In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-WV) announcement that he will not seek reelection presents an interesting puzzle.  I have evaluated his actions in the Senate, infuriating to the left, as strategically sound based on the premise that he is a Democrat attempting to maintain electability in the heavily Republican state of West Virginia.  I have contrasted his actions with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D/I-AZ), whose actions have never made as much strategic sense.  Her tactics have never been as directed, and Arizona, while not an overwhelmingly Democratic state, is not West Virginia either.  Manchin, unlike Sinema, has played his hand well.  Yet Manchin is not seeking reelection.  How do we consider this turn of events?  Does it mean that Manchin has been acting sincerely rather than strategically all along?  That would seem strange, given how manipulative his games have been.  There is a line of research about retiring legislators, which demonstrates that ...

 What if?  Nazis are not likely to come to power in the United States, and any rational assessment should recognize that, yet moral questions and social dynamics are clarified by questions formed in terms of "what if?"  What if it did happen here, paraphrasing Sinclair Lewis, or what if we did live in those times?  What if?  The question is centrally salient to all Jews given that it did not just happen once.  From the pogroms to the Inquisition to every historical attempt at genocide that you never studied-- and "genocide" has a real definition, for those of us who believe in objective truth and the use of language to communicate rather than manipulate/ lie -- it has happened a lot.  So we ask, what if?  Among the more interesting questions contemplated by many Jews over the last nearly century is as follows.  What if I found myself in Anne Frank's position?  Who, if anyone, would help?  Consider the risks to all involved.  O...

 Issue 1 passed in Ohio yesterday, to little surprise.  Do not over-interpret this result.  Recall when the political debate on abortion was over late-term abortions, or partial-birth abortions.  Public opinion runs strongly against late-term abortions, and the procedure known as "intact dilation and extraction."  If you propose 8.5 month abortion for non-medical reasons, most people will oppose it.  Everything is a matter of comparison.  When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs  and states passed laws that restricted abortions to a higher degree than public opinion allowed, the comparison changed.  It is all a matter of comparison.  No, the public does not believe in abortion on demand in all circumstances.  No, the public does not believe in total bans.  When policy moves too far to either end, it becomes easy to move the status quo.  That's it.  Do not over-extrapolate.

 Yesterday, Donald J. Trump trump-ed all over the witness stand during his civil fraud trial, leaving quite a mess for the janitorial staff.  I hope that they are well compensated, but I doubt that they are.  Let us consider.  From an outcome-based perspective, was his conduct the utility-maximizing conduct?  Yes.  Trump has already lost the case.  Engoron already issued a summary judgment on the question of fraud, and Trump has no case whatsoever.  The fraud was so blatant, and so indisputable that Engoron's ruling was that there was no point in even bothering with a trial on the question of facts.  When you list your penthouse apartment as triple its actual size in order to falsify its value, just as one  example, you did it.  No question, no defense.  There is absolutely no possible legal defense.  The only question was ever going to be the penalty, and even there, Trump's conduct is so egregiously fraudulent that it wa...

 Over the weekend, a Muslim student at Stanford was assaulted via hit-and-run in what appears to be a hate crime.  I am sickened enough to forgo any Stanford-bashing.  (Did that count?)  Some weeks ago, a six year old Palestinian-American boy was stabbed to death.  Step back, and test your virtue.  Are you as sickened by these events as by any other attack motivated by bigotry?  If not, your moral compass has ceased to point true north, and remember why we have a "hate crime" category.  It is not merely an attack on the person or people targeted, but a direct threat of violence to an entire group. Your reactions to all  such events, whether Cooper Union, the 6-year-old, October 7, or anything, regardless of who was targeted, should be these.  In order, (1)  Some combination of sadness or empathy.  (2)  An understanding that wrong is wrong, and evil is evil.  (3)  A correct assessment of the root and motivation, a...

