In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 The ruling on providing wedding services to gay couples was as predictable as everything else, but if you think through these rulings, it was really the only troubling one on moral or constitutional grounds.  Here is the problem.  There is a clear conflict of values.  On one hand, business owners should have some right to determine how they run their businesses.  On the other, we have seen what happens when you take that to the furthest extreme with no checks on discrimination, and the result was the Civil Rights Act because there is something important that we value, as a society, in having individuals be allowed to go to a business and not be treated like that.  If we are all honest, these are conflicting values, and it is just that most of us sided with the Civil Rights Act.  Gay marriage and associated issues have brought into the mix the issue of religious liberty, hence the first amendment.  The trouble, of course, is that plenty of old-fas...

 I couldn't resist.  Regardless, this was another inevitability, given that even Nancy Pelosi acknowledged that Biden's actions were blatantly unconstitutional.  The only other comment worth making at this point is the observation that the mere fact of the policy on the left's agenda demonstrates that the left, like the right, has no endpoint.  The right's goal is to reduce taxes, not to find a tax rate which just happens to be lower than whatever is achievable now, but to reduce tax rates.  That is not sustainable.  Nor, however, is the left's ever-expanding vision of government as a mechanism for wealth transference.  Converting loans into grants, after the fact, was an idea that never would have passed muster ten years ago, but just as the right has no goal beyond movement, the left just keeps expanding its scope, and will forever expand its scope.

 The Supreme Court struck down race-based preferences in college admissions, as everyone with a brain knew would happen.  I will make a simple observation.  Perhaps you recall the famous assertion by Ibram X. Kendi:  "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.  The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."  The suit was brought by Asian-American applicants, not white applicants, and this matters.  It matters because the existence of the case demonstrates that Kendi was wrong.  There has been discrimination against Asians and Asian-Americans in American history, as recently/famously/egregiously as the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. That constitutes "discrimination."  Can I have my understatement-of-the-year award now? Was past discrimination remedied?  Yes.  With discrimination?  No.  Yet it was remedied so effectively that Asian-Americans out-perform white  ...

 If you were not paying attention to the Supreme Court's ruling in Moore v. Harper , you could be forgiven, not merely because no sane person pays such close attention to politics, but even a politics junkie's bandwidth is occasionally challenged.  The legal doctrine in question was the "independent state legislature" notion.  Huh?  As is the case with any kooky, Republican (not "conservative") legal doctrine cooked up to serve a specific partisan objective, it not only fails any textual reading, but no Republican would accept meeting an other-footed shoe, or other shoe'd foot, or... fuck, it is much more difficult to do this without highfalutin references to John Rawls and the veil of ignorance.  The reason we, academics, speak with such obscurantism is that after so many years, we lose the ability to speak with clarity.  Anyway, it goes thusly.  Electoral processes are not only governed at the state level, but because they are done so, state legislat...

 For a few moments yesterday, one could almost imagine Prigozhin storming into Moscow and turning the day, or the week, into something like the fall of a Soviet satellite, or the Soviet Union itself.  I reminisced, and while Prigozhin, himself, is too monstrous to be the hero of any such story, anyone who didn't have images of Putin being chased and gunned down like Ceaucescu doesn't have a sense of history.  It was not to be, and somewhere, in the creepiest corners of the internet, they are taking bets on how long Prigozhin lasts before Putin's assassins get him. Right now, various journalists and curious parties are asking my kind-- political scientists-- what's the deal?  What happened, and what now?  Here, I turn to Philip Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment .  None of us saw this coming, and by "none," I do not merely mean, those of us with doctorates in political science, like me.  I mean, in particular, those who claim to be experts in Russia, w...

 In this series, we consider the applications of an important concept from the study of cults-- phobia indoctrination.  Cults keep their members in the fold by instilling in their members irrational fears of the dangers posed by the outside world, and those outside the cult.  Thus, a cult can subject its members to psychological abuse including, but not limited to gaslighting, and since members are isolated within the cult, too afraid to interact with those outside the cult, they have no external reality check.  Indeed, they have no one to provide a check on the exaggeration of those fears.  It is an insidious tactic, dangerous both for the damage it does directly, and for the way in which it traps people in a cult.  The more I read about it, the more I think it has explanatory power in modern, American politics, even taking care to avoid Haslam's "concept creep."  In order to see how phobia indoctrination works more broadly, though, we must have a bas...

