In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 So I guess the Grammamawatchamathingies have announced their nominees.  Now, I know  what you're thinking.  How does a pretentious, hipster douchebag like me even know that the Grambonis have a nominee list?  I have  a legitimate reason.  No Depression .  They had an article last week.  So, I'm a-gonna ramble about it, awards, popularity, and in the process, touch on some vaguely-political concepts. Here's the link to the No Depression  article .  First, you may wonder, what the hell is with that title, "No Depression?"  There's history.  Long ago, an old-time country band called The Carter Family wrote a song called, "There'll Be No Depression In Heaven."  Care to guess when they were around?  Anyway, round-about 1990, a movement that came to be called "alt-country," which had nothing  to do with the alt-right, got going in earnest when a band called Uncle Tupelo released an album called... No Depression , with the title track being a

 Uncle Tupelo, the title track from No Depression .

 I teased this post with one of my "quick takes" last week, and I think I may actually have something to say here.  As in, I actually published on this stuff.  For real. So.  This thing is over.  Finally.  The country faced a test, and we passed that test.  We failed that test in 2016, but we got ourselves a do-over, and after careful reconsideration, having to live with the consequences of our collective error, we passed the test in 2020.  But it was a close thing.  And that's rather my point.  It shouldn't have been close . What are the characteristics of a well-run, small-d democratic election?  To a goo-goo*, first and foremost, a democratic election should be "competitive."  OK, what does that  mean?  That's actually messier than you think.  I spent a whole chapter in my first book, Hiring & Firing Public Officials: Rethinking the Purpose of Elections  (Oxford University Press 2011), going through all of the many and often conflicting definition

 Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Competition Bed Blues."

Burnt Belief, "Arcing Towards Morning," from Burnt Belief , the debut album from the duo of Colin Edwin and Jon Durant .

This is over.  Finally.  The transition has begun.  Several observations have been made about why Donald Trump pushed this far beyond any point of reasonability.  Beyond, of course, the obvious point that Donald Trump has never done a reasonable thing in his life, especially when his fragile ego is at stake. First, he needed "time to process."  A losing candidate does not deserve  "time to process."  Democracy is about what the country  deserves.  Not Donald Trump and his fragile, warped psyche. Second, Trump's voters  deserved a fight, or something.  No.  They deserved to have their votes counted.  They did  have their votes counted.  After that, they deserved the truth.  The truth is that they lost.  At that point, they suck it up, like fucking losers. I am reminded of a phenomenon that one has to face as a hard grader, on occasion.  The "grade-grubber," who believes that completing the assignment is only the first stage of receiving a grade.  The se

It was inevitable that Donald Trump would try  to steal the election.  It was far from inevitable that his attempt would be this inept.  Yes, Trump himself  is a twit, but as I have noted, there is variation in the professional skill of his flunkies.  Consider the contrast between Bill Barr and Rudy Giuliani.  Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election is going the way of Giuliani.  Had Barr handled it, things might have gone differently.  We are fortunate. Yet, that does not mean democracy is stable.  The problem is that Trump's attempt  may normalize such attempts, just as his profligate lying and embrace of insane conspiracy theories has exacerbated dishonesty and the spread of conspiracy theories. And if such attempts are normalized, eventually, someone will succeed, because most politicians are smarter than Donald Trump, and most lawyers are more competent than Rudy Giuliani. Once we abandon the normality of accepting a loss, democracy really is in danger, even if Trump an

Blade Runner  took place in an alternate 2019.  Of course, I love that movie.  I am required to love it.  The director's cut.  No voice-over narration.  The hazard of near-future storytelling is that the audience will see the year.  The world of Blade Runner  had replicants, space colonization, and of course, flying cars.  Given how bad drivers are on the ground, I really don't  want flying cars.  Please, no flying cars.  Yet when Deckard wanted to make a video call to Rachel, he had to use a booth.  In... 2019.  What, no FaceTime or Skype?  And I guess we're all on Zoom now, in 2020.  The hazards of predicting the near future of technology. Anyway, I admit that I am guilty of a particular variation of the trope that we are living in a science fiction world.  Yet, while the common version is to marvel at technological development, I prefer to use science fiction itself as a lens through which to look at the world.  Science fiction at its best is a form of literature that al

The Waybacks, "From the Pasture to the Future," title track from the album.

Let's have some fun this morning. Gender is such a slippery concept.  No, I'm not just trolling Trump.  I'm trolling everyone . I am motivated by our modern-day source of wisdom and truth, The Onion .  This week, they had one of their typically brilliant pieces, " GOP Leaders Begin Search For Prissy, Miserable Shithead Who Can Compete With Trump In 2024 ."  Notice that word, "prissy."  Yes, Donald Trump is prissy.  Also, a miserable shithead, but let's focus for a moment on his prissiness .  Prissiness is not, generally speaking, a trait that one would associate with "masculinity."  Perhaps you see where I am going with this. Time to define our terms, because if I'm going to be a troll, I am going to be a scholarly  troll.  Sex is the biological/physiological.  As I use the term, "gender," for the purposes of this post, I am referencing Candace West & Don Zimmerman, "Doing Gender," from Gender & Society  

 Gotta go with Richard Thompson today.  Here's a live performance of "Woman or a Man?"  There is a recording available on Small Town Romance , which is one of his live albums.  I wonder if this one is now verboten.