 Calm down.  It'll be OK.  Alfred Bester is already dead, so a fatwa would be a silly exercise.  They'd need a time machine and a handgun to stop him , which is rather funny given the plot of the story.  Me?  CWRU and others are diggin' my grave as I type, but as a devotee of Socrates, (pronounced, "Soh-Crayts"), my motto is "hemlock before bullshit."  Note, vitally, that  your reaction to the title of the story, and your expectation of violence in response says more than anything I am typing anyway. In tenure veritas.  Academic freedom.  (Is that still a thing?  Let's find out, shall we?) Now.  Let us step into the wayback machine, and consider a short story by Alfred Bester.  If you recognize the name for anything other than his writing, then at least you win those geek points!  On Babylon 5 , the Psi-Cop, Bester, was named for the author.  A few years earlier, in a Simpsons  episode, Martin Prince ...

 Let us step back from the details of news, policy and war to consider the larger questions of what matters.  We turn now to Musonius Rufus, for what I expect to be a set of posts on this interesting and challenging philosopher.  He is not the most famous stoic from the perspective of 21st Century America, not having been played by Richard Harris in a bad movie, but he was historically and intellectually important, as Epictetus's teacher.  I reference Epictetus regularly, if not as regularly as Seneca, on whom I lean perhaps too heavily.  As challenging as Epictetus's lessons are, Musonius is a kick in the nuts, which is strange for a man whose philosophy was nearly pacifist, but he challenges you.  If you are not challenged, though, why bother?  In fact, among Musonius's commentaries were as follows.  If you find yourself clapping and cheering to someone's pretty words, that person is no philosopher, but merely a musician.  You are hearing p...

 Consider the following admonition to Israel.  Beware of the risks of making foreign policy decisions in the heat of anger.  Recall the American response to September 11, and where we went wrong.  Remember Iraq.  The first sentence in this admonition is generally good advice anyway.  Decisions made in anger may coincide with correctness, but anger will bias your decision-making process.  Better to seek calm and reflectiveness.  Better to seek reason.  The admonition goes wrong in its specifics.  Leftists have a never-ending series of excuses to demand that Israel permit terrorists to attack without response.  Whether these excuses take the form of a demand for a "humanitarian cease-fire," unaccompanied by a demand for a humanitarian cease-rape, or any number of other rhetorical gimmicks, the end goal is the same.  Let Hamas win, and let them do it through rape, torture, kidnapping and the targeted murder of civilians. Consider,...

 As the news stories continue to accumulate about anti-Semitism on college campuses, showing not an increase, but revealing what has been here all along, consider the mission statement of any institution.  Why do colleges and universities exist?  Jonathan Haidt describes the tension on college campuses as one between two conflicting missions.  Are they truth-seeking institutions, or are they social justice-seeking institutions?  To prioritize one is to sacrifice the other, by necessity, because all  prioritization works that way.  Haidt has an important point, but I have a more direct, empirical point about the mission statements of colleges and universities.  Few describe their missions, in writing, with the phrase, "social justice."  Nearly all state that they are providing some sort of moral education to their students.  Wording will vary by institution, but if you dig into the bowels of the general education requirements of any colle...

 Speaker Mike Johnson's first move as Speaker is of no surprise.  President Biden has requested a linked funding package, providing aid to Ukraine, and to Israel.  Johnson's plan is to pass a funding package with money for Israel, but not Ukraine.  The reason is simple.  Johnson comes from the Trumpiest wing of the party, which means that he is pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine.  This sets up a conflict, obviously, because the Democratic majority Senate, where even the Republicans are slightly less Trumpy (McConnell is pro-Ukraine), will pass a linked funding bill, and Biden obviously prefers a linked package.  Who wins this round?  I do not know, but at this point, I turn back to what I have written in the past, as for example in this February 25 post .  Briefly summarized, I wrote that America's political will to fund Ukraine will be exhausted before Putin's capacity to fight.  Ukraine can only fight as long as it is funded by the US, so once ou...