SHORT TAKES IN INDIAN SUMMER.

I'm not sure whether Indian Summer requires a hard freeze first, which has not yet happened, or if that first light frost, which was on the pumpkin a few mornings ago, is the criterion.  In any event, it's too fine a day, with high temperatures crowding eighty this afternoon, to spend much time at the keyboard.

That was Wednesday, midmorning, with no clouds in the sky and the leaves beginning to turn.  The combination of dry late summer and coolish early fall nights are favorable for good colors, and the woodlot is in pretty good shape.

Around the internet, there are a few things going on.  I'm not in the mood to do extended analysis of any of it.

I. Joe Biden has come up with an interesting way to avoid making campaign promises he won't keep.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden again ducked questions Thursday about whether he would seek to add seats to the Supreme Court, telling reporters he would not address the issue until after the November 3 election.

"They'll know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over," Biden said in Arizona, where he was campaigning with his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California.

"Now, look, I know it's a great question, and y'all -- and I don't blame you for asking it. But you know the moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be about that."

People are already voting, and that's a reason not to confirm Judge Barrett, but that's also a reason not to disclose what your plans for the Consititution are? Pathetic.

II. James "Long Emergency" Kunstler asks, "Is it possible that some Democratic Party voters begin to suspect that the party officials running this game have lost their minds?"  Plus "hebephrenic distemper."

III.  Political author Joe Klein notes, in the midst of a book review, "Messing around with the notion of truth is a luxury that comes with affluence. We have spent the past 50 years undermining the basic institutions of society — not just our sense of common purpose and identity, but also normative values like truth and duty and expertise."  If you deny coherent beliefs, guess what?  On the other hand, his notion of "expertise" is overrated.  Carlos Lozada, the author of one of the books Mr Klein reviews, writes, "Much of the resistance writing stresses who can rightfully claim the label — who counts and who doesn’t. It speaks of community but breeds exclusion."  It really doesn't matter what sort of ideology is calling itself resistance, and those insular communities, siloes if you will, are among the politically active and the academically inclined alike.  By all means, read both essays.

IV. Jim Treacher is contemplating something very different, and he, too, notes communities breeding exclusion.  "Because science is no longer a process of finding answers about the physical universe. Science is now a religion, and scientists are its priests."  Yes, there is the disinterested search for better explanations, and then there's the world of paid consultants.  In business, there's the phenomenon called "shopping for accounting principles."  Easier, perhaps, when there was a Big Eight in public accounting???

V. Public radio is "taxpayer funded gaslighting."  Read the report that provoked the complaint, and decide for yourself.  That milk is mostly fresh.

VI. John "Just Visiting" Warner complains, "If you are important, the rules do not apply," after noting, "One wishes there were not so many examples of this among our leadership class, but for this all-too-common failing to be illustrated so starkly by a priest and university president who claimed the chief mission of his institution is a moral one is stark and distressing."  That's a gripe about Notre Dame's John Jenkins, and, of course, there's the obligatory dig at Our President.  The generalization is straightforward.

VII. Lockdowns are useless.  "Gov. Kristi Noem claimed Monday that South Dakota has given the rest of the country an example of how to navigate a pandemic without heavy-handed government mandates."  Even if you grant that South Dakota are currently having a bad run of infections and hospitalizations, did the earlier national panic simply delay the arrival of Wuhan coronavirus there?

VIII. Philosopher Christopher Freiman notes,  "The desire to fit in is the root of almost all wrongdoing."  He begins,

Imagine that one morning you discover a ring that grants you magic powers. With this ring on your finger, you can seize the presidency, rob Fort Knox and instantly become the most famous person on the planet. So, would you do it?

Readers of Plato’s Republic will find this thought experiment familiar. For Plato, one of the central problems of ethics is explaining why we should prioritise moral virtue over power or money. If the price of exploiting the mythical ‘Ring of Gyges’ – acting wrongly – isn’t worth the material rewards, then morality is vindicated.

If you have been rejected by the Rheintochter first, maybe it's worth renouncing love. Oh, sorry, wrong Ring.  That's not where he's going, anyway.

Doing the wrong thing is, for most of us, pretty mundane. It’s not usurping political power or stealing millions of dollars. It’s nervously joining in the chorus of laughs for your co-worker’s bigoted joke or lying about your politics to appease your family at Thanksgiving dinner. We ‘go along to get along’ in defiance of what we really value or believe because we don’t want any trouble. Immanuel Kant calls this sort of excessively deferential attitude servility

Be servile, or be whipped with the world's displeasure.

IX. Finally, wisdom from James Lileks.  "January [2020] was better. And January is a standard we should hold up and remember and strive to regain."  Did anybody expect in January that an impeachment and World War III would turn out to be the bottom stories of the year?  When there is no longer reason for shutdowns, end the shutdown theater.  "[Y]ou will not slump around in perpetual compliance for the rest of your life, and acquiesce with sad nods and shrugs when all the aspects of human interaction are forbidden and the world shrinks to a hive of bees in their cells."

Per corollary, August 2001 was better.  And August is a standard we should strive to regain, shark attacks or not.  End the security theater.  "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."