In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 This will be brief.  (I promise, even though I rarely keep that promise.  I have a fuckload of work to do today.)  Consider the following statement: One should not mock those who are mentally ill or mentally impaired.  Agree?  Disagree?  How strongly?  Do you wish to add conditions?  What conditions?  I pose the question(s) in order to test principles.  Consider DD Hammer, better known as David DePape (the Pelosi assailant).  He is clearly mentally ill.  I am mocking him.  I mocked him yesterday, and I am mocking him again today.  Is it unacceptable for Republicans to mock John Fetterman?  He has impairment because of a stroke, so that puts him off-limits, right?  Do you mock Herschel Walker?  He is clearly  mentally ill, and his IQ would put him, let's just say, below average.  There are others in the GOP, whom many of us mock, despite the fact that they are mentally ill, or perhaps because of it.  Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Lauren Boebert.  Louie Gohmert. Donald Trump. If we'r

 Democracy is on the ballot.  Democracy itself is riding on the 2022/2024 election results.  The stakes of these elections are nothing less than democracy itself.  Choose your wording, but in all likelihood, you have read and heard many variations on the form.  If you are a lefty or Trump opponent with any self-awareness, you should have stopped to ask yourself that deepest of questions, huh ?  Or perhaps its close cousin, what the fuck?   The critique is currently making the rounds on the right, as logic would demand.  Wait, you mean if you lose, democracy ends?  Consider this from the Republican perspective.  Are you saying that if you lose the election(s), that would be the end of democracy?  Huh?  Or perhaps, what the fuck?  Wouldn't that just be "democracy," as long as you abide by the results rather than trying to use extralegal means to overturn those elections?  (Just sayin'...) This is a serious critique, and it does require a serious answer. Let us first con

 When I first saw the headline yesterday, I had the same reactions that many readers had.  Attacks on political leaders in this country are more common than we would like them to be, Pelosi herself is uniquely threatened given her position, "where's Nancy," and so forth.  And then... a hammer?  When a militia organized a plan to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and put her on trial over COVID lockdowns, the participants in the plot were crazy, sure, but they were also organized ideologues, as terrorists are.  Some attacks on politicians and public figures, though, are made by people who are just fucking bonkers.  Think John Hinckley, who shot Reagan because in his weirdo head, it would impress Jodie Foster and he'd get a date with her.  (She hadn't come out yet, not that that would have mattered when you're that coo-coo.) So, a hammer.  A... hammer .  Really?  I mean, the lefty impulse is to put David Depape in the same box as the organizers of the Januar

 Charlie Hunter, "Scrabbling for Purchase," from Bing, Bing, Bing!

 Amid debate season, I have a canned line.  An election is a hiring process.  (I wrote a book about that.)  The campaign is the job interview.  However, debating, particularly as it is conducted in modern politics, has nothing to do with the performance of the job.  It is as though a law firm asks prospective hires to come in for interviews, and amid the interview, the committee hands each recent law school grad a violin with a demand that the interviewee play the Brandenburg Concertos.  It is precisely that nonsensical. Yet mostly, debates do not matter.  They only matter on those rare occasions that a candidate with a real shot blows it so badly that it becomes one of those legendary moments.  And even then, consider the legendary moments.  You're no Jack Kennedy.  Bush Sr. won anyway.  Who am I?  Why Am I here?  Perot had no chance anyway. Oops. That was classic . Mostly, though, debates don't matter, which is just as well, as they have no business mattering.  Ignore them. 

 Read this one.  By the title, you may think that the novella of this morning's post is a twist on The Tempest .  Not so, although references to history and literature are scattered throughout.  Regardless, this one comes with my highest recommendation.  For those unaware, K.J. Parker is a pseudonym occasionally used by Tom Holt... 'cuz.  Prosper's Demon  is the first in a duology of fantasy novellas set in an alternate world of roughly Renaissance technology and culture, but with actual demons and exorcists.  Wackiness ensues. Here's the deal.  Your unnamed POV character is an exorcist, which means that he can see when there is a demon setting up shop inside a person's head, and kick out said demon, either gently or roughly.  He cannot kill  the demon, because you cannot kill a demon, but if exorcised roughly, he can cause the demon fuckloads of pain.  Also, there are about 7K demons total, in the world, and everyone is territorial (demons and exorcists, both) so h

 As a general rule, when you hear someone stick the prefix, "neo-," in front of a noun, that person is full of shit.  Old wine, new bottles, nothing to see here folks, move along past my annoying cliches and don't bother with neo-.  I shall not rant today about that nonsense word, "neoliberal," except to remind you that anyone who uses the word has disqualified himself from intelligent conversation.  Neo conservatism , on the other hand, is a real thing.  Why?  It is truly distinct from old fashioned conservatism.  So let's talk ideology and foreign policy.  Or rather, I shall write, and you shall read.  "You" being purely hypothetical, this being a blog that nobody reads.  It is merely that I poured myself some coffee, and what else am I gonna do? Anyway, there is a simple observation about war.  Wars don't happen between two democracies.  Think back through the history of war, and you'll find that at least one of the countries involved wa

 I cannot help myself.  Schleigho, "Head," In The Interest of Time .

