Camille Paglia is a philosopher?
Here's a 2005 article by Camille Paglia: "Ten great female philosophers: The thinking woman's women/Radio 4's 'Greatest Philosopher' poll yielded an all-male Top 20. But is philosophy really a female-free zone? On the contrary, insists Camille Paglia - and here are 10 to prove the point." In the note identifying the author, she's listed as a "Professor of Humanities at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia." If she had any claim to being considered a philosopher, I think we'd have seen it there. She said:
I feel women in general are less comfortable than men in inhabiting a highly austere, cold, analytical space, such as the one which philosophy involves. Women as a whole - and there are obvious exceptions - are more drawn to practical, personal matters. It is not that they inherently lack a talent or aptitude for philosophy or higher mathematics, but rather that they are more unwilling than men to devote their lives to a frigid space from which the natural and the human have been eliminated....Paglia loves to personalize things, so you can bet she'd have said but not me! if she could.
A philosopher for me is someone who is removed from everyday concerns and manipulates terms and concepts like counters on a grid or chessboard.Obviously, Paglia does not meet her own definition of philosopher. She likes to talk about ideas in connection with art — high and low art of all kinds.
Both Simone de Beauvoir and Ayn Rand, another favourite of mine, have their own highly influential system of thought, and therefore they belong on any list of great philosophers....But:
The term philosopher is passé, anyhow, and should be abandoned. The thinker of modern times should be partly abstract and partly practical. Karl Marx, the winner of the Radio 4 poll yesterday, was indeed a truly major thinker.A "major thinker" — which is what Paglia probably thinks she is — but not a "philosopher," because:
He was not a captive of abstraction and always kept his eye on society and its evolution...Who wants to be a philosopher anyway? Nobody good, certainly not Paglia:
Philosophy as traditionally practised may be a dead genre.
This is the age of the internet in which we are constantly flooded by information in fragments. Each person at the computer is embarked on a quest for and fabrication of his or her identity.... Philosophy belongs to a vanished age of much slower and rhetorically formal inquiry.Man, I know the feeling! I had to stop at this point and listen to "Life During Wartime":
Why stay in college? Why go to night school?/Gonna be different this time/Can't write a letter, can't send no postcard/I ain't got time for that now... We got computer, we're tapping phone lines/I know that ain't allowed... Burned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks?....
Anyway, back to the I-don't-trust-it Washington Examiner article I've been trying to read as the sun comes up here in Madison, Wisconsin, where nobody I know is manipulating terms and concepts like counters on a grid or chessboard, and I am thrown back to 1979, when I was trying to be a law student and The Talking Heads were distracting me with word of impending chaos and the futility of further education. I was writing in notebooks — what good are notebooks? — and nobody I knew got computer.
But speaking of chess, have you ever seen this picture?
That's "A Jew and a Muslim playing chess in 13th century al-Andalus." I found that in the Wikipedia article "Al-Andalus," which I clicked through to from "Alcázar," which I'd looked up because it was the hardest answer in the Friday NYT crossword.
Change 2 letters in chess, and you get the opposite of chess: Chaos! And chaos is what made me want to blog that Washington Examiner fragment about whatever it was Camille Paglia may have said. The key line for me wasn't Paglia's spurious expressing of hope to vote Democrat, but her assertion about what's going on with the attacks on Trump:
"Democrats are doing this in collusion with the media obviously, because they just want to create chaos... They want to completely obliterate any sense that the Trump administration is making any progress on anything... I am appalled at the behavior of the media... It's the collapse of journalism.... I feel that the media has so utterly lost its credibility that I think people are going to vote against the media again."I wanted to quote that because I agree with it. A partisan plot to cripple the American President, to make it as difficult as possible to accomplish anything? "Chaos" is a fun-loving term compared to "treason," but we don't say "treason" anymore, do we?
In the 1790s, opposition political parties were new and not fully accepted. Government leaders often considered their opponents to be some sort of traitors. Historian Ron Chernow reports that Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and President George Washington "regarded much of the criticism fired at their administration as disloyal, even treasonous, in nature." When an undeclared Quasi-War broke out with France in 1797–98, "Hamilton increasingly mistook dissent for treason and engaged in hyperbole." Furthermore, the Jeffersonian opposition party behaved the same way. After 1801, with a peaceful transition in the political party in power, the rhetoric of "treason" against political opponents diminished.Oh, but these days, part of the chaos-making is calling treason on Trump.
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114 comments:
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant.
I'm playing through my mind now the Talking Heads, but in the Trump era. It yields a whole new interpretation and meaning.
The sign of a genius so far ahead of his time
Or the sign that nothing ever really changes.
But to reference it now, is the sign of a blogger (my theory, now - my "philosophy") - the sign of a blogger whose earlier artist senses are - perhaps, give it a thought - are again emerging from the straight jacket of focus on the law.
In a world
where people have problems
In this world
where decisions are a way of life
Other people's problems they overwhelm my mind
They say compassion is a virtue, but I don't have the time
So many people have their problems
I'm not interested in their problems
I guess I've experienced some problems
But now I've made some decisions
Takes a lot of time to push away the nonsense
Take my compassion - Push it as far as it goes
My interest level's dropping, my interest level is dropping
I've heard all I want to, I don't want to hear any more
What are you, in love with your problems?
The cold abstraction, which means just abstraction, aims at the feeling that at least here, at last, everything will be settled once and for all.
It's a male interest.
Women are comfortable with things unsettled, the more complexity the better. It's more interesting.
So no women in philosophy, chess, math. It's an interest thing.
(Analysis by Vicki Hearne, _Bandit_, chapter "Beastly Behaviors")
Paglia doesn't understand what the interest is in the male interest, though.
Hannah Arendt was a philosopher. Camille Paglia, as otherwise valuable as she might be, is not.
Partisan politics is now treason? Althouse has regressed from yesterday's recognition that Trump was his own worst enemy. Sad!
@rh
Reminds me of that scene in "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control," where the lion tamer explains why a chair works:
"The chair has four legs... Now, an animal has a one track mind, For instance, the animal is coming after you with the idea of tearing your head off... You put the chair up, and all of a sudden, he has four points of interest. He loses his original train of thought because this agitates him. He can't comprehend those four points of interest, so what he does he attacks the chair. He takes his wrath out on the chair. His mind now had been completely distracted from his original thought: 'Eat the man in the white pants.'... It's basically animal psychology. You try to keep the animal afraid of you in that he does not understand you. He does not understand that you're weaker than he is."