 It should go without saying that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) did precisely nothing wrong related to the impeachment of Donald Trump, and the idea of censuring him-- meaningless though it ultimately is-- shows the deterioration of the Republican Party.  It should  go without saying, but since we now live in-- yes, I'll say it-- clown world, one must say it.  Then there is the Democratic response.  Chanting, "shame!"  This is a thing they do.  A lot.  Have you noticed this?  They like to chant, "shame!"  Actually, the left likes to chant lots of things.  There are certain catechisms that they chant depending on the policy, in lieu of logic or argumentation, but generally speaking, as The Simpsons  taught us, everyone loves a droning, repetitive chant ("the leader is good, the leader is great, we surrender our will, as of this date"... wait, which party was this?  um...).  Regardless, I abhor chants.  Whom are you impr...

 I could make an obvious joke about how nobody should name a child, "Hunter."  Was the weapons charge really his fault, or Joe's?  Dear parents:  Don't name your child, "Hooker," and get confused when she gets arrested on a street corner. Regardless, I have never cared about Hunter Biden, and the only people who did were Joe, who wished him better, and Republicans, looking to exploit his personal problems, which never had anything to do with his father.  So we ask the crass question.  Does this have any implications for 2024?  Consider, first, that there is no precedent, so we have no historical data on which to base any assessments.  That said, there are three groups of voters:  Democrats, Republicans and Independents.  Democrats don't care, Republicans have already decided blah-blah "Biden crime family" because... I honestly do not know who coined the phrase and it doesn't matter.  Independents?  They will be faced, presuming...

 Tomorrow is a new holiday.  Etymology-- day which is holy.  The word denotes religious significance, although we now attach the word to days of purely secular significance, along with days which mark secular events that we treat with religious devotion.  Some are stupid, and some make sense.  I have stated on several occasions that we go overboard with the Day of X Awareness thing, and some holidays are just plain silly.  Then there is Juneteenth.  Juneteenth makes sense, and indeed, I would argue that if not the specific day, then some equivalent is a logical necessity for the philosophical argument that many of us make in response to the absurdities of people like Nikole Hannah-Jones, peddlers of critical race theory, and a variety of schools of thought to be addressed here. I like the Fourth of July, and not only because it is an excuse to light the grill, throw some meat on it and read the Declaration of Independence  once again, while chuckl...

 It is time for another long-form series.  I have been thinking about this issue for some time, and with no sign that the daily turmoil of American politics will abate, I will probably continue with the occasional short post mid-week, but there are bigger issues that deserve discussion.  I have hinted at this one, but it requires more than a few hints.  Let's have some serious analysis of phobia indoctrination. Do you like reading about politics, listening to political news, thinking and talking about politics?  I am not asking whether or not you feel as though you have some 'civic duty' to engage in these activities.  In rational choice theory, we deride such psychological factors as 'the d-term,' included in one's decision-making calculus to make an equation balance when it wouldn't otherwise do so.  I am not asking whether or not you feel obligated, whether or not you think you are doing good, or anything like that.  Do you like  it, in th...

 Chick Corea & Bela Fleck, "Spectacle," from The Enchantment .

 Anyone who did not expect Donald Trump to raise money from his latest indictment* failed to predict the tides.  The tides are uncontrolled by any sentient being, indifferent to their effects on others, hypnotic**, and governed by mechanical laws.  As the canonical example of inductive reasoning goes, Donald Trump fundraised off of his own criminality yesterday, he fundraised off of his own criminality today, so he will probably fundraise off of his own criminality tomorrow. I could write a long-form post on fundraising, but instead, I will make a simple observation.  A piece of advice, really.  Never give your money to people who have more than you. Exchange ?  Sure.  That's called "commerce."  Give ?  What, are you fucking stupid ? And the thing is, I don't just mean Trump-donors.  This applies to everyone who gives money to a politician, except for the uber-wealthy.  Why do they give?  Someday, I'll write a post, but you're ...

 Donald J. Trump was arraigned yesterday.  His attorneys will try to convince Aileen Cannon to push the trial past the 2024 election so that he can either win the presidency outright and pardon himself, or have his political servants steal the White House for him, leading again to a self-pardon.  Or his attorneys will try to ensure that the jury includes loyal Trumpists who are indifferent to facts and the law, counting on jury nullification to keep their client out of prison, and aided by Aileen, that strategy too has a high likelihood of success.  All of this began in earnest amid a typically Trumpian circus of batshit, and I have no more confidence in the American legal system, indeed, in America than I did yesterday. The markets are continuing to climb back.  Perhaps, anyway.  With the expectation that the Fed won't raise rates today given current inflation trends, all while there are jobs aplenty for anyone who wants one, capitalism does what capitalis...

