs is the guy blowing the whistle. What penalties ensue if we cannot hear that whistle. And unlike shouting “Fire” in a theater, this is more like yelling “Ready, Aim” instead and perhaps outside the building.
Is this like communicative interference that must be regulated to secure the public sphere. In the case of speech rather than electronic interference, at what moment do speech freedoms get suppressed.
puts out the dog whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesn’t know which dog.
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