by liberal japonicus
Been a bit, so here you go. Altman and OpenAI, possible ceasefire in Gaza, right wing rising in the Netherlands and Argentina, Have at it.
268 thoughts on “Just an old-fashioned open thread”
Comments are closed.
"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
Hmmm???…
“Milei, by contrast, is a doctrinaire Hayekian seemingly grown in a secret laboratory funded by the Koch brothers, with the editorial staff of Reason, the extremist libertarian magazine based in Washington, serving as the scientists.”
Maga’s foolish embrace of Javier Milei: If this is all it takes to be a populist, then populism has no meaning.
Hmmm???…
“Milei, by contrast, is a doctrinaire Hayekian seemingly grown in a secret laboratory funded by the Koch brothers, with the editorial staff of Reason, the extremist libertarian magazine based in Washington, serving as the scientists.”
Maga’s foolish embrace of Javier Milei: If this is all it takes to be a populist, then populism has no meaning.
For those celebrating it, Happy Thanksgiving. 🙂
Sunshine here after a sloppy snow/rain yesterday, and mild temps. Turkey in the offing, for tradition’s sake.
For those celebrating it, Happy Thanksgiving. 🙂
Sunshine here after a sloppy snow/rain yesterday, and mild temps. Turkey in the offing, for tradition’s sake.
And a perspective on what else the family could argue about:
https://xkcd.com/2858/
Glad my family doesn’t celebrate by arguing.
And a perspective on what else the family could argue about:
https://xkcd.com/2858/
Glad my family doesn’t celebrate by arguing.
Disney has so oversaturated their franchises that I cannot be bothered anymore. They are making the same mistake that the Wachowskis made with the second two Matrix films where they try to spread the love across many different media and then use the feature films to draw it all together in one epic showpiece. There ends up being too many threads going, and even though those threads are not essential to the main plot, they affect the feel of the film because the emotional cues are all set high for the core fans, but feel underdetermined and a bit bewildering for the casuals.
Business model getting in the way of narrative sense. So disappointing.
Disney has so oversaturated their franchises that I cannot be bothered anymore. They are making the same mistake that the Wachowskis made with the second two Matrix films where they try to spread the love across many different media and then use the feature films to draw it all together in one epic showpiece. There ends up being too many threads going, and even though those threads are not essential to the main plot, they affect the feel of the film because the emotional cues are all set high for the core fans, but feel underdetermined and a bit bewildering for the casuals.
Business model getting in the way of narrative sense. So disappointing.
the emotional cues are all set high for the core fans, but feel underdetermined and a bit bewildering for the casuals.
I would interpret that as a business model aimed strictly at a niche market. While dismissing any interest in broadening the market. It can, admittedly, be a viable business model. But Disney used to know better than to limit themselves that way.
the emotional cues are all set high for the core fans, but feel underdetermined and a bit bewildering for the casuals.
I would interpret that as a business model aimed strictly at a niche market. While dismissing any interest in broadening the market. It can, admittedly, be a viable business model. But Disney used to know better than to limit themselves that way.
Sunshine here after a sloppy snow/rain yesterday, and mild temps.
Gray here. Looks like we’ve already had our high for the day at 38 and started back down. Snow isn’t supposed to start seriously until mid-afternoon, then last until Saturday morning. Well, a bunch of time to start a complicated little Christmas drawing.
The last 24 hours nicely illustrates the progress and remaining problems the local power authority has for meeting its 100% no-carbon electricity by 2030 goal.
http://mcain6925.com/obsidian/last24.png
Sunshine here after a sloppy snow/rain yesterday, and mild temps.
Gray here. Looks like we’ve already had our high for the day at 38 and started back down. Snow isn’t supposed to start seriously until mid-afternoon, then last until Saturday morning. Well, a bunch of time to start a complicated little Christmas drawing.
The last 24 hours nicely illustrates the progress and remaining problems the local power authority has for meeting its 100% no-carbon electricity by 2030 goal.
http://mcain6925.com/obsidian/last24.png
For those celebrating it, Happy Thanksgiving. 🙂
Yes, from me too. I meant to say it earlier than this.
For those celebrating it, Happy Thanksgiving. 🙂
Yes, from me too. I meant to say it earlier than this.
My Thanksgiving meal is tomorrow, at a friend’s house. The roast is now roasting. When it’s done, I have a couple sides to work on. My contributions will join turkey, potatoes, and many desserts at the hosts’ place.
At least two people who were expected will not be able to join us, so there will be So. Much. More. Food. than there will be people to eat it. I hope we can send folks home with doggie bags.
Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!
My Thanksgiving meal is tomorrow, at a friend’s house. The roast is now roasting. When it’s done, I have a couple sides to work on. My contributions will join turkey, potatoes, and many desserts at the hosts’ place.
At least two people who were expected will not be able to join us, so there will be So. Much. More. Food. than there will be people to eat it. I hope we can send folks home with doggie bags.
Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!
Charles, not sure what the hmmm is about. Are you arguing that you have to be populist to be right-wing?
Charles, not sure what the hmmm is about. Are you arguing that you have to be populist to be right-wing?
Charles, not sure what the hmmm is about. Are you arguing that you have to be populist to be right-wing?
The article is right in saying that Milei has little in common with the various populisms in the US and the rest of the world. But his fantasy about Milei being a product of the Koch brothers and “extremist” Reason is both puzzling and a bit amusing. Reason is pretty moderate compared to other libertarian publications and organizations.
Reason‘s response:
“Milei, clucks Ahmari, “rejects nearly everything ‘Maga’ populists in the United States, and analogue movements across the developed world, claim to stand for…. [He] is a doctrinaire Hayekian seemingly grown in a secret laboratory funded by the Koch brothers, with the editorial staff of Reason, the extremist libertarian magazine based in Washington, serving as the scientists.”
That’s flattering, really. Milei’s perfidious agenda includes such horribles as reducing tariffs in a country that is battling 140 percent annual inflation and has seen poverty climb from 5 percent a decade ago to over 40 percent. Milei—who does indeed quote libertarian economists such as Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard—also wants to “dollarize” the economy as a way of hemming in an incompetent central bank and spendthrift government. This is bad, Ahmari says because it “would leave the country without its own central bank and at the mercy of the US Federal Reserve System.” Maybe, but such a complaint simply ignores the existing reality, which is beyond untenable.”
Is Javier Milei a ‘Doctrinaire Hayekian’ and a Secret Reason Science Project?: Catholic New Dealer* Sohrab Ahmari denounces Argentina’s new president as a faux populist. Good for Milei.
Charles, not sure what the hmmm is about. Are you arguing that you have to be populist to be right-wing?
The article is right in saying that Milei has little in common with the various populisms in the US and the rest of the world. But his fantasy about Milei being a product of the Koch brothers and “extremist” Reason is both puzzling and a bit amusing. Reason is pretty moderate compared to other libertarian publications and organizations.
Reason‘s response:
“Milei, clucks Ahmari, “rejects nearly everything ‘Maga’ populists in the United States, and analogue movements across the developed world, claim to stand for…. [He] is a doctrinaire Hayekian seemingly grown in a secret laboratory funded by the Koch brothers, with the editorial staff of Reason, the extremist libertarian magazine based in Washington, serving as the scientists.”
That’s flattering, really. Milei’s perfidious agenda includes such horribles as reducing tariffs in a country that is battling 140 percent annual inflation and has seen poverty climb from 5 percent a decade ago to over 40 percent. Milei—who does indeed quote libertarian economists such as Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard—also wants to “dollarize” the economy as a way of hemming in an incompetent central bank and spendthrift government. This is bad, Ahmari says because it “would leave the country without its own central bank and at the mercy of the US Federal Reserve System.” Maybe, but such a complaint simply ignores the existing reality, which is beyond untenable.”
Is Javier Milei a ‘Doctrinaire Hayekian’ and a Secret Reason Science Project?: Catholic New Dealer* Sohrab Ahmari denounces Argentina’s new president as a faux populist. Good for Milei.
wj – I would interpret that as a business model aimed strictly at a niche market. While dismissing any interest in broadening the market.
Well it certainly seems to work that way in practice as they put out too many titles for each franchise and oversaturate the market. The intention is to try to win fans of particular characters via all the different media (film, tv, video games) and try to keep them hooked enough to chase the storylines across more titles and media. But what you get in practice is films with too many characters shoehorned in and not enough plot to go around.
It’s happened in comics, it happened with the Matrix across those same media.
I think Disney’s biggest goal was to try to lure the casuals to subscribe to Disney + so that they could get a steady income and not have to worry about any particular title bombing. I don’t love any of their franchises enough to do this. I’m even more disinclined to do this based on how poorly The MarvelWars Mouse treats its writers.
wj – I would interpret that as a business model aimed strictly at a niche market. While dismissing any interest in broadening the market.
Well it certainly seems to work that way in practice as they put out too many titles for each franchise and oversaturate the market. The intention is to try to win fans of particular characters via all the different media (film, tv, video games) and try to keep them hooked enough to chase the storylines across more titles and media. But what you get in practice is films with too many characters shoehorned in and not enough plot to go around.
It’s happened in comics, it happened with the Matrix across those same media.
I think Disney’s biggest goal was to try to lure the casuals to subscribe to Disney + so that they could get a steady income and not have to worry about any particular title bombing. I don’t love any of their franchises enough to do this. I’m even more disinclined to do this based on how poorly The MarvelWars Mouse treats its writers.
Thanks for the clarification, Charles, I thought the hmmm was for me classing Milei as right wing.
Thanks for the clarification, Charles, I thought the hmmm was for me classing Milei as right wing.
When your reveal party goes sideways. (YouTube)
When your reveal party goes sideways. (YouTube)
For anyone who was interested in the story of the Bulstrode paper (I know Pro Bono said he brought it to the attention of the Vice Chancellor of UCL), this further development makes depressing reading:
If you haven’t read my post, give it a go. It’s about a paper by a UCL historian called Jenny Bulstrode which claims that the English industrialist Henry Cort stole his innovative method of iron production from a group of black slaves who worked in an iron foundry in Jamaica – despite the fact that Cort never visited Jamaica, or had any established contact with anyone who had anything to do with anyone in the foundry, and despite there being no evidence that these slaves did invent a new process, or that the foundry ever used anything resembling Cort’s process. Honestly, if you think I’m exaggerating, read my piece and follow the links, and/or read Anton Howes’ first piece on the paper’s gaping holes.
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-end-of-history?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=54748&post_id=139074568&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=w2vx&utm_medium=email
As someone quoted in the article, about this and similar stories, tweeted:
As a black woman, a million times this. A single byte of empirical evidence is worth all the “emancipatory stories in the universe”.
For anyone who was interested in the story of the Bulstrode paper (I know Pro Bono said he brought it to the attention of the Vice Chancellor of UCL), this further development makes depressing reading:
If you haven’t read my post, give it a go. It’s about a paper by a UCL historian called Jenny Bulstrode which claims that the English industrialist Henry Cort stole his innovative method of iron production from a group of black slaves who worked in an iron foundry in Jamaica – despite the fact that Cort never visited Jamaica, or had any established contact with anyone who had anything to do with anyone in the foundry, and despite there being no evidence that these slaves did invent a new process, or that the foundry ever used anything resembling Cort’s process. Honestly, if you think I’m exaggerating, read my piece and follow the links, and/or read Anton Howes’ first piece on the paper’s gaping holes.
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-end-of-history?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=54748&post_id=139074568&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=w2vx&utm_medium=email
As someone quoted in the article, about this and similar stories, tweeted:
As a black woman, a million times this. A single byte of empirical evidence is worth all the “emancipatory stories in the universe”.
I heard no more from Professor Rees. UCL has declared that Bulstrode’s paper has been fully vindicated.
I heard no more from Professor Rees. UCL has declared that Bulstrode’s paper has been fully vindicated.
Leslie’s post is mainly about another paper, not yet published but previewed by the BBC. According to the BBC’s article, the paper asserts that “race is a social classification” but claims to be able to identify whether 14th century skeletons are of black Africans. I have no idea how both propositions could be true.
Leslie’s post is mainly about another paper, not yet published but previewed by the BBC. According to the BBC’s article, the paper asserts that “race is a social classification” but claims to be able to identify whether 14th century skeletons are of black Africans. I have no idea how both propositions could be true.
A23a, the current world’s largest iceberg, is about to reach the open ocean. 3,900 square kilometers, 400 meters thick.
A23a, the current world’s largest iceberg, is about to reach the open ocean. 3,900 square kilometers, 400 meters thick.
I have no idea how both propositions could be true.
Perhaps they take the position that “race” as a physiological/genetic characteristic exists. But is only peripherally related to “race” as it is used in everyday (i.e. social) situations.
Still, the authors would do well to unpack their position as a matter of transparency for readers.
I have no idea how both propositions could be true.
Perhaps they take the position that “race” as a physiological/genetic characteristic exists. But is only peripherally related to “race” as it is used in everyday (i.e. social) situations.
Still, the authors would do well to unpack their position as a matter of transparency for readers.
Pro Bono, I think in more than half Leslie’s post (admittedly the second half) he circles back to the Bulstrode piece and discusses the (seemingly absurd) claims that it has been vindicated, going on to worry about the effect that this sort of thing has on the respectability of academic history.
Pro Bono, I think in more than half Leslie’s post (admittedly the second half) he circles back to the Bulstrode piece and discusses the (seemingly absurd) claims that it has been vindicated, going on to worry about the effect that this sort of thing has on the respectability of academic history.
On an entirely different subject, some in other countries may know that we have been hearing the revelations of the independent public inquiry into Covid, and the government’s actions during the pandemic. We have grown used to many extraordinary findings in the testimony of the various scientists, political advisers etc, most recently that both Sunak and Johnson (who are due to testify soon) at different times expressed the opinion that the infection should be let rip through the population and kill off the old who, according to BoJo, had in any case had “a good innings” (a cricket term). In yesterday’s Guardian there was a poem by Michael Rosen, the poet, who spent more than 48 hours in intensive care with the virus. I hope that this is much anthologised in the future, and lives on to shame that scoundrel:
Out of bedrooms and wards
long lines of the dead walk towards you
asking you,
‘Who were you to decide
that our innings was over?
Who gave you the umpire’s white coat
and upraised finger?’
Did you think we would never speak
from the graves you gave us?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/24/who-were-you-to-decide-that-our-innings-was-over-michael-rosens-covid-inquiry-poem
On an entirely different subject, some in other countries may know that we have been hearing the revelations of the independent public inquiry into Covid, and the government’s actions during the pandemic. We have grown used to many extraordinary findings in the testimony of the various scientists, political advisers etc, most recently that both Sunak and Johnson (who are due to testify soon) at different times expressed the opinion that the infection should be let rip through the population and kill off the old who, according to BoJo, had in any case had “a good innings” (a cricket term). In yesterday’s Guardian there was a poem by Michael Rosen, the poet, who spent more than 48 hours in intensive care with the virus. I hope that this is much anthologised in the future, and lives on to shame that scoundrel:
Out of bedrooms and wards
long lines of the dead walk towards you
asking you,
‘Who were you to decide
that our innings was over?
Who gave you the umpire’s white coat
and upraised finger?’
Did you think we would never speak
from the graves you gave us?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/24/who-were-you-to-decide-that-our-innings-was-over-michael-rosens-covid-inquiry-poem
I only have time to respond to the Bulstrode debate with short points as my time has been swallowed by holidays and end-of-quarter grading.
– I do not disagree with any of the points made in the defense of Bulstrode’s papers. Her research went through the proper steps and followed acceptable historical practices. I believe them when they say there were no lapses in scholarly practice during the writing or the reviewing of the paper.
– The defense never makes the claim that Bulstrode’s interpretation definitively proves that Cort stole the processes and the credit from the workers at his Jamaican holdings. All they say is that the sorts of suppositions and against-the-grain assumptions she makes in the paper are within the realm of legitimate scholarly practice — especially when they are intended to push back against older readings of the same history that rest on similarly unexamined and unestablished narratives.
– A more thorough and definitive account that introduces new information into the archive might lend weight to an alternative view and vindicate Cort’s innovation, but that would not undercut Bulstrode’s work, it would just shift the weight we give to some of her conclusions.
– I disagree with wj’s assertion that the authors need to do more unpacking. They aren’t writing for an audience that needs these things unpacked. The fault in this lies with The Guardian and other popular media who report these things without working to contextualize them for the new audience.
– In all of these cases, the argument is not about facts, but about paradigms and methodologies, and treating these disagreements as matters of factual accounting misses the point of contention.
I remain unconvinced by Bulstrode’s conclusions, but I don’t think that means that her work needs to be held up as an object of public disapproval. I think the debate she is pushing with her reading is an important one. I just wish that the “fan community” on either side of the historical debate would step back a bit and learn better how to read the debate more critically.
I only have time to respond to the Bulstrode debate with short points as my time has been swallowed by holidays and end-of-quarter grading.
– I do not disagree with any of the points made in the defense of Bulstrode’s papers. Her research went through the proper steps and followed acceptable historical practices. I believe them when they say there were no lapses in scholarly practice during the writing or the reviewing of the paper.
– The defense never makes the claim that Bulstrode’s interpretation definitively proves that Cort stole the processes and the credit from the workers at his Jamaican holdings. All they say is that the sorts of suppositions and against-the-grain assumptions she makes in the paper are within the realm of legitimate scholarly practice — especially when they are intended to push back against older readings of the same history that rest on similarly unexamined and unestablished narratives.
– A more thorough and definitive account that introduces new information into the archive might lend weight to an alternative view and vindicate Cort’s innovation, but that would not undercut Bulstrode’s work, it would just shift the weight we give to some of her conclusions.
– I disagree with wj’s assertion that the authors need to do more unpacking. They aren’t writing for an audience that needs these things unpacked. The fault in this lies with The Guardian and other popular media who report these things without working to contextualize them for the new audience.
– In all of these cases, the argument is not about facts, but about paradigms and methodologies, and treating these disagreements as matters of factual accounting misses the point of contention.
I remain unconvinced by Bulstrode’s conclusions, but I don’t think that means that her work needs to be held up as an object of public disapproval. I think the debate she is pushing with her reading is an important one. I just wish that the “fan community” on either side of the historical debate would step back a bit and learn better how to read the debate more critically.
If Dr Bulstrode were to make a convincing case that it’s plausible that Cort’s techniques originated in Jamaica using sugarmill rollers, she should at least demonstrate that some sugarmill rollers of the time would have been suitable for rolling iron. She, and her defenders, don’t even try. It’s the lack of interest in the technology which irks.
Regarding the plague skeletons: yes, race in the “one drop of blood” sense is a social construct. Race in the “we can tell by measuring skeletons” sense is not.
If Dr Bulstrode were to make a convincing case that it’s plausible that Cort’s techniques originated in Jamaica using sugarmill rollers, she should at least demonstrate that some sugarmill rollers of the time would have been suitable for rolling iron. She, and her defenders, don’t even try. It’s the lack of interest in the technology which irks.
Regarding the plague skeletons: yes, race in the “one drop of blood” sense is a social construct. Race in the “we can tell by measuring skeletons” sense is not.
Hard to say what data was used for those skeletons if the article is pre-print, but similar research done recently on skeletons in Germany used DNA extracted from teeth and isotopic comparison of the tooth enamel to determine genetic heritage and geographical origin. If the study in question used similar methods, then that should lend some certainty to the conclusions. I’d want to know something like that before I started poking at the conclusions the way that Leslie does.
From there, though, the way that geographical origin, and genetic heritage, and phenotype play into our messy taxonomies of “race” surely does deserve scrutiny. We have, however, never been particularly good at constructing any objective basis for what race consists of beyond a few overlapping forms of degrees of resemblance that get freighted with a lot of social meaning and social hierarchies. It all gets very fuzzy very quickly, and to fight that fuzziness the language usually ends up becoming both less accessible, and fraught with unrelated disciplinary politics.
Good luck untangling.
Hard to say what data was used for those skeletons if the article is pre-print, but similar research done recently on skeletons in Germany used DNA extracted from teeth and isotopic comparison of the tooth enamel to determine genetic heritage and geographical origin. If the study in question used similar methods, then that should lend some certainty to the conclusions. I’d want to know something like that before I started poking at the conclusions the way that Leslie does.
From there, though, the way that geographical origin, and genetic heritage, and phenotype play into our messy taxonomies of “race” surely does deserve scrutiny. We have, however, never been particularly good at constructing any objective basis for what race consists of beyond a few overlapping forms of degrees of resemblance that get freighted with a lot of social meaning and social hierarchies. It all gets very fuzzy very quickly, and to fight that fuzziness the language usually ends up becoming both less accessible, and fraught with unrelated disciplinary politics.
