In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 Let me... just... savor this for a moment.  Now, for a couple of comments and warnings.  First, the likelihood of the returns being leaked is very  high.  Congress is supposed to keep them private.  However, Congress leaks like a Russian hooker.  These returns will probably leak.  Trump will, in that case, have a legitimate legal grievance.  No moral standing, but a legitimate legal grievance.  This means... I'm probably about to lose a bet I made years ago, and I'm about to owe someone a beer.  If you're reading this, yeah, I'll pay up, happily.  That said, what's in these returns?  Olympic gold medals'-worth of fraud.  Now please keep this sports-shit out of my news feed.  Will Trump be prosecuted?  No.  Why not?  Because no prosecutor would be able to compose a jury 100%-free of Trumpists in a country with so many Trumpists, which guarantees acquittal, no matter what the evidence says.  Therefore, Trump cannot be convicted of anything, ever, no matter what e

 Hello... [tap, tap]... is this thing on?  No, of course not.  Regardless, there is a body of scholarly work out there that irritates me, as does the debate around it, so I shall treat this blog as my Festivus Pole for just a tad longer.  Anyway, in Part II , I explained what critical race theory actually is.  I elaborated on the semi-canonical five tenets that one may find if one simply googles "critical race theory."  In Part III , then, I noted that while there are empirical puzzles to explain-- racial discrepancies-- the fact that critical race theory poses an  answer does not give it any special status, nor place a burden on skeptics to provide an equally parsimonious explanation for racial discrepancies in America.  Critical race theory must stand or fall on its own intellectual merits. Yet that is not actually the point of this series.  Rather, those posts constituted a very drawn-out, confrontational prologue, which partially serves as a snark-quotes "public serv

 Somethin' quick.  Miles.  "Masqualero," from Sorcerer .  The greatest artist in human history?  Maybe.

 As the January 6 hearings begin, it is important to understand what these hearings will accomplish.  They will not change the minds of anyone in today's America.  We live in either Ul Qoma or Beszel, seeing and unseeing separate countries, except that truth doesn't work that way.  "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away," as Philip K. Dick said.  The reality of January 6 will not go away, despite Republicans' refusal to believe in it.  The consequence is that we will be condemned to repeat it.  What happens in Congress will not stop that.  That doesn't mean you should disregard it.  These hearings are how we compile primary source documentation.  Note my phrasing.  These are the source materials for historical analysis.  Historians and other scholars will, at various points, look back at January 6, and the subsequent riots and insurrection attempts that we are likely to see.  They will need primary source materials.  Thes

 Let's make this simple.  I have generally been skeptical that the following proposal would matter in any dramatic way.  I never opposed it.  I simply never cared.  At the moment, though, it would make an interesting move.  So, Democrats.  If you had any leverage (you don't, but if you did), here is the deal you should offer on voting.  Make election day a national holiday.  Republicans want to limit early voting, get rid of drop boxes, limit access to absentee ballots, and all that?  OK.  Fine.  You can have all  of that, if election day is a national holiday.  Those policies matter primarily to the extent that they allow people to vote without worrying about their work schedules.  Yeah, you can go before work, after work, or something like that, but for people with kids, that's harder, and yes, your employer is legally required to let you off work to go vote anyway, but there are complications for low-wage, hourly workers, and yadda-yadda-yadda. Make election day a nation

 I am less than certain why it took three parts of prelude for me to get here.  OK, I know.  I am long-winded, and easily distracted.  However, when I started thinking again about Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle , it was with the notion that the novels tell us something about a world in transition.  That is, after all, what Stephenson describes.  Throughout Quicksilver, The Confusion , and The System of the World , Stephenson lays out something like a literary-historical thesis that our world was set in place, for all practical purposes, during the Enlightenment, and that we can understand our world by understanding how those transformations took place from the late 1600's through the early 1700's.  Thus, we can learn about the process of transition through these novels, and as our world goes through dramatic upheavals of many kinds, perhaps we should study past upheavals.  Some of you may choose to read history texts themselves.  Go.  Do that.  I think it is as valuable to

 And, we're back.  "We," being the royal we, as in, I  am narcissistic and solipsistic, fully cognizant of the fact that nobody wants to read hot air from a professor who criticizes critical race theory.  Some people vent into diaries about petty, interpersonal dramas.  I shout into the void about an idea-virus (see Inception ) that escaped from a lab (law reviews).  What?  What do you  do with your Saturday mornings?  Sleep ?  That's how you get incepted.  Damn.  We're back to paranoia, conspiracy theories, and solipsism. Anyway, in Part II, I was less than gentle towards critical race theory in its academic form.  I found some merit in the concepts of "whiteness as property" and "interest convergence," if we were to take them as parsimonious models from which one could derive falsifiable hypotheses.  Yet at its core, critical race theory resists any such approach.  It is postmodern, and it exists primarily as a counter-narrative to operate ag

 Busy again, but enjoy something Cuban.  Cuban jazz is kind of the best.  Ruben Gonzalez, live.  Can you figure out who the real villains are?  If not, you need some historical perspective.

 Speaker Pelosi has made an interesting move.  She won't let Rep. Jim Jordan (R- Sexual Assault Cover-ups  OH, no, never mind, I was right the first time) onto the January 6 Committee.  Also, some dude named Jim Banks, but who the fuck is he?  There's a "Jim Banks" in Congress?  I study Congress.  I've written two books on Congress, and I didn't know that.  Fuck.  Whatever.  Anyway, the child molestation cover-up dude won't be running his fast-taking, Fox News clip-making act on the January 6 Committee.  Well, that's a bold move! A good move? Um... well, let's be clear about where things stand. What's the goal here? We know where the Republican Party is on January 6, and any matter relating to Donald Trump, unless their names are "Liz Cheney," or, "Adam Kinzinger."  Their positions are, "just tell me what to say, Mr. Trump, sir."  Also, "feel free to rape and murder my children if it pleases you, oh lord, my g

 After a particularly long-winded post yesterday, I think I'll try to keep it on the shorter side today.  While... writing about Neal Stephenson.  Yeah, that makes a kind of sense that doesn't.  Anyway, let's get back to my other ongoing series.  I have been revisiting Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle  lately, which was a great read the first time around, and has only gotten more timely, which is ironic for historical fiction taking place in the late 17th and early 18 Centuries.  But hey, that's Neal.  Anyway, my original intent when I thought about going back to the series was to think about a world in transformation.  We currently live in a world in transformation, and Stephenson chose to novelize the Enlightenment period.  To the degree that a trilogy of novels can have a thesis, it would be this:  our world was set on its course through the Enlightenment, so via strange-but-true, and funny-but-false tales, Stephenson muses on everything from "natural philoso

 Welcome back.  To... no one.  I'm simply going to shout into the void about the irritating public "debate," such as it is, about critical race theory, taking place between people who have either never read the literature, or just refuse to engage in its substance.  As I noted in Part I, there is a puzzle in our national dialog here.  A disjoint.  Those who defend "critical race theory" most vigorously in the public sphere are actually the kind of people attacked quite vigorously by  critical race theory in the literature itself.  How did critical race theorists convince modern American liberals to advocate a scholarly model that calls them somewhere between dupes and enablers of permanent racial oppression?  Something weird is happening.  The American left got snookered. In order to explain how, we need to explain what critical race theory actually is.  Let's do that. Remember, critical race theory is not  the history of racism and racial inequality.  It is