Love it when you do Paglia. Neither of you do Rand enough, though. She's too intimidating. :)
A previous comment I made, applicable here.
Comment originally here.
Early-to-mid Talking Heads (you know: the Good Stuff) can be seen as an outsider responding to the feelings of paranoia and doom that the Elites created during the Reagan era. Example Number One: "Life During Wartime."
I got some groceries, some peanut butter,
To last a couple of days
But I ain't got no speakers, ain't got no headphones,
Ain't got no records to play
Why stay in college? Why go to night school?
Gonna be different this time
Can't write a letter, can't send no postcard,
I ain't got time for that now
Listening to this song, you can hear it as a soundtrack to what is going through the heads of today's college SJWs under a President they don't respect: they are part of The Battle, it is Happening Right Now...
On that same album, Fear of Music, the paranoia returns on "Electric Guitar" -- one of the most claustrophobic-sounding songs they ever recorded:
An electric guitar is brought in to a court of law
The judge and the jury (twelve members of the jury)
All listening to records
This is a crime against the state
This is the verdict they reach:
Never listen to electric guitar
Of course, paranoia strikes deep: it is not just politics, it is found in the very Air we breathe:
What is happening to my skin?
Where is that protection that I needed?
Air can hurt you too
Air can hurt you too
Some people say not to worry about the air
Some people never had experience with...
"Fear of Music" is a Time Capsule that, when opened in the Trump Era, provokes Strong Deja Vu.
On the other hand, Byrne also wrote this on an earlier album: "Don't Worry About The Government":
Some civil servants are just like my loved ones
They work so hard and they try to be strong
I'm a lucky guy to live in my building
They own the buildings to help them along
So there is that. Fear in that song, too, if you know where to look.
I am Laslo.
"Partisan politics is now treason?"
Who said that? George Washington? Thomas Jefferson? Alexander Hamilton? Me, little me? I don't think I did. But it is a good question. Why don't we try to answer it? At what point would a partisan goal fixated on disempowering the American President deserve to be called treason? You start.
"My interest level's dropping! My interest level is dropping!"
So says rh's woman.
I understand Althouse's rage at much of the media. She's been a New York Times reader for her adult life, and an NBC watcher (etc., etc.)* and she is offended by what she sees as anti-Trump hysteria. And Althouse is mostly right.
But I gave up on NYT and NBC a long time ago. The National Review Online is not part of any leftwing media consortium. The Weekly Standard is not promoting any anti-Republican propaganda. Jonah Goldberg; Brent Bozell; Bret Stephens; David French; these are some of the harshest critics of the left-leaning mainstream media who have ever occupied positions of public prominence in modern America.
And those people have been offering a whole lot of criticism of Donald Trump. And rightly so. Althouse, if you are despairing at a media world convulsed with Trump Derangement Syndrome, I strongly advise you to alter your media choices. Because there are conservatives who can offer to you a critical view of Trump that is not suffused with left wing ideology and deranged obsession.
(Cue the ad hominem sneers, a la Trump. Can't "normalize" that.)
Vicki Hearne is interested in philosophy enough to follow it and point out little mistakes a woman might notice.
In _Animal Happiness_ "Wittgenstein's Lion" Wittgenstein is wondering what a lion would say if a lion could talk. Hearne points out that lions do talk, as any lion tamer knows.
Wittgenstein's Lion
Pay no attention to the titles or blurbs on any of Hearne's books. They're written by women who don't understand the first thing about Hearne. Hearne takes no prisoners. She follows males and writes in female notes.
RAND - weaving through this heavily flowing river. That's what I was still riffing. Anyway, carry on, then...
"My interest level's dropping! My interest level is dropping!"
So says rh's woman.
Women drop out of fields when they find you can't do it at a world class level without sustaining illusions about its importance that males embrace. The illusions displace for example a social life, which they prefer.
Vicki Hearne's woman.
I forgot to add the footnote that I started above...
*I am not criticizing Althouse's news-source choices as myopic or deficient. I am sure that is not the case. I picked the NYT because she so often links there, and NBC because she is clearly a devoted viewer of Meet the Press. As are millions of others. I'm just suggesting that the simple answer to NYT prejudice and opinionating is the Wall Street Journal, and that the answer to the New Yorker is the National Review, and that the answer to Meet the Press is Fox News Sunday. And yet still, there is some very solid criticism of Trump in all of those places.
I don't believe that what the Republicans did to disrupt Obama's presidency ('You lie') was treason, nor do I believe that what the less disciplined Democrats are doing to Trump is treason. The difference in effectiveness of the similar approaches is almost entirely due to the difference in the temperaments of the two men.
Here is Krauthammer on that very topic today. Trump is a dumpster fire.
"Love it when you do Paglia. Neither of you do Rand enough, though. She's too intimidating."
I don't like the writing style. I've enjoyed some of her videos.
You really ought to put "xword spoiler alert" on posts giving answers to the current puzzle!!!!
Stanley Cavell showed Hearne how to do it (Cavell's _The Claim of Reason_) but I think in general a woman can't follow Cavell because she doesn't see the point of what he's writing against in the first place.
At the point when the opposition deliberately and continually creates situations that threaten the safety and well-being of citizens in the country, including deliberate and continual destruction of property, thus seeking to paralyze the ability of society to provide a framework where its citizens can pursue life, liberty and happiness?
Or when the assassination plot is uncovered...
"Althouse, if you are despairing at a media world convulsed with Trump Derangement Syndrome, I strongly advise you to alter your media choices. Because there are conservatives who can offer to you a critical view of Trump that is not suffused with left wing ideology and deranged obsession."
I'm always looking for stuff to read. If the people you name haven't made it into my blog posts, it's because I didn't find them interesting in the way that works to get me going somewhere.
I'm interested in liberals. I'm surrounded by them where I have lived and worked for 30+ years. Conservatives don't annoy me enough. I don't know these people. It's like the way I write about the United States and not other countries. I need to feel the context.
Why you single out NBC? I don't watch NBC as a particular place to go for anything. I go to the news-all-the-time channels if I want to watch the news and switch back and forth based on when commercials come on.
