In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 I'm going to do a thing.  I'm going to acknowledge the existence of... Politico .  I don't like it, but occasionally, this is a thing that has to happen.  Why?  This morning, the occasion is that a gentleman named Seth Masket has lowered himself to provide them with an essay.  Whether or not you know the name depends on your knowledge of political scientists of my generation, but Seth is a very smart person, and a mensch.  And yet, he... wrote for... Politico .  I have done things in my life of which I am not proud, and perhaps upon reflection, when Seth is forced to look back on his life, and his scholarship, and his distinguished record in political science, adding to our collective body of knowledge, he will recognize that by lowering himself to work with... Politico , he perhaps did not live his best life in that moment.  Or perhaps he thought that he could elevate Politico  by being a smart person who wrote for them.  That said, he got some stuff wrong, which occasion

 Did you laugh during the description of Trump trying to grab the steering wheel, and then trying to grab the Secret Service agent?  I did.  I mean, I suppose it says something about how deeply Trump degraded the country that we laugh instead of cry about such things, but here we are.  So two questions:  was it surprising, and will it change anything?  Do I have to dignify either question with an answer?  No, no (and no).  Look, a few years ago, there was a grand convention, attended by all the shithouse rats in all the land.  The most eminent of all the shithouse rats, senior and respected, and bonkers and covered in feces, gave a moving and eloquent speech in which he convinced his fellow rodents that they needed to get their shit and their houses together, for one reason:  Donald J. Trump.  For, if they did not get both in order, they would forever be associated with the plate-throwing, Secret Service agent and steering wheel-grabbing (better or worse than a pussy?) game show host m

 The first point to be made is that some questions are settled, and some are never settled.  Abortion falls into the latter category because it is rooted in a fundamental, philosophical difference.  When does a clump of organic matter become a human being, with associated rights?  At any point during which that clump of carbon-infused mostly-water is just carbon-infused mostly-water which happens to have some interesting proteins but nothing more, then the only relevant question is the woman's bodily autonomy.  At any point at which we grant that carbon-infused mostly-water humanity and personhood , the question of murder-most-foul enters the discussion.  Since the earliest stages of development are stages without a functioning cerebral cortex, or the other physical manifestations of what makes humans humans , those who take the pro-life position tend to root their belief (if not their actual argument) in religion, yet the very real question is where we draw a line.  Regardless of

 Let's delve into ideology this morning.  Yet again.  What?  I'm a political scientist.  Yes, we are going to examine a science fiction novel, in a long-running series on parallel universes (univ... is that really the plural of "universe," and should there really be a plural of "universe?"), and once again, I am going to ramble about the internal structure of ideology.  Why does Idea A go with Idea B?  Must it?  Let's consider.  And fair warning, for those who just read these for the political/social commentary.  I need to get through an unusually large amount of plot summary, because  Invisible Sun  is deep into a series. It is possibly the last book in a series which has actually been broken up, so depending on the number of the counting, three may be the number of the counting.  Or nine.  It's kind of like time signatures in complex music.  You can count it different ways.  (But five is right out.)  Charles Stross began the "Merchant Princes

 1.  I would like a final ruling that the attitudinal model* is the law of the land. 2.  Stop letting conservatives pretend to be libertarians. 3.  Yes, the conservative Justices perjured themselves during their confirmation hearings.  What are you going to do about it?  Appeal to... um... oh, yeah. 4.  Please keep your protests peaceful .  Remember the basic, ironclad rule of morality.  Ask yourself, what would Donald Trump do?  Do the opposite.  Works literally every time, and I detest misuse of the word, "literally." 5.  What you are actually going to do is lose in November, and then... well, I'm getting to that. 6.  Understand that the Supreme Court does not set policy.  It is what we call a "veto player."  In the absence of a law prohibiting X, you have the "negative liberty," in the terminology of Isaiah Berlin**, to do X.  State governments, which are elected , pass laws to prohibit X.  The Supreme Court is a veto player.  Those laws stand unles

 Yup.  5-4.  Before the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade , I reminded you that if it went down 5-4, then mathematically, the blame would fall on Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her idiotic, narcissistic refusal to step down when Obama could have named a successor.  Well... do you lefties still worship her?  Do you?  Or are you ready to admit that she was exactly what I have been saying?

 I have been telling you, year after year, that no matter what crimes Trump commits, he will never be convicted of anything.  At the federal level, he will never be indicted, and if he is indicted in Georgia, it will be nothing more than a campaign stunt, leading to an inevitable acquittal.  His probability of criminal conviction is absolute zero.  It has always been, and remains absolute zero.  What happened yesterday?  Further testimony.  And to a man, they all said that even behind closed doors, Trump insisted that he really won, and that the election was illegitimate. All a criminal defense attorney would have to demonstrate is that Trump "believed" that he was trying to correct a corrupted election.  Now, as I remind you, it makes little sense to describe Trump as "believing" anything, since he does not accept the premise of empirical reality, but that is not the kind of thing you take into the courtroom.  Instead, the question of corrupt intent would be assess

 Thou totally ravish'd bride of inflation, Thou foster child of silent Fed critics and too long depressed interest rates; Sylvan economist, who canst thus express, A flowery tale more bitter than our rhyme; What paper-fring'd legend haunts about thy shapeless fiat, Of elites and unwashed masses... or both.  Whatever. In Tempe, Arizona, and the Cajun Bayou, Men, gods, maidens; In mad pursuit of an affordable price, struggling to escape, As their money gets flushed down the pipes, to plumbers' wild ecstasy at inflated off-hours rates. Prices are high, but those yet to come, Are higher still; therefore ye dovish policy, dither on; Not to the rational ear, but more a-fear'd, Whine to the unwashed masses, blatherings of no tone: Economically illiterate youth beneath... fuck, we've chopped down all the trees, ain't no more leaves; Their songs are all shit; I'm getting off track. Bold Regulator (the rest, my unmeter'd ass can kiss), Though nowhere near thy goal

