{"id":984,"date":"2019-01-03T00:02:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T00:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=984"},"modified":"2019-01-03T00:02:42","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T00:02:42","slug":"gaussian-gargoyles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/03\/gaussian-gargoyles\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaussian Gargoyles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The frustration of democrats with the Orban depredations in Hungary is understandable, but their fatalism is neither warranted nor helpful.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve looked for a suitable emotional analogy, and the closest recent one that comes to mind is Trump. <\/p>\n<p>His vile, vulgar, vicious antics are outrageous in much the way Orban\u2019s are. Trump has money, Orban has power (and steals money). The styles are different, but the ethics are the same: nil.  Both leave decent people dismayed that so many people can not only put up with it but embrace it, for so long. <\/p>\n<p>Both are sad signs about the demography of decency in our times. But their support comes from the tail end of the normal distribution, meaner than the mean. And time\u2019s tail is longer.<\/p>\n<p>Le Pen was upended in France. Let\u2019s see whether Trump gets dumped in the US. <\/p>\n<p>Then comes the turn of Orban and his clan\u2026<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"http:\/\/stat.hirstart.hu\/image\/20151210\/156485\/orban_viktorral_riogat_cimlapjan_az_economist-600x315-crop.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The frustration of democrats with the Orban depredations in Hungary is understandable, but their fatalism is neither warranted nor helpful. I\u2019ve looked for a suitable emotional analogy, and the closest recent one that comes to mind is Trump. His vile, vulgar, vicious antics are outrageous in much the way Orban\u2019s are. Trump has money, Orban &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/03\/gaussian-gargoyles\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Gaussian Gargoyles&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":985,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions\/985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}