I need to know more about the interest in medieval and classical history in the trump white house. /1

2) Today the WH issued a proclamation of commemoration of the 850th anniversary of the death of St. Thomas Beckett.

https://t.co/H8Fbhg75Ob
3) It's quite a document. "Becket’s death serves as a powerful and timeless reminder to every American that our freedom from religious persecution is not a mere luxury or accident of history, but rather an essential element of our liberty...bought with the blood of martyrs."
4) I am reasonably sure that Donald Trump is not a Peter O'Toole fan; and while he and T.S. Eliot would have gotten along in their fascism and antisemitism, I doubt he's read that either. And we can't always just say STEPHEN MILLER! ... can we?
5) Then there was the appointment of Milo's medievalist to a board that oversees cultural exchange and is tasked with stopping illicit artifact trade. Which is an important board but also a weird position.

https://t.co/fPlHs1JzJw
6) RFB is a name that medievalists know well and whose full entry - rather than dabbling - into the right-wing internet is a problem for medievalists. Alt-right forces use her academic credentials to justify their ideology and medievalists and other scholars need to condemn it.
7) But the pathway from third tier rightwing websites and Milo's failed career to a presidential appointment is a weird one. RFB is just not that big a deal even in obscure right-wing circles. She doesn't have a big footprint (again, this isn't saying medievalists should ignore).
8) how did her name get on a list?
9) Then of course there's the recent executive order on beautiful classical architecture, which was announced in February but rolled out last week.
10) That's the big one in some ways - trying to cement a false white version of antiquity as the only acceptable ancestor of the US federal government. It's absolutely a claim rooted in white supremacist claims about the past and who we - as a nation - are today.
11) That the alt-right fetishizes a false white medieval and classical european past to craft - as Sierra Lomuto says - an origin story for whiteness isn't news at this point. If you follow me. If you follow other medievalists. Hopefully you know this.
12) But the vector to Trump's official documents and pronouncements isn't as clear to me and I'd like to know more. Who put RFB's name on the desk. Who decided to draft this St. Tommy B's proclamation. Because those people aren't going away.
/fin. Back to chapter 12.
addendum: https://t.co/xp1HFBuAU4

More from Government

How does a government put a legislation on 'hold'? Is there any constitutional mechanism for the executive to 'pause' a validly passed legislation? Genuine Koshan.


So a committee of 'wise men/women' selected by the SC will stand in judgement over the law passed by


Here is the thing - a law can be stayed based on usual methods, it can be held unconstitutional based on violation of the Constitution. There is no shortcut to this based on the say so of even a large number of people, merely because they are loud.


Tomorrow can all the income tax payers also gather up at whichever maidan and ask for repealing the income tax law? It hurts us and we can protest quite loudly.

How can a law be stayed or over-turned based on the nuisance value of the protestors? It is anarchy to allow that.
Which metric is a better predictor of the severity of the fall surge in US states?

1) Margin of Democrat victory in Nov 2020 election
or
2) % infected through Sep 1, 2020

Can you guess which plot is which?


The left plot is based on the % infected through Sep 1, 2020. You can see that there is very little correlation with the % infected since Sep 1.

However, there is a *strong* correlation when using the margin of Biden's victory (right).

Infections % from
https://t.co/WcXlfxv3Ah.


This is the strongest single variable I've seen in being able to explain the severity of this most recent wave in each state.

Not past infections / existing immunity, population density, racial makeup, latitude / weather / humidity, etc.

But political lean.

One can argue that states that lean Democrat are more likely to implement restrictions/mandates.

This is valid, so we test this by using the Government Stringency Index made by @UniofOxford.

We also see a correlation, but it's weaker (R^2=0.36 vs 0.50).

https://t.co/BxBBKwW6ta


To avoid look-ahead bias/confounding variables, here is the same analysis but using 2016 margin of victory as the predictor. Similar results.

This basically says that 2016 election results is a better predictor of the severity of the fall wave than intervention levels in 2020!

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