 " We  won."  First person, plural.  Throughout the hearings yesterday, which I had on in the background, we kept hearing the first person plural pronoun.  As we are all attentive to pronouns now, let's examine, shall we?  It is worth noting that even on the Georgia phone call, Trump did not merely demand that the Sec. State find him the votes necessary to declare him the winner.  He did so, because " we  won."  We.  Plural.  Donald Trump was not using "the royal 'we.'"  Rather, this was an interesting rhetorical and strategic choice.  We (nonexistent readers, and I) should recall that Donald Trump is a narcissist.  He thinks only of himself.  There is no "team" in "narcissist."  So why the we from Mr. I Alone Can Fix It? Replace the "we" with "I."  To a sane person, Donald Trump always sounds like a petulant child, but even more so replacing the "we" with "I."  Someone told him to ma

 Occasionally, I click on clickbait.  I'm not proud of it.  Usually, I resist the temptation, but occasionally, my finger slips, and the bait clicks itself.  Cringe ensues.  I shall not acknowledge the specific bait that got the click, but rather, I shall tell a story to motivate this morning's post.  Recently, I assigned Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses  to a group of students, on the topic of book-banning.  I asked the students what they thought would have been most infuriating to Ayatollah Khomeini.  Nobody gets it.  No sane person can put himself in the mindset of a looney-tune, and while the book is not exactly pious, the part that really got Khomeini's goat was not what anyone, save Khomeini, would guess.  Anyway, the bait that baited my click followed the precise methodology of my question to students on The Satanic Verses  for... another thing.  Present the heretical thing.  Ask the audience to guess the heresy.  I failed to guess the heresy contained within

 One of the themes from this week's hearings was the attempt to show that Donald Trump "knew" that he lost the 2020 election.  Yet as I often remark, it is not accurate to say that Trump "knows" anything, because the word, "know," denotes acceptance of facts, by the old, Philip K. Dick definition of reality:  that which is still true, even when you stop believing in it.  Trump is not a philosophical postmodernist, in the sense of having read Michel Foucault or any other supposedly-deep thinker who isn't really as deep as he seems to a 19-year-old punk.  He's just stupid, crazy, and above all, narcissistic in the colloquial as well as technical, DSM-sense.  Donald Trump does not hold "knowledge" in his Trump-brain.  He will assert any claim in service of his short-term goals, and accept any claim in service of his short-term goals, and he is indifferent to contradiction, prioritizing only a limited set of goals:  self-aggrandizement, a

 Stop me if you've heard this one before:  "Well, you know, America isn't really  a democracy .  It's actually  a republic ."  So says the semi-educated person.  According to the line, which is insufficiently true to qualify as an aphorism, "democracy" is formally defined as direct  democracy, wherein citizens vote directly on policy through referenda.  However, a "republic" is an indirect democracy, in which citizens vote for representatives, who select policy.  How many times have you heard snotty, sanctimonious people give you this lecture?  I don't need an answer.  It's bullshit.  "Democracy," derives from the Greek.  Demos , and -kratia .  Rule by the people.  Nothing within the etymology restricts the meaning to direct democracy, and all governmental systems labeled "democracies" are "republics" by this stupid definition, which no political scientist uses.  After all, why use a definition that defines

 Why, on this night, do we eat only bitter herbs?  Actually, many of us like horseradish, but nobody likes inflation.  And already, I'm off-track and off-season.  Whatever.  Inflation remains the big issue of the day, and shall remain so.  Powell did, indeed, raise interest rates 75 basis points, and there are more rate hikes on the way because he has one job, and no, it's not a stupid job.  Actually, technically, Powell has two jobs.  Dual-mandate, 'n all, but right now, inflation is so far over the NAIRU that his priority is clear.  Inflation.  And inflation is a fundamentally different issue, which is where I am going after a typically verbose lead-in. Inflation really is a different issue.  For any given political issue, if it affects you, ask two questions:  1) could you have done something differently, and 2) can you do something now, regardless of government policy? There are times when something really, truly is not your fault, and you could not possibly have done a

 Today, the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates.  By how much?  A lot, comparatively speaking (75 basis points, seems to be the consensus), and they won't be done with this rate hike.  For the first time in decades, the country, and indeed, many countries around the world are facing inflation rates not seen since the last time we had an energy shock, thereby demonstrating the macroeconomic effects of energy shocks, challenging the default partisan talking points on the right that it is either the economic death-magic of having Brandon McOldie in the White House, or the specific effects of the specific fiscal policies of Comrade Brandon.  (Don't blame me, I voted f... actually, I did vote for him, but in my defense, the alternative was Rapey McShitbag.)  Actually, as it turns out, energy shocks matter, consistently.  Hence we turn to Jerome Powell and the question of whether or not he goes full Volcker, but in any case, inflation sucks, as in, it sucks the money right out

 The line of the day, so far, is "Team Normal."  I expect the turn of phrase to "trend," whatever that means.  I do, however, have a question.  Doesn't "Team Normal" jump ship right around "grab 'em by the pussy?"  Or any number of other episodes of The Trump Show?  I am glad that Stepien and a few others finally found a line, but-- and I ask this being no lefty-- how many lines did they already cross?  Do you get to call yourself a member of "Team Normal" when you spent four years on Team Pussygrabber?  Team Hot-Bleach-Injector?  Take your pick, but Team Normal ?  I'd like to find a Team Normal, but lookin' around, I've got moonbats to the left of me, wingnuts to the right, here I am, stuck in the aether with no one.  By definition, that's abnormal, though.