In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 OK, fine.  I'll go back to politics for a Sunday post.  But I'll be quick about it. A few days ago , while addressing the hypocrisy of the left on bigotry, I mentioned their ongoing tolerance of Ilhan Omar despite her gross antisemitism.*  I restated my indecent, counterfactual proposal:  what if a white, male, Republican said the kinds of things that Ilhan Omar says?   And ... roll the tape of Marjorie Taylor Greene saying some crazy shit about space lasers, because holy shit  can she turn "the crazy" up to 11. OK, now I'm a big fan of C.S. Friedman's This Alien Shore , in which the Gueran culture does not conceive of mental illnesses, learning disabilities, 'n such.  Instead, people just wear face paint to indicate how their different minds work, because their ancestors' minds were all altered by the first generation of FTL technology.  But even the Guerans  would look at Greene and say, " that  woman is just nuts." And we o...

 Otis Taylor, "Changing Rules," from Respect the Dead .

 I need a break from politics.  Let's have some fun with the lunacy of the stock market! We begin, though, with a moment of sanity.  Here's how the stock market works.  Most people who trade stocks underperform the market average (the S&P 500, or whichever other benchmark you are using).  How can this be?  Simple.  A lot of the money, and a lot of the trades are controlled by big firms and a few people who have very fast computers, and frequently, inside information.  Yes, that's illegal, but only fools get caught.  If that's not you , then you are a fool to trade individual stocks.  Here's the analogy I use.  There are three kinds of critters swimmin' around the financial seas.  Sharks, remoras and prey.  The big financial institutions are the sharks.  If you don't have inside information, super-fast computers, or the like, you ain't a shark.  If you try  to trade individual stocks, you get eaten by a s...

 Let's go with the live version here.  Bruce Cockburn, "You Pay Your Money And You Take Your Chance," from the live EP of that name.

 Joe Henderson, the title cut from In 'N Out .

 Remember how the inauguration of Joe Biden as President was supposed to usher in a new era of normalcy in American politics?   Yeah... that did not happen.  Donald Trump is out of office, stripped of his precious, precious Twitter account, and in case you were thinking that it couldn't possibly  get any worse... have you been paying attention to the trajectory of American politics and the Republican Party in particular? Hence, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).  Because of the media and the left's fixations, there is probably insufficient attention right now to her calls for the execution of Democratic leaders and her attachment to QAnon because they have found a shiny thing that is ultimately not nearly as important to the future of democracy, but I'm not allowed to talk about these things.  (Hi, Neil!) Anyway, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) is introducing a motion to expel Greene from Congress.  It'll fail, but a few comments. First, strategically, t...

 Hey, remember Michele Bachmann?  I miss her.  A decade ago, she was the face of the Republicans' crazy-caucus in the House of Representatives.  Yeah, she was toxic, but she was also kind of endearingly kooky and hilarious.  Yeah, she spewed McCarthyist nonsense about a supposed need to investigate anti-Americanism among political leaders , but when she gave the "Tea Party" response to Obama's "State of the Union," it was so badly staged that she was staring off into space instead of into the camera .  Yes, Bachmann was terrible, and vile, but it was just so hard to take her seriously, and so easy to think of her as almost cuddly  in her ineptitude.  (And her husband !  Oh, he was fabulous !)  It was like that episode of Buffy  about the fear demon, revealed at the end to be just a few inches tall.  Xander made coo-ing noises at it while it raged, and Giles told him to stop.  Why, Xander asked?  Giles told him that it...

 Donald Trump was pre-acquitted in the Senate yesterday.  He was impeached by the House, for the second time for inciting riot and insurrection, and yesterday, he was pre-acquitted, which is a demonstration of the fact that this isn't really anything like a criminal trial.  As you have no doubt read, the Senate held a vote on the constitutionality of trying an ex-president.  The Senate voted, by a majority, that it is constitutional, but only five Republicans voted that it is constitutional to hold the trial.  Therefore, we know with absolute, 100% certainty that Donald Trump will be acquitted again, and that he is still firmly in charge of the Republican Party.  They are completely under his control.  Even Rob Portman. What happened? Funny thing, but I wrote a book about this!  Kinda.   Incremental Polarization: A Unified Spatial Theory of Legislative Elections, Parties & Roll Call Voting . Here's the basic premise.  Roll call ...

 I'm going to do a somewhat longer form post, mid-week today based on a forum in which I participated last night.  It was... odd .  In some ways, predictably so, but such oddities speak to an unfortunate cognitive impulse about which I write today.  The impulse is towards a method of simplistic analysis, management of cognitive dissonance, and what we can call the "I have a hammer" phenomenon.  (Hey, look!  There's a nail!  Everywhere a nail, nail!) The forum was a discussion of the January 6 riots, the pending impeachment trial, and associated issues.  Because of the organizers and participants, one of the themes was going to be race, and my hypothesis going into the forum was that there would be some scholarly discussion of the relationship between police response to the insurrectionists on January 6 and the police response when BLM protests turned violent, "what if they had been black," and such questions.  That isn't my area of scholarly ...

