Current Affairs

Quarterback Blake Barnett, one of the highest-rated college recruits in 2015, has shocked the Crimson Tide by leaving college this week.
Barnett started the first game of the season, but was benched after 2 series in favor of Jalen Hurts, and his only other playing time was 3 series in the game on September 24th. Otherwise he has been holding the clipboard as the #2 quarterback.
Predictably, perjoratives like “quitter” have been ladled out like confetti since the news of Barnett’s leaving college broke on Thursday.
Blake Barnett had three options open to him, given that he had apparently been demoted to #2 quarterback at Alabama.
1. Remain on the program, and try to win the job back
2. Remain this season and try (1) but leave after the season
3. Leave Alabama now and transfer to a junior college

The underlying reason for Barnett leaving Alabama are that there is a rule in the NCAA governing playing eligbility that worked against him remaining with Alabama and the football program. The rule states that transferring players lose one season of eligibility after the date that they transfer.
So, if Blake Barnett transfers immediately to another college, and if he meets specified academic and attendance records, he can play football for another college after the fourth game of next season. If he left Alabama after the end of this season, he would not be able to play for any college team until 2018.
Barnett was not a little-noticed scrub when he was recruited. He was universally regarded as one of the top quarterback prospects coming out of high school. However, he is more a prototypical pocket passer, where Jalen Hurts is more of an athletic read-option quarterback. Alabama’s offensive line is not currently very good – Nick Saban admitted as much at halftime in today’s game. At the moment Alabama is having to use the running flexibility of Hurts to win on offense. The reason why Barnett is not playing may have as much to do with Alabama’s o-line challenges as it does with Barnett’s skills and abilities.
Given the o-line issues, and the decision to cope with them by moving to a playbook based on more running plays and read-option calls, Barnett’s decision makes a lot of sense. Let’s go back and look at his options again:

1. Stay and win back the job
This is less likely than it might appear. If you can’t protect a pocket quarterback, you have to find other ways to put up points. If Barnett wins back the starting job, that might be bad for him. He gets to go out there and run for his life if his o-line protection breaks down. If he suffers a season-ending injury, this will not be good for his college career and could ruin his attempt to make it into the NFL (think Marcus Lattimore and Jaylon Smith).

2. Stay but transfer at the end of the season
If he moves to another college he forfeits a year of playing time. He will not be able to play until 2018.

3. Go to junior college now, transfer to a football college in 2017
If he does this, he can play after four games of the 2017 season.

Lost amidst all of the whining about Barnett being a quitter is one important thing that we have to remember. He is not being paid for playing football. He gets to work hard and then go out on a Saturday and put his body in harm’s way for the official sum of $0. Meanwhile, his head coach Nick Saban pulled down $7m last year.
When you get the hook after one quarter of the firs game of the season, you are on the bench, and you are not being paid, but you want to play, why stay at Alabama? I’ll pass on the whining about him quitting on the team. If he was benched after 2 series, that kind of looks like the coaches quit on him.

One thing that is easy to notice on Twitter is how many proclaimed supporters of Donald Trump, in addition to proudly changing their handle to some combination including the word “Deplorable”, are also anti-semitic.
They could, of course be taking their cue from some of Trump’s supporters. like David Duke. Here he manages to combine both anti-semitism and a racist dog-whistle in the same tweet:

Shamefully bias debate moderator, Lester Holt, has been married to his Jewish wife, Carol Hagen, since 1982.#RiggedElection #MAGA #AltRight pic.twitter.com/V46CPLhOtc

— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) October 2, 2016

I remind readers once again of the remarkable similarity between tweets like this one and the sort of public comments that the Nazi party made in the early 1930’s when Adof Hitler was consolidating his power in Germany.

