There's also the fact that those troops tend to come from countries where public opinion at least nominally matters. Absent a strategic interest of some kind peacekeeping is a no win for democratically elected leaders. At best no one really cares. There can also be percieved imperialistic undertones that make the locals even more hostile. You mentioned Somalia above...
I don't think anyone, even his supporters, think Trump is smart. My point is about the kind of work this is. If your priors are that Trump is a blithering dope utterly unqualified for the job its a good, fun read (I found the chapter out there quite enjoyable, despite thinking its, at best, unsubstantiated gossip). But if you're a Trump supporter I'd imagine you'd look at this in a similar way to how non ditto heads would look at a book about Barack Obama written by Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. Yea you'll say its trash but the author's priors ars such that you're not going to take it seriously. I'm not saying there's no truth to this book but it isn't really journalism and for that reason will be looked at more like Fahrenheit 9/11 than the Pentagon papers.
I hear what you and aaron are saying but this feels different to me. Michael Wolff isn't the same as CNN. The MSM seems to hate him, or at least not consider him to be one of their own and he isn't recognizable to most media consumers. I think he's less Wolf Blitzer and more Michael Moore.
I don't think there's any way its a 'win' for Trump. There is however a good chance it does nothing but prove things people already know, with what it is they know depending in large part on their priors.
This seems about right to me. I read the excerpt and got a real kick out of it but between the bias confirmation, unreliable sources, and unreliable author this thing needs to be taken with a spoonful of salt. Its possible Trump's presidency was born of a publicity stunt that got out of control but even if thats true I doubt the book's description of it is. It seems to suffer from the 'these people are calculatingly smart when we want them to be but also hilariously stupid when we want them to be' problem.
Reading that chapter actually reminded me of Fear and Loathing in the Campaign Trail '72*, which, despite some very interesting insights, we all know isn't really factual.
*This is not to compare Wolff to Thompson, as we all know Thompson actually had a soul.
You're confusing your controversies. Erika Christakis is the Yale halloween costume email. Kipnis wrote an article referencing a semi-sex scandal at Northwestern which resulted in protest/investigations.
I read the article but I didn't see proof of causation. There are billions of people running around biologically programmed to prioritize reproduction. Some of them try things that are downright nutty or criminal in their efforts. That may include immitating things they see in movies but I see that as a case of stupid is as stupid does more than anything else.
I do think your point about 'try writing one.' Is totally fair. Rom-coms are notoriously hard to write but if you can do it well Hollywood will be all over you. The lack of special effects makes a success a great ROI. That also gets us to the primary issue she didn't make any attempt to deal with- these movies are written for women. The idea that dudes are taking their cues from stuff like Love Actually strikes me as... lets just say something that needs a lot of proving.
Nothing is hotter than signed contracts granting consent for a man to offer a woman a drink. This is of course only after a panel of gender studies professors has obtained consent on his behalf to get within 5 feet of her. Signatures must be provided for each advance thereafter, preferably in blood, with two for every step after the nipple has made an appearance.
Seriously though I think romance in these movies is akin to space flight in most science fiction movies. There's nothing wrong with criticizing it but you can go so far down the rabbit hole you forget that realism isn't really the point.
I think it just means we need to parse the data better. My understanding is that the further down the socio-economic ladder you go the more implications it has.
The libertarian side of me agrees with you that its really no one's business and that marriage shouldn't mean anything more than people make it. On the other hand the guy with a 3 month old and a new appreciation for what European states do for mothers and children thinks discarding some of the old tropes may be premature.
The moral victory is that by bringing former Eastern Bloc countries into NATO we've shown that we do in fact live our values about sticking up for freedom and liberal democracy. In this view of the world NATO is more than a military alliance, its a club of democracies that act with moral legitimacy. There's also a real counter-argument to the realist view that goes something like this:
'Russia may be down and out now but they won't be disjointed and inward looking forever. If we don't expand NATO east a day will come when Russia is able to re-assert itself in its historical European sphere of influence in a way that undermines the democratic order necessary for peace. Bringing these countries into NATO is a show of strength and a deterrent to Russian meddling that could result in another war in which we will be (once again) forced to intervene.'
As stated above I don't agree with this argument but its not totally without merit, and I can see how people might be convinced by it 15-20 years ago. People making the decisions were looking at NATO membership as somewhat ancillary to EU expansion.
I believe the common view is that Russia acquiesced to a re-unified Germany with the former DDR being absorbed into NATO provided that was the end of it. Of course that was never an official agreement. Its still far from clear to me that expansion has been a win. We've opened the door for Russia to fracture the alliance by formenting chaos in places like the Baltic states that we probably can't defend, some of which have sizeable Russian ethnic minorities. From a certain perspective we've substantially weakened our strategic advantage for a moral victory.
