… is the Ghost Fleet of one hundred World War I wooden ships, whose outlines lie in the shallow water. This was today’s outing.
Gun laws and regulations are among the most impactful policy factors [in college choice], with 80 percent of students saying these are at least somewhat important in their college choices, and 84 percent of those said they prefer campuses that restrict firearms… Reproductive healthcare policies are [also] a significant consideration, with 71 percent of students citing its importance to their college choice. Of this group, eight in 10 prefer states with fewer restrictions on reproductive healthcare.
It’ll be interesting to watch enrollment trends in, for instance, Idaho, with utterly unrestricted gun laws and utterly restricted abortion laws. Ob/gyns are fleeing the state as fast as their specula can carry them. Let’s see how many female applicants find that attractive.
The former president now enjoys an unprecedented level of control over the Republican national apparatus. He can freely raid the RNC’s dwindling campaign coffers for legal defense money and appoint family members to key positions while personally directing House Republicans’ disastrous investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden. Trump’s total dominance of the Republican Party is a remarkable thing to behold.
But Republicans’ willingness to bow to Trump on nearly every issue is making their party staggeringly unpopular with voters — and not just the rank and file. Colorado Rep. Ken Buck stunned Capitol Hill on Tuesday by announcing that he’d simply had enough of Trumpism (“This place keeps going downhill and I don’t need to spend more time here.”) and would resign in just about a week. In an interview with CNN, Buck slammed Congress as “dysfunctional” and remarked that many of his constituents were sick of Trump.
Und so weiter. Title: TRUMP’S GOP IS ALREADY DYING.
*************************
Listen, my children, and you shall hear, of the ways of capitalism you and UD hold so dear.
Hunter-gatherers persisted in their way of life for thousands of years, slave cultures for almost as long and feudal societies for many centuries. In contrast, capitalism transforms everything it touches.
It’s not just brands that are constantly changing. Companies and industries are created and destroyed in an incessant stream of innovation, while human relationships are dissolved and reinvented in novel forms... [S]ociety … is being continuously transformed by market forces … Looking to a future in which the market permeates every corner of life, Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto: “Everything that is solid melts into air”... The gyrations of the market are such that no-one can know what will have value even a few years ahead... This state of perpetual unrest is the permanent revolution of capitalism …
For UD, the most powerful, most poignant, current example of this truth is the contrast between Madonna — exhausted, barely gyrating, surgeried-up, a real living deadster — and her replacement, Taylor Swift… Capitalist society demands constant newness, incessant novelty, fresh gyrations, and it demands it mercilessly.
Trump intuits all of this, and has done his bit by generating stupendous levels of personal and political drama, sustaining that ever-changing drama over decades. But like his iconic has-been shadow, he too is beginning to lose his restless audience. His latest mavericky move – appointing Kim Yo Jong to run the Republican National Committee – snapped his increasingly bored followers to attention yet again, but isn’t going as planned. Lara’s “purge of the unfaithful” has creeped people out rather than excited them. And that’s because even his routine – even his – is becoming subject to capitalism’s iron law – all that is solid melts into air.
We can expect Trump’s novelty-desperation to become more radical even as it loses its effectiveness. Watch for him and Lara to divorce their partners, marry each other in a joint ceremony with 93 year old Rupert Murdoch and his fifth, and immediately announce Lara’s pregnancy. Gotta keep up!
Candace Owens’ theory that Brigitte Macron is actually her own brother recalls Buck Mulligan telling his British lodger about Stephen’s theory of Hamlet.
“He proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.“
********************
Owens is a fanatic Evangelical, which leads me to this godly cosmic convergence: Sex addict, voyeur, alcoholic, fraudster, Falwell Jr introduces her as an honored speaker at a Liberty University convocation.
The two of them together! There’s so much – intellectually, morally, spiritually – for Liberty students to be proud of.
Don’t miss her delight at “the gift of Kanye West,” another great Christian.
… out of the barn! It does our hearts good to see her freely grazing in the fields.
Jon Stewart weighs in on Katie Britt. But his rhetorical question shows that he just doesn’t get it. The sort of Christians Britt’s addressing smile with all their heart when they sing the words
Anyone who, like UD, sits at her piano and sings through hymnals in which every other song delights in personal salvation through submersion in gobs of blood, knows that exulting when you use phrases like steeped in the blood is the Evangelical order of the day. Britt’s audience represents a decidedly sanguinary sanctuary.
********************
Here’s a variant of the same clueless liberal problem. Paul Krugman thinks he’s mighty clever when he writes
The other day [Trump declared] “I will stop the killing, I will stop the bloodshed, I will end the agony of our people, the plunder of our cities, the sacking of our towns, the violation of our citizens and the conquest of our country.” Which towns and cities, exactly, have been sacked and plundered? Did Attila the Hun swing by for a visit while I wasn’t looking?
Same haha rhetorical question thing as Stewart’s. Same smug shock at over the top bloodiness.
Trump’s people are apocalyptic, guys. Its an ongoing battle between the blood of damnation and the blood of the redeemed. Atttila the Hun didn’t swing by, but Lucifer did.