One of the processes that was well-documented during the rise of the Nazi Party to power in pre-World War II Germany was its ability to persuade supporters to adopt progressively more extreme and enabling views about out-groups in Germany. The number one out-group was the Jews, but other groups such as homosexuals were also declared to be out-groups.
The process was a progressive one like this:

Criticism –> Demonization –> Dehumanization –> Extermination

This could be seen very easily with the Jews, who, by the beginning of World War II, were being routinely described as filthy animals and vermin by Nazi supporters and in the media. The whole idea was that by re-defining them as animals and vermin, and not humans, the next step, extermination, seemed utterly logical. And so it proved. The demonization was an excellent example of what was once termed “the banality of evil”. People casually and reflexively came to believe that Jews were not entitled to live. No contemplation, no second thoughts that perhaps this might be a Really Bad Thing.
The whole approach in Nazi Germany to opponents was casual eliminationism, the idea that opponents were not even entitled to survive, because they were a threat to Nazi purity and control.
Today we have this delightful news item from the Carolinas. A local political fundraising project for the GOP decided that it would be OK to raffle off an AR-15, 1000 rounds of ammunition and a picture of Hillary Clinton.
The money quote is this one:

“Of course we won’t tell you what to do with the photo, but when we ran a picture of Hillary on the front of our newsletter, we heard that it was VERY popular down at the range”

This, folks is the casualization of eliminationism. It’s just like reading the history of Nazi Germany all over again. The writers of this screed are not only ignorant of world history, they are participants in the casual demonization of a politician that they disagree with. They’re nothing better than enablers of creeping, casual, unthinking eliminationism. In short, the writer of this is a rabble-rousing scumbag. Thinking about it, maybe the right response is to label the author a Nazi, and when they protest, tell them to STFU and go study some history.

A good way to show that you are a bit of a juvenile jerk:

This guy at Trump rally, who refused to give name, confirmed to me his shirt means he wishes Clinton had been killed pic.twitter.com/C2apONBv4d

— Dominic Holden (@dominicholden) September 28, 2016

A pithy commenter online about the idea that Donald Trump is about to magically Behave Differently:

@TPM Great comment on Charles Blow's column in NYT. pic.twitter.com/3oQ9AwJ45U

— lnOrOut (@Undetermined_US) September 29, 2016

Donald Trump is engaging in activities at his rallies that are clearly designed to foster an Us and Them mentality. This tweet will illustrate:

TRUMP in IOWA: "Raise your hand if you're NOT a Christian conservative. I want to see that. There's a few of them. Should we keep them?"

— James Hohmann (@jameshohmann) September 28, 2016

As a student of European history, I know exactly where I have seen this behavior pathology before. It’s not pretty.
If anybody reading this is going to try and make the argument that Donald Trump was joking, or that this is not sinister and threatening…
STOP.
Don’t even go there. I don’t want to have to be the one to tell you in sharp words how utterly un-versed you are in world history.

UPDATE – If you want to see what Trump’s remark triggers on an online forum where the barrier to assholes is non-existent, here we go:

Wow the antisemitism came fast after my response to @JeffreyGoldberg tweet pic.twitter.com/CRzkhPMa20

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) September 28, 2016

I have a pretty high tolerance for bullshit. If I didn’t, I would not have reached the age of 61 and still be gainfully employed.
However, I am going to make a promise.
If anybody sends me a message urging me to vote for any political candidate because the candidate’s spouse is so nice/smart/good-looking/would make a great First Lady, I will excoriate and ridicule their message to everybody on my friends list.
If I vote for a candidate, I am voting for that candidate. Not their spouse, pets, hairdresser, accountant, PR flunky, or yard worker.
If I dislike a candidate, it makes no difference that they have a “nice” spouse (whatever that might mean).
If you intend to vote for a candidate, my assumption is that you like the candidate’s message. If you then send me a message asserting that the candidate’s spouse is so nice etc. etc., what you just told me is that you don’t have a cogent case for voting for that person at all. Pointing to their spouse in this way, quite simply, smacks of desperation. Desperate appeals are never appealing.

Politicians lie!
I read this all the time, even out of election season.
Most of the time, the person yelling about this is hot under the collar because they despise (or even hate, dangerous for them) the politician or candidate Because They Lied.
First off, there is a legal definition of a lie, and it is a lot less expansive than some people think. A lie is a falsehood uttered by somebody