You say "Meet the Press," but I record all the Sunday shows. Those are the only network news shows I ever watch, and I pick parts of all of them to watch. Lately, I've been leaning toward "Face the Nation" and "State of the Union." If Tim Russert were still around, I'd be a devotee of "Meet the Press." But that would be because I loved Russert, not anything about NBC.
Trump's flailing makes the strong case that the presidency has become too powerful relative to the other arms of government. A bipartisan effort to pare pack the powers of the presidency would be both a practical way to deal with the current crisis and a good way to reverse a long-term trend that may not be in the best interests of anyone.
Actual experience long ago in philosophy 101 class, some chassical point of skeptical philosophy was being argued in a seminar and a woman seated next to me whispered "What are they talking about" and I explained the particular doubt in question and she dismissed it, "Is that all?"
She couldn't see how it wound up important or of any interest.
Something on the order of a ball of was and how do I know it's a ball of was I really only see one side of it or really only a front surface...
Cavell reveals that the scene of doubt has to involve something that nobody could care about in order that normal criteria of doubt no longer apply (How do I know it's a goldfinch? by the markings, by the song, by the behavior, depending on what's being questioned). But a general question about doubt is the philosophers' trick and seems important to him. It's just that philosophers think in language and language doesn't work the way they think.
This is where a woman comes in, except that she left the conversation long ago.
@rh
Here's the best discussion of Wittgenstein's lion.
"I don't believe that what the Republicans did to disrupt Obama's presidency ('You lie') was treason, nor do I believe that what the less disciplined Democrats are doing to Trump is treason. The difference in effectiveness of the similar approaches is almost entirely due to the difference in the temperaments of the two men."
The question was when would the line be crossed? When would a specific intent to wreck the power of the presidency amount to treason (in your opinion)? Don't tell me what's not treason. Tell me the first thing that is.
A Jew and a Muslim playing chess in 13th century al-Andalus walk into a bar.
Bartender says, "I don't see many Jews and Muslims playing chess in my bar."
Jewish guy replies, "(Your answer here)."
I too look forward to the day when the Democrats are worthy of my vote. I believe in the two party system and am distressed that they have abandoned their role in our democracy.
At a minimum, they should changed their name. The current one is false advertising.
I bought that Talking Heads album on vinyl sometime around 1982. I hated it then. I listen to it a lot on Spotify now. Especially that song, which is great for workouts.
Yeah, sure. Like the billions of dollars of "free" publicity that Trump got during the election campaign from the MSM and the real "fake news" delivered by an army of Russians AND Wikileaks and on and on.
Well, I wanted to avoid any sense of criticizing Althouse personally, and I think I have failed at that. And I blame only myself. I'll take one more shot at this point, and then quit.
So there was this Paglia quote, which Althouse liked, and agreed with, and which I found provocative:
"Democrats are doing this in collusion with the media obviously, because they just want to create chaos... They want to completely obliterate any sense that the Trump administration is making any progress on anything... I am appalled at the behavior of the media... It's the collapse of journalism.... I feel that the media has so utterly lost its credibility that I think people are going to vote against the media again."
Alright. There may be a lot of truth in that. But in the media I am consuming, and which I was consuming pre-Trump, there was never any collusion with Democrats. The conservatives whom I read regularly, were literally writing the (many) book(s) on the subject of liberal media bias.
And so their criticism of Trump is sure as heck not in any "collusion" with Democrats.
By the way, it's funny about the unconscious way that the word "collusion" snuck into that quote. Since the question of "collusion" between unlawful Russian dirty tricksters and the Trump campaign is technically the principle question to be answered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
This has certainly been a more chaotic and intense effort by Democrats/media than against some other Republican presidents, but when was the last time the Democrats or the media actually accepted a Republican win?
We know they didn't with Trump and certainly not with Bush 43. That puts it back to 1988 as the last time a Republican win wasn't portrayed as a fraud by either media or Democrats. And it's not like the media or Democrats had much love for Reagan or Nixon either.
The Treason is from those we depend on to "report the news". Their decision to go rogue, their obvious coordination of message, journOlist-style, their brazen flooding of all airtime with incendiary distortions while suppressing important developments that do not serve "the Cause": these are treasonous attacks by the fourth estate on our nation's body. A pox on NPR and NYT etc. for their choice. where is the wikileaks contributor that will unmask their journOlist communiques. May one be so brave.
"Paglia, who cast her ballot for Jill Stein last November, is predicting Trump will win re-election in 2020. 'I feel like the Democrats have overplayed their hand,' she said . . ."
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/camille-paglia-democrats-are-colluding-with-the-media-to-create-chaos/article/2623299
Here's the best discussion of Wittgenstein's lion.
Misses the woman's note, see the Vicki Hearne page, that the lion is Wittgenstein.
Well, as for any attempt to wreck the power of a presidency...
I'd say that calling the president a Muslim, with a fake birth certificate, is an unserious way to attempt that. And more likely to tarnish the promoter of such theories.
And I'd say that that the appointment of a special counsel who is the universally respected former Director of the FBI is a decidedly serious way to do that.
So I think you gotta give the anti-Trump forces points, for seriousness.
Check out the Vicki Hearne page - I think she writes the way you want to blog.
Fuck off, Chuck.
--Old American saying
Treason is very narrowly defined, I think to waging war and taking bribes.
The idea though abstracts and then broadens to putting your own interest over the existence of the country, with a mute recognition that some unwritten rules really need to be followed, even if they're unspoken.
Ann Althouse said...
Don't tell me what's not treason. Tell me the first thing that is.
Nixon's break-in of the DNC headquarters was illegal but it was not treasonous. On the other hand, Nixon's attempt to undermine Johnson's peace talks with the Vietnamese could be viewed as treasonous. One action hurts the Dems but not the country directly whereas the other is an attack on what appears to have been the best interests of the country.
A certain and often high level of partisan chaos is characteristic of democracies, to start to define this as treasonous strikes me as anti-democratic, which is possibly a little treasonous.
Women as a whole...
Doesn't she realize that joke only works with the spoken word?
See, Paglia attacks the feminists. Hearne likes her opponent.
Like the difference between Derrida and the academic postmodernists.
