Instead of cowering in a corner how about speaking up? Laura Kipnis spoke up. Jordan Peterson continues to speak up. Camille Paglia won't shut up--ever.
If "progressives are winning the culture war," it's because no one else has enough courage in their convictions to do so. If Vaclev Havel and others hadn't spoken up people would still be living in the prison behind the Iron Curtain.
And the holier-than-thou comments about Trump and Trump voters are just tiresome.
Mar 3, 2018
Jul 15, 2013
The consent of the governed
Or New Yorkers deserve the politicians they get:
“Yeah, why not Anthony Weiner?” said one transit worker. “Weiner’s a fighter. You see him go up against those Republican assholes back in 2009, 2010? Everyone else sitting there just taking it—Obama too—and Weiner’s the only one screaming back. That’s a hell of a lot more important to me than whether he showed off his cock.”
Apr 15, 2011
Fare Ye Well
I must bring my meager contributions to this blog to an end. I really appreciated the opportunity to contribute, Rachel. Please keep in touch. God bless you all.
Mar 1, 2011
What Holmes is Listening to
Just because it is an amazing song. All politics and no music makes Holmes a dull boy.
Feb 25, 2011
Feb 23, 2011
Jan 12, 2011
Dec 27, 2010
Nov 26, 2010
Nov 22, 2010
Nov 7, 2010
Nov 2, 2010
Oct 14, 2010
Sep 28, 2010
The starfish vs the spider
Jonathan Rauch on the Tea Party movement.
The Starfish and the Spider, a business book by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, was published in 2006 to no attention at all in the political world. The subtitle, however, explains its relevance to the tea party model: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.
Traditional thinking, the book contends, holds that hierarchies are most efficient at getting things done. Hierarchies, such as corporations, have leaders who can make decisions and set priorities; chains of command to hold everyone accountable; mechanisms to shift money and authority within the organization; rules and disciplinary procedures to prevent fracture and drift. This type of system has a central command, like a spider's brain. Like the spider, it dies if you thump it on the head.
The rise of the Internet and other forms of instantaneous, interpersonal interaction, however, has broken the spider monopoly, Brafman and Beckstrom argue. Radically decentralized networks -- everything from illicit music-sharing systems to Wikipedia -- can direct resources and adapt ("mutate") far faster than corporations can. "The absence of structure, leadership, and formal organization, once considered a weakness, has become a major asset," the authors write. "Seemingly chaotic groups have challenged and defeated established institutions. The rules of the game have changed."
Sep 26, 2010
Sep 9, 2010
I beg to differ
Megan McArdle:
FDR would do just fine on video:
FDR lived in a different era. His speeches come across so well today precisely because they were designed largely to be read; Obama is making speeches for an era when most people get their news from television, and so naturally, his speeches read flat and uninteresting. FDR's speech delivery, by contrast, was surprisingly poor for an audience used to taking in most of its news in audio or video.
FDR would do just fine on video:
Sep 2, 2010
Hell is other people
The existential crisis of Obama supporters:
According to Maureen Dowd, “Obama is the head of the dysfunctional family of America — a rational man running a most irrational nation, a high-minded man in a low-minded age. The country is having some weird mass nervous breakdown.” Jonathan Alter argues that the American people “aren’t rationally aligning belief and action; they’re tempted to lose their spleens in the polling place without fully grasping the consequences.” And Slate’s Jacob Weisberg has written that “the biggest culprit in our current predicament” is the “childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.”
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