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The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel: Nihilism.

It’s not – as Samuel Johnson claimed – patriotism. Months ago we got past whatever muck-sweat heavery the president thought might convey love of country to his rallies. We’re now into the final scenes (which, faithful UD readers know, I believe have a small but real chance of featuring executive self-slaughter), and these begin with institutional nihilism: All of our elections are rigged, including the one I won last time. Every operating part of America is bullshit: The law, the constitution, the FBI, the CIA: It’s all NOTHING. NOTHING! Nothing but global communist interstellar Soros machinations against me and you and there’s NOTHING we can do. None of it means anything. It’s pure murderous malignancy.

Here, Arkansas is the cutting edge. Got there a long time before everyone else.

So now the Republican party is worried that Republican voters will sit out the Georgia run-offs because why not? Why the hell not? Nothing matters. Nothing means anything. It’s all rigged. I don’t want to be a sucker.

Listen to Mitch McConnell lead his fellow Republican senators in singing the national anthem here.

So that’s the institutional final scene. We’re gonna get Trump’s personal nihilistic endgame pretty soon. Hold onto your hat.

Margaret Soltan, December 1, 2020 8:50AM
Posted in: the rest is silence

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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.
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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.
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There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
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Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
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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.
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