You get actual insights if you like your opponent.
"You really ought to put "xword spoiler alert" on posts giving answers to the current puzzle!!!!"
Oh, I assumed everyone had the puzzle done by 6 a.m.
Sorry.
"A fish rots from the head first. Trump is the head of the executive branch"
Trump's flailing makes the strong case that the presidency has become too powerful relative to the other arms of government. A bipartisan effort to pare pack the powers of the presidency would be both a practical way to deal with the current crisis and a good way to reverse a long-term trend that may not be in the best interests of anyone.
Totally agree - I'll just add that virtually none of our politicians show any interest at all in furthering the national interest - it's all "gotcha" all the time from the Democrats, and "We hate Trump too" from the Republicans. No-one is offering anything useful.
A fish rots from the head first. Trump is the head of the executive branch"
That would be a vagina joke if Hillary were president.
What's happening now is not much different in terms of degree of caustic intensity than what happened in 1790. There hasn't been a fall of integrity in the media, it never was noble. Politicians always reached for any instrument to achieve their objectives, no matter how base. The only one who didn't was Washington, lucky for us that he shrugged power. But his legend also allowed us to think the whole nation is like him when we actually resemble the scrum of infighting that surrounded him.
Without flailing you'd have no bread.
It says in the TIME magazine article on the renaming of the White House to the Red House, Russia bought online ads to support Trump during the 2016 election.
Darn, those Russian again.
Blows a hole through this blog post.
Trump had no money for online ads and so relied on the Russians.
Things not believed.
You don't believe that a Jill Stein voter wants to vote Democrat again? Of course she does!
She doesn't believe the Democrat party is democratic--that's why she refuses to use the word. She thinks the Democrat party is in the hands of filthy rich assholes who love Hillary because she is as corrupt as they are.
Paglia is so feisty and fun and interesting and hates all the right people, it's always kind of a shock to hear that she voted for Jill Stein. Twice!
Here is Paglia on Trump, back in March, 2016. I think she pretty much nails it. She loves the populism. She's a Bernie babe.
Here is Nate Silver trying to explain how Donnie and Bernie are not similar. But they are! Not the least of which is angry/hopeful mobs of fans.
Epic post.
North Korea supplied hair mousse to the Trump campaign.
Perpetual Left-wing tantrum and butthurt = how you get more Trump.
Nobody's checking the Australian connection to the Trump campaign. Koalagate.
Chuck wins.
St. George said...
A Jew and a Muslim playing chess in 13th century al-Andalus walk into a bar.
Bartender says, "I don't see many Jews and Muslims playing chess in my bar."
Jewish guy replies,
"We have a talking lion outside, but you can't understand him."
Bartender says "If you can't understand him, how do you know he's talking, and not just making noises?"
Jew and Mulsim "D'Oh!"
It says in the TIME magazine article on the renaming of the White House to the Red House, Russia bought online ads to support Trump during the 2016 election.
So somebody actually reads and believes that shit ? Amazing.
Don't tell me what's not treason. Tell me the first thing that is.
Adultery! On a personal level, that's the worst sort of betrayal.
On a political level, you would have to betray the country with some kind of foreigner.
So if Bill Clinton fucked, I don't know, Marion Le Pen
I think he would have been impeached. Pretty much unanimously!
A Jew and a Muslim playing chess in 13th century al-Andalus walk into a bar.
Bartender says, "I don't see many Jews and Muslims playing chess in my bar."
Jewish guy replies, "(Your answer here)."
'Cause I won't pay the check mate.
Could this be considered treasonous?
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/democrats-sketch-international-resistance-on-eve-of-trump-trip/article/2623411
"Democrats are going global in their battle with President Trump, promoting their "international resistance" on the eve of his first foreign trip to the Middle East and Italy.
Democratic Party Deputy Chair Keith Ellison and representatives of Democrats Abroad are taking the lead and tonight plan to lay it out in a live webcast. "They'll be discussing Democrats Abroad, the international resistance, and the ongoing scandals from the Trump administration," said the DNC"
Dems promote "the international resistance" to an American president.
Chuck illustrates why this is bipartisan chaos-making. The constant drumming of the word itself is destabilizing. Reports of the transition team being chaotic preceded the inauguration and have only increased since then. Paglia rightly points out that Obama and Clinton both endured six months of mixed signals and missteps. My own recollection is that Democrats tried to sow much confusion and dysfunction in the G W Bush White House as possible. It took forever to get Condi confirmed as NSA. Right up until 9/11 the D party was obstructing every little thing.
So the opposition party doing this is nothing new. But now we have Ben Sasse and other nevertrumpers who are actively working to undermine the admin, sow chaos, and IMO hysterically react to everything Trump does. We R's have the reputation as the stupid party and apparently many are determined to live that out to oppose Trump, instead of being constructive. Yes I know Trump undermines himself with mixed signals and the failure to "clean house" of Deep State Democrat operatives left over from Obama, but the vehemence that the DNC-Media complex (including Establishment organs like NRO) exhibit as they go wall-to-wall all day with anti-Trump propaganda is disgusting.
Like I've said in many threads, there is no news any more that isn't Trump News. There's no opinion piece that doesn't tie the author's angst to Trump. It's ridiculous that they can't cover the very real and important things going on in the world, in the country. There is no news anymore. The world is melting down and all my TV is stuck on Trump.
"A bipartisan effort to pare pack the powers of the presidency would be both a practical way to deal with the current crisis and a good way to reverse a long-term trend that may not be in the best interests of anyone."
I'd support this enthusiastically... if there was a way to make it stick.
Our last President expanded the powers of his office beyond recognition with the willing support of his party. Do you think a paring back would hold if the Democrats re-took the Oval Office and Congress?
I don't think either party is filled to the brim with honest brokers. But the left has fooled me twice too many times.
Ann Althouse said...
"At what point would a partisan goal fixated on disempowering the American President deserve to be called treason? You start."
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."
Unknown said...
It says in the TIME magazine article on the renaming of the White House to the Red House, Russia bought online ads to support Trump during the 2016 election"
Ah, yes. Time magazine. Kept afloat by doctor's and dentist's office subscriptions. Like I've said, it's what you read when you're waiting for the root canal and all the good magazines are taken.