The founders never could've envisioned an administrative state like most first world bureaucracies or our mass media and the powerful bully pulpit it gives the executive. It's why the kind of, shall we say extra-constitutional activity, we now take as a given was sporadic and mostly reversible up through the early 20th century. Any thesis also needs to take into account our emergence as a super power after World War 2 and the endless military commitments ever since. Its no accident that most of the power grabs have been related to actual or imagined threats to national security where the president operates with the least restriction. I don't know that the Westminster system would've done much to alleviate this particular dynamic, even if there are other arguments for it.
I don't expect the Democrats to become government skeptics, unless government skeptic means things like living up to Obama's campaign promises about constitutional limits around executive use of military force. You can support a robust social safety net, environmental protections, labor protections, etc. (all things I favor) and still be unhappy with a system that allows one person control over the biggest war machine the world has ever known and a bunch of shady intelligence agencies with histories of abusing their power. It's bad enough when we have a normal politician in charge.
Have a good holiday @rufus-f. Always enjoy your comments and essays, hopefully those friends, drinks, philosophers, and gremlins get you out of the melancholy.
Precisely. You can also throw in coming down on the Europeans for being free riders on defense. Trump's positions are a John Bolton type's wish list. It's like the neocons have finally been forced to look at themselves in the mirror and don't like what they see.
As for the future of the GOP I have no idea whats coming. I keep expecting them to fracture and maybe Trump will finally cause it to happen but I have my doubts. We're voting for our tribes and as long as some general conservative culture exists out there and its mouthpieces support Republicans they'll stumble along no matter the total incoherence on policy/governing.
Maybe she pulls an Andrew Sullivan (frustrating as I can still find him at times), and if so, I'll give her credit. To me though that requires a little more than finding Jesus only after the obviously evil guy you've been happily breaking bread with pulls off his mask and announces that he is in fact Satan. She'd need to own some of those old pieces/stances.
In that respect I very much differ from the OP on Sullivan. His change on Iraq is the biggest reason I can take him seriously. Say what you want about his emotional swings but he isn't a sycophant. I don't think it's at all clear that Rubin would be writing these articles if, say, Romney was president and the Congressional GOP agenda was the same (which it has been since at least 2012).
As for the rest of the NeverTrumpers I think we are in agreement. If they exist they're at the margins of conservative intelligentsia, and their opposition strikes me as more of a cultural distaste. They certainly aren't putting up any hurdles for Trump. The struggles Congress has had seem to arise from contradictions in the conservative coalition than anything to do with the president.
Whether or not Rubin is on the road to any kind of change in philosophy is impossible to say. Either way neocon horror of Trump is their just deserts for the Bush years. One of the few good things that could come out of the Trump presidency is a thorough and lasting discrediting of the executive branch.
Empire and militarism seems all well and good until the plebes elect some charlatan too stupid to maintain a veneer of respectability over our self-destructive foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East.
AE2 I know the art vs. the artist thing is an age old debate but I still find the handwringing odd. More often than not the qualities a person has to have to be a good or interesting artist are simply incompatible with being a nice, uncontroversial guest at a dinner party in the suburbs. No one owes anyone an apology over it nor does liking an artist's work require someone to own everything the artist has said or done.
AE5 I'd also lament a sale to Disney. It's weird that, despite the internet theoretically leveling the playing field its hard to imagine something as disruptive on a large scale quite the way the Fox television network was in the late 80's/early 90s. There's an interesting history of it included at the Dead Homer Society, a site dedicated to arguing that the Simpsons should be taken off the air to stop ruining the legacy of the early seasons.
It makes sense when you think about it. To the extent any kind of message is expected, banal, vaguely liberal inclusiveness is the best to alienate as few wallets as possible.
Seeing something else shows how weirdly paranoid parts of the movement right can be and how willingly parts of the progressive movement will forget their own critiques of our form of capitalism.
It's what happens when you can beat the wrap but you can't beat the ride, and the ride is now provided by guys who too often epitomize the point of an apocryphal matrix for selecting German officers.
On “Linky Tuesday: Hot & Cold Wars”
There's also the fact that those troops tend to come from countries where public opinion at least nominally matters. Absent a strategic interest of some kind peacekeeping is a no win for democratically elected leaders. At best no one really cares. There can also be percieved imperialistic undertones that make the locals even more hostile. You mentioned Somalia above...