This language, from Britt and Trump and their preacher, isn’t lurid. It’s descriptive.
Bravo, Ben Gurion University, whose faculty said a collective fuck you to Israel’s ridiculous ultraorthodox population and its gender segregating ways.
None of it means much, though, because one of their leaders has just announced that they’ll all pack up and leave the country if the government dares ask them to defend it.
If America would prefer to keep out of the country a large number of riot-prone, bigoted, anti-vax, welfare-cheaters, it might want to pay attention to this developing domestic story.
… puts her pen to work again on behalf of her benefactor, Donald Trump. I wonder who wrote this opinion piece for her.
That’s because for decades Greek fans have been killing people and torching cities and all. The hapless government thinks a temporary pause and some more security cameras will bring Peace in Our Time, but this latest scheme will work out just as well as Chamberlain’s. I guess it’s real hard to confront the only thing to be done with a significant population of nihilist shits: No. More. Soccer.
**************
A BAD CROWD
Since that’s way rad an idea, let me say a bit more about pre-modern and postmodern crowds, and how they’re making crowds themselves obsolete.
The Greek football fans generate primitive, pre-modern crowding, all about atavistic drives among men. We had one of these recently in the States — the mass shooter at the Super Bowl victory parade was just, you know, hormones, spoiling for a fight.
Any scenario that surrounds fundamentally aggressive men with other young men will bring out the AK47 (that’s new — primitive cavemen had rocks), or, outside of gun-drenched USA, knives. And not just random young men: It was a signal cultural moment when the sixty year old owner of a soccer team got angry and ran onto the field during a game, with a gun in his outstretched hand to kill a referee.
You understand – yes? – the message Savvidis sent to all random hormoned-up young men? What I’m doing is a highly charismatic act.
You make matters worse when you present these people with established ‘enemies’ – opposing domestic or foreign teams. They don’t have to – like the Super Bowl shooter – go looking for enemies. You’ve set up a war for them to fight in, collectively, cuz they’re part of… a crowd.
And it’s an all-male, all-young crowd, right? Didn’t use to be, but over the years women children and older people have arrived at the conclusion that Greek soccer stadiums are not conducive to longevity, let alone a fun afternoon. So now you’ve concentrated the scariest element of society into loud sweaty excited rageful quarters.
So Greece is simply farther along in the evolution toward the end of crowds: It has watched for decades as its soccer matches – increasing numbers of them – devolve into fatal violence. It has tried everything, including, indeed, the end of crowds. The country is coming off of a two-month moratorium on soccer attendees.
But now that they’re letting these incredibly dangerous groups of people back in, what do they think is going to happen?
So, you know, we’re getting the stern announcements about enhancements of the police state they’ve already set up in the stadiums – vast numbers of security cameras, police, mandatory digital identification, weapon checks, blah blah.
Will it work? Keep your eye on Miami’s spring break. It’s happening right now. Those crowds are so awful that Miami released this ad a couple of weeks ago, and has made clear that it does in fact want the total end of those crowds. We don’t want you. Don’t come here. AND here are all the police state goodies we’re throwing at you if you come anyway. Let’s see if it works. Might make the guys madder, you know.
Anyway, so Greece. So what was once supposed to be A GAME, a certain thing, a sports gathering, is now – you understand? – a kind of lord of the flies free for all held perilously in check by insane levels of surveillance technology plus a very large, very frightened, security force. The players are scared, and not just the ones dreading racist chants. The referees? Forget about it. You know that groups of them have gone on strike because of the attacks.
So my thing is who’s kidding who. Eventually it won’t just be Savvidis packing heat. Obvious escalations of an already lurid situation are on their way, and we know from security’s inability to stop a mass shooting at the Super Bowl parade that guns are too quick and easy and lethal to police.
Think security will find weapons and confiscate them? Haha. Check out how many smuggled guns are discovered every day at all of America’s airports. People are always trying, and think about how many guns the TSA isn’t finding.
When crowds become impossible, what are your choices? You can try identifying and excluding the evil doers, but you’ll never get them all, and of course they’re evil enough to figure out how to get into the stadium no matter what you do. You can get to North Korean levels of police state apparatus, I guess (lines of soldiers with guns pointed at the crowd throughout? torture chambers below the locker rooms?), but this won’t be very… pretty. No, UD is thinking that Greece (and other countries) will have to shut down the whole thing.
************************
Our highly advanced postmodern crowds are a whole other thing. It’s their innocence that gets you. They are sitting ducks, awaiting the Las Vegas shooter, the Prague shooter, the Highland Park shooter. They are gathered to enjoy a concert, a parade, or just a sunny afternoon on the campus of Charles University. Massive, extensive, the highest of high-tech firepower rains down upon them from a heavily fortified genius who has thought everything out to guarantee he’ll be able to shoot for a long time and kill a lot of people.
I don’t think American parades or outdoor concerts have a very long shelf life either.