A bipartisan effort to pare pack the powers of the presidency would be both a practical way to deal with the current crisis and a good way to reverse a long-term trend that may not be in the best interests of anyone.
Yeah this idea would have been REALLY handy about eight years ago, or at any point in the last admin was using their "discretion" to squelch inquiry into potentially criminal doings by the IRS, ATF, etc. Or when vague 1300-page laws are written that defer details to the various agencies instead of delineating the law when written, as tradition and separation of powers would suggest. Or when the executive stands before a crowd and says, "I have a phone and a pen!" Instead of cheering, Democrats should have been jolted to their senses by the thought that such raw usurpation of power, once aggregated to the Chief Executive, would be very difficult to reallocate to Congress.
Mike said...
...
...The world is melting down and all my TV is stuck on Trump.
And can't we agree that the main reason for that, is that Trump is stuck on Trump? Why is there a controversy over how many people were at the Inauguration? Why a news cycle wasted on disproving Trump's flatly wrong claim that he won the largest Republican electoral victory since Reagan? Why all of the days spent on Trump's disparaging the federal judiciary? And genuinely silly immigration orders, all issued in the service of an old campaign speech?
And on and on and on. We both know there are 10,000 more words to be written on the details of how Trump has singlehandedly and personally driven his legislative agenda into a ditch.
The most un-Trumpian thing in the last 100 days was also the most successful for the Administration; the nomination and confirmation of Justice Gorsuch. Because it was almost wholly taken out of Trump's hands. And even then, Trump was the only minor screwup in the process, with his "so-called judges" Tweet followed by his "Blumenthal mischaracterized Gorsuch" Tweet.
It's no more treason to seek to dis-empower the presidency than it is to seek to expand the power of the presidency, or to narrow the scope of judicial review or to expand the power of Congress (why yes, that marijuana plant growing in your back yard really does affect interstate commerce). Partisan political motivation for doing any of the above is not disqualifying.
Specific acts, like sending a tape of a President's secret negotiations with US allies to an actual enemy (as opposed to a rival or adversary) in time of war would likely be treason; but the motivation would probably not matter (unless the idea was to scare that enemy into surrendering).
There was a time when almost all intellectual inquiry was termed "Philosophy". When Hamlet says "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy", he is mocking Horatio's University education. Over time, those branches of Philosophy which had actual content were slowly pared away as sciences - Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology; all were originally the province of Philosophers. What remains is mostly a seemingly pointless wrangling over words, and over questions whose answers the rest of us regard as obvious. Only, it is not so easy to say exactly what those obvious answers are ....
I have a hard time considering any political opposition as treason. Our Constitution defines treason as providing aid and comfort to the enemy, and that is not what is occurring here. I would tend to consider excessive opposition to be insurrection, not treason. Insurrection is opposing the authority of the government to execute its constitutionally defined powers, and I think that would require the use of armed force in opposition, as it is usually interpreted. I have, like Paglia, looked at what the left is doing to Trump as an attempt at a bloodless coup. I had not thought of it before but looking at Article 25 again it would appear that it would be possible to stage a coup against Trump to remove him from office if the right powers in the Cabinet and Congress could be convinced to do so.
If anything in recent history comes close to treason I would submit Obama's shipment of pallet loads of cash in small bills to Iran as coming close though it probably still does not quite meet the strict definition since we are technically not at war with Iran.
As an ancient fan of the conservative media Chuck likes- Buckley, NR, and the WSJ, to which I subscribed for nearly 40 years - let us say that life has moved on. The changes in the US economy and society have modified the interests they serve and the issues that matter to them, and so also their political alignments.
NR was really a hobby journal for WFB, that appealed to political aficionados and hobbyists, which never paid for itself and depended on subsidies from rich fans of WFB. He himself had influence as a media figure, but without him and without the media presence NR is an uninfluential husk, living off charity.
Buckley had a broad concept of conservatism that the new management severely narrowed, I believe in response to the narrow vision of its present funders. Its telling that the post-Buckley management conducted a great purge of their most interesting writers, Derbyshire, Sailer, Steyn, etc. They would never have the wit, or chutzpah, to run someone like Florence King.
Anyway, NR is about as useful as the New Criterion. Someone may write something interesting there, but it will always be that unheard tree falling in the forest.
As for the WSJ,
The US economy has split in its interests. You have the real economy, which is about dealing with physical things and is run by people expert in physical things, and the new economy that lives off abstractions, money and its derivatives as abstractions, pure and isolated from real things. The players here make money as a consequence of exploiting rules and tacit privileges granted by government regulations. These economies do not get along. Their interests diverge. The WSJ has thrown in with economy2.
As for weakening the executive, that is what "draining the swamp" is. The President is not solely the executive, it is, much more so, the vast bureaucracy, and its powers, that the President is supposed to oversee. To weaken the executive, properly speaking, means purging this vast establishment and reducing its mandate.
Those I have heard that want to reduce Presidential authority simply want to reduce anyones ability to control the government structure itself, and turn it into a completely self-directed, unaccountable entity - such as the EU bureaucracy for instance. It is very much that already, as we see today.
And can't we agree that the main reason for that, is that Trump is stuck on Trump?
No. No we can't agree to that. The media studiously ignored eight years of malfeasance and managed to actually report some of what went on the world. Is there no news value to completing the XL pipeline, something that was in the news when protesters were trashing the reservation and water supply last year, but not a peep when the line was completed and put people to work? Tiny improvements in unemployment was presented via banner headlines during the last admin, but the lowest rate of UI applications in 28 years now is, what? Not worth reporting?
Chuck, there is real newsworthy events all around the globe, but they are ignored, or more likely buried under an avalanche of Trumpy newspinion. At this point I have to admit every TV channel has driven me away except my local news. So if CNN suddenly developed another airline fixation or Shep Smith has a weather event to report, I won't hear it. Who is the willing consumer of so much Trumpiness? Is there no person in authority at any network or cable outlet that can decide they are going to cover the whole range of newsworthy events in the world?
Mike said...
The world is melting down and all my TV is stuck on Trump.
The world isn't melting. China is doing an amazing job advancing its mercantilist agenda.
Chuck look at the stale months-old crap you are fixated on. Trump's tweet about crowd size or winning big aren't "news" anymore, if they ever were! But you illustrate the absurdity by being a parody of yourself. Why does it matter? Why can't you "move on" and deal with today's events? TDS. It's a form of mental illness that you share with every news operation to more or less extent!