On “The White House Mess”
I don't think anyone, even his supporters, think Trump is smart. My point is about the kind of work this is. If your priors are that Trump is a blithering dope utterly unqualified for the job its a good, fun read (I found the chapter out there quite enjoyable, despite thinking its, at best, unsubstantiated gossip). But if you're a Trump supporter I'd imagine you'd look at this in a similar way to how non ditto heads would look at a book about Barack Obama written by Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. Yea you'll say its trash but the author's priors ars such that you're not going to take it seriously. I'm not saying there's no truth to this book but it isn't really journalism and for that reason will be looked at more like Fahrenheit 9/11 than the Pentagon papers.
"
I hear what you and aaron are saying but this feels different to me. Michael Wolff isn't the same as CNN. The MSM seems to hate him, or at least not consider him to be one of their own and he isn't recognizable to most media consumers. I think he's less Wolf Blitzer and more Michael Moore.
"
I don't think there's any way its a 'win' for Trump. There is however a good chance it does nothing but prove things people already know, with what it is they know depending in large part on their priors.
"
This seems about right to me. I read the excerpt and got a real kick out of it but between the bias confirmation, unreliable sources, and unreliable author this thing needs to be taken with a spoonful of salt. Its possible Trump's presidency was born of a publicity stunt that got out of control but even if thats true I doubt the book's description of it is. It seems to suffer from the 'these people are calculatingly smart when we want them to be but also hilariously stupid when we want them to be' problem.
Reading that chapter actually reminded me of Fear and Loathing in the Campaign Trail '72*, which, despite some very interesting insights, we all know isn't really factual.
*This is not to compare Wolff to Thompson, as we all know Thompson actually had a soul.
On “Morning Ed: Education {2017.01.04.Th}”
I see @maribou beat me to the punch.
"
You're confusing your controversies. Erika Christakis is the Yale halloween costume email. Kipnis wrote an article referencing a semi-sex scandal at Northwestern which resulted in protest/investigations.
On “Morning Ed: Love & Marriage {2017.12.27.W}”
I read the article but I didn't see proof of causation. There are billions of people running around biologically programmed to prioritize reproduction. Some of them try things that are downright nutty or criminal in their efforts. That may include immitating things they see in movies but I see that as a case of stupid is as stupid does more than anything else.
I do think your point about 'try writing one.' Is totally fair. Rom-coms are notoriously hard to write but if you can do it well Hollywood will be all over you. The lack of special effects makes a success a great ROI. That also gets us to the primary issue she didn't make any attempt to deal with- these movies are written for women. The idea that dudes are taking their cues from stuff like Love Actually strikes me as... lets just say something that needs a lot of proving.
"
Nothing is hotter than signed contracts granting consent for a man to offer a woman a drink. This is of course only after a panel of gender studies professors has obtained consent on his behalf to get within 5 feet of her. Signatures must be provided for each advance thereafter, preferably in blood, with two for every step after the nipple has made an appearance.
Seriously though I think romance in these movies is akin to space flight in most science fiction movies. There's nothing wrong with criticizing it but you can go so far down the rabbit hole you forget that realism isn't really the point.
"
I think it just means we need to parse the data better. My understanding is that the further down the socio-economic ladder you go the more implications it has.
The libertarian side of me agrees with you that its really no one's business and that marriage shouldn't mean anything more than people make it. On the other hand the guy with a 3 month old and a new appreciation for what European states do for mothers and children thinks discarding some of the old tropes may be premature.
On “Morning Ed: World {2017.12.26.Tu}”
The moral victory is that by bringing former Eastern Bloc countries into NATO we've shown that we do in fact live our values about sticking up for freedom and liberal democracy. In this view of the world NATO is more than a military alliance, its a club of democracies that act with moral legitimacy. There's also a real counter-argument to the realist view that goes something like this:
'Russia may be down and out now but they won't be disjointed and inward looking forever. If we don't expand NATO east a day will come when Russia is able to re-assert itself in its historical European sphere of influence in a way that undermines the democratic order necessary for peace. Bringing these countries into NATO is a show of strength and a deterrent to Russian meddling that could result in another war in which we will be (once again) forced to intervene.'
As stated above I don't agree with this argument but its not totally without merit, and I can see how people might be convinced by it 15-20 years ago. People making the decisions were looking at NATO membership as somewhat ancillary to EU expansion.
"
I believe the common view is that Russia acquiesced to a re-unified Germany with the former DDR being absorbed into NATO provided that was the end of it. Of course that was never an official agreement. Its still far from clear to me that expansion has been a win. We've opened the door for Russia to fracture the alliance by formenting chaos in places like the Baltic states that we probably can't defend, some of which have sizeable Russian ethnic minorities. From a certain perspective we've substantially weakened our strategic advantage for a moral victory.
