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‘[C]onsider the cynicism and nihilism necessary to believe in [the Trumpian world view] … You must believe that our institutions are so top-to-bottom corrupt that nothing and no one is worthy of civic trust… This is conspiracism in its most unaccountable form… Once you begin understanding our national politics as a matter of emergencies, corruption, and lies reparable only by figures of exceptional heroism, there is no returning to a politics of the everyday, of democratic choice and representation, and of disagreement, contestation, and compromise. [And there is] … no easy weaning from [this] dystopian hype.’

Trump’s opening statement at his recent news conference announced the likely imminence of a 1920’s style depression and also World War III. This was his howdeedo, his little world review before he took questions. From his earlier speeches and tweets we can add mass slaughter on our city streets. Mass slaughter from the border. Your child’s forced transgendering. Babies killed moments after birth. Sick filthy books lining the walls of the local library. Subsidized tampons.

UD likes the phrase dystopian hype very much (see this post’s title). Boiled down, you could just say that authoritarian strongmen always try to scare us into voting for them — Only I can fix it, but first my campaign must convince Americans that existence as such is desperately, terrifyingly, in need of fixing. Trumpian authoritarians like Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, and JD Vance feature, in their books and rhetoric, a religiously inflected dystopian hype, in which the always-fallen world has REALLY let itself go lately, with America an unbearable hellscape of suicide, loneliness, alienation, and late-night snacking. Only Jesus – as interpreted by Pater Edmund Waldstein – can fix it.

Into this thorny tangle of statecraft and soulcraft now bursts Tim Walz, skipping through Rappaccini’s Garden, hanging a left by the House of Usher, and finally pausing to pick a lovely bouquet of Queen of the Night tulips. It’s Cold Comfort Farm with Trump as Ada Doom and Walz as Flora Poste and it’s pretty fucking funny.

Margaret Soltan, August 10, 2024 11:08AM
Posted in: ADA DOOM

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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...
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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.
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The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
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I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
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As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
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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.
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University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
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[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
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If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
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