I could select any number of versions, but let's go with Tal Farlow, "They Can't Take That Away From Me," from The Swingin' Guitar of Tal Farlow .

One of the primary questions of the day is as follows:  How much permanent damage is Donald Trump doing to democracy by refusing to concede, lying about who really won the 2020 election, and continuing to file frivolous lawsuits and engage in other tactics? The short answer is, a lot. The somewhat longer answer is:  Donald Trump isn't the one doing the damage.  The dupes who are stupid enough to believe him are the ones doing the damage. As I keep reminding you, Donald Trump is not just a liar.  He has always been an obvious  liar, and anyone who can't see through him is, and has always been stupid.  Yes, Donald Trump has enablers.  Republican elected officials continue to back every craven lie he tells, but the lies are so absurd that anyone who believes him is a fool. So, Donald Trump is undermining democracy by lying.  Again.  It's a day ending in -y." OK, so what's "democracy?"  As I often remind people, the term is a multifaceted concept, but however

 Two quick and related observations for this morning.  First, the good news, such as it is.  It looks like the Senate will reject Judy Shelton for the Federal Reserve.  You may not have noticed this, amid all of the other political lunacy, but Trump tried to appoint a straight-up goldbug to the Fed. The good  news is that McConnell does not appear to have the votes to confirm the wacko goldbug for an appointment to set... monetary policy .  The bad news is that it was a close call.  In other words, this is now a part of our mainstream political debate.  Goldbuggery is back in the Overton window. Next, if you are paying attention to financial markets, the price of... oy... bitcoin is way up again.  Back on The Unmutual Political Blog , I wrote a long series called "Bitcoin is Bullshit."  Fortunately, I wrote a lot of that series in word processing rather than just in the blog editor, so I didn't actually lose it when I wiped the slate clean!  I can recover that, and maybe

Let's just say it.  Donald Trump is trying to maximize the number of Americans who die of COVID under Joe Biden's administration. Generally speaking, we should be leery of what we might call a teleological fallacy-- confusing effect with intent.  Nevertheless, attributing ill-intent to Donald Trump is rarely much of a stretch, given his sociopathy.  So let's just go through this quickly. Donald Trump is obstructing a transition of power.  In doing so, he is raising the difficulty of Joe Biden's job as president.  He is increasing the number of Americans likely to die of COVID by raising the difficulty of administering the government's response. Does Donald Trump know  this?  Yes.  This is being pointed out to him repeatedly.  By... everyone. Does Donald Trump believe that he, personally, has something to gain from this?  Unfortunately, in his sociopathic brain... yes.  He believes that if Joe Biden looks bad because the burden of a COVID response has been raised-- e

The news story right now is... that Trump is still the news story.  This is both perverse, and encouraging.  In 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated and Sarah Palin was no longer a candidate for the vice presidency, she struggled for relevance, eventually resorting to a reality tv show.  Donald Trump will have a much easier time maintaining an audience, but the iron law of time and attention is that they are finite.  It will become mathematically impossible for Trump to remain the story. Except, unfortunately, for his core followers.  And they will remain dangerous.

 I need a break from these near-daily politics posts.  One would think I'm a political scientist, or something... Time for some science fiction.  Y'all know what "utopia" means, right?  Thomas Moore invented his "utopia," and then used a word that translated, literally, to "no place."  Utopia means "no place."  As in, it doesn't exist.  As in, bullshit.  Got that?  Thomas Moore was fucking with you.  And then we stuck with the word, using it to refer to a place of ideals and perfection, not understanding the etymology.  Yet how perfect is it that a place that is  perfect is denoted with a label that is, itself, denoted to mean that it doesn't exist? Why?  Because in the real  world, there are tradeoffs.  Always and forever. The YA dystopia trend is a thing, I guess, and I'll admit that my reading tastes can be rather dark, but my starting observation for today is that there is an interesting pattern regarding u topian writing.

 David Lindley & Wally Ingram, "Sport Utility Suck," from Twango Bango II .  This song includes one of the greatest lines ever written:  "Hang up and drive, you blood clot!"

 Donald Trump will never concede the 2020 election in any formal terms.  His pathetically fragile ego will never permit it, and his life has always been built around self-serving lies.  His behavior now was predictable from the beginning.  Yet, we are at least fortunate that the courts are laughing at his lies. Laughter is the key.  Laugh at how small he is.  This is the secret to beating him into final submission, and to making him feel bad, which is a victory in and of itself.  Laugh at the pathetic loser as he cries his little tears. Laugh at his tears of self-pity, and laugh at everyone around him. But understand that all is not well.  Going into the 2020 election, I was not sanguine about the state of American democracy, and in assessing American democracy, I have focused on two dimensions of the multifaceted concept.  American democracy, I argued, has crumbled with the loss of two vital features:  checks-and-balances, and a unified understanding of fact.  I will return to the con