Good luck untangling.
CLEARLY what is needed is a new set of terms for racial groups, completely disconnected from all previous terminology, to defuse the political/racist connotations.
Might work for 10-20 years, until the terms become widespread and politically loaded again. UNLESS the terms can be made so very complex* that only experts can tell them apart.
(*my suggestion, which is mine, is to put them on the complex plane; based on DNA sequences)
CLEARLY what is needed is a new set of terms for racial groups, completely disconnected from all previous terminology, to defuse the political/racist connotations.
Might work for 10-20 years, until the terms become widespread and politically loaded again. UNLESS the terms can be made so very complex* that only experts can tell them apart.
(*my suggestion, which is mine, is to put them on the complex plane; based on DNA sequences)
I disagree with wj’s assertion that the authors need to do more unpacking. They aren’t writing for an audience that needs these things unpacked. The fault in this lies with The Guardian and other popular media who report these things without working to contextualize them for the new audience.
Which is to say, the Guardian’s authors needed to unpack it. Since they were the ones writing for a general audience which needed it.
I disagree with wj’s assertion that the authors need to do more unpacking. They aren’t writing for an audience that needs these things unpacked. The fault in this lies with The Guardian and other popular media who report these things without working to contextualize them for the new audience.
Which is to say, the Guardian’s authors needed to unpack it. Since they were the ones writing for a general audience which needed it.
CLEARLY what is needed is a new set of terms for racial groups, completely disconnected from all previous terminology, to defuse the political/racist connotations.
I’m not seeing an actual need here.
Increasingly, people are born with ancestors from all over the world. So, whatever “race” is taken to mean, increasingly the only category which fits is “mixed”. So why bother?
CLEARLY what is needed is a new set of terms for racial groups, completely disconnected from all previous terminology, to defuse the political/racist connotations.
I’m not seeing an actual need here.
Increasingly, people are born with ancestors from all over the world. So, whatever “race” is taken to mean, increasingly the only category which fits is “mixed”. So why bother?
Which is to say, the Guardian’s authors needed to unpack it. Since they were the ones writing for a general audience which needed it.
Or the academy needs to figure out that it has a big problem with translating its work in ways that can actually influence popular thought, and start rewarding work that is aimed at a non-academic audience and that scaffolds the more difficult concepts without losing too much nuance.
Neither side is bridging that gap very effectively.
Which is to say, the Guardian’s authors needed to unpack it. Since they were the ones writing for a general audience which needed it.
Or the academy needs to figure out that it has a big problem with translating its work in ways that can actually influence popular thought, and start rewarding work that is aimed at a non-academic audience and that scaffolds the more difficult concepts without losing too much nuance.
Neither side is bridging that gap very effectively.
(*my suggestion, which is mine, is to put them on the complex plane; based on DNA sequences)
I have been thinking about something vaguely like this in relation to gender for decades. I’ve never really tried to work it out in writing or in detail, and I think what I’m groping for would work fine on a regular plane, but a line or spectrum certainly isn’t adequate.
(“Spectrum” in one of the senses Google tosses up:
used to classify something, or suggest that it can be classified, in terms of its position on a scale between two extreme or opposite points.
“the left or the right of the political spectrum”.)
(*my suggestion, which is mine, is to put them on the complex plane; based on DNA sequences)
I have been thinking about something vaguely like this in relation to gender for decades. I’ve never really tried to work it out in writing or in detail, and I think what I’m groping for would work fine on a regular plane, but a line or spectrum certainly isn’t adequate.
(“Spectrum” in one of the senses Google tosses up:
used to classify something, or suggest that it can be classified, in terms of its position on a scale between two extreme or opposite points.
“the left or the right of the political spectrum”.)
The fault in this lies with The Guardian…
The Guardian has its faults, but it’s not to blame for the BBC’s reportage.
And whatever the merits of the BBC’s account, I’d be grateful if someone could explain to me how something which can be determined by scientific measurement of skeletons can be a social construct.
In fairness to Leslie, I point out that his main problem with the (unpublished) paper is that its numbers are highly implausible.
The fault in this lies with The Guardian…
The Guardian has its faults, but it’s not to blame for the BBC’s reportage.
And whatever the merits of the BBC’s account, I’d be grateful if someone could explain to me how something which can be determined by scientific measurement of skeletons can be a social construct.
In fairness to Leslie, I point out that his main problem with the (unpublished) paper is that its numbers are highly implausible.
Race can be both a social construct and something that can be determined by forensic evidence in the sense that the same word is used to denote different definitions and usages. We can know that the skeletons come from a particular place of origin and have genetic markers consistent with particular populations and call that taxonomy a race in the older sense of the word that indicates a people. And we can also claim that the commonly held notions about groups of people who share a particular phenotype, geographical origin, or heritage is a product of public discourse and prejudice without any natural basis. Two stable and separate definitions belonging to the same word, with problematic slippage in their overlapping usages.
Race can be both a social construct and something that can be determined by forensic evidence in the sense that the same word is used to denote different definitions and usages. We can know that the skeletons come from a particular place of origin and have genetic markers consistent with particular populations and call that taxonomy a race in the older sense of the word that indicates a people. And we can also claim that the commonly held notions about groups of people who share a particular phenotype, geographical origin, or heritage is a product of public discourse and prejudice without any natural basis. Two stable and separate definitions belonging to the same word, with problematic slippage in their overlapping usages.
Thank you. But that’s not what the quotes from the paper are saying.
Thank you. But that’s not what the quotes from the paper are saying.
New topic, sort of, but Gaza related.
I’ve been and will remain a lesser evil voter since 2000. I lived in New York then and now, so it was safe to vote for Nader. I wouldn’t have done that in a swing state.
So my third party voting theory back then was not purity politics, one of those silly dismissive terms people use. They also say Sanders supporters are a personality cult— you should see what Sanders supporters including me have said about his unwillingness to support a ceasefire. A cult we may be, whatever that is, but it is an issues cult and we turn on our “ heroes” in a heartbeat. So that could be purity politics, except many of us do in fact vote lesser evil and make the sort of calculation I made in 2000– vote third party but not in safe states.
My third party voting theory was that it was a way of sending a message to the Democrats— take our issues seriously. I actually thought Nader’s campaign would do that. I very naively found it shocking that it did exactly the opposite— people seemed to go out of their way to ignore the issues that made Nader better in my view and emphasize the ones that made Gore better than Bush. ( There was also the extreme contempt that flowed back and forth between the two sides— politics as usual.)
Gore lost, I think mainly because of Republican shenanigans in Florida, but Nader contributed. The “ send a message” theory of voting I had was a total disaster. Years later saw some commenter at Balloon Juice defending Hillary Clinton ( who supported the Iraq War and practically every war and who is cheering for the Israelis) who then blamed Nader a few sentences later for the Iraq War which so many leading Democrats had supported. The cognitive dissonance was awe-inspiring, but he also had a point. The history of the next 20 years in the Middle East might have been very different with Gore there. He was a leading Democrat who spent the run up to the Iraq invasion urging caution. It wasn’t exactly a moral argument that he made, it was very D.C. technocrat as I recall, but I will take caution over hubris.
So anyway, I stopped thinking of voting as a tool for sending messages. Voting is an extremely blunt instrument and something we have to do, but everybody makes it into something it is not. Don’t get overly excited by candidates. In fact, if you get excited you are probably setting yourself up either for disappointment or you might become the sort of person who starts filtering how you see every issue in a way so that your hero is always right.
Otoh, Gaza is front page news. Israel attracts both more support and more criticism than other countries ( for often bad reasons on both sides) which commit massive war crimes, but that means that unlike, say, Yemen, a President has to take an open stance that everyone sees. And it appears to be that, despite some advice to be more careful, Biden is going to support Israel’s ostensible goal in wiping out Hamas, which apparently involves literally turning all of Gaza into a pile of rubble.
I think voting for Biden sends the message that there is nothing you can’t do, so long as the other guy is worse. That is bad. With something like Yemen you could say a vote sends no obvious message because most people don’t even know about it.
I am still a lesser evil voter, but that’s been the problem all along with lesser evil voting. The word “ evil” is literally true on some issues. Voting for candidates is very important, but it just doesn’t capture everything you are supposed to care about and there is a problem in reducing politics to which side you support in the voting booth. On many issues there is a clear choice, but on some both candidates are terrible and people have to think about how to handle those issues. I don’t have any great ideas. Michael Cain mentioned voting on propositions, which will work on local environmental or other issues, but not as well on foreign policy. ( Though of course there has been a lot of voting against BDS on the local scale, so I guess you can do it, even if the actual results on that are not what I favor.)
New topic, sort of, but Gaza related.
I’ve been and will remain a lesser evil voter since 2000. I lived in New York then and now, so it was safe to vote for Nader. I wouldn’t have done that in a swing state.
So my third party voting theory back then was not purity politics, one of those silly dismissive terms people use. They also say Sanders supporters are a personality cult— you should see what Sanders supporters including me have said about his unwillingness to support a ceasefire. A cult we may be, whatever that is, but it is an issues cult and we turn on our “ heroes” in a heartbeat. So that could be purity politics, except many of us do in fact vote lesser evil and make the sort of calculation I made in 2000– vote third party but not in safe states.
My third party voting theory was that it was a way of sending a message to the Democrats— take our issues seriously. I actually thought Nader’s campaign would do that. I very naively found it shocking that it did exactly the opposite— people seemed to go out of their way to ignore the issues that made Nader better in my view and emphasize the ones that made Gore better than Bush. ( There was also the extreme contempt that flowed back and forth between the two sides— politics as usual.)
Gore lost, I think mainly because of Republican shenanigans in Florida, but Nader contributed. The “ send a message” theory of voting I had was a total disaster. Years later saw some commenter at Balloon Juice defending Hillary Clinton ( who supported the Iraq War and practically every war and who is cheering for the Israelis) who then blamed Nader a few sentences later for the Iraq War which so many leading Democrats had supported. The cognitive dissonance was awe-inspiring, but he also had a point. The history of the next 20 years in the Middle East might have been very different with Gore there. He was a leading Democrat who spent the run up to the Iraq invasion urging caution. It wasn’t exactly a moral argument that he made, it was very D.C. technocrat as I recall, but I will take caution over hubris.
So anyway, I stopped thinking of voting as a tool for sending messages. Voting is an extremely blunt instrument and something we have to do, but everybody makes it into something it is not. Don’t get overly excited by candidates. In fact, if you get excited you are probably setting yourself up either for disappointment or you might become the sort of person who starts filtering how you see every issue in a way so that your hero is always right.
Otoh, Gaza is front page news. Israel attracts both more support and more criticism than other countries ( for often bad reasons on both sides) which commit massive war crimes, but that means that unlike, say, Yemen, a President has to take an open stance that everyone sees. And it appears to be that, despite some advice to be more careful, Biden is going to support Israel’s ostensible goal in wiping out Hamas, which apparently involves literally turning all of Gaza into a pile of rubble.
I think voting for Biden sends the message that there is nothing you can’t do, so long as the other guy is worse. That is bad. With something like Yemen you could say a vote sends no obvious message because most people don’t even know about it.
I am still a lesser evil voter, but that’s been the problem all along with lesser evil voting. The word “ evil” is literally true on some issues. Voting for candidates is very important, but it just doesn’t capture everything you are supposed to care about and there is a problem in reducing politics to which side you support in the voting booth. On many issues there is a clear choice, but on some both candidates are terrible and people have to think about how to handle those issues. I don’t have any great ideas. Michael Cain mentioned voting on propositions, which will work on local environmental or other issues, but not as well on foreign policy. ( Though of course there has been a lot of voting against BDS on the local scale, so I guess you can do it, even if the actual results on that are not what I favor.)
Donald — we have a two-party system. No one is going to get everything they want out of either party. I think you’re right that voting third party doesn’t “send a message” the way people think it might, but also, by definition, if you have two choices, and you choose to vote, then if you don’t vote for the lesser evil you are ending up voting for the greater evil. Which also doesn’t feel right. Does it?
My immediate thought is that anyone who really cares about an issue, especially one involving “evil” and a choice (in a 2-party system) of lesser or greater, has to get involved beyond voting. Donate money. Donate time. Protest. Write op-eds. Write blog posts or comments! There are a lot of ways to (try to) exert influence on politicians/officeholders besides voting or not voting for them.
It’s slow, dirty, dishearteningly endless work. But I don’t see any other way.
Also, as you say, making decisions by referendum doesn’t work very well on foreign policy. But speaking as someone who lives in a state where it’s relatively easy to get an issue on the ballot for a statewide vote, it’s also a pretty blunt and unreliable instrument. You can’t govern a state of 1.3 million people (Maine) by making every little (or even every big) decision that way, much less a country of 330 million. Legislators may be overly influenced by lobbyists and prejudices, but ordinary people are in an even worse position for staying/becoming informed enough to be voting on some things (even if they wanted to and had the time). And as we have seen in Maine, moneyed interests tend to prevail … as usual.
Donald — we have a two-party system. No one is going to get everything they want out of either party. I think you’re right that voting third party doesn’t “send a message” the way people think it might, but also, by definition, if you have two choices, and you choose to vote, then if you don’t vote for the lesser evil you are ending up voting for the greater evil. Which also doesn’t feel right. Does it?
My immediate thought is that anyone who really cares about an issue, especially one involving “evil” and a choice (in a 2-party system) of lesser or greater, has to get involved beyond voting. Donate money. Donate time. Protest. Write op-eds. Write blog posts or comments! There are a lot of ways to (try to) exert influence on politicians/officeholders besides voting or not voting for them.
It’s slow, dirty, dishearteningly endless work. But I don’t see any other way.
Also, as you say, making decisions by referendum doesn’t work very well on foreign policy. But speaking as someone who lives in a state where it’s relatively easy to get an issue on the ballot for a statewide vote, it’s also a pretty blunt and unreliable instrument. You can’t govern a state of 1.3 million people (Maine) by making every little (or even every big) decision that way, much less a country of 330 million. Legislators may be overly influenced by lobbyists and prejudices, but ordinary people are in an even worse position for staying/becoming informed enough to be voting on some things (even if they wanted to and had the time). And as we have seen in Maine, moneyed interests tend to prevail … as usual.
For the coming election, the two-party system seems to be working hard to turn out the third-party vote.
For the coming election, the two-party system seems to be working hard to turn out the third-party vote.
My third party voting theory was that it was a way of sending a message to the Democrats— take our issues seriously. I actually thought Nader’s campaign would do that. I very naively found it shocking that it did exactly the opposite— people seemed to go out of their way to ignore the issues that made Nader better in my view and emphasize the ones that made Gore better than Bush. ( There was also the extreme contempt that flowed back and forth between the two sides— politics as usual.)
I think this is a classic case of “The message you are sending is not the message they are receiving.” You were trying to send “Pay attention to my issues.” What they heard was “We won’t support you” — leading to a, rather predictable, reaction of “Why should we bother with your issues, since you won’t support us?”
That is IMHO the problem with “protest voting.” (Something I have done myself on occasion.) It is at least as likely to drive potential allies away as to motivate them to move in your direction. And allies are critical to get from fringe view to established policy.
My third party voting theory was that it was a way of sending a message to the Democrats— take our issues seriously. I actually thought Nader’s campaign would do that. I very naively found it shocking that it did exactly the opposite— people seemed to go out of their way to ignore the issues that made Nader better in my view and emphasize the ones that made Gore better than Bush. ( There was also the extreme contempt that flowed back and forth between the two sides— politics as usual.)
I think this is a classic case of “The message you are sending is not the message they are receiving.” You were trying to send “Pay attention to my issues.” What they heard was “We won’t support you” — leading to a, rather predictable, reaction of “Why should we bother with your issues, since you won’t support us?”
That is IMHO the problem with “protest voting.” (Something I have done myself on occasion.) It is at least as likely to drive potential allies away as to motivate them to move in your direction. And allies are critical to get from fringe view to established policy.
WJ—
Yeah, protest voting doesn’t work. Found that out in 2000-2001. I still remember my genuine surprise at how it all backfired.
Jamie— Also agreed.
Charles— I actually agree with you as well, though I won’t be one of them.
WJ—
Yeah, protest voting doesn’t work. Found that out in 2000-2001. I still remember my genuine surprise at how it all backfired.
Jamie— Also agreed.
Charles— I actually agree with you as well, though I won’t be one of them.
Donald, I really liked your 10.55, which I found very thoughtful and reasonable. It also made me realise how rarely we see someone come out and say “I was wrong, I made a mistake.” I also agree with Janie’s
by definition, if you have two choices, and you choose to vote, then if you don’t vote for the lesser evil you are ending up voting for the greater evil. Which also doesn’t feel right
which essentially lays out the reasoning for a lot of my voting.
Donald, I really liked your 10.55, which I found very thoughtful and reasonable. It also made me realise how rarely we see someone come out and say “I was wrong, I made a mistake.” I also agree with Janie’s
by definition, if you have two choices, and you choose to vote, then if you don’t vote for the lesser evil you are ending up voting for the greater evil. Which also doesn’t feel right
which essentially lays out the reasoning for a lot of my voting.
Gftnc—
I wouldn’t give me too much credit. I was just confessing to a tactical error or misunderstanding regarding how politics works. Also, of course, a miscalculation of one person in a very large country has a tiny tiny effect. My vote in NY made no difference. I probably contributed something like 50 dollars to the campaign, which might have made a nonzero but still tiny difference. But yeah, not doing that anymore.
If my actions had a huge impact in a negative way, that would probably be very difficult to confess, even to myself, which is presumably why there is so much denialism in the world.
Gftnc—
I wouldn’t give me too much credit. I was just confessing to a tactical error or misunderstanding regarding how politics works. Also, of course, a miscalculation of one person in a very large country has a tiny tiny effect. My vote in NY made no difference. I probably contributed something like 50 dollars to the campaign, which might have made a nonzero but still tiny difference. But yeah, not doing that anymore.
If my actions had a huge impact in a negative way, that would probably be very difficult to confess, even to myself, which is presumably why there is so much denialism in the world.
..You can’t govern a state of 1.3 million people (Maine) by making every little (or even every big) decision that way, much less a country of 330 million…
Seems to work fine in Switzerland, but they are something of a special case.
..You can’t govern a state of 1.3 million people (Maine) by making every little (or even every big) decision that way, much less a country of 330 million…
Seems to work fine in Switzerland, but they are something of a special case.
But it took significantly longer for women to get the right to vote in Switzerland. The first Kanton got it in 1959, the last in 1990. On the federal level it was 1971.
And (as with the Brexit in Britain) xenophobes* have been quite successful in demagoguing issues for their advantage**. I get the impression that the parliament is more moderate on those issues than the direct democratic votes.
*I’d say Switzerland has at least two distinct strains of xenophobia (three, if one counts the internal prejudices against the Italo-Swiss minority): the common one against those looking different (these days mainly Muslims) and the one against the ‘great Kanton to the North’ (Germany) that seems to have replaced the traditional against Austria. In a way the Germans are to Switzerland what the Mexicans are to the US: “they steal our work and s(p)end the money home (and would love to take over, if they were strong enough)”
**and the campaigns were extremly nasty, almost Austrian (I mean the patented “Why are you so intolerant to call me an antisemite just because I hate the Jews? WE were Hitler’s first victims after all” shtick or the [propagated but never executed] idea that every Austrian should have to bite into a piece of pork in front of witnesses once a year***)
***which I guess got inspired by the old Japanese mandatory trampling of the crucifix but aimed at Muslims
But it took significantly longer for women to get the right to vote in Switzerland. The first Kanton got it in 1959, the last in 1990. On the federal level it was 1971.
And (as with the Brexit in Britain) xenophobes* have been quite successful in demagoguing issues for their advantage**. I get the impression that the parliament is more moderate on those issues than the direct democratic votes.
*I’d say Switzerland has at least two distinct strains of xenophobia (three, if one counts the internal prejudices against the Italo-Swiss minority): the common one against those looking different (these days mainly Muslims) and the one against the ‘great Kanton to the North’ (Germany) that seems to have replaced the traditional against Austria. In a way the Germans are to Switzerland what the Mexicans are to the US: “they steal our work and s(p)end the money home (and would love to take over, if they were strong enough)”
**and the campaigns were extremly nasty, almost Austrian (I mean the patented “Why are you so intolerant to call me an antisemite just because I hate the Jews? WE were Hitler’s first victims after all” shtick or the [propagated but never executed] idea that every Austrian should have to bite into a piece of pork in front of witnesses once a year***)
***which I guess got inspired by the old Japanese mandatory trampling of the crucifix but aimed at Muslims
I meant to get back to this but will keep it short. I wasn’t just indicting third party voters. I was also indicting people who ignore the issues that sometimes motivate third party voters.
Might come back to this later if I have time.
I meant to get back to this but will keep it short. I wasn’t just indicting third party voters. I was also indicting people who ignore the issues that sometimes motivate third party voters.
Might come back to this later if I have time.
@Nigel — thanks for bringing Switzerland up — it’s fascinating, and I didn’t know much about it. But it’s still not remotely like having a national referendum for every little decision.
https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-geschichte/politisches-system.html
https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-geschichte/politisches-system/direkte-demokratie.html
In the 130th Maine Legislature, 2021-2022, 2301 bills were introduced and 639 were completed. Fifteen is not like 2301, or even 639. (see here).
(Sorry for the bare links. I haven’t had breakfast yet, or more relevantly, caffeine.)
@Nigel — thanks for bringing Switzerland up — it’s fascinating, and I didn’t know much about it. But it’s still not remotely like having a national referendum for every little decision.
https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-geschichte/politisches-system.html
https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-geschichte/politisches-system/direkte-demokratie.html
In the 130th Maine Legislature, 2021-2022, 2301 bills were introduced and 639 were completed. Fifteen is not like 2301, or even 639. (see here).
(Sorry for the bare links. I haven’t had breakfast yet, or more relevantly, caffeine.)
A more relevant comparison might be with how many bills (or whatever they call them there) are passed in Switzerland by the council/assembly, i.e. the indirect/representative levels of government.
Also thanks to Hartmut for the info about some women not getting the vote in Switzerland until 1959 and then … 1990?!?!?!? So much for direct democracy.
A more relevant comparison might be with how many bills (or whatever they call them there) are passed in Switzerland by the council/assembly, i.e. the indirect/representative levels of government.
Also thanks to Hartmut for the info about some women not getting the vote in Switzerland until 1959 and then … 1990?!?!?!? So much for direct democracy.
Or “democracy.”
Or “democracy.”
Also, as you say, making decisions by referendum doesn’t work very well on foreign policy. But speaking as someone who lives in a state where it’s relatively easy to get an issue on the ballot for a statewide vote, it’s also a pretty blunt and unreliable instrument. You can’t govern a state of 1.3 million people (Maine) by making every little (or even every big) decision that way, much less a country of 330 million. Legislators may be overly influenced by lobbyists and prejudices, but ordinary people are in an even worse position for staying/becoming informed enough to be voting on some things (even if they wanted to and had the time). And as we have seen in Maine, moneyed interests tend to prevail … as usual.
In the western states, where initiatives and recalls were widely incorporated into the state constitutions over a 15-20 year period, state legislatures were almost completely out of control. Simplifying grossly, no matter who you voted for, they were going to pass laws that favored eastern business interests. TTBOMK the story about legislators showing up on the first day of the session and finding envelopes full of cash on their desks didn’t actually happen, but at the time it seemed like it could.
Initiatives are at their best when there’s an inflection point happening with policy. For example, in the 2000s in Colorado neither party wanted to touch the idea of a state mandate guaranteeing generation and delivery of renewable electricity. Once an initiative putting one in the constitution passed comfortably, the Democrats have expanded it while the Republicans have dug in their heels and claimed (despite data) that rural Colorado is too poor to afford renewable power.
Regardless of claims, it’s a lot of work to get an initiative on the ballot. Colorado has relatively low hurdles and allows paid signature collectors. That got six issues on the 2022 ballot. Three of them could have been one item except for the single-subject rule. (Allowing groceries to sell full-strength beer and wine, with limits to protect the mom-and-pop liquor stores. Another example, IMO, of the people telling all of the legislators, “Quit being stupid.”)
Also, as you say, making decisions by referendum doesn’t work very well on foreign policy. But speaking as someone who lives in a state where it’s relatively easy to get an issue on the ballot for a statewide vote, it’s also a pretty blunt and unreliable instrument. You can’t govern a state of 1.3 million people (Maine) by making every little (or even every big) decision that way, much less a country of 330 million. Legislators may be overly influenced by lobbyists and prejudices, but ordinary people are in an even worse position for staying/becoming informed enough to be voting on some things (even if they wanted to and had the time). And as we have seen in Maine, moneyed interests tend to prevail … as usual.
In the western states, where initiatives and recalls were widely incorporated into the state constitutions over a 15-20 year period, state legislatures were almost completely out of control. Simplifying grossly, no matter who you voted for, they were going to pass laws that favored eastern business interests. TTBOMK the story about legislators showing up on the first day of the session and finding envelopes full of cash on their desks didn’t actually happen, but at the time it seemed like it could.
Initiatives are at their best when there’s an inflection point happening with policy. For example, in the 2000s in Colorado neither party wanted to touch the idea of a state mandate guaranteeing generation and delivery of renewable electricity. Once an initiative putting one in the constitution passed comfortably, the Democrats have expanded it while the Republicans have dug in their heels and claimed (despite data) that rural Colorado is too poor to afford renewable power.
Regardless of claims, it’s a lot of work to get an initiative on the ballot. Colorado has relatively low hurdles and allows paid signature collectors. That got six issues on the 2022 ballot. Three of them could have been one item except for the single-subject rule. (Allowing groceries to sell full-strength beer and wine, with limits to protect the mom-and-pop liquor stores. Another example, IMO, of the people telling all of the legislators, “Quit being stupid.”)
This afternoon on Balloon Juice:
https://balloon-juice.com/2023/11/27/open-thread-more-like-this-please/
This afternoon on Balloon Juice:
https://balloon-juice.com/2023/11/27/open-thread-more-like-this-please/
Priest, thank you for that. I don’t know why I don’t look at BJ more often. What a mensch that George Takei is.
Priest, thank you for that. I don’t know why I don’t look at BJ more often. What a mensch that George Takei is.
Too many mensch stories about George Takei to pick one.
My favorite fun Takei story is that when he interviewed for the Sulu role, Gene Roddenberry asked him for something unique about himself. Takei said that he fenced. Sometime during the first season one of the writers stopped Takei and said, “You told Gene that you fenced? We worked that into one of the stories…” So Takei ended up working 12 hours a day on set, then going to one of the Hollywood fencing schools and learning some basics: classic en garde position, simple salute, baby lunge with recover forward.
Too many mensch stories about George Takei to pick one.
My favorite fun Takei story is that when he interviewed for the Sulu role, Gene Roddenberry asked him for something unique about himself. Takei said that he fenced. Sometime during the first season one of the writers stopped Takei and said, “You told Gene that you fenced? We worked that into one of the stories…” So Takei ended up working 12 hours a day on set, then going to one of the Hollywood fencing schools and learning some basics: classic en garde position, simple salute, baby lunge with recover forward.
Michael, I’ve probably asked you this before, but just in case not: have you read the Mick Herron Slow Horses books? Spy stories, Jim, but absolutely not as you know it. Highly recommended.
Michael, I’ve probably asked you this before, but just in case not: have you read the Mick Herron Slow Horses books? Spy stories, Jim, but absolutely not as you know it. Highly recommended.
I wouldn’t try to tell Palestinian Americans to vote for Biden. The feelings there are too deep. In some cases they are losing family members, quite possibly to weapons supplied by the US.
Imagine a situation in some parallel earth where we supported Hamas. It wouldn’t be the worst set of “ freedom fighters” we ever backed. Rather typical, frankly. We were supporting Hamas’s ideological brothers in Syria and there was a genuine fear of what people called a “ catastrophic success” if they had toppled Assad, because it likely would have resulted in a genocide of some religious minorities. Anyway, on parallel earth I think you could expect to lose a pretty big chunk of the Jewish vote if geopolitical calculations had us supporting Hamas against Israel.. And I wouldn’t try to change their minds with lesser evil arguments. People losing family members tends to outweigh these political calculations..
I vote lesser evil as I have explained but one of the bad things about this whole lesser evil thing and the third party illusion too, is that almost everything immediately gets turned into electoral politics. I think there should be room to make harsh and even bitter criticisms of the people in power even if one also thinks that later on, they are the least bad choice in the voting booth, But way too often one goes from criticizing US policy to electoral politics. Not here, it not so much, but very often. It is a flaw in our system and maybe one that can’t be fixed, but it seems like people can’t think of a way to pressure politicians except by threatening not to vote for them, and then we are back to the lesser evil thing.
I wouldn’t try to tell Palestinian Americans to vote for Biden. The feelings there are too deep. In some cases they are losing family members, quite possibly to weapons supplied by the US.
Imagine a situation in some parallel earth where we supported Hamas. It wouldn’t be the worst set of “ freedom fighters” we ever backed. Rather typical, frankly. We were supporting Hamas’s ideological brothers in Syria and there was a genuine fear of what people called a “ catastrophic success” if they had toppled Assad, because it likely would have resulted in a genocide of some religious minorities. Anyway, on parallel earth I think you could expect to lose a pretty big chunk of the Jewish vote if geopolitical calculations had us supporting Hamas against Israel.. And I wouldn’t try to change their minds with lesser evil arguments. People losing family members tends to outweigh these political calculations..
I vote lesser evil as I have explained but one of the bad things about this whole lesser evil thing and the third party illusion too, is that almost everything immediately gets turned into electoral politics. I think there should be room to make harsh and even bitter criticisms of the people in power even if one also thinks that later on, they are the least bad choice in the voting booth, But way too often one goes from criticizing US policy to electoral politics. Not here, it not so much, but very often. It is a flaw in our system and maybe one that can’t be fixed, but it seems like people can’t think of a way to pressure politicians except by threatening not to vote for them, and then we are back to the lesser evil thing.
I wouldn’t try to tell Palestinian Americans to vote for Biden. The feelings there are too deep. In some cases they are losing family members, quite possibly to weapons supplied by the US.
I wouldn’t try to tell them either. But I would suggest that they consider what TIFG’s approach to the situation would be. Considering his demonstrated views of Muslims (meaning, since he is an ignoramus, pretty much anybody in the Middle East). Yes, it would be a very painful “lesser evil” choice. But it would be a much less evil one.
I wouldn’t try to tell Palestinian Americans to vote for Biden. The feelings there are too deep. In some cases they are losing family members, quite possibly to weapons supplied by the US.
I wouldn’t try to tell them either. But I would suggest that they consider what TIFG’s approach to the situation would be. Considering his demonstrated views of Muslims (meaning, since he is an ignoramus, pretty much anybody in the Middle East). Yes, it would be a very painful “lesser evil” choice. But it would be a much less evil one.
My former housemate who has dual Israeli/US citizenship supports the enfant terrible over Biden because she believes Hamas would never have dared try that attack if The Orange Menace were in charge. I half wonder if some Palestinians cynically wonder if that might be the case.
Which is to say it’s the domestic abuse household strategy for not setting off the abuser’s temper.
My former housemate who has dual Israeli/US citizenship supports the enfant terrible over Biden because she believes Hamas would never have dared try that attack if The Orange Menace were in charge. I half wonder if some Palestinians cynically wonder if that might be the case.
Which is to say it’s the domestic abuse household strategy for not setting off the abuser’s temper.
Which is to say it’s the domestic abuse household strategy for not setting off the abuser’s temper.
And is likely to work about as well. Sadly, it seems to be a lesson that is hard for some to learn. Either personally or en masse.
Which is to say it’s the domestic abuse household strategy for not setting off the abuser’s temper.
And is likely to work about as well. Sadly, it seems to be a lesson that is hard for some to learn. Either personally or en masse.
My former housemate who has dual Israeli/US citizenship supports the enfant terrible over Biden because she believes Hamas would never have dared try that attack if The Orange Menace were in charge.
I don’t understand that at all. How would the Israeli response have been different with Trump in the White House?
My former housemate who has dual Israeli/US citizenship supports the enfant terrible over Biden because she believes Hamas would never have dared try that attack if The Orange Menace were in charge.
I don’t understand that at all. How would the Israeli response have been different with Trump in the White House?
How would the Israeli response have been different with Trump in the White House?
My expectation is that, rather than trying to rein in the Israelis, Trump would have encouraged Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox cabinet members to go with their preferences and go whole hog. And if that ended up killing everyone in Gaza, he’d have been OK with that.
How would the Israeli response have been different with Trump in the White House?
My expectation is that, rather than trying to rein in the Israelis, Trump would have encouraged Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox cabinet members to go with their preferences and go whole hog. And if that ended up killing everyone in Gaza, he’d have been OK with that.
By her way of thinking, Hamas would not have dared launch the glider attack in the first place for fear of The Great Spraytan going all in with his support. Hamas would have known they were in for a whuppin’ and would not have tested us.
I know…madness.
How fortunate for us all that she is now an RFK Jr. supporter, with Nikki Haley as her backup plan.
By her way of thinking, Hamas would not have dared launch the glider attack in the first place for fear of The Great Spraytan going all in with his support. Hamas would have known they were in for a whuppin’ and would not have tested us.
I know…madness.
How fortunate for us all that she is now an RFK Jr. supporter, with Nikki Haley as her backup plan.
RFK Jr. sounds like an advanced case of throat cancer to my ears. Apart from his unhinged views I could see that as a real handicap in a campaign
RFK Jr. sounds like an advanced case of throat cancer to my ears. Apart from his unhinged views I could see that as a real handicap in a campaign
I tend to think that a good number of RFK Jr. supporters gain a sense of satisfaction from the notion that they’re going against the grain and aren’t falling for the baloney coming from either party’s mainstream. They’re edgy and special and different.
I tend to think that a good number of RFK Jr. supporters gain a sense of satisfaction from the notion that they’re going against the grain and aren’t falling for the baloney coming from either party’s mainstream. They’re edgy and special and different.
@Hartmut: Like Susan Collins and former NPR radio host Diane Rehm, RFK Jr. has spasmodic dystonia. (Google it if you care. There are plenty of references.)
Rehm’s wiki says: In 1998, Rehm began having difficulty speaking normally. Eventually, she was treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital and was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological condition that affects the quality of her voice. The condition is treatable but not curable.
I enjoyed Rehm’s show back in the day. As for the other two, I would enjoy it if they would disappear from public life and never be heard from again.
@Hartmut: Like Susan Collins and former NPR radio host Diane Rehm, RFK Jr. has spasmodic dystonia. (Google it if you care. There are plenty of references.)
Rehm’s wiki says: In 1998, Rehm began having difficulty speaking normally. Eventually, she was treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital and was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological condition that affects the quality of her voice. The condition is treatable but not curable.
I enjoyed Rehm’s show back in the day. As for the other two, I would enjoy it if they would disappear from public life and never be heard from again.
I meant it more as an impression not as a medical diagnosis. For a job that requires lots of public speaking (and even more of it to get in the first place) having such a voice is not ideal. It should not matter (there are enough demagogues with pleasant voices and honest guys with unpleasant ones) but from a practical standpoint it does. Like (old) Kennedy’s hair won over Nixon’s sweat.
But, hey, in this case we should be happy about any handicap.
I wonder what a debate between Tricky Dick and the Orange One would have looked and sounded like.
But this could become the first modern POTUS campaign without the final candidates meeting each other in debate. The RNC seems to have preemptively excluded the ususal one organized by the commission on presidential debates, i.e. they will not accept a non-rigged setting.
I meant it more as an impression not as a medical diagnosis. For a job that requires lots of public speaking (and even more of it to get in the first place) having such a voice is not ideal. It should not matter (there are enough demagogues with pleasant voices and honest guys with unpleasant ones) but from a practical standpoint it does. Like (old) Kennedy’s hair won over Nixon’s sweat.
But, hey, in this case we should be happy about any handicap.
I wonder what a debate between Tricky Dick and the Orange One would have looked and sounded like.
But this could become the first modern POTUS campaign without the final candidates meeting each other in debate. The RNC seems to have preemptively excluded the ususal one organized by the commission on presidential debates, i.e. they will not accept a non-rigged setting.
The trouble is that Biden doesn’t seem to get it:
According to a 2022 survey by Pew Research Center, 58 percent of people aged 18 to 29 have an unfavorable view of Israel, versus 28 percent of Americans older than 65—a divergence that has only become sharper in the past few weeks.
An NBC News poll released on Sunday found that between September and November, Biden’s approval rating among voters aged 18 to 34 fell from 46 to 31 percent. It’s no mystery why: A stunning 70 percent of voters in this age group disapprove of his handling of the war in Gaza.
More bad news for Biden: Young voters tend to be loyal not to a party or candidate but to their preferred policy objectives, often voting on a single issue. (…) if these voters’ sentiments toward Biden turn negative from neutral as a result of his stance on Gaza, a considerable amount of the Trump-repellent effect may be neutralized, resulting in a considerable portion of young voters either supporting a third-party candidate or sitting the election out. Faced with two candidates whose agenda they oppose, many Gen Zers will simply stay home.
But it’s not just young voters Biden has to contend with on this issue: 68 percent of all voters favor a cease-fire in Gaza, versus the 31 percent who support sending Israel weapons. And yet Biden continues to refuse to call for an enduring cease-fire.
It’s a two-way street – voters may have to vote for the lesser evil, but there’s a breaking point if leaders take their voters for granted and simply ignore their policy preferences.
The trouble is that Biden doesn’t seem to get it:
According to a 2022 survey by Pew Research Center, 58 percent of people aged 18 to 29 have an unfavorable view of Israel, versus 28 percent of Americans older than 65—a divergence that has only become sharper in the past few weeks.
An NBC News poll released on Sunday found that between September and November, Biden’s approval rating among voters aged 18 to 34 fell from 46 to 31 percent. It’s no mystery why: A stunning 70 percent of voters in this age group disapprove of his handling of the war in Gaza.
More bad news for Biden: Young voters tend to be loyal not to a party or candidate but to their preferred policy objectives, often voting on a single issue. (…) if these voters’ sentiments toward Biden turn negative from neutral as a result of his stance on Gaza, a considerable amount of the Trump-repellent effect may be neutralized, resulting in a considerable portion of young voters either supporting a third-party candidate or sitting the election out. Faced with two candidates whose agenda they oppose, many Gen Zers will simply stay home.
But it’s not just young voters Biden has to contend with on this issue: 68 percent of all voters favor a cease-fire in Gaza, versus the 31 percent who support sending Israel weapons. And yet Biden continues to refuse to call for an enduring cease-fire.
It’s a two-way street – voters may have to vote for the lesser evil, but there’s a breaking point if leaders take their voters for granted and simply ignore their policy preferences.
Article with links to polls:
https://newrepublic.com/article/177048/biden-israel-ceasefire-young-voters-save-democracy
Article with links to polls:
https://newrepublic.com/article/177048/biden-israel-ceasefire-young-voters-save-democracy
Speaking as someone who not only favours a cease-fire in Gaza, but also thinks Israel should face consequences for what seems incontrovertibly to be war crimes, I can only say that anyone who agrees with this, but in any way votes (third party, sitting it out) against Biden in a Biden /Trump fight, will reap the whirlwind if they do not realise how very much worse that situation (among many, many others) would become under the Orange horror. At least Biden is trying, behind the scenes and with strictly limited success, to restrain Bibi. Despite Trump’s current dislike of Bibi, he would probably be perfectly content with (maybe even excited by) e.g. a tactical nuclear strike against Gaza.
Speaking as someone who not only favours a cease-fire in Gaza, but also thinks Israel should face consequences for what seems incontrovertibly to be war crimes, I can only say that anyone who agrees with this, but in any way votes (third party, sitting it out) against Biden in a Biden /Trump fight, will reap the whirlwind if they do not realise how very much worse that situation (among many, many others) would become under the Orange horror. At least Biden is trying, behind the scenes and with strictly limited success, to restrain Bibi. Despite Trump’s current dislike of Bibi, he would probably be perfectly content with (maybe even excited by) e.g. a tactical nuclear strike against Gaza.
It’s a two-way street – voters may have to vote for the lesser evil, but there’s a breaking point if leaders take their voters for granted and simply ignore their policy preferences.
I’m sure there’s a breaking point, but I notice you said “preferences” plural.
There are dozens of issues that matter to me at least as much as Israel/Gaza — the threat of fascism in our own nation, abortion rights and the treatment of women, voter rights, the fact that the country is carpeted in guns, climate change….
But Israel/Gaza has dominated — or okay, not dominated, because metaphorical usage or not, that suggests that the issue itself has agency, and I want to be clear that the agency is with some human being(s) — it has been MADE to dominate the top headlines of one of the main sources I go to for headlines — nbcnews dot com — EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. since October 7. Ukraine has never gotten remotely that kind of treatment. Abortion, voter rights, climate change — eh, barely back page news.
Practical politicians no doubt have to take into account the tendency of people to cut off their noses to spite their faces, which I would say is what you do if you vote for the greater evil candidate to spite the lesser evil one. But it also gets entwined with the question of how many voters are single-issue voters. I’m not. If people want to vote for Clickbait or any R in this country at this moment, for that matter, and for *whatever reason on earth* — then we are doomed regardless.
It’s a two-way street – voters may have to vote for the lesser evil, but there’s a breaking point if leaders take their voters for granted and simply ignore their policy preferences.
I’m sure there’s a breaking point, but I notice you said “preferences” plural.
There are dozens of issues that matter to me at least as much as Israel/Gaza — the threat of fascism in our own nation, abortion rights and the treatment of women, voter rights, the fact that the country is carpeted in guns, climate change….
But Israel/Gaza has dominated — or okay, not dominated, because metaphorical usage or not, that suggests that the issue itself has agency, and I want to be clear that the agency is with some human being(s) — it has been MADE to dominate the top headlines of one of the main sources I go to for headlines — nbcnews dot com — EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. since October 7. Ukraine has never gotten remotely that kind of treatment. Abortion, voter rights, climate change — eh, barely back page news.
Practical politicians no doubt have to take into account the tendency of people to cut off their noses to spite their faces, which I would say is what you do if you vote for the greater evil candidate to spite the lesser evil one. But it also gets entwined with the question of how many voters are single-issue voters. I’m not. If people want to vote for Clickbait or any R in this country at this moment, for that matter, and for *whatever reason on earth* — then we are doomed regardless.
GftNC said it better.
GftNC said it better.
I think my comment jumbled up two things that are really separate: so-called “lesser evil” voting, and single issue voting. Maybe that’s fair, because they seem to be jumbled up in this particular situation.
Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I don’t see life on earth as any better than “lesser evil” a lot of the time. It’s like that old story of the man who went looking for the perfect woman, and finally found her, but alas, she was looking for the perfect man.
Also, sometimes — at least in theory, though certainly not in our presidential politics in this era — the options are so alike, or so mixed up as to a voter’s policy preferences, that there’s something to weigh. I don’t see how anyone could look at Biden and Clickbait and see that. I guess not voting at all is another approach, but that seems equivalent to saying: there’s nothing to choose between them, and/or our system is so broken it doesn’t matter. I get that a little more than I get imagining that voting for Clickbait is a “solution” to Biden not giving you what you want on a particular issue. It’s not like better candidates are littering the streets, policy-wise.
I think my comment jumbled up two things that are really separate: so-called “lesser evil” voting, and single issue voting. Maybe that’s fair, because they seem to be jumbled up in this particular situation.
Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I don’t see life on earth as any better than “lesser evil” a lot of the time. It’s like that old story of the man who went looking for the perfect woman, and finally found her, but alas, she was looking for the perfect man.
Also, sometimes — at least in theory, though certainly not in our presidential politics in this era — the options are so alike, or so mixed up as to a voter’s policy preferences, that there’s something to weigh. I don’t see how anyone could look at Biden and Clickbait and see that. I guess not voting at all is another approach, but that seems equivalent to saying: there’s nothing to choose between them, and/or our system is so broken it doesn’t matter. I get that a little more than I get imagining that voting for Clickbait is a “solution” to Biden not giving you what you want on a particular issue. It’s not like better candidates are littering the streets, policy-wise.
There are dozens of issues that matter to me at least as much as Israel/Gaza — the threat of fascism in our own nation, abortion rights and the treatment of women, voter rights, the fact that the country is carpeted in guns, climate change….
I just want to say how passionately I agree with Janie on this. And there isn’t a thing, not any of the above, or Russia/Ukraine, or anything regarding foreign affairs anywhere in the world, which would not be made immeasurably worse if Trump were once again to win the presidency. God (in whom I do not believe) forbid – and may anybody who has access to whoever is flirting with the idea of enabling that cursed event please try to convince them otherwise, for the sake of their own issues and many others.
There are dozens of issues that matter to me at least as much as Israel/Gaza — the threat of fascism in our own nation, abortion rights and the treatment of women, voter rights, the fact that the country is carpeted in guns, climate change….
I just want to say how passionately I agree with Janie on this. And there isn’t a thing, not any of the above, or Russia/Ukraine, or anything regarding foreign affairs anywhere in the world, which would not be made immeasurably worse if Trump were once again to win the presidency. God (in whom I do not believe) forbid – and may anybody who has access to whoever is flirting with the idea of enabling that cursed event please try to convince them otherwise, for the sake of their own issues and many others.
It’s a two-way street – voters may have to vote for the lesser evil, but there’s a breaking point if leaders take their voters for granted and simply ignore their policy preferences.
Back to this. I have been going on from the point of view of how strange I think “lesser evil” voting is when (IMHO) life presents us with an endless menu of greater vs lesser evils, usually in rather complex ways, and we have to thread our way through the mess as best we can.
But insofar as novakant’s comment has to do with how “leaders” respond to one-issue or lesser evil voters, well, they, the “leaders,” have a dilemma too. In a huge, diverse democracy, voters are all over the map. Satisfy one group (and there are so many ways to slice the electorate it boggles the mind) and you’ll wake up to find another voting bloc furious at you from another direction.
I had never heard of the Quincy Institute, but I did follow novakant’s link. Yet another pundit with an opinion…. Everyone seems to want to prove they’re smart these days by explaining how deep the trouble is that Biden’s in. You would think that all Biden would have to do to show that he’s a better choice for president than Clickbait would be to make it clear that he’s competent enough to take out the trash without spilling it. But no….is this what’s called heightening the contradictions? Somehow I don’t think that’s going to work, in the sense of making the world a better place anyhow.
As a footnote, what are polls worth these days when no one will answer the phone to an unknown number? I don’t know, but I guess we’ll gradually find out.
It’s a two-way street – voters may have to vote for the lesser evil, but there’s a breaking point if leaders take their voters for granted and simply ignore their policy preferences.
Back to this. I have been going on from the point of view of how strange I think “lesser evil” voting is when (IMHO) life presents us with an endless menu of greater vs lesser evils, usually in rather complex ways, and we have to thread our way through the mess as best we can.
But insofar as novakant’s comment has to do with how “leaders” respond to one-issue or lesser evil voters, well, they, the “leaders,” have a dilemma too. In a huge, diverse democracy, voters are all over the map. Satisfy one group (and there are so many ways to slice the electorate it boggles the mind) and you’ll wake up to find another voting bloc furious at you from another direction.
I had never heard of the Quincy Institute, but I did follow novakant’s link. Yet another pundit with an opinion…. Everyone seems to want to prove they’re smart these days by explaining how deep the trouble is that Biden’s in. You would think that all Biden would have to do to show that he’s a better choice for president than Clickbait would be to make it clear that he’s competent enough to take out the trash without spilling it. But no….is this what’s called heightening the contradictions? Somehow I don’t think that’s going to work, in the sense of making the world a better place anyhow.
As a footnote, what are polls worth these days when no one will answer the phone to an unknown number? I don’t know, but I guess we’ll gradually find out.
You would think that all Biden would have to do to show that he’s a better choice for president than Clickbait would be to make it clear that he’s competent enough to take out the trash without spilling it. But no….is this what’s called heightening the contradictions? Somehow I don’t think that’s going to work, in the sense of making the world a better place anyhow.
I think basically they are living in a dream world.
In their dream world someone (almost always carefully unspecified) that they prefer could just step up and replace Biden. With no hard feelings, either from people who like, and vote for him in the primaries, nor from those with a different imaginary replacement. And that imaginary person would be a sure thing to beat Trump — because they hate Trump, and can’t imagine that people exist who prefer Biden to Trump, but would not prefer their white knight to Trump. Even though I’d give long odds that, whoever they imagine replacing Biden would push more low information voters towards Trump than she would attract.
Or, to be (sort of) fair, perhaps them somehow imagine that, if Biden was replaced, Trump voters would magically see the light and abandon him for a different Republican. In what universe???
You would think that all Biden would have to do to show that he’s a better choice for president than Clickbait would be to make it clear that he’s competent enough to take out the trash without spilling it. But no….is this what’s called heightening the contradictions? Somehow I don’t think that’s going to work, in the sense of making the world a better place anyhow.
I think basically they are living in a dream world.
In their dream world someone (almost always carefully unspecified) that they prefer could just step up and replace Biden. With no hard feelings, either from people who like, and vote for him in the primaries, nor from those with a different imaginary replacement. And that imaginary person would be a sure thing to beat Trump — because they hate Trump, and can’t imagine that people exist who prefer Biden to Trump, but would not prefer their white knight to Trump. Even though I’d give long odds that, whoever they imagine replacing Biden would push more low information voters towards Trump than she would attract.
Or, to be (sort of) fair, perhaps them somehow imagine that, if Biden was replaced, Trump voters would magically see the light and abandon him for a different Republican. In what universe???
If I had a vote in the next US presidential election, I would be a single-issue voter opposing fascism.
If I had a vote in the next US presidential election, I would be a single-issue voter opposing fascism.
I wonder how much of what the pollsters are seeing here is people treating their polls as a chance to give feedback about policy decisions that they hate, and not about how they will actually vote come election time? I think a lot of this is less about actual choices and more about trying to signal a shift in public opinion.
I don’t know that Biden is in deep peril. He’s likely in some peril. Where I think we’ll really see this play out, though, is in the House races, where reps that toe the Biden line may find themselves dropped in favor of a younger candidate that expresses more frustration with Israel. I think we’ll see a lot more tension between the pro-Israel and the Israel-critical caucuses on the left. I see a whole lot of this sort of infighting going on in social media posts.
It will be interesting to see if there is any sort of knock-on effect with other issues based on the caucuses becoming more divided. There will be a lot of other issues that shift based on the long tailcoats of I/P.
But I remain unconvinced that this all translates into deep electoral trouble for Biden. I think it actually translates into greater uncertainty, and how much trouble that translates into depends on whether we have Spraytan as the opponent again, or if someone like Haley ends up sneaking into the frontrunner’s position.
I wonder how much of what the pollsters are seeing here is people treating their polls as a chance to give feedback about policy decisions that they hate, and not about how they will actually vote come election time? I think a lot of this is less about actual choices and more about trying to signal a shift in public opinion.
I don’t know that Biden is in deep peril. He’s likely in some peril. Where I think we’ll really see this play out, though, is in the House races, where reps that toe the Biden line may find themselves dropped in favor of a younger candidate that expresses more frustration with Israel. I think we’ll see a lot more tension between the pro-Israel and the Israel-critical caucuses on the left. I see a whole lot of this sort of infighting going on in social media posts.
It will be interesting to see if there is any sort of knock-on effect with other issues based on the caucuses becoming more divided. There will be a lot of other issues that shift based on the long tailcoats of I/P.
But I remain unconvinced that this all translates into deep electoral trouble for Biden. I think it actually translates into greater uncertainty, and how much trouble that translates into depends on whether we have Spraytan as the opponent again, or if someone like Haley ends up sneaking into the frontrunner’s position.
I think Ukrainian war got tremendous amount of attention in the early days. It gradually receded as time passed. Gaza is getting more attention because Israel is involved and they are treated as practically part of Amerca, which means both an enormous amount of support and also the antiwar types ( like myself) who focus on the crimes of our own country also focus on it. But I think the news coverage will lessen if Biden succeeds in making it a kinder gentler war. But it has been one of the most intense bombing campaigns in many years, triggered by one of the largest terrorist attacks in many years, which combined with the fact that it is Israel means obsessive coverage.
I think Ukrainian war got tremendous amount of attention in the early days. It gradually receded as time passed. Gaza is getting more attention because Israel is involved and they are treated as practically part of Amerca, which means both an enormous amount of support and also the antiwar types ( like myself) who focus on the crimes of our own country also focus on it. But I think the news coverage will lessen if Biden succeeds in making it a kinder gentler war. But it has been one of the most intense bombing campaigns in many years, triggered by one of the largest terrorist attacks in many years, which combined with the fact that it is Israel means obsessive coverage.
it has been one of the most intense bombing campaigns in many years, triggered by one of the largest terrorist attacks in many years, which combined with the fact that it is Israel means obsessive coverage.
Given today’s short attention spans, even though Israel is involved it seems likely a new obsession will surface in a couple of months at the outside. Or maybe an old one (Biden’s age, perhaps?) will get recycled.
My personal preference (about which the universe cares not at all) would be a spate of headlines on Ukraine’s sudden, and unexpected, big gains. With second choice being TIFG getting tossed in the slammer for contempt of court. That would distract the media totally!
it has been one of the most intense bombing campaigns in many years, triggered by one of the largest terrorist attacks in many years, which combined with the fact that it is Israel means obsessive coverage.
Given today’s short attention spans, even though Israel is involved it seems likely a new obsession will surface in a couple of months at the outside. Or maybe an old one (Biden’s age, perhaps?) will get recycled.
My personal preference (about which the universe cares not at all) would be a spate of headlines on Ukraine’s sudden, and unexpected, big gains. With second choice being TIFG getting tossed in the slammer for contempt of court. That would distract the media totally!
Well, to-day the media will be all over the death of the original 9/11 guy – the one from/in 1973.
Well, to-day the media will be all over the death of the original 9/11 guy – the one from/in 1973.
I think the best thing for Rump would be to stick to the outlets that cater to his core supporters and otherwise lie low (a phrase which could be taken a number of ways in his case).
ISTM that the mushy middle has a short memory and that his numbers improve the less he’s seen spewing his bile on major news networks as he was while “serving” as POTUS.
The election is a year out. Who knows what sort of public antics he’ll pull in the meantime to turn off people who aren’t hardcore MAGA? I could see him running a campaign that’s negative for himself, at least for some portion of the electorate that isn’t already unequivocally opposed to him.
I’m not generally a big fan of negative campaigns, but I think the D machine as a whole should run lots of ads that are simply clips of Rump speaking his own worst words. Make damned sure everyone who is at all persuadable has it as fresh in mind as possible what a horrible POS the man is.
This presidential election is a contest to be the more abstract alternative to the candidate you can’t stand.
I think the best thing for Rump would be to stick to the outlets that cater to his core supporters and otherwise lie low (a phrase which could be taken a number of ways in his case).
ISTM that the mushy middle has a short memory and that his numbers improve the less he’s seen spewing his bile on major news networks as he was while “serving” as POTUS.
The election is a year out. Who knows what sort of public antics he’ll pull in the meantime to turn off people who aren’t hardcore MAGA? I could see him running a campaign that’s negative for himself, at least for some portion of the electorate that isn’t already unequivocally opposed to him.
I’m not generally a big fan of negative campaigns, but I think the D machine as a whole should run lots of ads that are simply clips of Rump speaking his own worst words. Make damned sure everyone who is at all persuadable has it as fresh in mind as possible what a horrible POS the man is.
This presidential election is a contest to be the more abstract alternative to the candidate you can’t stand.
I think the best thing for Rump would be to stick to the outlets that cater to his core supporters and otherwise lie low
But, as with taking advice from his lawyers, it’s something he is basically incapable of doing.
the D machine as a whole should run lots of ads that are simply clips of Rump speaking his own worst words.
The trick there being to select a few, out of the vast array of possibilities, and hammer them repeatedly. Specifically, his pushing for something which will motivate people who are not MAGA to turn out and vote against him.** Repetition is what sells.
** Maybe a nice “ban contraceptives” rant (if a good one is available) — something which reflects taking away stuff from the public.
I think the best thing for Rump would be to stick to the outlets that cater to his core supporters and otherwise lie low
But, as with taking advice from his lawyers, it’s something he is basically incapable of doing.
the D machine as a whole should run lots of ads that are simply clips of Rump speaking his own worst words.
The trick there being to select a few, out of the vast array of possibilities, and hammer them repeatedly. Specifically, his pushing for something which will motivate people who are not MAGA to turn out and vote against him.** Repetition is what sells.
** Maybe a nice “ban contraceptives” rant (if a good one is available) — something which reflects taking away stuff from the public.
One could revive the old “X vs. X” interview format with completely opposite statements from the same guy.
(Iirc Colbert did that at least once)
One could revive the old “X vs. X” interview format with completely opposite statements from the same guy.
(Iirc Colbert did that at least once)
Power targets–the reasoning behind why so many high rises are being blown up. Basically, it is an attempt to pressure Hamas by hurting civilians. There’s a word for that which starts with a t.
https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/
Power targets–the reasoning behind why so many high rises are being blown up. Basically, it is an attempt to pressure Hamas by hurting civilians. There’s a word for that which starts with a t.
https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/
Ah, RIP the wonderful Shane MacGowan. I link the clip from the documentary on Danny Boy I have mentioned on ObWi before. I love how he thinks his eyes can’t be seen because of the sunglasses, but they can of course, and you can see how moved he is by what some (but not me, for sure, and not him or the other wonderful artists in the documentary) consider a corny old song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEKs2v5dF9M
Ah, RIP the wonderful Shane MacGowan. I link the clip from the documentary on Danny Boy I have mentioned on ObWi before. I love how he thinks his eyes can’t be seen because of the sunglasses, but they can of course, and you can see how moved he is by what some (but not me, for sure, and not him or the other wonderful artists in the documentary) consider a corny old song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEKs2v5dF9M
MacGowan just wanted to get into the queue early to punch Kissinger in the face.
MacGowan just wanted to get into the queue early to punch Kissinger in the face.
This is worth reading on him, from today’s Guardian.
I think it’s slightly misleading about his background: his parents might have been middle-middle class, but he was brought up for his first 6 years on a farm in an extraordinary version of rural Ireland – he said that he was given his first alcoholic drink before he was 6, and was drinking regularly. However, the fact that once back in England, even after going to prep school, he won a scholarship to Westminster shows how very clever he must have been. I once had a ward at Westminster, it is the most extraordinary school, at times I found it almost more like a good university. Unsurprisingly, he only lasted there just over a year before being expelled for drugs.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/30/shane-macgowan-the-poet-musician-of-dereliction-who-became-a-mythic-figure
This is worth reading on him, from today’s Guardian.
I think it’s slightly misleading about his background: his parents might have been middle-middle class, but he was brought up for his first 6 years on a farm in an extraordinary version of rural Ireland – he said that he was given his first alcoholic drink before he was 6, and was drinking regularly. However, the fact that once back in England, even after going to prep school, he won a scholarship to Westminster shows how very clever he must have been. I once had a ward at Westminster, it is the most extraordinary school, at times I found it almost more like a good university. Unsurprisingly, he only lasted there just over a year before being expelled for drugs.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/30/shane-macgowan-the-poet-musician-of-dereliction-who-became-a-mythic-figure
Basically, it is an attempt to pressure Hamas by hurting civilians. There’s a word for that which starts with a t.
There’s also a word for that which starts with an F: futile. Since civilians, and civilian lives, are way, way down on Hamas’ list of priorities.
Basically, it is an attempt to pressure Hamas by hurting civilians. There’s a word for that which starts with a t.
There’s also a word for that which starts with an F: futile. Since civilians, and civilian lives, are way, way down on Hamas’ list of priorities.
From another piece on Shane MacGowan, by Will Hodgkinson who interviewed him several years ago in the same tumbledown cottage referred to. I was wrong, he was 4 when he had his first alcoholic drink:
It was at the tumbledown cottage that MacGowan discovered drinking — at the age of four. Four years later he was conducting animated conversations with the farmyard animals after getting hold of a bottle of whisky. “I couldn’t wait to grow up,” he said of throwing himself toward alcoholism. “I was going to the pub when I was a kid. My uncle who looked after the farm would bring me bottles of Guinness from the boozer. I would drink them very slowly as the night went on.”
MacGowan’s stroke of genius, which led to beloved Pogues songs such as Sally MacLennane, A Pair of Brown Eyes and, of course, Fairytale of New York, was to combine a thoroughly Irish literary, mystical, boozy spirit with the raw anger and energy of punk. As the Pogues took off, first in the Irish pubs and clubs of London and then across the world, and in America in particular, MacGowan got the adventure he had been waiting for. “Everything was exciting,” he told me in Dublin. “The first time we stayed in a hotel and discovered room service — that was exciting. We took Irish music and speeded it up a bit, which you can hear in A Pair of Brown Eyes — exciting. It changed our lives.”
Something about MacGowan was resistant to the charade that showbusiness inevitably brings, though. “Once Fairytale got big it was really boring, and you get real sick of it. You’re walking out on stage and they’re applauding like mad before you’ve done anything, yeah? It gets to be frightening.”
From another piece on Shane MacGowan, by Will Hodgkinson who interviewed him several years ago in the same tumbledown cottage referred to. I was wrong, he was 4 when he had his first alcoholic drink:
It was at the tumbledown cottage that MacGowan discovered drinking — at the age of four. Four years later he was conducting animated conversations with the farmyard animals after getting hold of a bottle of whisky. “I couldn’t wait to grow up,” he said of throwing himself toward alcoholism. “I was going to the pub when I was a kid. My uncle who looked after the farm would bring me bottles of Guinness from the boozer. I would drink them very slowly as the night went on.”
MacGowan’s stroke of genius, which led to beloved Pogues songs such as Sally MacLennane, A Pair of Brown Eyes and, of course, Fairytale of New York, was to combine a thoroughly Irish literary, mystical, boozy spirit with the raw anger and energy of punk. As the Pogues took off, first in the Irish pubs and clubs of London and then across the world, and in America in particular, MacGowan got the adventure he had been waiting for. “Everything was exciting,” he told me in Dublin. “The first time we stayed in a hotel and discovered room service — that was exciting. We took Irish music and speeded it up a bit, which you can hear in A Pair of Brown Eyes — exciting. It changed our lives.”
Something about MacGowan was resistant to the charade that showbusiness inevitably brings, though. “Once Fairytale got big it was really boring, and you get real sick of it. You’re walking out on stage and they’re applauding like mad before you’ve done anything, yeah? It gets to be frightening.”
Morality aside, from a marketing point of view, it’s probably not the most effective strategy to ignore or belittle the concerns of voters who are on the fence, especially if they are mostly young people.
And if we don’t expect Palestinian Americans to vote for Biden, we should ask ourselves what the Democrats could do to change that – hint: change tone and policy.
I’m still confused why everybody should just accept Biden’s outdated ME policy as the lesser evil and not challenge him – his own administration is doing it:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/dissent-generation-gap-biden-administration-israel-hamas-war-rcna127358
Morality aside, from a marketing point of view, it’s probably not the most effective strategy to ignore or belittle the concerns of voters who are on the fence, especially if they are mostly young people.
And if we don’t expect Palestinian Americans to vote for Biden, we should ask ourselves what the Democrats could do to change that – hint: change tone and policy.
I’m still confused why everybody should just accept Biden’s outdated ME policy as the lesser evil and not challenge him – his own administration is doing it:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/dissent-generation-gap-biden-administration-israel-hamas-war-rcna127358
novakant: either we’re talking past each other, or you need to clarify what you mean by “challenge.”
I don’t have time to reread the thread, but I don’t remember anyone saying Biden shouldn’t be challenged on his ME policy. Nor, in my reading of people’s comments, did anyone suggest accepting the ME policy on its own as the “lesser evil.”
I thought we were talking about whether to vote for Biden or not, especially given the likely alternative. I.e., “lesser evil” means which candidate you choose, explicitly relating to a whole constellation of policies, and not just one. As I tried to say already, there’s inevitably going to be a mix of greater and lesser evils in relation to any particular voter’s mix of policy preferences. Or to put it a different way, ME is not the only policy implicated in who you vote for.
Of course, it depends on what you mean by “challenge.” Speak out, pressure the administration, protest in the streets if you want to “challenge” a specific policy: I certainly never intended to say (I think I explicitly said the opposite) that people shouldn’t make their displeasure with a particular policy known.
But if by challenge you mean a primary challenge, I think that gets the same result as not voting for him in a two-way contest, by a different pathway: it hands the election over to Clickbait.
novakant: either we’re talking past each other, or you need to clarify what you mean by “challenge.”
I don’t have time to reread the thread, but I don’t remember anyone saying Biden shouldn’t be challenged on his ME policy. Nor, in my reading of people’s comments, did anyone suggest accepting the ME policy on its own as the “lesser evil.”
I thought we were talking about whether to vote for Biden or not, especially given the likely alternative. I.e., “lesser evil” means which candidate you choose, explicitly relating to a whole constellation of policies, and not just one. As I tried to say already, there’s inevitably going to be a mix of greater and lesser evils in relation to any particular voter’s mix of policy preferences. Or to put it a different way, ME is not the only policy implicated in who you vote for.
Of course, it depends on what you mean by “challenge.” Speak out, pressure the administration, protest in the streets if you want to “challenge” a specific policy: I certainly never intended to say (I think I explicitly said the opposite) that people shouldn’t make their displeasure with a particular policy known.
But if by challenge you mean a primary challenge, I think that gets the same result as not voting for him in a two-way contest, by a different pathway: it hands the election over to Clickbait.
Shorter me:
novakant: I’m still confused why everybody should just accept Biden’s outdated ME policy as the lesser evil and not challenge him – his own administration is doing it
Nobody said this.
Shorter me:
novakant: I’m still confused why everybody should just accept Biden’s outdated ME policy as the lesser evil and not challenge him – his own administration is doing it
Nobody said this.
I would have favored someone challenging Biden if I had a time machine and could go back far enough to make it practical or far better, I wish Biden had decided right from the start to be a one termer and then other Democrats would be competing to be the nominee. Too late now.
I am not sure, supposing a primary challenge from a serious candidate were possible, if it would increase the chances of Trump winning, but since it can’t happen, it’s just a theoretical debate. Carter was challenged by Ted Kennedy, but Carter was presiding over very high inflation and interest rates and there was the Iran hostage crisis ( probably made worse by sabotage from Republicans— I believe that conspiracy theory) and I don’t think Kennedy’s challenge made the difference.
I would have favored someone challenging Biden if I had a time machine and could go back far enough to make it practical or far better, I wish Biden had decided right from the start to be a one termer and then other Democrats would be competing to be the nominee. Too late now.
I am not sure, supposing a primary challenge from a serious candidate were possible, if it would increase the chances of Trump winning, but since it can’t happen, it’s just a theoretical debate. Carter was challenged by Ted Kennedy, but Carter was presiding over very high inflation and interest rates and there was the Iran hostage crisis ( probably made worse by sabotage from Republicans— I believe that conspiracy theory) and I don’t think Kennedy’s challenge made the difference.
if I had a time machine and could go back far enough to make it practical or far better, I wish Biden had decided right from the start to be a one termer
I’m thinking that, if he had, it would have made his dickering with (arm twisting of) Congress to get things done notably harder. I’m not a political guru, heaven knows. But my sense is that it makes a difference. Especially if you were to say that you are going to be a single term President.
if I had a time machine and could go back far enough to make it practical or far better, I wish Biden had decided right from the start to be a one termer
I’m thinking that, if he had, it would have made his dickering with (arm twisting of) Congress to get things done notably harder. I’m not a political guru, heaven knows. But my sense is that it makes a difference. Especially if you were to say that you are going to be a single term President.
I have heard things like that before and it seems weird— people also say the same about second term Presidents, as though they win and instantly become lame ducks. But it is supposed to be the party and whatever it loosely stands for that one is supporting. So Biden is in the WH pushing for a Democratic agenda with the understanding that his successor , whoever that is, will have the same agenda, roughly speaking.
Again, of course, water under the bridge. But I think I remuneration people looking at Biden’s age in 2020 and saying that he could be a 1 termer, saving us from Trump and then passing the baton and in the early days it was not certain he would run for a second term. Bernie even said when this was discussed that if Biden chose to run again, he would not run and Biden was grateful. I wouldn’t want Sanders to run again myself— I do have a concern about all these very old politicians sticking around and while Bernie is still in good shape and I think should stick around as Senator if he wants, until he starts slowing down, as far as Presidents are concerned I wish the baton would get passed.
Too late now.
I have heard things like that before and it seems weird— people also say the same about second term Presidents, as though they win and instantly become lame ducks. But it is supposed to be the party and whatever it loosely stands for that one is supporting. So Biden is in the WH pushing for a Democratic agenda with the understanding that his successor , whoever that is, will have the same agenda, roughly speaking.
Again, of course, water under the bridge. But I think I remuneration people looking at Biden’s age in 2020 and saying that he could be a 1 termer, saving us from Trump and then passing the baton and in the early days it was not certain he would run for a second term. Bernie even said when this was discussed that if Biden chose to run again, he would not run and Biden was grateful. I wouldn’t want Sanders to run again myself— I do have a concern about all these very old politicians sticking around and while Bernie is still in good shape and I think should stick around as Senator if he wants, until he starts slowing down, as far as Presidents are concerned I wish the baton would get passed.
Too late now.
“ Renumeration” in my previous post was the iPad’s way of correcting whatever typo I made when spelling “remember”
“ Renumeration” in my previous post was the iPad’s way of correcting whatever typo I made when spelling “remember”
probably made worse by sabotage from Republicans— I believe that conspiracy theory
I thought this was established fact? Proof that Reagan catspaws made sure that the hostages weren’t released til after the election – is that not so?
Also, Janie, novakant might be referring to my saying that at least Biden’s policy with Israel was producing a certain, very limited amount of restraint (although obviously the hostages’ relatives have also been instrumental), whereas Trump would only make things worse. But yes, this certainly was only one way, and far from the most consequential, in which I was proposing Biden as the lesser evil.
probably made worse by sabotage from Republicans— I believe that conspiracy theory
I thought this was established fact? Proof that Reagan catspaws made sure that the hostages weren’t released til after the election – is that not so?
Also, Janie, novakant might be referring to my saying that at least Biden’s policy with Israel was producing a certain, very limited amount of restraint (although obviously the hostages’ relatives have also been instrumental), whereas Trump would only make things worse. But yes, this certainly was only one way, and far from the most consequential, in which I was proposing Biden as the lesser evil.
I’m getting pretty tired of this modern adaptation of King Lear.
I’m getting pretty tired of this modern adaptation of King Lear.
“ thought this was established fact? Proof that Reagan catspaws made sure that the hostages weren’t released til after the election – is that not so?”
I think so, but can’t remember for sure. I’m feeling too lazy to look. It was a conspiracy theory for a long time, but i don’t reject CT’s simply for being CT’s. I just reject the ones which seem clearly idiotic, remain agnostic on some and embrace a few others.
“ thought this was established fact? Proof that Reagan catspaws made sure that the hostages weren’t released til after the election – is that not so?”
I think so, but can’t remember for sure. I’m feeling too lazy to look. It was a conspiracy theory for a long time, but i don’t reject CT’s simply for being CT’s. I just reject the ones which seem clearly idiotic, remain agnostic on some and embrace a few others.
I’m getting pretty tired of this modern adaptation of King Lear.
Yep.
I’m getting pretty tired of this modern adaptation of King Lear.
Yep.
But Lear was – despite his 80 years of age – still very fit. His daughters complained that he always made too much noise when coming home in the evening from wild boar hunting. And in the end he is still capable of carrying his fully grown dead daughter in his arms (not over his shoulders). It’s an old stage joke that the most important thing for an actor to play Lear is to find out how heavy his Cordelia is.
But Lear was – despite his 80 years of age – still very fit. His daughters complained that he always made too much noise when coming home in the evening from wild boar hunting. And in the end he is still capable of carrying his fully grown dead daughter in his arms (not over his shoulders). It’s an old stage joke that the most important thing for an actor to play Lear is to find out how heavy his Cordelia is.
Well, well. Not before time:
The Biden administration has informed Israel that Washington will impose visa bans in the next few weeks on Israeli extremist settlers engaged in violence against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank, a senior state department official said.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, in his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and his war cabinet have let them know that the United States will take its own action against an undisclosed number of individuals.
The West Bank, among the territories where Palestinians seek statehood, has experienced a surge of violence in recent months amid expanding Jewish settlements and a nearly decade-old impasse in US-sponsored peacemaking.
The violence, at a more-than-15-year high this year, surged further after Israel hurtled into a new war in Gaza in response to Palestinian militant group Hamas unleashing the deadliest day in Israel’s history on 7 October.
Asked for a response, Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said he had no comment on the matter but said that Israel firmly condemned any vigilantism or hooliganism or attempts by individuals to take the law into their own hands.
The United States has repeatedly expressed its concern over the rising violence in the West Bank, saying it must stop. Joe Biden, in an 18 November Washington Post opinion piece threatened to take action against the perpetrators.
“I have been emphatic with Israel’s leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable. The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank,” the US president wrote.
The state department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said Washington wanted Israel to prosecute perpetrators but had yet to see such a step. The bans could come in the next few weeks, the official said.
Daily settler attacks have more than doubled, UN figures show, since Hamas, which controls the coastal enclave of Gaza to Israel’s southwest, killed 1,200 Israelis and took about 240 hostage. Israel has since bombed and invaded Gaza, killing more than 15,000 people.
Well, well. Not before time:
The Biden administration has informed Israel that Washington will impose visa bans in the next few weeks on Israeli extremist settlers engaged in violence against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank, a senior state department official said.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, in his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and his war cabinet have let them know that the United States will take its own action against an undisclosed number of individuals.
The West Bank, among the territories where Palestinians seek statehood, has experienced a surge of violence in recent months amid expanding Jewish settlements and a nearly decade-old impasse in US-sponsored peacemaking.
The violence, at a more-than-15-year high this year, surged further after Israel hurtled into a new war in Gaza in response to Palestinian militant group Hamas unleashing the deadliest day in Israel’s history on 7 October.
Asked for a response, Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said he had no comment on the matter but said that Israel firmly condemned any vigilantism or hooliganism or attempts by individuals to take the law into their own hands.
The United States has repeatedly expressed its concern over the rising violence in the West Bank, saying it must stop. Joe Biden, in an 18 November Washington Post opinion piece threatened to take action against the perpetrators.
“I have been emphatic with Israel’s leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable. The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank,” the US president wrote.
The state department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said Washington wanted Israel to prosecute perpetrators but had yet to see such a step. The bans could come in the next few weeks, the official said.
Daily settler attacks have more than doubled, UN figures show, since Hamas, which controls the coastal enclave of Gaza to Israel’s southwest, killed 1,200 Israelis and took about 240 hostage. Israel has since bombed and invaded Gaza, killing more than 15,000 people.
…thought this was established fact? Proof that Reagan catspaws made sure that the hostages weren’t released til after the election – is that not so?
IIRC, lots of allegations and circumstantial evidence but no “smoking gun”. My own favorite theory is that the Iranians did it on their own, along with a back-door message to the effect of “Let’s talk about ways to get around the arms embargo.”
…thought this was established fact? Proof that Reagan catspaws made sure that the hostages weren’t released til after the election – is that not so?
IIRC, lots of allegations and circumstantial evidence but no “smoking gun”. My own favorite theory is that the Iranians did it on their own, along with a back-door message to the effect of “Let’s talk about ways to get around the arms embargo.”
But Lear was – despite his 80 years of age – still very fit.
“But”? I thought that was the point of nous’s comment.
But Lear was – despite his 80 years of age – still very fit.
“But”? I thought that was the point of nous’s comment.
I.e. that Biden is quite fit for the job he is doing and wants to keep doing. This is in the back of my mind every time someone brings up his age, or that he should have just done one term, or etc. I am not sure anyone else living could have handled Congress the way he has, and there’s a lot else that I think he’s been doing right as well. But it’s all bitching and moaning in every direction, depending on what people’s personal hobbyhorse is.
But enough. If Mr. Bumble wants to say “the electorate is an ass,” I won’t disagree with him. Instead I’ll go cook dinner.
I.e. that Biden is quite fit for the job he is doing and wants to keep doing. This is in the back of my mind every time someone brings up his age, or that he should have just done one term, or etc. I am not sure anyone else living could have handled Congress the way he has, and there’s a lot else that I think he’s been doing right as well. But it’s all bitching and moaning in every direction, depending on what people’s personal hobbyhorse is.
But enough. If Mr. Bumble wants to say “the electorate is an ass,” I won’t disagree with him. Instead I’ll go cook dinner.
Pretty recent (May 2023) return to the subject of the Iran hostages.
Pretty recent (May 2023) return to the subject of the Iran hostages.
Been thinking about Lear, and the parallel that resonates most deeply with me (not necessarily the one that prompted my comment) is the way that the senior party leadership wants to allot power in line with the junior party members’ avowals of loyalty to and appreciation for the legacy that they hope to receive.
Been thinking about Lear, and the parallel that resonates most deeply with me (not necessarily the one that prompted my comment) is the way that the senior party leadership wants to allot power in line with the junior party members’ avowals of loyalty to and appreciation for the legacy that they hope to receive.
When I last looked it up, more than a year ago (maybe two), I got the impression that it was a known fact. I had no idea that there was still no actual proof. However, from everything in Janie’s link, it really does look pretty conclusive. In some English legal processes (and maybe American ones too?), a verdict can be made either “beyond a reasonable doubt”, or at a slightly lower bar “on the balance of probabilities”. I’d say it now easily clears the latter, and approaches pretty damn close to the former.
When I last looked it up, more than a year ago (maybe two), I got the impression that it was a known fact. I had no idea that there was still no actual proof. However, from everything in Janie’s link, it really does look pretty conclusive. In some English legal processes (and maybe American ones too?), a verdict can be made either “beyond a reasonable doubt”, or at a slightly lower bar “on the balance of probabilities”. I’d say it now easily clears the latter, and approaches pretty damn close to the former.
If Mr. Bumble wants to say “the electorate is an ass,” I won’t disagree with him. Instead I’ll go cook dinner.
Ah! So good to see a lady who has her priorities straight.
If Mr. Bumble wants to say “the electorate is an ass,” I won’t disagree with him. Instead I’ll go cook dinner.
Ah! So good to see a lady who has her priorities straight.
In some English legal processes (and maybe American ones too?), a verdict can be made either “beyond a reasonable doubt”, or at a slightly lower bar “on the balance of probabilities”.
IANAL, but here’s my understanding. In American criminal cases, the requirement is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But in civil cases, “a preponderance of the evidence” is sufficient.
In some English legal processes (and maybe American ones too?), a verdict can be made either “beyond a reasonable doubt”, or at a slightly lower bar “on the balance of probabilities”.
IANAL, but here’s my understanding. In American criminal cases, the requirement is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But in civil cases, “a preponderance of the evidence” is sufficient.
Some proceedings I’ve been involved in used the standard of “comfortable satisfaction” favoured by the CAS. I’d say R interference to delay the release of Iran’s hostages has been proved to that standard.
Some proceedings I’ve been involved in used the standard of “comfortable satisfaction” favoured by the CAS. I’d say R interference to delay the release of Iran’s hostages has been proved to that standard.
Some proceedings I’ve been involved in used the standard of “comfortable satisfaction” favoured by the CAS. I’d say R interference to delay the release of Iran’s hostages has been proved to that standard.
Some proceedings I’ve been involved in used the standard of “comfortable satisfaction” favoured by the CAS. I’d say R interference to delay the release of Iran’s hostages has been proved to that standard.
For anybody who continues to be even remotely interested in the story of the Bulstrode paper, this today from Ian Leslie:
I want to pick out one email in particular, from an historian at a prestigious university (he asked to stay anon for now although he intends to go public on this at some point). Extract here, with permission:
I agree with every word you have written, and have been watching this shameful episode unfold with mounting horror. As you say, if this continues it will completely undermine any residual respect the general public might have for academic history as a discipline…
I thought Bulstrode’s original article provided worrying evidence of a decline of basic historical logic – it is full of non-sequiturs and dreamy associations of things for which there is no evidence that any real connection existed at all. However it was just possible to believe that it wasn’t a product of deliberate academic misconduct so much as poor historical practice, wishful thinking and the temptations of ‘impact’ and historical celebrity…I had thought, naively, that the polite and well-reasoned criticism by Howes and Jelf’s review of her evidence would produce at least a partial retraction of the article, and an admission of carelessness and misreading of the evidence…What we have seen instead alarms me far more than the original article did. The editors of the journal that was foolish enough to publish it, and who would share in the shame of its retraction, were hardly the best people to conduct an impartial evaluation of its worth, but even so what they have produced is jaw-droppingly awful – a combination of active intellectual dishonesty, obfuscatory drivel and political posturing.
The statement from the British Society for the History of Science is even more shocking, partly because it purports to speak for an entire field, but also because they have nothing to offer but arguments from authority – simultaneously intellectually feeble and menacing…Much as the journal editors did they are effectively warning all those who criticised Bulstrode’s work to keep off the grass, or face accusations of racism. I find that quite astonishing in what is meant to be a representative academic body…[T]here are some academic historians who are as horrified by this as you are…I don’t see why it should only be junior, untenured scholars and the retired who put their heads above the parapet on this issue. I have also been writing to those historians I know who do work in this or related areas. What I earnestly hope is that there will be some kind of organised response from people who cannot simply be dismissed as ‘History Reclaimed’ reactionaries.
I have to say, even despite reading with respect what nous said about this (and he knows a hell of a lot more about academic verification etc than I do), I couldn’t help thinking from what the original analysis laid out that the paper seemed an awful lot more like “speculative fiction”, or at least speculation, than history. However, those of us with no skin in the game shall no doubt see in due time with interest how this all plays out.
For anybody who continues to be even remotely interested in the story of the Bulstrode paper, this today from Ian Leslie:
I want to pick out one email in particular, from an historian at a prestigious university (he asked to stay anon for now although he intends to go public on this at some point). Extract here, with permission:
I agree with every word you have written, and have been watching this shameful episode unfold with mounting horror. As you say, if this continues it will completely undermine any residual respect the general public might have for academic history as a discipline…
I thought Bulstrode’s original article provided worrying evidence of a decline of basic historical logic – it is full of non-sequiturs and dreamy associations of things for which there is no evidence that any real connection existed at all. However it was just possible to believe that it wasn’t a product of deliberate academic misconduct so much as poor historical practice, wishful thinking and the temptations of ‘impact’ and historical celebrity…I had thought, naively, that the polite and well-reasoned criticism by Howes and Jelf’s review of her evidence would produce at least a partial retraction of the article, and an admission of carelessness and misreading of the evidence…What we have seen instead alarms me far more than the original article did. The editors of the journal that was foolish enough to publish it, and who would share in the shame of its retraction, were hardly the best people to conduct an impartial evaluation of its worth, but even so what they have produced is jaw-droppingly awful – a combination of active intellectual dishonesty, obfuscatory drivel and political posturing.
The statement from the British Society for the History of Science is even more shocking, partly because it purports to speak for an entire field, but also because they have nothing to offer but arguments from authority – simultaneously intellectually feeble and menacing…Much as the journal editors did they are effectively warning all those who criticised Bulstrode’s work to keep off the grass, or face accusations of racism. I find that quite astonishing in what is meant to be a representative academic body…[T]here are some academic historians who are as horrified by this as you are…I don’t see why it should only be junior, untenured scholars and the retired who put their heads above the parapet on this issue. I have also been writing to those historians I know who do work in this or related areas. What I earnestly hope is that there will be some kind of organised response from people who cannot simply be dismissed as ‘History Reclaimed’ reactionaries.
I have to say, even despite reading with respect what nous said about this (and he knows a hell of a lot more about academic verification etc than I do), I couldn’t help thinking from what the original analysis laid out that the paper seemed an awful lot more like “speculative fiction”, or at least speculation, than history. However, those of us with no skin in the game shall no doubt see in due time with interest how this all plays out.
Not being an academic, and generally less apt to fall into line in praise of people like Robin DiAngelo or, let’s say, Meghan Markle than most folks whose views I otherwise agree with, I’ve been hesitant to comment on the Ian Leslie essay. (As a reminder: here.) But since GftNC has offered another (and to my mind much more sober) commentary, I thought I’d chime in.
Leslie’s essay “64 Reasons to Celebrate Paul McCartney” is a favorite of mine, but this one makes me uneasy. It feels representative of a variant of Poe’s law: his chortling superiority makes it even harder than it might otherwise be to tell whether he’s just grinding an axe, or has a point that I should take seriously.
The best example is a passage where he does something very like what he’s eviscerating Bulstrode for (emphasis mine):
The footnote says this:
Ironically, elsewhere in the essay Leslie writes, “The reviewers cite Howes and Jelf in the footnotes but don’t stoop to mention them in the text.” But he does something similar: he admits only in the footnotes that he made up what he said about the number of black people in London in the mid-fourteenth century. I mean, everybody knows that must be true, right? Except (only in the footnote), apparently no one does really know. He mentions a consensus, but he doesn’t even have a reference for that, because he only “thinks” that that’s what the consensus is.
He may be right about Bulstrode and the dire state of contemporary historical scholarship, but if I’m ever convinced of it (and I could be fairly easily), it will be despite this essay, not because of it.
Not being an academic, and generally less apt to fall into line in praise of people like Robin DiAngelo or, let’s say, Meghan Markle than most folks whose views I otherwise agree with, I’ve been hesitant to comment on the Ian Leslie essay. (As a reminder: here.) But since GftNC has offered another (and to my mind much more sober) commentary, I thought I’d chime in.
Leslie’s essay “64 Reasons to Celebrate Paul McCartney” is a favorite of mine, but this one makes me uneasy. It feels representative of a variant of Poe’s law: his chortling superiority makes it even harder than it might otherwise be to tell whether he’s just grinding an axe, or has a point that I should take seriously.
The best example is a passage where he does something very like what he’s eviscerating Bulstrode for (emphasis mine):
The footnote says this:
Ironically, elsewhere in the essay Leslie writes, “The reviewers cite Howes and Jelf in the footnotes but don’t stoop to mention them in the text.” But he does something similar: he admits only in the footnotes that he made up what he said about the number of black people in London in the mid-fourteenth century. I mean, everybody knows that must be true, right? Except (only in the footnote), apparently no one does really know. He mentions a consensus, but he doesn’t even have a reference for that, because he only “thinks” that that’s what the consensus is.
He may be right about Bulstrode and the dire state of contemporary historical scholarship, but if I’m ever convinced of it (and I could be fairly easily), it will be despite this essay, not because of it.
But it’s all bitching and moaning in every direction, depending on what people’s personal hobbyhorse is.
Gaza is not my, or anyone’s hobby horse. It’s a humanitarian catastrophe.
I understand the fear of Trump getting elected in 2024, but keeping stum in the face of a massive policy failure and hoping for the best is not a strategy to prevent that, in fact it’s counterproductive.
But it’s all bitching and moaning in every direction, depending on what people’s personal hobbyhorse is.
Gaza is not my, or anyone’s hobby horse. It’s a humanitarian catastrophe.
I understand the fear of Trump getting elected in 2024, but keeping stum in the face of a massive policy failure and hoping for the best is not a strategy to prevent that, in fact it’s counterproductive.
https://www.euronews.com/2023/12/02/unicef-gaza-strip-most-dangerous-place-in-the-world-for-children
https://www.euronews.com/2023/12/02/unicef-gaza-strip-most-dangerous-place-in-the-world-for-children
keeping stum in the face of a massive policy failure
Again, who suggested this?
*****
And as for “hobbyhorses,” it was a casual usage, but climate change is also a humanitarian catastrophe, now and in the making; Putin’s attempt to starve a good chunk of the world and turn Ukraine into rubble is a humanitarian catastrophe; the loss of abortion rights in America is a slower-moving kind of human catastrophe; i could go on, Donald could list several that I’ve paid very little attention to (Yemen, Syria), so could anyone else here, probably. Different people feel different catastrophes more urgently; Gaza is far from being the only one, and that was my point.
Twisting people’s words, or making them up, is not “argument.” You’re not helping your credibility by doing it.
keeping stum in the face of a massive policy failure
Again, who suggested this?
*****
And as for “hobbyhorses,” it was a casual usage, but climate change is also a humanitarian catastrophe, now and in the making; Putin’s attempt to starve a good chunk of the world and turn Ukraine into rubble is a humanitarian catastrophe; the loss of abortion rights in America is a slower-moving kind of human catastrophe; i could go on, Donald could list several that I’ve paid very little attention to (Yemen, Syria), so could anyone else here, probably. Different people feel different catastrophes more urgently; Gaza is far from being the only one, and that was my point.
Twisting people’s words, or making them up, is not “argument.” You’re not helping your credibility by doing it.
And you (novakant) took my “bitching and moaning” comment out of the context in which I wrote it, which was that people (not meaning here, particularly) are complaining about every damned thing Biden does and is. Like his age. It wasn’t directed at concern over Gaza, except by several degrees of free association.
And you (novakant) took my “bitching and moaning” comment out of the context in which I wrote it, which was that people (not meaning here, particularly) are complaining about every damned thing Biden does and is. Like his age. It wasn’t directed at concern over Gaza, except by several degrees of free association.
You know, I may be wrong, but Pro Bono’s reaction a few days ago, and Janie’s upthread, make me wonder whether I posted that initial Ian Leslie piece on the Bulstrode paper at all, or whether I just assumed I had, and posted what I thought was a follow-up which also looked at the issue of the black people in 14th century England. Anyway, since I refer to the original piece on Bulstrode @11.10 a few comments ago, I post it here just in case a) I never posted it originally, and b) anybody is still interested! Also, I do think the issue of “being seduced by story” is an interesting one.
This is Henry Cort. You probably haven’t heard of him unless you’re an Industrial Revolution nerd (I hadn’t until this week). He isn’t as well known as James Watt or Joseph Priestley – he wasn’t one of the Lunar Men – but Cort played a critical part in the creation of the modern world. He invented a method of production which made it much easier and cheaper to turn scrap iron into high-quality iron, ready to build railways, warships, bridges and balconies.
Cort pioneered and combined two innovations. One was an improvement on Peter Onions’s puddling process, which we needn’t dwell on here – really, I just wanted to write out, “Peter Onions’s puddling process”. The other was the use of grooved rollers. Traditional rolling mills used flat rollers to roll hot metal into simple, flat shapes. Cort’s rollers had grooved edges which made for perfectly smooth, welded bars.
The “Cort process”, introduced in the 1780s, led to a quadrupling of Britain’s iron production over the following twenty years, making Britain one of the world’s leading iron producers. Fifty years after his death, the Times called Cort “the father of the iron trade” and today he’s regarded as one of the twenty or so most important innovators of the era.
Now comes a twist in the tale. A lecturer in science and technology at UCL called Jenny Bulstrode has published a paper which argues that what she calls “the myth of Henry Cort” is based on a lie.
In the prestigious journal, History and Technology, Dr Bulstrode argues that Cort stole his innovations from black slaves who had developed them independently in an iron works in Jamaica. Bulstrode traces a complex chain of events by which Cort, who as far as we know never visited Jamaica, ended up claiming credit for a process which was collectively invented by 76 enslaved factory workers (Bulstrode refers to them as “Black metallurgists”).
Bulstrode’s paper centres on a Jamaican ironworks run by an English industrialist called John Reeder. Within a few years of setting up, his foundry became successful and profitable. Reeder’s workforce included slaves trafficked from West Africa and trained by English experts he shipped over. Bulstrode argues that the black workers, drawing on ancient African traditions of ironwork, and from their experience of sugar production (where a kind of grooved roller is used) developed these new methods of their own volition, and that it was this which accounted for the factory’s impressive profits.
So how did Cort find out about it? Well, he ran an ironworks in Portsmouth, which he took over in 1775. Bulstrode notes that in 1781 a man with the surname of Cort arrived in Portsmouth from Jamaica. She describes him as a ‘cousin’ of Henry Cort, although as she notes, that term was often used to mean a distant relative. This second Cort had no connection to Reeder’s mill either, but Bulstrode argues that he must have heard all about the foundry and its innovative process when he was in Jamaica. She says he then met Henry Cort in Portsmouth, and passed on this valuable information.
A few months later, in 1782, Reeder’s factory was razed to the ground under orders from the British government. This was previously thought to have been because the colony was under threat from rival European powers and the British wanted to prevent the foundry from falling into French or Spanish hands. Bulstrode says that the military governor disclosed an ulterior motive: the British wanted to stop the factory from being taken over by black Jamaicans, who might then be empowered to overthrow their colonial rulers (in an interview with a podcast called The Context of White Supremacy, Bulstrode even suggests that Henry Cort instigated the destruction via contacts in the British government). Bulstrode says that components from the destroyed factory were then shipped to Portsmouth, with the implication being that Cort then reverse-engineered the process, and patented the secrets under his own name.
Bulstrode’s paper has made a big splash. It’s been hailed by her academic peers as a major breakthrough, and picked up by big media outlets including the Guardian, the New Scientist, and NPR. If you Google “Henry Cort”, it’s these reports which come up. Wikipedia has already incorporated it into Cort’s biography. Bulstrode’s paper fits the zeitgeist in historical studies – that the economic success of Britain and the West owes much more to the exploitation of black ingenuity and ideas than mainstream historians have hitherto allowed for.
If the story Bulstrode tells sounds incredible, that’s because it is. Right after Bulstrode’s paper made the headlines, Anton Howes, the proprietor of an excellent Substack on the history of innovation, noted the almost total lack of evidence for the paper’s central claims. Last week, he returned to it in a piece sparked by a new paper from Oliver Jelf which examines Bulstrode’s paper in detail and provides the most thorough debunking of it imaginable.
Jelf’s paper is a crisply argued, ruthless demolition job which makes for a gruesomely compelling read (I suggest reading Bulstrode’s paper first). Jelf takes each of Bulstrode’s central claims and finds them to be, not just dubious, but demonstrably false. He draws on his own expertise on the period but often, all he has to do is point us to the very sources Bulstrode cites in order to show that her conclusions are unsupported.
In reality, John Reeder’s foundry used very ordinary (run-of-the-mill?) production processes. No innovations were introduced there, by the workers or anyone else. Its profitability needs no extraordinary explanation; Reeder had the only foundry on the island and supplied the Royal Navy. The elaborate chain of events by which Cort is supposed to have found out about these non-existent innovations simply didn’t happen. Cort’s cousin did not go to Portsmouth, but to Lancaster. Henry Cort lived in complete and blissful ignorance of John Reeder’s factory. The factory was destroyed because of the foreign invasion threat and only because of that; at no point did the military governor or anyone else suggest otherwise. No components from the foundry, which was thoroughly destroyed, were shipped to Portsmouth or anywhere else. I could go on but, simply put, none of the assertions Bulstrode makes in her paper stand up to even cursory scrutiny.
Bulstrode hasn’t yet responded to Jelf or Howes in public, but it’s hard to see how her paper can be creditably defended. I’m left wondering two things: one, how she arrived at her narrative at all, and two, how on earth it survived the review process.
On the first, I suspect Bulstrode fell under the spell of story. Her paper has the feel of a messy and flawed first draft of a historical novel. It begins in Lisbon in the fifteenth century (even here, her assertions seem to be mistaken) before skipping to eighteenth century Jamaica, West Africa, and Portsmouth, weaving a web of vague and tenuous connections as it goes. It is clogged with deadening and risibly anachronistic jargon (“sugar and iron shared much overlapping conceptual space”). Most uncomfortably, there is a strain of quasi-Orientalism to its depiction of the black metalworkers, who are presented as magical figures: exceptionally skilled “metallurgists”, conceptual innovators, custodians of ancient and mystical wisdom, noble freedom-fighters. But it is full of nuggets which fire the imagination; names of forgotten people; dim outlines of dramatic events.
I doubt that Bulstrode set out to deceive. My guess is that she came across a few suggestive fragments in her reading (the ‘cousin’ of Cort travelling from Jamaica to England) and wanted so badly to make them into a story which fitted her ideologically determined prior – that the British stole ideas from those they enslaved – that she got carried away, fabricating causes and effects where none existed.
It’s one thing for a young and passionate academic to make mistakes; it’s quite another for a series of experienced academics to let her make them. The paper had two anonymous peer-reviewers (Bulstrode thanks other historians in an endnote, though they may not have read the paper). Even to an ignorant reader like me, the paper just smells funny – it has the aroma of the fantastical. How on earth did these experts read it without becoming suspicious? Why didn’t they double-check its remarkable claims?
My guess is that they were also seduced by story. It’s not just that Bulstrode’s storytelling mind went into overdrive, it’s that the master-narrative into which her paper fits now exerts such a grip over some historians that they will blind themselves to anything which undermines it. According to this narrative, Britain’s Industrial Revolution was not the product of ingenuity or the free exchange of ideas, but of thievery and exploitation. The British stole, not just the labour and materials of black countries, but their ideas too. If your paper fits that narrative, it’s more likely to get published, even if it has holes in it; even if it is nothing but holes. The discipline, or a sub-set of it, has become helplessly in thrall to one of the archetypal narrative forms: Good vs Evil. Naturally, the academics are on the side of the Good.
Anton Howes argues that, like the field of psychology has done in recent years, history must confront its own “replication crisis”. Errors are allowed to survive and spread throughout the corpus for decades. His solution is widen access to archival sources to make it easier for peer-reviewers to check claims. But if peer-reviewers aren’t motivated to be sceptical, this may not help much. I draw a different moral, which is that historians need to train, or retrain, themselves, to be suspicious of story and narrative.
Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories which gain attention and make ‘impact’. But anyone in the business of reporting on reality – scholars, scientists, journalists – ought to be suspicious of narrative, even if they use it. So should those of us who consume these reports. Just because information is conveyed in narrative form doesn’t make it false, but it does mean that it’s going to seem more true than it is.
Stories are reality filters. By definition, they leave out information – all the messy stuff that doesn’t fit – and draw attention to what the storyteller wants us to notice. In that sense they are like ideologies: both are methods of rolling and shaping the hot metal of reality into smooth ready-made shapes. Stories don’t accommodate randomness or structural forces very well; they rely on chains of causation and on individual motive. Covid-19 can’t be an accident and we needn’t bother ourselves too much with biology; it is a plot perpetrated by evil people. Bulstrode’s paper has the flavour of a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories aren’t theories; they’re stories.
Stories act like an anaesthetic on our sceptical, questioning faculties. It can be valuable and pleasurable to subdue that part of our brain, and immerse ourselves in an imaginary world; I love reading stories, including non-fictional ones. But if you come across a history book, or a scientific study, or a news report, which tells a great story, or which slots neatly into a master-narrative in which you already believe, you should be more sceptical of its truth-value, not less. Narrative can give an illusion of solidity. When the expert narrative about the world changes, as with China (see below), we shouldn’t just conclude that the old narrative was false, but that all such narratives are unreliable.
In Metahistory, his classic work of historiography, Hayden White argued that historians are always drawing on literary forms, like tragedy or comedy, whether they realise it or not. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you’re a historian you have to be aware of it; otherwise the story writes you rather than the other way around. Moralising narratives are particularly potent. Historians of the British empire are currently substituting one simplistic narrative for another in popular books.
In a sense, Cort was an easy target for Bulstrode because he didn’t have a story of his own; he was narratively undefended. If Cort is less well known than Watt or Priestley that’s because neither his life or work have been moulded into a story; other than his innovations, Cort left barely a trace behind. He wasn’t a flamboyant character, but one of those diligent, determined, curious tinkerers on whom the Industrial Revolution was built (in my book CURIOUS I call them “thinkerers”). His innovations probably emerged from years of slow, sooty experimentation, without any eureka moments or dramatic breakthroughs.
Stories are indispensable, nourishing and delightful. They are also attacks on the rational immune system. TED Talks are, famously, all about stories, but when the economist Tyler Cowen did one he used it, rather subversively, to warn against “story bias”. Cowen argues that any time someone believes in a story they are effectively subtracting ten points from their IQ (by which he means, broadly speaking, their analytical intelligence). That’s a deal we will often take willingly, since stories can bring pleasure and meaning to our lives and deepen our understanding of the world. But let’s be clear about what the deal is.
You know, I may be wrong, but Pro Bono’s reaction a few days ago, and Janie’s upthread, make me wonder whether I posted that initial Ian Leslie piece on the Bulstrode paper at all, or whether I just assumed I had, and posted what I thought was a follow-up which also looked at the issue of the black people in 14th century England. Anyway, since I refer to the original piece on Bulstrode @11.10 a few comments ago, I post it here just in case a) I never posted it originally, and b) anybody is still interested! Also, I do think the issue of “being seduced by story” is an interesting one.
This is Henry Cort. You probably haven’t heard of him unless you’re an Industrial Revolution nerd (I hadn’t until this week). He isn’t as well known as James Watt or Joseph Priestley – he wasn’t one of the Lunar Men – but Cort played a critical part in the creation of the modern world. He invented a method of production which made it much easier and cheaper to turn scrap iron into high-quality iron, ready to build railways, warships, bridges and balconies.
Cort pioneered and combined two innovations. One was an improvement on Peter Onions’s puddling process, which we needn’t dwell on here – really, I just wanted to write out, “Peter Onions’s puddling process”. The other was the use of grooved rollers. Traditional rolling mills used flat rollers to roll hot metal into simple, flat shapes. Cort’s rollers had grooved edges which made for perfectly smooth, welded bars.
The “Cort process”, introduced in the 1780s, led to a quadrupling of Britain’s iron production over the following twenty years, making Britain one of the world’s leading iron producers. Fifty years after his death, the Times called Cort “the father of the iron trade” and today he’s regarded as one of the twenty or so most important innovators of the era.
Now comes a twist in the tale. A lecturer in science and technology at UCL called Jenny Bulstrode has published a paper which argues that what she calls “the myth of Henry Cort” is based on a lie.
In the prestigious journal, History and Technology, Dr Bulstrode argues that Cort stole his innovations from black slaves who had developed them independently in an iron works in Jamaica. Bulstrode traces a complex chain of events by which Cort, who as far as we know never visited Jamaica, ended up claiming credit for a process which was collectively invented by 76 enslaved factory workers (Bulstrode refers to them as “Black metallurgists”).
Bulstrode’s paper centres on a Jamaican ironworks run by an English industrialist called John Reeder. Within a few years of setting up, his foundry became successful and profitable. Reeder’s workforce included slaves trafficked from West Africa and trained by English experts he shipped over. Bulstrode argues that the black workers, drawing on ancient African traditions of ironwork, and from their experience of sugar production (where a kind of grooved roller is used) developed these new methods of their own volition, and that it was this which accounted for the factory’s impressive profits.
So how did Cort find out about it? Well, he ran an ironworks in Portsmouth, which he took over in 1775. Bulstrode notes that in 1781 a man with the surname of Cort arrived in Portsmouth from Jamaica. She describes him as a ‘cousin’ of Henry Cort, although as she notes, that term was often used to mean a distant relative. This second Cort had no connection to Reeder’s mill either, but Bulstrode argues that he must have heard all about the foundry and its innovative process when he was in Jamaica. She says he then met Henry Cort in Portsmouth, and passed on this valuable information.
A few months later, in 1782, Reeder’s factory was razed to the ground under orders from the British government. This was previously thought to have been because the colony was under threat from rival European powers and the British wanted to prevent the foundry from falling into French or Spanish hands. Bulstrode says that the military governor disclosed an ulterior motive: the British wanted to stop the factory from being taken over by black Jamaicans, who might then be empowered to overthrow their colonial rulers (in an interview with a podcast called The Context of White Supremacy, Bulstrode even suggests that Henry Cort instigated the destruction via contacts in the British government). Bulstrode says that components from the destroyed factory were then shipped to Portsmouth, with the implication being that Cort then reverse-engineered the process, and patented the secrets under his own name.
Bulstrode’s paper has made a big splash. It’s been hailed by her academic peers as a major breakthrough, and picked up by big media outlets including the Guardian, the New Scientist, and NPR. If you Google “Henry Cort”, it’s these reports which come up. Wikipedia has already incorporated it into Cort’s biography. Bulstrode’s paper fits the zeitgeist in historical studies – that the economic success of Britain and the West owes much more to the exploitation of black ingenuity and ideas than mainstream historians have hitherto allowed for.
If the story Bulstrode tells sounds incredible, that’s because it is. Right after Bulstrode’s paper made the headlines, Anton Howes, the proprietor of an excellent Substack on the history of innovation, noted the almost total lack of evidence for the paper’s central claims. Last week, he returned to it in a piece sparked by a new paper from Oliver Jelf which examines Bulstrode’s paper in detail and provides the most thorough debunking of it imaginable.
Jelf’s paper is a crisply argued, ruthless demolition job which makes for a gruesomely compelling read (I suggest reading Bulstrode’s paper first). Jelf takes each of Bulstrode’s central claims and finds them to be, not just dubious, but demonstrably false. He draws on his own expertise on the period but often, all he has to do is point us to the very sources Bulstrode cites in order to show that her conclusions are unsupported.
In reality, John Reeder’s foundry used very ordinary (run-of-the-mill?) production processes. No innovations were introduced there, by the workers or anyone else. Its profitability needs no extraordinary explanation; Reeder had the only foundry on the island and supplied the Royal Navy. The elaborate chain of events by which Cort is supposed to have found out about these non-existent innovations simply didn’t happen. Cort’s cousin did not go to Portsmouth, but to Lancaster. Henry Cort lived in complete and blissful ignorance of John Reeder’s factory. The factory was destroyed because of the foreign invasion threat and only because of that; at no point did the military governor or anyone else suggest otherwise. No components from the foundry, which was thoroughly destroyed, were shipped to Portsmouth or anywhere else. I could go on but, simply put, none of the assertions Bulstrode makes in her paper stand up to even cursory scrutiny.
Bulstrode hasn’t yet responded to Jelf or Howes in public, but it’s hard to see how her paper can be creditably defended. I’m left wondering two things: one, how she arrived at her narrative at all, and two, how on earth it survived the review process.
On the first, I suspect Bulstrode fell under the spell of story. Her paper has the feel of a messy and flawed first draft of a historical novel. It begins in Lisbon in the fifteenth century (even here, her assertions seem to be mistaken) before skipping to eighteenth century Jamaica, West Africa, and Portsmouth, weaving a web of vague and tenuous connections as it goes. It is clogged with deadening and risibly anachronistic jargon (“sugar and iron shared much overlapping conceptual space”). Most uncomfortably, there is a strain of quasi-Orientalism to its depiction of the black metalworkers, who are presented as magical figures: exceptionally skilled “metallurgists”, conceptual innovators, custodians of ancient and mystical wisdom, noble freedom-fighters. But it is full of nuggets which fire the imagination; names of forgotten people; dim outlines of dramatic events.
I doubt that Bulstrode set out to deceive. My guess is that she came across a few suggestive fragments in her reading (the ‘cousin’ of Cort travelling from Jamaica to England) and wanted so badly to make them into a story which fitted her ideologically determined prior – that the British stole ideas from those they enslaved – that she got carried away, fabricating causes and effects where none existed.
It’s one thing for a young and passionate academic to make mistakes; it’s quite another for a series of experienced academics to let her make them. The paper had two anonymous peer-reviewers (Bulstrode thanks other historians in an endnote, though they may not have read the paper). Even to an ignorant reader like me, the paper just smells funny – it has the aroma of the fantastical. How on earth did these experts read it without becoming suspicious? Why didn’t they double-check its remarkable claims?
My guess is that they were also seduced by story. It’s not just that Bulstrode’s storytelling mind went into overdrive, it’s that the master-narrative into which her paper fits now exerts such a grip over some historians that they will blind themselves to anything which undermines it. According to this narrative, Britain’s Industrial Revolution was not the product of ingenuity or the free exchange of ideas, but of thievery and exploitation. The British stole, not just the labour and materials of black countries, but their ideas too. If your paper fits that narrative, it’s more likely to get published, even if it has holes in it; even if it is nothing but holes. The discipline, or a sub-set of it, has become helplessly in thrall to one of the archetypal narrative forms: Good vs Evil. Naturally, the academics are on the side of the Good.
Anton Howes argues that, like the field of psychology has done in recent years, history must confront its own “replication crisis”. Errors are allowed to survive and spread throughout the corpus for decades. His solution is widen access to archival sources to make it easier for peer-reviewers to check claims. But if peer-reviewers aren’t motivated to be sceptical, this may not help much. I draw a different moral, which is that historians need to train, or retrain, themselves, to be suspicious of story and narrative.
Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories which gain attention and make ‘impact’. But anyone in the business of reporting on reality – scholars, scientists, journalists – ought to be suspicious of narrative, even if they use it. So should those of us who consume these reports. Just because information is conveyed in narrative form doesn’t make it false, but it does mean that it’s going to seem more true than it is.
Stories are reality filters. By definition, they leave out information – all the messy stuff that doesn’t fit – and draw attention to what the storyteller wants us to notice. In that sense they are like ideologies: both are methods of rolling and shaping the hot metal of reality into smooth ready-made shapes. Stories don’t accommodate randomness or structural forces very well; they rely on chains of causation and on individual motive. Covid-19 can’t be an accident and we needn’t bother ourselves too much with biology; it is a plot perpetrated by evil people. Bulstrode’s paper has the flavour of a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories aren’t theories; they’re stories.
Stories act like an anaesthetic on our sceptical, questioning faculties. It can be valuable and pleasurable to subdue that part of our brain, and immerse ourselves in an imaginary world; I love reading stories, including non-fictional ones. But if you come across a history book, or a scientific study, or a news report, which tells a great story, or which slots neatly into a master-narrative in which you already believe, you should be more sceptical of its truth-value, not less. Narrative can give an illusion of solidity. When the expert narrative about the world changes, as with China (see below), we shouldn’t just conclude that the old narrative was false, but that all such narratives are unreliable.
In Metahistory, his classic work of historiography, Hayden White argued that historians are always drawing on literary forms, like tragedy or comedy, whether they realise it or not. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you’re a historian you have to be aware of it; otherwise the story writes you rather than the other way around. Moralising narratives are particularly potent. Historians of the British empire are currently substituting one simplistic narrative for another in popular books.
In a sense, Cort was an easy target for Bulstrode because he didn’t have a story of his own; he was narratively undefended. If Cort is less well known than Watt or Priestley that’s because neither his life or work have been moulded into a story; other than his innovations, Cort left barely a trace behind. He wasn’t a flamboyant character, but one of those diligent, determined, curious tinkerers on whom the Industrial Revolution was built (in my book CURIOUS I call them “thinkerers”). His innovations probably emerged from years of slow, sooty experimentation, without any eureka moments or dramatic breakthroughs.
Stories are indispensable, nourishing and delightful. They are also attacks on the rational immune system. TED Talks are, famously, all about stories, but when the economist Tyler Cowen did one he used it, rather subversively, to warn against “story bias”. Cowen argues that any time someone believes in a story they are effectively subtracting ten points from their IQ (by which he means, broadly speaking, their analytical intelligence). That’s a deal we will often take willingly, since stories can bring pleasure and meaning to our lives and deepen our understanding of the world. But let’s be clear about what the deal is.
Whether to vote for “the lesser evil” when the only other option is “the greater evil” is one topic: i.e. voting in a 2-party system. How to pressure the administration in relation to a cause one thinks is critically important is another. *They are not the same thing.*
I would like novakant to find me something written here that says we shouldn’t pressure the Biden administration about Gaza, or anything else. With the recognition that saying it’s bad to vote for Clickbait is not the same as saying the current administration shouldn’t be pressured. There are, amazing though it may seem, ways of pressuring the administration short of threatening to help hand the country over to a psychopathic wanna-be Hitler.
Maybe I am, or others are, not writing coherently enough. I don’t like to assume bad faith, but I’m getting close given the repetition of the strawmanning.
Whether to vote for “the lesser evil” when the only other option is “the greater evil” is one topic: i.e. voting in a 2-party system. How to pressure the administration in relation to a cause one thinks is critically important is another. *They are not the same thing.*
I would like novakant to find me something written here that says we shouldn’t pressure the Biden administration about Gaza, or anything else. With the recognition that saying it’s bad to vote for Clickbait is not the same as saying the current administration shouldn’t be pressured. There are, amazing though it may seem, ways of pressuring the administration short of threatening to help hand the country over to a psychopathic wanna-be Hitler.
Maybe I am, or others are, not writing coherently enough. I don’t like to assume bad faith, but I’m getting close given the repetition of the strawmanning.
The arguments over the essay leave me feeling a bit like le cul entre deux chaises. Like I said, I think that Bulstrode’s arguments fall short of being convincing when put in dialogue with the technical side of the innovation, and warrants reexamination in that light. But I also think that people need to be circumspect in how they approach this. The scholarship being done here lies at the seams of a couple of different disciplines (history and technology). It appears to me that Bulstrode’s paper runs into trouble on the technological side, but the commentators coming out strongly against the paper are framing this as a sign of the bankruptcy of historical scholarship. I also think the attacks are clearly influenced by the commentators’ impatience with Bulstrode’s anti-colonial framing, and especially with the amount of media attention that the article garnered as a result of how it flipped the colonial script.
So from my point of view, the critiques are not lining up with the article’s actual shortcomings. They are attacking the professionalism of the historians, rather than focusing on the technical details that a historian might not have known – and need not have known for archival historical work – that reveals there has to be more to the story than just borrowing ideas from one technology and having it work in another context without need of further adaptation. There are many ways that this could have been framed that assumed good faith on the part of Bulstrode and the journal. It appears to me that the commentators want instead to try to shame and embarrass them.
Also at work in this, I think, is the idea that quantitative, technical work is less imbricated within politics, and thus proceeds from purer motives where the humanities have become ideologically tainted. A big part of this is just that the people approaching interdisciplinary work from the technical side are as challenged by a lack of grounding in the disciplinary concerns of the historians as the historians are challenged by the technological and design constraints.
Interdisciplinary work is hard, and research universities tend to reward specialization. A scholar who actually tried to do work that combined both the historical and the technological usually finds themselves having to pick a chair in which to plant their ass and embrace the disciplinary constraints.
My own thoughts about this matter are that this larger disagreement is entirely grounded in the culture war side of what Bulstrode’s article implied about how technical breakthroughs get attributed in historical accounts. I think that critics could claim with merit that Bulstrode’s account does not fully take into account the technological constraints that exist in the innovation that she was writing about, and that more work needs to be done to understand and tease out how those constraints were overcome in order to get a clearer picture of how these innovations happened and what influence the Afro-Caribbean metalworkers might have had on these developments. And I’m more than a bit annoyed that what we get instead is a broad attack on the legitimacy of modern historical approaches to the archive.
The arguments over the essay leave me feeling a bit like le cul entre deux chaises. Like I said, I think that Bulstrode’s arguments fall short of being convincing when put in dialogue with the technical side of the innovation, and warrants reexamination in that light. But I also think that people need to be circumspect in how they approach this. The scholarship being done here lies at the seams of a couple of different disciplines (history and technology). It appears to me that Bulstrode’s paper runs into trouble on the technological side, but the commentators coming out strongly against the paper are framing this as a sign of the bankruptcy of historical scholarship. I also think the attacks are clearly influenced by the commentators’ impatience with Bulstrode’s anti-colonial framing, and especially with the amount of media attention that the article garnered as a result of how it flipped the colonial script.
So from my point of view, the critiques are not lining up with the article’s actual shortcomings. They are attacking the professionalism of the historians, rather than focusing on the technical details that a historian might not have known – and need not have known for archival historical work – that reveals there has to be more to the story than just borrowing ideas from one technology and having it work in another context without need of further adaptation. There are many ways that this could have been framed that assumed good faith on the part of Bulstrode and the journal. It appears to me that the commentators want instead to try to shame and embarrass them.
Also at work in this, I think, is the idea that quantitative, technical work is less imbricated within politics, and thus proceeds from purer motives where the humanities have become ideologically tainted. A big part of this is just that the people approaching interdisciplinary work from the technical side are as challenged by a lack of grounding in the disciplinary concerns of the historians as the historians are challenged by the technological and design constraints.
Interdisciplinary work is hard, and research universities tend to reward specialization. A scholar who actually tried to do work that combined both the historical and the technological usually finds themselves having to pick a chair in which to plant their ass and embrace the disciplinary constraints.
My own thoughts about this matter are that this larger disagreement is entirely grounded in the culture war side of what Bulstrode’s article implied about how technical breakthroughs get attributed in historical accounts. I think that critics could claim with merit that Bulstrode’s account does not fully take into account the technological constraints that exist in the innovation that she was writing about, and that more work needs to be done to understand and tease out how those constraints were overcome in order to get a clearer picture of how these innovations happened and what influence the Afro-Caribbean metalworkers might have had on these developments. And I’m more than a bit annoyed that what we get instead is a broad attack on the legitimacy of modern historical approaches to the archive.
So, reading the Leslie piece, the first part seems convincing— Bulstrode was wrong.
The second half seems to be more of a politically motivated rant, in part about people criticizing imperialism.
But I agree in general terms that people allow ideology and stories to dictate how they see the world. That’s happening on the extremes of both sides with Gaza. ( You knew I was going to bring it back to that, but I think there really is a connection.) On the one side, Israel’s defenders in many cases have a reflexive tendency to yell “antisemite” at anyone more critical of Israel than they want to hear and on the other side, the defense of Hamas that you find from some leftwingers comes from a reflexive anti-imperialism where the oppressed are justified in whatever they do. ( Zionism itself used to be a leftwing cause.). Bulstrode isn’t defending atrocities, but it sounds like she is romanticizing the oppressed and creating a story based on a similar ideology.
I tend to agree with the anti- imperialist view, but any ideology can make you stupid if you take it too far. My cracker barrel aphorism for the day.
So, reading the Leslie piece, the first part seems convincing— Bulstrode was wrong.
The second half seems to be more of a politically motivated rant, in part about people criticizing imperialism.
But I agree in general terms that people allow ideology and stories to dictate how they see the world. That’s happening on the extremes of both sides with Gaza. ( You knew I was going to bring it back to that, but I think there really is a connection.) On the one side, Israel’s defenders in many cases have a reflexive tendency to yell “antisemite” at anyone more critical of Israel than they want to hear and on the other side, the defense of Hamas that you find from some leftwingers comes from a reflexive anti-imperialism where the oppressed are justified in whatever they do. ( Zionism itself used to be a leftwing cause.). Bulstrode isn’t defending atrocities, but it sounds like she is romanticizing the oppressed and creating a story based on a similar ideology.
I tend to agree with the anti- imperialist view, but any ideology can make you stupid if you take it too far. My cracker barrel aphorism for the day.
As usual, nous, you shed more light than heat. And when you say
I also think the attacks are clearly influenced by the commentators’ impatience with Bulstrode’s anti-colonial framing, and especially with the amount of media attention that the article garnered as a result of how it flipped ?the colonial script.
and
My own thoughts about this matter are that this larger disagreement is entirely grounded in the culture war side of what Bulstrode’s article implied about how technical breakthroughs get attributed in historical accounts.
I am sure you’re right. But I think back to that tweet, saying in response to one of the critical pieces laying out some of the flaws of the paper:
As a black woman, a million times this. A single byte of empirical evidence is worth more than all the “emancipatory stories” in the universe
Which of course brings us right back to the seductions offered by stories….
As usual, nous, you shed more light than heat. And when you say
I also think the attacks are clearly influenced by the commentators’ impatience with Bulstrode’s anti-colonial framing, and especially with the amount of media attention that the article garnered as a result of how it flipped ?the colonial script.
and
My own thoughts about this matter are that this larger disagreement is entirely grounded in the culture war side of what Bulstrode’s article implied about how technical breakthroughs get attributed in historical accounts.
I am sure you’re right. But I think back to that tweet, saying in response to one of the critical pieces laying out some of the flaws of the paper:
As a black woman, a million times this. A single byte of empirical evidence is worth more than all the “emancipatory stories” in the universe
Which of course brings us right back to the seductions offered by stories….
On the one side, Israel’s defenders in many cases have a reflexive tendency to yell “antisemite” at anyone more critical of Israel than they want to hear and on the other side, the defense of Hamas that you find from some leftwingers comes from a reflexive anti-imperialism where the oppressed are justified in whatever they do.
Absolutely correct.
On the one side, Israel’s defenders in many cases have a reflexive tendency to yell “antisemite” at anyone more critical of Israel than they want to hear and on the other side, the defense of Hamas that you find from some leftwingers comes from a reflexive anti-imperialism where the oppressed are justified in whatever they do.
Absolutely correct.
GftNC
The pattern of being pandered to, and then disappointed, is a wearying one. But so is being ignored and or gasslit. It’s a hard balance to strike, and the culture warriors will come at you for either or both.
\_(ツ)_/¯
GftNC
The pattern of being pandered to, and then disappointed, is a wearying one. But so is being ignored and or gasslit. It’s a hard balance to strike, and the culture warriors will come at you for either or both.
\_(ツ)_/¯
GftNC: if you had previously posted the essay you copied into your 4:41 comment, I missed it. Here’s a link to it:
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/stories-are-bad-for-your-intelligence (Sept. 2, 2023)
And here are more related links, which I have mostly only skimmed — well read them more carefully if/when I get time:
https://www.rarelycertain.com/p/call-me-old-fashioned-but-i-still (Sept. 4)
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-problem-with-educate-yourself (Sept. 6)
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-end-of-history (Nov. 25, 2023)
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/rattle-bag-986 (Dec. 2, 2023)
https://an-historian.medium.com/we-have-to-talk-about-ian-leslie-09bef0f6152a (“6 days ago” on Dec. 2, 2023)
That last essay ends like this:
This is a more coherent framing of what I was struggling with and ascribed to a variation on Poe’s law. Leslie is, if you believe the author of the last-linked essay, not shedding light but grinding his axe. I find this difficult territory, because so often the axe-grinding overshadows the shedding of light (pun not really intended) from both sides.