"Silly immigration orders"? Really! Even the people arguing at the 9th this week admitted they would be legal orders if anyone but Trump had issued them. You sir are deranged.
Nevertrump reflects the interests of its owners. The old conservative media and the various think-tanks always depended on subsidies from a coterie of rich men. This was an attempt at bypassing the academic monopoly of the left. Many of these funders of the old days were self-made "old economy" sorts plugged in to truth on the ground, or came from traditions of that milieu.
But generations turn over and the nature of the US upper class shifted. So also have the funders of the old-style conservative media. And so also have the personnel of the conservative media. Like it or not they are, a lot of them, tainted by their educational and social environment, both the funders and those they hire, and closer in spirit to their partisan opponents than the conservative people.
Having studied history, the Founders knew well what mischief could be made with a charge of "treason", and they were at pains to head it off in the Constitutional definition; "... shall consist *only* ...".
Even at the height of the Civil War, Lincoln never called the Confederates "traitors". This was policy on his part. To have so termed them would have been to acknowledge their separation from the United States. And he was waging a bloody war to affirm the impossibility of such a separation.
I'm not getting on the treason train, but if I had to argue for the case for the prosecution, I would start with Trump's claim of an "absolute right" to disclose information to Russia. That's in the same category of Constitutional overreach as Nixon's claim that when the President does it, it's not illegal. With adhering to a enemy, Russia, is mixed in, that's treason. Now Trump can argue that Russia is a hoped for ally and not an enemy, but the argument that Trump has been ordained to determine Russia's status in his sole discretion invites a Charles I ending.
"To take a spontaneous interest in natural beauty is the mark of a good soul." Kant
Cold abstractions indeed.
buwaya said...
"You have the real economy, which is about dealing with physical things and is run by people expert in physical things, and the new economy that lives off abstractions, money and its derivatives as abstractions, pure and isolated from real things."
While I have considerable sympathy with this view, I am not sure it is correct. Things have value because they are valued. They have a price because they are scarce. To suggest that people involved in lawful commerce are not creating value is to suggest that their willing customers do not know their own interest. Although I am hard pressed to see how Mark Zuckerberg has ever created a penny of value in his life, I am always suspicious of anyone who claims to teach others where their "true" interests lie.
Bad behavior only becomes treason when you betray your friends and allies.
Buwaya wrote: " Its telling that the post-Buckley management conducted a great purge of their most interesting writers, Derbyshire, Sailer, Steyn, etc. They would never have the wit, or chutzpah, to run someone like Florence King."
Yep. NR canned its' best, most iconoclastic writers and it is an extremely boring, unoriginal Establishment organ at this point. No wonder Chuck holds it in great regard.
Marx' great error, from which many of his lesser errors follow, was to suppose that objects derive their value from the labor consumed in their production. He conflated "value" and "cost". It is amusing that Paglia supposes he "was not a captive of abstraction". If he wasn't, then he was a brazen liar and manipulator. I think the truth is that he was a determined thinker, but not a particularly penetrating one. Though his theory was built on economic abstractions, his movement was built upon emotional resentments. And there the matter stands, a century and a half later.
Discussion of Paglia, but no link to her latest book, "Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism"?
Amazon reviewers have it at 4.9 stars (even if it does a good deal of recycled material, such as the first chapter from her "Sexual Personae" (1991)).
"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
----Sir John Harington (1561-1612)
Saint Croix said...
"Bad behavior only becomes treason when you betray your friends and allies."
No, behavior, bad, good or indifferent, is only termed "treason" when it is directed against a group of which you are a member. Betrayal of friends and allies is only treason, even metaphorically, if they have some claim, as a group, upon your allegiance or loyalty.
We have a great many words in the English language. Pretty much anything you need to say, they can say it. It is not necessary to go redefining them all the time.
That's "A Jew and a Muslim playing chess in 13th century al-Andalus."
The Muslim is telling the Jew he is checkmated.
Peoples economic interests have no necessary bearing on economic value. In seventeenth-eighteenth century Spain the chase was for government positions, rents and pensions. Receiving money for nothing by working levers of political influence. This is not creating value.
So today the chase is for government initiated asset appreciation, or some very complex exploitation of some government created arbitrage opportunity, or some sort of licensed monopoly position. There is a series of parallel worlds of money that are only very vaguely attached to anything we understand as classical economics, but is in reality very close to what some lace-collared Habsburg courtier schemed for.
"Betrayal of friends and allies is only treason, even metaphorically, if they have some claim, as a group, upon your allegiance or loyalty."
In the old days, people swore allegiance to the king or queen. In America, government officials don't swear allegiance to the President or any individual. They swear allegiance to the Constitution. So in America treason is more a betrayal of our Constitution than of any man or woman who might be temporarily in power, which makes the charge trickier.
If the king says it's treason, then it's treason. Betrayal of the Constitution is subject to interpretation.
Democrats - party of slavery, party of secession, party of segregation, now the party of sedition.
So here is where I want ARM to opine: Was Ted Kennedy a traitor? He, after all, offered to the Soviets to halve the US nuclear arsenal if the Russians helped him win the 1984 election or something like that. At the height of the cold war, no less.
Was that treason? And of course Obama selling out the Brits to the Russians--you do know that, right? Obama gave the serial numbers and precise locations of all of the British Nuclear weapons to the Russians, not very long ago in fact. Reported in the Telegraph. Of course you supported him... no doubt this is A-OK in your book. Plus the pallets of cash to Iran so they can build a bomb to drop on Jerusalem.
Now, deputy director of the DNC Keith Ellison is calling on people all through the world to "Resist Trump" and do it violently. Right when Trump goes on a foreign policy trip, of course. Is that not treason? At the least, it is insurrection.
Treason has a name, and right now it is "Democrat". Plenty of Republicans are close, though.
--Vance
Left Bank of the Charles said...
I'm not getting on the treason train, but if I had to argue for the case for the prosecution, I would start with Trump's claim of an "absolute right" to disclose information to Russia.
Yet it is a fact that the President has the absolute right to declassify or classify any information at his discretion. Therefore, what you cite as an over-reach is a truism: it ain't illegal if the Chief Executive does it. If you disagree with this then please cite a legal or learned opinion that says the President does NOT have the right to declassify information.
The WSJ went down the tubes when they started writing features for women.
"I'm not getting on the treason train, but if I had to argue for the case for the prosecution, I would start with Trump's claim of an "absolute right" to disclose information to Russia. That's in the same category of Constitutional overreach as Nixon's claim that when the President does it, it's not illegal."
But he does have an absolute right to disclose whatever he wants to whomever he wants. He has the ultimate classification and declassification authority, and any authority to do either for anyone in the government is delegated to them by him. His act of disclosing classified information to someone not cleared for it can be taken as partial declassification.
Moreover, the classified information sharing here was done in an attempt to fight a common enemy. And who actually disclosed the important information about the sources of that intel to our real enemies (ISIS)? It wasn't Trump, and it wasn't the Russians. It was the MSM disclosing the information to the public, information that they received through illegal leaks aimed at harming Trump. There are your crimes - the leaking. The Russians had every incentive of keeping our sources of that intel from ISIS (as they did), as did Trump. And your treason - ISIS is an official enemy right now, while Russia is not. Who gave aid to our enemies here? Obviously, the NYT and the leakers who ultimately ended up intentionally disclosing information to our formally declared enemies about the identity of spies in their midsts.
Oh, and what about Obama setting up classified information sharing with the Cubans? Cuba really is still an official enemy, and Obama's actions somewhat normalizing relations with them intentionally bypassed Congress. How can Trump be charged here, and not Obama, whose actions were so much more egregious?
I don't think I've seen or heard anyone calling treason on POTUS. If anyone is they must be outliers or the angrier part of the hoi polloi. Personally it seems too early to be talking about whether there is reason to impeach the president. Right now I don't think so.
Trump is one scary nightmare to me, but what I want is to see what the investigations show. I'd also like him to start acting a little grown up, even presidential. That, however, seems too much to ask.
I don't see much difference between the Dems current (unfortunate) behavior and what Repubs did to Obama for 8 years. The biggest point of difference is that Trump is making all kinds of unforced tactical errors that Obama didn't make, giving them tons of opportunities.
Spoilers!
Could you please not give away answers to the NYTimes crossword?
I trust almost nothing from the Washington Examiner. If one listened to them everything Obama did was "tyranny!".
"If one listened to them everything Obama did was "tyranny!"."
It was. He oversaw a massive (albeit continuing from previous trends, he accelerated it) expansion of government encroachment on the US economy and civil liberties.
Sigh. People shouldn't get their underwear in a bundle when the term "treason" gets attached to Trump, considering what was said about Obama. It's just a continuation of the hyperbole seen in our divided country. And we'll all have to wait and see what comes out of all the investigations.
AReasonableMan said...
Ann Althouse said...
"Don't tell me what's not treason. Tell me the first thing that is.
Nixon's break-in of the DNC headquarters was illegal but it was not treasonous. On the other hand, Nixon's attempt to undermine Johnson's peace talks with the Vietnamese could be viewed as treasonous. One action hurts the Dems but not the country directly whereas the other is an attack on what appears to have been the best interests of the country.
A certain and often high level of partisan chaos is characteristic of democracies, to start to define this as treasonous strikes me as anti-democratic, which is possibly a little treasonous."
You don't say much, but when you do you don't say much.
The dems started literal treason when they started rewarding Iraqi terror attacks around 2004.
Blow militarily insignificant stuff up and we'll get Bush out of Iraq for you, using your insignificant attacks as the reason.
Marx' great error, from which many of his lesser errors follow, was to suppose that objects derive their value from the labor consumed in their production. He conflated "value" and "cost".
That was one of his big errors. Another one was that, like Malthus, he thought the competition between workers for jobs would drive wages down to the subsistence level, leaving capitalists (employers) to collect all the "surplus value". It never occurred to him that employers also had to compete for workers, and that this would drive wages up to the point where they matched the marginal product of labor. That is, if each additional unit of labor adds X dollars to a firm's saleable output and the price of labor is less than X dollars, it pays the employer to keep adding labor until it costs him X dollars to hire more. Some of this thinking was implicit in Adam Smith's 1776 The Wealth of Nations, but Marx didn't get it.
The biggest error of Marx and most of the later economists, however, was their focus on issues of production and distribution rather than innovation and invention. We are much better off than our great-grandparents not because we individually work harder or are smarter, but because there have been so many advances in engineering, technology, business processes, and other areas. Noticing this is the Hayekian tradition in economics, and it is still mostly ignored by the economics profession today.
"was their focus on issues of production and distribution rather than innovation and invention. "
Marx did include the issue of innovation - his theory was based on technological improvements in productivity reducing the need for labor. That's why he predicted a progressively expanding labor surplus.
His theory left out that innovation would also create new products and services, absorbing the labor made redundant by higher productivity in established production processes.
He also left out the social-welfare system that, mainly, took older workers out of the labor force through retirement, or mass education that took the young out of it likewise.
There has, very plausibly, been an observed Marxian effect in US wages since the 1970's, a result of women and immigrants expanding the labor force, and a long term deterioration in the ability of this culture to come up with new products and services, or at least at a rate faster than the obsolescence of old ones.
Stop Making Sense just the greatest.
Buwaya, you say that Marx apparently thought that technical innovation would only affect the production of existing products and did not see that new products would be invented. I would say that means he had no idea at all of what innovation is. Even if you look at something like textile mills, which were around in Marx's time, it's clear that inventions in one area lead to invention in other areas and subsequent new processes and products. Marx spent too much time in libraries and too little time learning what businessmen and capitalists actually do.
I don't hold myself out as an expert on Marx. I tried to read Das Kapital in grad school, but I just couldn't plow my way through the bad writing and convoluted thinking. Moreover, I was convinced a long time ago by Milton Friedman that you judge the validity of an economic theory by the accuracy of the predictions it makes. Marx made only a few predictions, but one of them was the subsistence wage I mentioned above, and that prediction was spectacularly wrong, even in his day. So I was never very motivated to study his stuff.
Furthermore, it always seemed to me that Marxism as an ideology is based much more on envy than on economic analysis. None of the Marxists I've met in my lifetime had much understanding at all of economics.
I don't agree with your characterization of the American economy as having run out of innovative steam. I think the slowdown in productivity growth has more to do with over-regulation, government-enabled rent seeking, and measurement errors. GDP accounting tends to value the output of service industries at the cost of producing those services. That kind of accounting grossly understates, for example, the value of Google searches and other online services, many of which are provided for free.
Here is another example: If I buy Microsoft Office today for 20 percent of what I paid for an inferior product ten years ago, GDP thinks I'm getting less value. And Heaven forbid I should download LibreOffice for free.
The effect of quality improvements is also understated. New cars today don't cost much more than they did 20 years ago, but they are much better products today. They are quieter, safer, more fuel efficient, more durable and more comfortable. But GDP values them about the same as before, because the cost is about the same. The price deflators used by the Commerce Department do try to make some accomodation for changes in product quality, but most economists, even the ones who work at Commerce, think they are off by at one or two percent per year. Just adding that back in to the productivity figures eliminates much of the supposed decline.
It's also kind of funny that you should mention immigrants in this context, as immigrants are responsible for much of the technical innovation going on today, particularly in computer engineering. And there are a lot of women, like both of my well-educated daughters, who have dropped out of the official labor force. Together with their husbands they've decided that their families are better off with their "off the books" labors and homemakers and mothers, but GDP is lower.
"I would say that means he had no idea at all of what innovation is."
A very incomplete and simplistic one, most certainly.
"Furthermore, it always seemed to me that Marxism as an ideology is based much more on envy than on economic analysis. "
It was indeed very much a rationalization of a desired set of conclusions.
As for the rest - I doubt a great deal of the "quality" argument. For one thing it does not take into account similar losses in "quality" that are also missed by productivity figures. Such as for instance stupider service personnel, or more complex procedures (for anything), regulatory compliance spending, or reduced service quality (airlines for one). And longetivity of consumer products. Household appliances used to have, for instance, much longer warranties
An example of where innovation has displaced former products and services, but not necessarily to the good -
Computers, PC's, killed a huge slice of boys and mens hobbies in the mid-1980's-90's.
You see this in the collapse of the camera industry (there had been a huge boom in hobby SLR'sin the 1970's); in stereo-audio equipment, in musical instruments, model building, in woodworking/home shop, auto customization, motorcycles, in hunting, in bowling (bowling alleys are a small fraction of their former numbers), even in golf. And etc. across a huge range of industries. All replaced by computers, the internet and videogames.
This may or may not be an improvement. I tend to doubt it. It seems to me that a whole lot of satisfying activities were absorbed by the intellectual equivalent of heroin.
buwaya said...
"There has, very plausibly, been an observed Marxian effect in US wages since the 1970's, a result of women and immigrants expanding the labor force, and a long term deterioration in the ability of this culture to come up with new products and services, or at least at a rate faster than the obsolescence of old ones."
The "obsolescence of old ones" is necessarily driven by the invention of new ones. Buggy whips did not become obsolete because someone ripped a page off a calendar.
I do think the feminists made a Devil's bargain with the Capitalists. "Give us jobs, and we'll work for half of what you were paying our husbands." Of course, that only left the other half for the husbands. The capitalists got two workers for the price of one, and women got to leave their children in daycare while they perform some meaningless drudgery for a few bucks. Of course, this looked like a good deal to the college-educated women who invented feminism.
She may not consider herself a philosopher but her book Sexual Personae is certainly a philosophical work as it seeks to explain the different behavioral patterns of men and women based upon the physiological aspects, ie, men shoot out ideas easily, whereas women, not so much. (I may have abbreviated that too much)
This may or may not be an improvement. I tend to doubt it. It seems to me that a whole lot of satisfying activities were absorbed by the intellectual equivalent of heroin.
Well, since the men and boys you speak of could still engage in those activities today if they wanted to, they evidently don't agree with you. But I know where you're coming from. In 1975 the Army sent my 17-year-old self to South Korea, where I fell in love with the sound of Bose 601 Series II speakers, which I couldn't afford until 25 years later. But first MTV elevated appearance over sound, then came Ipods and compressed music files, earbuds that can't reproduce the feel of bass, rap and ridiculous subwoofers, and the result is that young people growing up in this environment just don't care about music the way us geezers did back then. Makes me wanna shout GET OFF MY LAWN!
Mike said...
Chuck look at the stale months-old crap you are fixated on. Trump's tweet about crowd size or winning big aren't "news" anymore, if they ever were! But you illustrate the absurdity by being a parody of yourself. Why does it matter? Why can't you "move on" and deal with today's events? TDS. It's a form of mental illness that you share with every news operation to more or less extent!
"Silly immigration orders"? Really! Even the people arguing at the 9th this week admitted they would be legal orders if anyone but Trump had issued them. You sir are deranged.
Mike; all along, I have described myself as "mostly an immigration hawk." I have a lot of sympathy with the legal power, of a president to issue orders much like what Trump has issued. (I don't happen to think that Trump's orders are particularly important, as a technical matter, but whatever.)
But Trump himself screwed it up. He never should have said that he called for a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. That was a stupid statement. Such an order would never be enforced. It could not be enforced. When Trump got into office and got some very mildly competent people to help him, even they would not and could not draft such an order with any seriousness.
Again and again Trump does stupid stuff like that. And I won't have any sympathy for Trump as a bit of a verbal bumbler but whose heart and head are really in the right place, because I don't even believe that. I think Trump is a mean-spirited sociopathic prick, with almost no conservative principles or beliefs.
It's good that he got elected, and that Hillary didn't. But Trump is just that and no more. A placeholder.
Yes, most knowledgeable people would say I'm looking forward to voting Democratic. I wonder if that's an editorial policy at the Examiner? To change it to vote Democrat. I have long complained about the childish insistence among some conservatives to heed the calls of Rush Limbaugh to change Democratic to Democrat.
OTOH, maybe she did say Democrat. I guess we'd have to look up some of her past talks to see if she says things like Democrat Party.
Again and again Trump does stupid stuff like that. And I won't have any sympathy for Trump as a bit of a verbal bumbler but whose heart and head are really in the right place, because I don't even believe that. I think Trump is a mean-spirited sociopathic prick, with almost no conservative principles or beliefs.
All you really need to understand him is two words: Roy Cohn.
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