 Donald Trump has committed among the most egregious criminal offenses ever committed by an American public official.  One must go back to the Civil War to find worse.  He will not be convicted.  Facts do not have any bearing, laws only matter when we, collectively, agree that they matter, and half the country decrees Donald Trump to be "axiomatically" innocent in all matters.  He will not be convicted.  Is this fair or just?  No.  The world is not, has never been, and will never be either.  What will you do?  How will you respond? One question to ask in order to maintain perspective is this: how will Donald Trump's further evasion of justice affect you?  It may.  There are benefits to living in a society in which we collectively agree to live by laws, and there are costs when that agreement ceases to hold.  Just look at any city in which law enforcement has stopped, crime has surged, and quality of life has plummeted....

 It's the singularity!  AI is taking over!  Or maybe not, but you should definitely put all of your money into any company that uses AI buzzwords, because that investment strategy has never gone wrong.  The markets are doing strange things, as markets are wont to do, those prone to freakouts are freaking out about either SkyNet, or at least the latest iteration of technology-will-put-everyone-out-of-work, which is a story that humanity has been hearing since the industrial revolution, or possibly earlier.  Yet the industrial revolution was also why Malthus was wrong, so either way, there are apocalyptic predictions, and the world just keeps not ending.  Bad shit keeps happening on smaller scales, but the world only ends once, which means my ability to grouse about failed predictions in the past is a direct function of the failure of those predictions.  What will the newest coming thing bring us?  Fuck if I know.  For the most part. Here's wha...

 Take a moment to recall the strange days of Donald Trump's presidency.  Do so, not merely because it is going to happen again-- although there is a high likelihood that it will-- but because every day was a new roller coaster of cuckoo.  Merely reading the news involved those unsettling stomach drops which are entertaining for the young, but horrifying for anyone past a certain age.  Stomachs are not supposed to do that.  Here we are.  Again.  Did you feel a little of that old, black magic when the indictment announcement was made?  When the document was released?  When Trump's congressional stooges, like Andy Biggs, started trying to incite violence?  Just wait until the trial.  Unless Aileen Cannon delays the trial past the election, Trump "assumes" the presidency, so to speak, and pardons himself.  Which is not a possibility to discount. Anyway, if you want legal analysis, there are plenty of lawyers.  Too many.  ...

 G'morning.  Somewhere knockin' around the ole' noggin', I had a hankerin' to bang out a morning post today in which I not only used excessive and needless contractions, but called the nonexistent reader's attention to an obscure happenin' in Congress.  For you see, every leftist's favorite anti-Semite, Ilhan Omar, has been rewarded for her good, old-fashioned Jew-hatin' by an elevated position in the Democratic Party because that's how they roll.  Rail about it when it comes out of Marjorie Taylor Greene's Karen-mouth, but Ilhan gets away with it because she's a leftist with so many intersectional identity markers that the only "folks" who can beat her in the oppression olympics, as Latina feminist, Betita Martinez put it, well, shhhh....  Anywho, Omar getting rewarded for her anti-Semitism seems to be rather minor at the moment.  It's just the Democrats being Democrats. Donald Trump has been indicted.  It could not happen....

 In the world of comedy, this happened.  House Republicans were planning a symbolic vote on a bill that would have blocked Biden from issuing regulations that would ban gas stoves, because everything is a culture war issue.  Gas or electric?  Stoves, not capital punishment, for which firing squad is clearly the optimal choice.  On the indoor cooking issue, your answer should tell me your position on taxes, abortion, and drag shows for tots where this happens .  That's just logic.  Anyway, is Biden going to issue a regulation about gas stoves in new homes?  Fuck if I know, but if Commie McOldster is agin' 'em, we're f'r 'em.  Hence, the Republicans in the House were getting ready to pass a symbolic bill that would have blocked any potential new regulation, but since they don't control the Senate, and Biden isn't so senile as to have forgotten how to work a veto pen, this is just what David Mayhew called a "position-taking" vote in Congress: Th...