On “About the Never-Trump Skirmish of 2017”
The founders never could've envisioned an administrative state like most first world bureaucracies or our mass media and the powerful bully pulpit it gives the executive. It's why the kind of, shall we say extra-constitutional activity, we now take as a given was sporadic and mostly reversible up through the early 20th century. Any thesis also needs to take into account our emergence as a super power after World War 2 and the endless military commitments ever since. Its no accident that most of the power grabs have been related to actual or imagined threats to national security where the president operates with the least restriction. I don't know that the Westminster system would've done much to alleviate this particular dynamic, even if there are other arguments for it.
"
@saul-degraw
It just may. I feel it's put me well to the left of most conversations and at odds with a lot of people I normally agree with. It sucks.
"
@james-k @saul-degraw
I don't expect the Democrats to become government skeptics, unless government skeptic means things like living up to Obama's campaign promises about constitutional limits around executive use of military force. You can support a robust social safety net, environmental protections, labor protections, etc. (all things I favor) and still be unhappy with a system that allows one person control over the biggest war machine the world has ever known and a bunch of shady intelligence agencies with histories of abusing their power. It's bad enough when we have a normal politician in charge.
"
Have a good holiday @rufus-f. Always enjoy your comments and essays, hopefully those friends, drinks, philosophers, and gremlins get you out of the melancholy.
"
Based on what happened during the Obama administration the answer is no.
"
Precisely. You can also throw in coming down on the Europeans for being free riders on defense. Trump's positions are a John Bolton type's wish list. It's like the neocons have finally been forced to look at themselves in the mirror and don't like what they see.
As for the future of the GOP I have no idea whats coming. I keep expecting them to fracture and maybe Trump will finally cause it to happen but I have my doubts. We're voting for our tribes and as long as some general conservative culture exists out there and its mouthpieces support Republicans they'll stumble along no matter the total incoherence on policy/governing.
"
Maybe she pulls an Andrew Sullivan (frustrating as I can still find him at times), and if so, I'll give her credit. To me though that requires a little more than finding Jesus only after the obviously evil guy you've been happily breaking bread with pulls off his mask and announces that he is in fact Satan. She'd need to own some of those old pieces/stances.
In that respect I very much differ from the OP on Sullivan. His change on Iraq is the biggest reason I can take him seriously. Say what you want about his emotional swings but he isn't a sycophant. I don't think it's at all clear that Rubin would be writing these articles if, say, Romney was president and the Congressional GOP agenda was the same (which it has been since at least 2012).
As for the rest of the NeverTrumpers I think we are in agreement. If they exist they're at the margins of conservative intelligentsia, and their opposition strikes me as more of a cultural distaste. They certainly aren't putting up any hurdles for Trump. The struggles Congress has had seem to arise from contradictions in the conservative coalition than anything to do with the president.
"
Whether or not Rubin is on the road to any kind of change in philosophy is impossible to say. Either way neocon horror of Trump is their just deserts for the Bush years. One of the few good things that could come out of the Trump presidency is a thorough and lasting discrediting of the executive branch.
Empire and militarism seems all well and good until the plebes elect some charlatan too stupid to maintain a veneer of respectability over our self-destructive foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East.
On “Morning Ed: Arts & Entertainment {2017.12.22.F}”
AE2 I know the art vs. the artist thing is an age old debate but I still find the handwringing odd. More often than not the qualities a person has to have to be a good or interesting artist are simply incompatible with being a nice, uncontroversial guest at a dinner party in the suburbs. No one owes anyone an apology over it nor does liking an artist's work require someone to own everything the artist has said or done.
AE5 I'd also lament a sale to Disney. It's weird that, despite the internet theoretically leveling the playing field its hard to imagine something as disruptive on a large scale quite the way the Fox television network was in the late 80's/early 90s. There's an interesting history of it included at the Dead Homer Society, a site dedicated to arguing that the Simpsons should be taken off the air to stop ruining the legacy of the early seasons.
On “Linky Friday: Critters & Coffee”
Touche
"
It makes sense when you think about it. To the extent any kind of message is expected, banal, vaguely liberal inclusiveness is the best to alienate as few wallets as possible.
Seeing something else shows how weirdly paranoid parts of the movement right can be and how willingly parts of the progressive movement will forget their own critiques of our form of capitalism.
"
It's what happens when you can beat the wrap but you can't beat the ride, and the ride is now provided by guys who too often epitomize the point of an apocryphal matrix for selecting German officers.
"
There's a very weird phenomena out there where people mistake mass marketing strategies for politics.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.