 On endings.  Sometimes, a story ends conclusively with everything wrapped up in a neat, tidy bow.  Do you feel that way now?  If you think about the state of the country (or the world), probably not.  However you feel about Arnold Schwarzenegger, he had one of the most badass moments in his career recently.  He got his vaccination, and said... " come with me if you want to live ."  So  badass. Yeah, a lot of people would like to come with you right now, Arnie.  Kind of waitin' on logistics, though. Anyway, endings are often not so pat, and they often aren't endings at all.  Instead, they are often... "what now?"  Sometimes, authors try it.  Given the "what now?" state of the world, I'm feelin' a little resonance with having recently read Jeff VanderMeer's The Southern Reach  trilogy.  Annihilation , Authority , and Acceptance .  Good books.  Flawed, of course, but good books.  Normally when I write sci...

 Eric McFadden, "Bitter Endings," from Devil Moon .  One of those people with a claim to the title of "greatest guitarist you don't know."

 It's done.  Over.  He's out of office, and he will probably never hold office again.  There is something real to celebrate, but before anyone rejoices the revival of American democracy, remember all of the warnings I have repeatedly given.  The damage that Donald Trump has done to the country will range from "long-term and difficult to heal" to "permanent and possibly fatal to American democracy in the long-term."  Most dangerously, Donald Trump has mainstreamed lies and conspiracy theories in a way that no other political figure ever has.  Was there precedent?  Yes, but Donald Trump lied and spread conspiracy theories on a scale so vastly different that the difference in scale became a difference in kind.  And without a common understanding of fact.. without fact , we cannot have civil politics.  The events of January 6 were, if not the ultimate culmination of Trumpism, then that speaks only of the danger of what may be to come. No one...

 Only the best for this morning.  Nina Simone, with a live performance of "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood."

 Dexter Gordon, "Until the Real Thing Comes Along," from A Swingin' Affair .

 I suppose the big news yesterday was Anthony Fauci giving an unshackled press appearance in which he talked about how great it felt to be able to go where science leads rather than where Trump demands.  Oh, he of the Sharpie and staring unprotected at solar eclipses.  Yay, science!  Two quick(ish) comments. First, professors have historically been Democratic and liberal, but not uniformly so.  If you looked, you could find conservative and Republican professors, although the challenge of doing so would vary by discipline.  Yet, even the conservatives and Republicans in the academy recoiled in revulsion from Trump.  Why?  Anti-intellectualism. Second, don't get too comfortable here, lefties.  The scourge of academia right now is also the scourge of the far-left, which has taken over most of the left, and the Democratic Party as a whole:  postmodernism.  That would be the philosophy that there is no such think as a knowable, objectiv...

 As we look forward (?) to a Biden administration, let's take one quick moment to address a theme from Biden's address.  Unity. Ain't happen', no way, no how. Do you remember some guy named, "Barack Obama?"  He ran for office with a response to John "I'm a douchebag, cheating on my wife who's dying of cancer" Edwards.  Edwards had this whole schtick about "two Americas," and Obama was Mr. One America.  Unity, and can't we all just get along?  He came into office, in 2009, promising to bring the country together, and work across the aisle, and all of that sappy, kumbaya crap.  And then the Republican Party spent eight years telling everyone that he was an illegal immigrant from Kenya, secretly muslim, trying to institute death panels, and all sorts of other crazy things. And even when the Tea Party threatened financial calamity in 2011 by threatening to block an increase in the debt ceiling... Obama still  didn't get it.  He ...

 I have two elementary observations about what didn't happen today. First, Donald Trump did not  pardon himself, his family, or Rudy Giuliani.  I am actually surprised by this.  When you're wrong, say so.  What happened?  There is a lot of speculation about the legal reasoning, the constitutionality of self-pardons, and all of that, but here's the basic political point, which I have made.  Biden will  ensure that Trump is not prosecuted.  (At the federal level, anyway.)  In a funny way, that will make Biden more loyal to Donald Trump than Jeff Sessions! Second, if you think back a few weeks, to the time before Trump incited an insurrection, you may recall that Trump wanted to counter-program the inauguration.  You know, like, announce his 2024 campaign at the same time, with a big rally, 'n stuff.  Did you notice how that didn't happen? Gee... I... wonder why? Of course, there are the obvious worries that didn't happen, but I w...

 I write now, briefly, having just watched Biden's inauguration.  Donald J. Trump is no longer president.  In all likelihood, he never will be again.  Given how uniquely unfit he was for office-- his sociopathy, his detachment from reality, his stupidity-- it is unlikely that the United States will ever have another president so obviously unfit for office.  The country will likely collapse first.  Entropy is a law of the universe. In a very real sense, this is a moment of victory for democracy, for honesty, and for basic decency.  Yet there is a moment in stories of war, in which "the good guys" win, and look around that the damage done, and ask, "but at what cost?"  For all the celebration in some circles, all I can ask myself right now is, "but at what cost?" I shall not recount the costs here, many of which are measured in actual, human lives.  Many of those costs are costs to democracy itself which will be difficult, if not impossible to ...

 It's time.  When I started The Unmutual Political Blog , it was to call out my fellow political scientists during the 2016 Republican primaries for their failure to understand that Donald Trump really did have a chance.  My colleagues simply didn't have a proper framework to understand what was happening.  I argued that their models were junk, and that they needed to understand the real precedent:  Jimmy Carter.  I already did my Trump vs. Carter Revisited series a while back on this blog. Now, it is time to revisit another comparison I made back on The Unmutual .  This one, somewhat scarier.  And in fact, I am distressed that some of the knowledge even exists in my brain.  Currently, I am quite successful in tuning out any pop culture.  I know absolutely squat about pop music right now, and for the last several decades.  Nothin'.  Bupkis.  I occasionally hear snippets, and of course, I do the old-guy thing and comment ab...