**********************
Oh, and on the subject of Greek violence — We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the petrol bombs being thrown at police, even as we speak, in opposition to the government’s shocking intention to allow private universities to operate freely in Greece.
Yes! What’ll they think of next? Private, as well as, public universities!
Most Greeks are in favor; over 40,000 of the smartest young Greeks currently study abroad, having fled the squalid corrupt national system. (Put Greece university in my search engine.) Competition might wake up the dead public campuses and reverse the brain drain, but who would want to do that?
UD will let everyone else make the obvious points about Biden’s state of the union: Aggressive, feisty, high-energy, confrontational, polemically sharp, etc.
UD will simply note that the dude is an inspiration to oldies everywhere. Eighty is the new fifty.
****************
From Heather Cox Richardson, via my pal Al S.:
… Trump’s team has dismissed Haley supporters, saying he doesn’t need them. In contrast, President Joe Biden continued to broaden the Democrats’ tent. Biden reached out in a statement, saying there was a place for Haley supporters in his campaign. “I know there is a lot we won’t agree on,” he said, “But on the fundamental issues of preserving American democracy, on standing up for the rule of law, on treating each other with decency and dignity and respect, on preserving NATO and standing up to America’s adversaries, I hope and believe we can find common ground.”
… He asked Republicans to “speak the truth and bury the lies.” He urged them to “[r]emember your oath of office to defend against all threats foreign and domestic. Respect free and fair elections. Restore trust in our institutions. And make clear—political violence has absolutely no place in America.”
As Democrats stood to applaud, Republicans remained resolutely in their seats…
Age makes “certain things become clearer than ever before,” he said. “I know the American story.”
“Again and again I’ve seen the contest between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation. Between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future. My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy. A future based on the core values that have defined America. Honesty. Decency. Dignity. Equality. To respect everyone. To give everyone a fair shot. To give hate no safe harbor.
“Now some other people my age see a different story,” he said, in a reference to Trump, who will turn 78 in June. “An American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution.”
“[T]he issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old our ideas are,” Biden said. “Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas, but you can’t lead America with … ideas that only take us back.”
… [Republicans suggested that commentators describe their rebuttal choice] as “America’s mom.” [She gave the speech] in a kitchen.
‘[H]is high-decibel performance seemed to confound Republicans, who have spent years seeking to portray Biden as a near-catatonic dementia case.‘
LOL
*********************
OTOH…
Julia Ioffe, Washington correspondent for Puck News, said: “Imagine you’re sleeping over at a friend’s house and you get up in the middle of the night to pee and you hear a weird sound so you follow it to the kitchen, where your friend’s mom is drunk, crying, and rambling about the national debt. Those are the vibes from Katie Britt right now... “
“The acting chops … are somewhere between porn and high school play.”
*********************
And more porn! What exactly are people picking up on?
As someone who covers the far right and the Christian nationalist movement, Sen Katie Britt’s speech was the closest thing to porn they’ll consume.
*********************
“The sheer scale of her cringe became an instant legend.” Andrew Sullivan
*********************
**********************
Andrew Weissmann, MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, wrote: “I don’t think Katie Britt is going to get the lead in the school play this year.”
**********************
‘There’s nothing I can quote from Britt’s speech that can convey the strangeness of it — the mismatched emotions, the smiles in the wrong places, the jaw clenched when it shouldn’t have been — just the indescribable weirdness. It was something that had to be seen, but even then, couldn’t be understood — like postmodernism, avant-garde performance art or an involuntary behavioral science experiment... [S]he came off as the aunt who’s been spending too much time on Facebook, and if you don’t change the subject soon, she’s going to tell you about sex dungeons beneath the pizza parlor.‘
***********************
The MAGA reply from K. Britt
Hit home like a big piece of shit
She sat in her kitchen
Abitchin and bitchin
When she should have just read holy writ
It’s obvious why Ancelloti –
Along with the other lads – thought he
Could simply relax
And cheat on his tax.
The big football leagues are that grotty.
Too right, David French.
French, a Christian, focused, in this much-read opinion piece, on “an academic superpower in Christian America,” Liberty University (known to readers of this blog as Libertine University), and its fecalicious Falwellian fiefdom. French noted that, no sooner had the school overthrown the Falwell dynasty, than the Education Dept came after the place for lying about campus crimes, not to mention intimidating students who tried to report them.
Liberty mishandled claims of sex abuse and sex harassment on campus and used its strict code of conduct, the Liberty Way, against victims of sex abuse. If, for example, victims had been drinking or engaged in any other conduct prohibited by Liberty policies, those details in their sex abuse complaints could be used against them in school disciplinary proceedings.
Today we got word of the exact amount Libertine’s gonna have to pay to get out from under its sex/crime/omerta obsession: $14 mill. — “by far the largest [fine] ever levied under the Clery Act, a law that requires colleges and universities that receive federal funding to collect data on campus crime and notify students of threats.”
Of course all of it – Judas David French, the satanic federal government – is a plot against the righteous, and the captain of their soul, Donald Trump.
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UD REVIEWED
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte