Boy Scouts are sex-segregated? No, silly, of course not. For as much as the Boy Scouts appear in the news periodically with complaints that they refuse to permit girls to join, in this case they’re coming under fire for the opposite reason: because they have been discussing ways to open the program up to girls. This first appeared in the news back in May, and I’ve seen snippets in newsletters that are sent to Scout leaders, from which I’ve gotten the... Read more
In a truly spectacular case of bizarre reasoning, multiple people have posted on twitter variations of a claim, made, perhaps first, by Nicholas Kristof in his New York Times column: there was no controversy about the arrival of this eclipse; we all accepted the scientific consensus about its timing and swarmed to the best viewpoints. So why is there such resistance to the similar scientific consensus about other foretold events — such as climate change? Which is, well, odd. We... Read more
Does it matter whether one gets into an Ivy League school or not? Read more
Apparently, the white working class in the U.S. have a lot in common with the Dutchies. Belief that kids can find their own way in the world (as distinct from needing intensive parenting, travel sports, and the like), check. Belief that work is a means to an end, that of supporting your family, check. Belief that there are other paths towards a happy adulthood than a college degree, let alone one from Harvard, check. Belief that ever greater accumulation of... Read more
It occurs to me that the pro- and the anti-monument removal sides are having two separate discussions. The pro-removal side is really making some very good claims that the monuments never should have been erected in the first place, placing them in the context of Jim Crow and segregation and reinforcing white power in the early 20th century. (They are then, in some cases, destroying their case by suggesting that any honor on anyone connected with slavery, even Jefferson or... Read more
Subtitled, Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America, this little book (125 pages) is directed at upper middle-class white Democrats asking themselves, “why were white working class voters so stupid and so bigoted as to have voted for Trump, and how can we get them to vote for our preferred candidates instead?” And, indeed, the end of the book was seriously disappointing, since there’s no consideration at all of whether the Democratic platform needs any reconsideration; instead, Williams proposals new slogans to... Read more
We are assured that, with respect to white supremacists and antifa anarchists, there is right and there is wrong, and nothing to discuss. And while I’m all for condemning white supremacists, I’m not thrilled about adopting the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle that anarchists are noble because they fight against racists. We are also assured that this is true with respect to the debate over Confederate monuments. See, for instance, Tribune columnist Dahleen Glanton this morning, who condemned Trump as... Read more
There’s a rally coming up on Saturday the 19th, in Boston, called “Boston Free Speech.” According to the Boston Globe, this is a completely different animal than the mess in Charlottesville in one respect: the security will be massive. No backpacks, no weapons, nothing that can be used as a weapon, such as a large pole — the sort of restrictions that would be applied to a variety of public gatherings on terrorism grounds, even if you weren’t worried about... Read more
What does that quote from Wargames have to do with Trump, and his loony press conference, and its aftermath? Is there any point to it besides revealing my age? In the movie, a supercomputer controls the American nuclear missile system, and a teen boy hacks into its system, thinking he’s playing a computer game but unknowningly triggering that computer believing that a real attack from the Soviet Union is occurring (or maybe that a political scenario has occurred which its... Read more
On the one hand, we have “monument fever” — with an endless array of, not just people, but groups, getting monuments in our public places. Will future generations feel the need to clean up the National Mall, in order to memorialize heroes of future civic or military battles? On the other hand, we’re engaged in a process of clean-up now, getting rid of monuments to people who we conclude weren’t that heroic after all. On the third hand, when ISIS... Read more
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