GftNC: if you had previously posted the essay you copied into your 4:41 comment, I missed it. Here’s a link to it:
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/stories-are-bad-for-your-intelligence (Sept. 2, 2023)
And here are more related links, which I have mostly only skimmed — well read them more carefully if/when I get time:
https://www.rarelycertain.com/p/call-me-old-fashioned-but-i-still (Sept. 4)
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-problem-with-educate-yourself (Sept. 6)
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-end-of-history (Nov. 25, 2023)
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/rattle-bag-986 (Dec. 2, 2023)
https://an-historian.medium.com/we-have-to-talk-about-ian-leslie-09bef0f6152a (“6 days ago” on Dec. 2, 2023)
That last essay ends like this:
This is a more coherent framing of what I was struggling with and ascribed to a variation on Poe’s law. Leslie is, if you believe the author of the last-linked essay, not shedding light but grinding his axe. I find this difficult territory, because so often the axe-grinding overshadows the shedding of light (pun not really intended) from both sides.
PS Non-buyer beware: Some of those links have paywalls that I can’t get around, notably “The Problem with Educate Yourself.”
Ah well.
PS Non-buyer beware: Some of those links have paywalls that I can’t get around, notably “The Problem with Educate Yourself.”
Ah well.
Fortuitously, from Tony Jay, one of BJ’s Brit commenters:
In a two-party system you go with the least worst option. That doesn’t and shouldn’t mean that you don’t get to say what’s wrong about that option or what needs to change about it for it to be better than least worst.
Fortuitously, from Tony Jay, one of BJ’s Brit commenters:
In a two-party system you go with the least worst option. That doesn’t and shouldn’t mean that you don’t get to say what’s wrong about that option or what needs to change about it for it to be better than least worst.
Interdisciplinary work is hard, and research universities tend to reward specialization.
Yeah, the second time I was going to go to graduate school a couple of colleagues with PhDs tried to dissuade me from a PhD track. Over beer, one of them told me, “You can do dissertation-level research, we’ve both worked with you while you did. But you do peculiar interdisciplinary things and you’ll never find someone to oversee that sort of project.”
Interdisciplinary work is hard, and research universities tend to reward specialization.
Yeah, the second time I was going to go to graduate school a couple of colleagues with PhDs tried to dissuade me from a PhD track. Over beer, one of them told me, “You can do dissertation-level research, we’ve both worked with you while you did. But you do peculiar interdisciplinary things and you’ll never find someone to oversee that sort of project.”
Janie, it’s not that I hold any brief for Ian Leslie, although I think quite a lot of his stuff is interesting and link when I think it could interest others here. But whereas the anonymous historian in your last link says (and personally I think this, particularly my bolded phrase, shows more “chortling superiority” – OK, maybe not chortling – than Leslie does):
Leslie has created a lazy caricature of an entire discipline he evidently knows little about. It is based on one piece of research by scholars who are not historians and which he has not read, and a second piece — this time actually by a historian — which he has not understood.
contrasts with the anonymous academic historian Leslie quotes who seems to think he has understood very well. I can’t say which is right, but academic historians of my acquaintance seem more to agree with the latter. And my view is, in the war on “woke” as in many other wars, that hewing as close to the truth, as best you can, or the facts, as close as you can establish them, and in a case like this e.g. the norms or rules of an academic discipline, is the wisest course to follow. I believe that a strong desire for social justice and inclusion, in its many forms, which I share, is best served by a determination to always check for honesty and integrity, even if the results are temporarily discouraging. At one stage in the Leslie piece I link most recently, he says I doubt that Bulstrode set out to deceive, which seems fair. I think it possible that the people contesting with him on this subject are less interested in fairness than in gaining advantage in what they see as his “position” in this section of the culture war.
Janie, it’s not that I hold any brief for Ian Leslie, although I think quite a lot of his stuff is interesting and link when I think it could interest others here. But whereas the anonymous historian in your last link says (and personally I think this, particularly my bolded phrase, shows more “chortling superiority” – OK, maybe not chortling – than Leslie does):
Leslie has created a lazy caricature of an entire discipline he evidently knows little about. It is based on one piece of research by scholars who are not historians and which he has not read, and a second piece — this time actually by a historian — which he has not understood.
contrasts with the anonymous academic historian Leslie quotes who seems to think he has understood very well. I can’t say which is right, but academic historians of my acquaintance seem more to agree with the latter. And my view is, in the war on “woke” as in many other wars, that hewing as close to the truth, as best you can, or the facts, as close as you can establish them, and in a case like this e.g. the norms or rules of an academic discipline, is the wisest course to follow. I believe that a strong desire for social justice and inclusion, in its many forms, which I share, is best served by a determination to always check for honesty and integrity, even if the results are temporarily discouraging. At one stage in the Leslie piece I link most recently, he says I doubt that Bulstrode set out to deceive, which seems fair. I think it possible that the people contesting with him on this subject are less interested in fairness than in gaining advantage in what they see as his “position” in this section of the culture war.
And my view is, in the war on “woke” as in many other wars, that hewing as close to the truth, as best you can, or the facts, as close as you can establish them, and in a case like this e.g. the norms or rules of an academic discipline, is the wisest course to follow.
Let’s flip this, then. What rules or norms are the critics claiming that Bulstrode has ignored or violated in her research? What violations of scholarly or editorial ethics have those defending the publication of Bulstrode’s article committed? What are the truths that they did not hew sufficiently close to in their work as researchers and editors?
If the critics are going to make noise about the sorry state of historical scholarship, then they need to be very clear about where they think these scholars are failing to uphold their scholarly ethics, and they need to be very clear about how they think these protocols should be adjudicated and enforced (and by whom).
I think Bulstrode is likely wrong in some of her particular conclusions, or is at least stating conclusions more strongly and provocatively than I would given the ambiguity of the evidence we have and the gaps in the archive we must try to navigate. That said, though, I don’t see any particular place where she or her editors are guilty of having violated norms or protocols. It’s not an ethical violation to be wrong, or to be biased, or to make provocative claims. Ones biases can lead you to misrepresent evidence, or the arguments of opponents, and those misrepresentations can constitute ethical violations, but I want to see that case made.
I don’t see that anyone criticizing her or her editors has done that so far.
And I don’t see that “woke” scholars are doing anything different, methodologically speaking, from any of their more traditional colleagues or from their more critical peers.
And my view is, in the war on “woke” as in many other wars, that hewing as close to the truth, as best you can, or the facts, as close as you can establish them, and in a case like this e.g. the norms or rules of an academic discipline, is the wisest course to follow.
Let’s flip this, then. What rules or norms are the critics claiming that Bulstrode has ignored or violated in her research? What violations of scholarly or editorial ethics have those defending the publication of Bulstrode’s article committed? What are the truths that they did not hew sufficiently close to in their work as researchers and editors?
If the critics are going to make noise about the sorry state of historical scholarship, then they need to be very clear about where they think these scholars are failing to uphold their scholarly ethics, and they need to be very clear about how they think these protocols should be adjudicated and enforced (and by whom).
I think Bulstrode is likely wrong in some of her particular conclusions, or is at least stating conclusions more strongly and provocatively than I would given the ambiguity of the evidence we have and the gaps in the archive we must try to navigate. That said, though, I don’t see any particular place where she or her editors are guilty of having violated norms or protocols. It’s not an ethical violation to be wrong, or to be biased, or to make provocative claims. Ones biases can lead you to misrepresent evidence, or the arguments of opponents, and those misrepresentations can constitute ethical violations, but I want to see that case made.
I don’t see that anyone criticizing her or her editors has done that so far.
And I don’t see that “woke” scholars are doing anything different, methodologically speaking, from any of their more traditional colleagues or from their more critical peers.
Connects with Twitter, but belongs here—
One thing I am seeing more and more of are Israel supporters saying “ What about Yemen?” The point being that nobody, especially Muslims, protested Yemen.
Which makes me flip out. The press did a very bad job covering Yemen for the usual hypocritical reasons when the US is guilty, but Israel supporters were often tacitly on the Saudi side, because it was thought that the Saudi government was a tacit ally against Iran. That hope is probably dead for now.
But irony really dies when Trump supporters use Yemen this way.
It is a valid point to make about some Muslims, I suspect. But not by the people I see making it.
Connects with Twitter, but belongs here—
One thing I am seeing more and more of are Israel supporters saying “ What about Yemen?” The point being that nobody, especially Muslims, protested Yemen.
Which makes me flip out. The press did a very bad job covering Yemen for the usual hypocritical reasons when the US is guilty, but Israel supporters were often tacitly on the Saudi side, because it was thought that the Saudi government was a tacit ally against Iran. That hope is probably dead for now.
But irony really dies when Trump supporters use Yemen this way.
It is a valid point to make about some Muslims, I suspect. But not by the people I see making it.
Dammit, just lost a comment because I forgot to change handle for including a link.
In brief, nous, I couldn’t find your comment on the “exoneration”, or defence, of Bulstrode’s paper, despite thinking it was very recent. But actually, what I wanted to say was, do you think that Jelf is wrong in his examination of Bulstrode’s sources, and the conclusions he draws?
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/rp5ae
And when you say:
What violations of scholarly or editorial ethics have those defending the publication of Bulstrode’s article committed? What are the truths that they did not hew sufficiently close to in their work as researchers and editors?
what I was trying to say was that in the war on “woke” I am at least as worried about those attacking what they conceive to be woke scholarship, as those doing that scholarship. My point was that one’s ideological position should not be the basis of either one’s formal, reasoned support or criticism of a piece of research at the expense of the evidence, and that if it is that should be called out as a violation of scholarly norms and ethics. (I may not be expressing myself all that well.) It looks, as you indicate, as if Bulstrode’s claims are not well supported by the evidence, and if she said or implied that they were (which I understand to be the case) that is not respectable academic history, hence my comment upthread about speculative fiction, or even straightforward speculation. My criticism, such as it was, was more of Bulstrode herself than her defenders, or people (anonymous or otherwise) attacking Leslie for his perceived “anti-woke” agenda. But I may be criticising her defenders too, if they are allowing support for what they perceive as her ideological motivations to influence their defence, despite what you indicated earlier. If, that is, I can find your comment, details of their arguments etc! And have the time and energy (becoming increasingly unlikely….)
Dammit, just lost a comment because I forgot to change handle for including a link.
In brief, nous, I couldn’t find your comment on the “exoneration”, or defence, of Bulstrode’s paper, despite thinking it was very recent. But actually, what I wanted to say was, do you think that Jelf is wrong in his examination of Bulstrode’s sources, and the conclusions he draws?
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/rp5ae
And when you say:
What violations of scholarly or editorial ethics have those defending the publication of Bulstrode’s article committed? What are the truths that they did not hew sufficiently close to in their work as researchers and editors?
what I was trying to say was that in the war on “woke” I am at least as worried about those attacking what they conceive to be woke scholarship, as those doing that scholarship. My point was that one’s ideological position should not be the basis of either one’s formal, reasoned support or criticism of a piece of research at the expense of the evidence, and that if it is that should be called out as a violation of scholarly norms and ethics. (I may not be expressing myself all that well.) It looks, as you indicate, as if Bulstrode’s claims are not well supported by the evidence, and if she said or implied that they were (which I understand to be the case) that is not respectable academic history, hence my comment upthread about speculative fiction, or even straightforward speculation. My criticism, such as it was, was more of Bulstrode herself than her defenders, or people (anonymous or otherwise) attacking Leslie for his perceived “anti-woke” agenda. But I may be criticising her defenders too, if they are allowing support for what they perceive as her ideological motivations to influence their defence, despite what you indicated earlier. If, that is, I can find your comment, details of their arguments etc! And have the time and energy (becoming increasingly unlikely….)
Meanwhile, one very old family friend is refusing to talk to me at the moment because of my criticisms of Israeli actions, while I read in the papers that the female border guards (many of whom were subsequently raped, killed or captured on October 7th) had reported days before their serious concerns about suspicious activity on the border, and were completely dismissed and ignored. And that the Israelis received intelligence a year before about fairly detailed Hamas plans for an incursion and operation from Gaza, and dismissed it as overly ambitious and impracticable.
Jesus F Christ.
Meanwhile, one very old family friend is refusing to talk to me at the moment because of my criticisms of Israeli actions, while I read in the papers that the female border guards (many of whom were subsequently raped, killed or captured on October 7th) had reported days before their serious concerns about suspicious activity on the border, and were completely dismissed and ignored. And that the Israelis received intelligence a year before about fairly detailed Hamas plans for an incursion and operation from Gaza, and dismissed it as overly ambitious and impracticable.
Jesus F Christ.
Jesus F Christ is Jesus H Christ’s cousin, right? From Wikipedia:
I suggest that Roger Smith, whoever he is, should hang around with me for a few days. I’m pretty sure my use of the phrase alone would make up for any general imbalance among the genders. Although I do often shorten it, perhaps over-familiarly in the preacher’s eyes, to “Jesus H.”
Jesus F Christ is Jesus H Christ’s cousin, right? From Wikipedia:
I suggest that Roger Smith, whoever he is, should hang around with me for a few days. I’m pretty sure my use of the phrase alone would make up for any general imbalance among the genders. Although I do often shorten it, perhaps over-familiarly in the preacher’s eyes, to “Jesus H.”
GftNC – I was referring to Bulstrode’s journal editors’ response, and to the statement from the British Society for the History of Science as the defenses of Bulstrode’s work. Both of those are referenced in Leslie’s commentary.
WRT Jelf’s examination, it strikes me that he is more secure and detailed for the technical details of why Bulstrode’s account of the invention of this process is insufficient, but his straightforward dismissals of the archival evidence she presents doesn’t really leave me with any good argument as to why it is that he dismisses them. If he thinks she has read too much into them, then he needs to engage with that. If he thinks she is making up evidence where none exists, then he needs to outline the what and the where of it, or he needs to ask for further sources and a more detailed accounting of how she has arrived at this conclusion.
Cue the “Argument Clinic” sketch:
An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition.
No, it isn’t.
Yes, it is. It isn’t just contradiction.
Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
But it isn’t just saying, “No, it isn’t.”
Yes, it is.
I do not know enough about any of the actual history involved here, or enough of the technical details to weigh in on either side. I, unlike Leslie and Hind, leave that sort of thing to actual historians with expertise and experience.
The fact is that neither Hind nor Leslie seem to have noticed (or at least deemed it important to mention) that neither the editors nor the Society claim that they stand behind Bulstrode’s conclusions. It’s a limited defense of methodology and process. And the claims of “the end of history” have nothing to do with an informed reading of the archive. I’m not at all convinced that either Hind or Leslie actually understand how history actually gets done or how scholarly disagreements should get hashed out. And this last bit is why I don’t really hold either of their commentaries in particularly high regard.
GftNC – I was referring to Bulstrode’s journal editors’ response, and to the statement from the British Society for the History of Science as the defenses of Bulstrode’s work. Both of those are referenced in Leslie’s commentary.
WRT Jelf’s examination, it strikes me that he is more secure and detailed for the technical details of why Bulstrode’s account of the invention of this process is insufficient, but his straightforward dismissals of the archival evidence she presents doesn’t really leave me with any good argument as to why it is that he dismisses them. If he thinks she has read too much into them, then he needs to engage with that. If he thinks she is making up evidence where none exists, then he needs to outline the what and the where of it, or he needs to ask for further sources and a more detailed accounting of how she has arrived at this conclusion.
Cue the “Argument Clinic” sketch:
An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition.
No, it isn’t.
Yes, it is. It isn’t just contradiction.
Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
But it isn’t just saying, “No, it isn’t.”
Yes, it is.
I do not know enough about any of the actual history involved here, or enough of the technical details to weigh in on either side. I, unlike Leslie and Hind, leave that sort of thing to actual historians with expertise and experience.
The fact is that neither Hind nor Leslie seem to have noticed (or at least deemed it important to mention) that neither the editors nor the Society claim that they stand behind Bulstrode’s conclusions. It’s a limited defense of methodology and process. And the claims of “the end of history” have nothing to do with an informed reading of the archive. I’m not at all convinced that either Hind or Leslie actually understand how history actually gets done or how scholarly disagreements should get hashed out. And this last bit is why I don’t really hold either of their commentaries in particularly high regard.
Janie: yes, I use Jesus H because of having more American vocabulary than most Brits. But H did not seem adequate for that particular circumstance!
Janie: yes, I use Jesus H because of having more American vocabulary than most Brits. But H did not seem adequate for that particular circumstance!
…neither the editors nor the Society claim that they stand behind Bulstrode’s conclusions
The editors write “We write today to express our unreserved support…We demonstrate here the accuracy of Bulstrode’s historical account.” In my opinion a reader could be forgiven for supposing that the editors had no reservations about Bulstrode’s conclusions.
The thing that irks me about Bulstrode and her supporters is their lack of interest in the details of the technology. Bulstrode tells us that Black metallurgists in Jamaica
This is nonsense. Sugar mill rollers are designed to crush the cane and extract its juice. Rollers for forming iron bars have grooves shaped to impose the desired section on the iron. They are quite different.
Incidentally, the idea of passing hot iron through grooved rollers was far from unknown – a similar method was used in slitting mills to make nails, though the rollers were used for cutting rather than forming.
…neither the editors nor the Society claim that they stand behind Bulstrode’s conclusions
The editors write “We write today to express our unreserved support…We demonstrate here the accuracy of Bulstrode’s historical account.” In my opinion a reader could be forgiven for supposing that the editors had no reservations about Bulstrode’s conclusions.
The thing that irks me about Bulstrode and her supporters is their lack of interest in the details of the technology. Bulstrode tells us that Black metallurgists in Jamaica
This is nonsense. Sugar mill rollers are designed to crush the cane and extract its juice. Rollers for forming iron bars have grooves shaped to impose the desired section on the iron. They are quite different.
Incidentally, the idea of passing hot iron through grooved rollers was far from unknown – a similar method was used in slitting mills to make nails, though the rollers were used for cutting rather than forming.
There is also “Jessica H. Christ” which I believe I first encountered in “Privates on Parade” where John Cleese’s character repeatedly complains about its use by a (gay) subordinate on religious grounds.
There is also “Jessica H. Christ” which I believe I first encountered in “Privates on Parade” where John Cleese’s character repeatedly complains about its use by a (gay) subordinate on religious grounds.
The editors write “We write today to express our unreserved support…We demonstrate here the accuracy of Bulstrode’s historical account.” In my opinion a reader could be forgiven for supposing that the editors had no reservations about Bulstrode’s conclusions.
That is how a lawyer would read that statement, and probably how many lay readers would as well, but a historian would see it as a defense of a disciplinary identity based on the limited choices of what the writers chose to engage with and defend. There’s a lot of subtext going on on either side, and a lot of that subtext is going unrecognized.
The thing that irks me about Bulstrode and her supporters is their lack of interest in the details of the technology.
I’d like to see more engagement on that front as well. Thing is, when the commentators choose to wade in and attack a disciplinary identity rather than trying to open a more qualified and limited discussion about the technology, the people in that discipline will respond defensively to the threat rather than responding openly to the new line of discussion.
It’s a dysfunctional discussion, and neither side is doing a good job of focusing on the techno-historical side. The cultural side is getting in the way of that.
The editors write “We write today to express our unreserved support…We demonstrate here the accuracy of Bulstrode’s historical account.” In my opinion a reader could be forgiven for supposing that the editors had no reservations about Bulstrode’s conclusions.
That is how a lawyer would read that statement, and probably how many lay readers would as well, but a historian would see it as a defense of a disciplinary identity based on the limited choices of what the writers chose to engage with and defend. There’s a lot of subtext going on on either side, and a lot of that subtext is going unrecognized.
The thing that irks me about Bulstrode and her supporters is their lack of interest in the details of the technology.
I’d like to see more engagement on that front as well. Thing is, when the commentators choose to wade in and attack a disciplinary identity rather than trying to open a more qualified and limited discussion about the technology, the people in that discipline will respond defensively to the threat rather than responding openly to the new line of discussion.
It’s a dysfunctional discussion, and neither side is doing a good job of focusing on the techno-historical side. The cultural side is getting in the way of that.