who knows that it is a falsehood at the time that they utter it

. Note the last part of the sentence.
That makes a lot of difference. If I guess that the stock price for a corporation is $10, and say so, and it turns out to be $15, that is not me lying. It is me being mistaken. If I know in advance that the stock price is $15, but I state that it is $10, then I just told a lie.
So, a lot of people’s claimed lies are nothing of the sort.
But moving on, you just discovered that politicians lie.
Well, No Shit Sherlock.
The sky is blue.
The Sun rises in the East.
Those three statements are always going to be true.
Politicians are salesmen. They want to sell Them and Their Program to You. So, like all salesmen, they talk up their product, denigrate the opposing product, and shade the truth in their favor.
When I read people ranting about politicians lying, I laugh inwardly. I laugh because politicians, like all salespeople, are acutely aware of what works when selling stuff.
They lie because it works. If lying and being found out resulted in their never winning another election, they would become honest. Very very quickly.
So, when people complain that politicians lie, that is not really what they are saying.
What they are really saying is “We The People let politicians lie to us”.
When I see electors buying propositions from political candidates, I often alternate between worry, amusement and outright amazement. One thing I realized a long time ago is that many electors will cheerfully accept total bullshit from political candidates that they would never accept from anybody actually trying to sell them something for use in their household. If a salesperson spent their entire time slamming rival products without talking about their own product, most people would be wary and rightfully so. However, electors let politicians do that all the time. It is as if all normal critical thinking facilities get suspended when it comes to making electoral judgments.
Effectively, We The People have proven that we just do not take electoral politics seriously. If we did, we would have a better class of politician.
We have choices. Big choices. We can vote for people who in a number of cases have proved that they are liars, or where independent scrutiny has proven that they are liars. If we do that, we really have no right to complain about the outcomes. We are enablers.
Or we can stop voting for people who have no credibility. Credibility is more than not lying by the way. The subject of another post for another time.
Here’s the bottom line. You don’t have to buy what they are selling. Voting is not compulsory. You can pass, or you can vote for some other political salesperson.
So, as you can tell, complaining that politicians lie is, for me, like hearing somebody acting surprised that water flows downhill. ’twas ever thus, and the only way you stop it is to stop voting for liars. Voting for Your Party’s Liar doesn’t cut it either. That simply makes you a partisan follower, an apologist for the continuing role of lying in the political process. And no, rationalizing it on the grounds that Your Guy tells fewer lies than the Other Guy doesn’t make the issue go away. You’re still enabling the pathology.

So, you hate Hillary Clinton?
Donald Trump?
Gary Johnson?
Limberbutt McCubbins?
(By the way, there are 95 filed candidates for POTUS with more than $100 in their campaign kitty as at today. When I hear people complaining about not having a choice for POTUS, I laugh inwardly.)
Hate.
An emotive word.
Here’s my take on hate. If you really really hate somebody or something, you have a bigger problem than the person or thing you hate.
You see, hate is one of the most mentally and emotionally taxing of the great emotions.
That person you hate? They now live in your head and heart every second that you are awake. They are impacting many of your thoughts, actions and deeds. Every time the hatee’s name is mentioned, your primitive emotions, like a person who hates snakes stumbling upon one, are stirred, and not in a good way. Your heartbeat and respiration alter, and the risk of you doing and saying dumb stuff goes up. Dumb stuff including ranting on Facebook, often by posting dumb-ass memes or bullshit which must be right, because you hate the subject of the meme.
For some people who are seriously out of control, hate takes the form of pulling out weapons and going on a shooting spree, or plotting the overthrow of the government, or murdering and brutalizing family members. Hate is the slippery slope that leads down to some of the worst possible human behavior.
So, when I read people claiming to hate other people, I worry. Most of the time I worry about the person doing the hating. That person has lost control of perspective and emotions, and is wasting energy and effort that they will never get back.
But, let’s be charitable. Let’s assume that you simply despise the person, group or thing. Isn’t that better?
Well, yes and no. They still live in your head. There’s a good chance that you won’t do dumb stuff, at least not Right Now. However, the rest of us will still have to find the dumb-ass memes and other random outbursts on social media. Yes, we get it, you despise whatever it is or whoever it is. But…so what? Are you so conceited that you think that everybody else should be at all interested in what you despise on a daily basis?
If you were merely ranting, or seeking affirmation, carry on. (In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t run around seeking affirmation. I grew up in an out-group, trying to get affirmation, and being told that I was a lower form of life for years resulted in me not caring very much about any form of affirmation, positive or negative).
If you want me to take your ranting seriously, you need to realize that, just like the huffing and puffing of “I’m offended”, I really don’t have a lot of time left in my life to listen to poorly or incompletely argued cack to support emotionally-based claims. If you hate or despise somebody or something, that’s really your problem, not mine. If you want me to understand your angst and take it seriously, then you need to drop the memes and get with the idea of logical arguments based on critical thinking.