 Lettuce not lose our heads in this time of lolling about like vegetables, nor hand control of the state to one who is green.  Instead, turnip your googly eyes to one who can meat the crisis, and steak a claim to the future! Dr. John, "Cabbage Head," from Goin' Back to New Orleans .

 I shall assume you have encountered the leaked recording from the Los Angeles City Council.  My reaction, from the political science perspective, is to recall two names: Kimberle Crenshaw and Elizabeth Betita Martinez. Having heard the recording, you will hopefully have contrasted the recordings with the obnoxious attempt at a definitional escape from moral culpability: "racism = prejudice + power."  The construction, or perhaps, reconstruction, popular among the far left, is an attempt to redefine "racism" to immunize anyone in a set of demographic categories from the most heinous of charges-- racism-- no matter what they do, through the all-powerful legerdemain of redefining the words in a sentence.  It doesn't count when I  do it because I redefined myself out of guilt. Anyway, what happened?  Essentially, one group of non-white people expressed their animosity towards other non-whites.  This is intersectionalism, and Elizabeth Betita Martinez warned about i

 Who is your favorite painter?  Rembrandt?  Van Gogh?  Perhaps your tastes lean more towards the bathroom stall sketch, but removing those doors from the restrooms, framing them, and finding a proper method of display is a tad difficult.  Nevertheless, if some jackass can throw paint at a wall and sell it for millions in an Alan Sokal-level prank on the art world... wait... you mean he was serious ?  Fuck.  Anyway, moving on, what say ye about the works of noted vegetarian and syphilis enthusiast, A. Hitler?  At one point, he was involved in politics, but as I always say, one must separate evaluation of art from artist and consider the proper method for displaying the works of this painter and patron of the medical sciences. What?   I'm allowed to make that joke.  Statistically, you probably aren't. Getting back on track, some British comedian, of whom I have never heard, is doing something hilarious   horribly offensive  that is a topic of some controversy and consternation wi

 OK, time for an in-class survey.  Raise your hands if you think that Donald Trump will respond to the January 6 subpoena.  Anyone?  Anyone?  Now, let me just scan the room and do a quick count of hands, and if you'll just gimme a moment, by my rough count, there are roughly zero hands raised in the room right now, and while OK, technically I am the only one in the room right now, (my cat being otherwise occupied), I am reasonably certain that sampling bias is not much of a problem here. Suppose the Committee had issued its subpoena earlier.  Steve Bannon, for example, was convicted of criminal contempt for his failure to respond to his subpoena.  What might have happened? The first question would be whether or not Trump would have responded.  He would have needed to consider a few things.  First, he is incapable of speaking the truth, on anything, ever.  Had he responded, and done anything other than plead the fifth, he would have perjured himself because if he had been asked what

 Does anyone remember the old Robin Williams joke about British police?  They do not carry firearms, so when chasing suspects, they just yell, "stop!  Or I'll say 'stop' again!"  The January 6 Committee has pulled a Robin Williams-British cop.  For the most part, I have been impressed with their work, not because it will lead to anything, but because they have performed the historically important task of documenting things that needed to be documented, but this?  This is the theater of the absurd.  In a couple of months, Speaker Marjorie Taylor Greene will reconstitute the Committee, with Jim Jordan in charge.  The subpoena will be retracted, and new subpoenas will be issued to Hunter Biden, the head of the baby blood-drinking cabal, as soon as the voice in Greene's head tells her who that person is, and oh, fuck it, Hillary. More soon, because while you may certainly hear from me on the subject, you'll never hear from Trump.  Or rather, you'll never h

 Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is at the center of a typically 2020's media firestorm based on some rather interesting comments he made at a rally.  The short version is that he accused Democrats of supporting crime as a form of reparations.  Cue outrage.  Yet my first thought was of a book that I think I might assign next semester in my "Forbidden Books" class:  In Defense of Looting , by Vicky Osterwell.  Perhaps you remember it, and perhaps you do not, but the short version is that Osterwell actually does endorse crime-- looting during riots, specifically-- and a legally permissive approach towards it as a form of reparations for police violence against African-Americans.  Osterwell was motivated by the case of Michael Brown, which the Department of Justice determined was a case of self-defense by Officer Wilson (the "hands up, don't shoot" story did not hold up to scrutiny, according to President Obama's DoJ investigation, under Attorney General Eric

 Let us call today's science fiction commentary the result of a convergence of observations.  Yesterday's post in the "Political Science is bullshit" series made the suggestion that the discipline may have reached the end of what existing scientific paradigms can accomplish, perhaps creating openings for the new.  The passing of the old, the rise of the new, presuming there is  a new.  Political systems themselves are undergoing such shifts, and that was at the core of my concern.  Whether that is democratic backsliding around the world, or even perhaps the fall of Vladimir Putin, if one can risk optimism, the endurance of any system is always a question mark at best, existing under the cloud of what time series analysis would call "right censoring," which doesn't mean what you think it does.*  And so this morning, I turn to an old classic in the history of science fiction, Hyperion , by Dan Simmons.  Actually, there are four "Cantos" in the se

 In Part II of "hey, kids, don't waste your time in my classes," I went through a minimalist syllabus of core Political Science books, focusing (of course) on my primary areas of interest, in order to see if I could get away with books that are still decades old.  Yup.  What lesson do we take from this?  Not much of value is happening in Political Science.  Stuff is being written, but we are mainly nibbling around the edges, and at best making minor improvements to existing major models.  There is an "at worst," and I'll get to that in a subsequent entry in the series, but for now, let's just keep in mind that "at best."  Basically, we're stuck.  We're in a rut.  We're not going anywhere interesting.  We are adding nothing of real value to our collective knowledge.  Our efforts are being wasted. So what should we be doing?  At this point, we return again to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions .  A paradigm can

 T-Bone Walker played somewhere in the space between blues and jazz.  "Prison Blues."

 At this point, I do not know who would be shocked that Herschel Walker paid for an abortion.  The old joke about abortion is that everyone believes in three exceptions:  the life of the mother, rape, and me.  Walker, as it turns out, believes in but one exception.  Yes, I made an abortion joke.  [What, too soon?]  Anyway, consider the position of an ideological conservative.  What do you do?  What is the moral choice?  If this sounds like a similar framing to the Roy Moore question, that's because it is.  Roy Moore was a child molester, and the GOP, for the most part, stood by him because what was the alternative?  What was the policy cost? Turn this around, if you are a lefty.  What personal sin would get you to vote for a conservative Republican?  Can you conceive of anything?  Anything ?  To the lefties aghast that Republicans won't turn on Walker and support Warnock, the following question should be posed:  In a hypothetical 2024 contest between Biden and DeSantis, what wo

 I have several more observations on Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov , and when I have somethin' knockin' around the ole' noggin', I cannot help but write it.  Yet, I am getting bored with this one, so I think this will do it for Fyodor.  For now.  At some point, I'll probably revisit Crime & Punishment , but three Sunday's worth of Dostoevsky blather is plenty. Anyway, let's return to the lurking antisemitism, which reared its head again, mid-week, with that lovely clip from my hero, Frank Zappa.  I noted last Sunday that amid Dostoevsky's generally strict moralism, as he saw it, was some rather casual and historically normal antisemitism, even from the moralist characters.  My reaction was... I didn't care.  Why not?  If you are reading 19th Century Russian literature and expecting 21st Century Western liberalism, you have missed the point.  There is a difference between moral relativism and expecting that all people everywhere t

 In Part I of "biting the hand that fed me," I described the current state of Political Science as something closer to Philosophy than Physics, in the following way.  Philosophy is not so much a discipline of discovery as one of revisiting and reinterpreting the canon.  That canon began, depending on a particular scholar's emphasis, in Greece, hit a stride with some continental writers in the 17th through the 19th Centuries, and trailed off ignominiously with postmodern navel-gazing bullshit in the mid-20 Century, unless you have the misfortune of dealing with a postmodernist philosopher who actually likes that shit, in which case... run.  Run away, run far, run fast, but whatever you do, run.  Regardless, do philosophers do anything new?  Occasionally.  Rarely.  Mostly, they offer new, post-27th wave intersectional feminist interpretations of Kierkegaard, or something.  Intellectually speaking, the discipline is deader'n Cleese's parrot. Physics?  Physics periodi