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Tom Nichols Profile picture
@RadioFreeTom
Sep 23, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
This is the ugliest "I told you so" but...I did. For years I said MOOCs and online and all that were not going to work. I had serious head-butts with a former president of my school about it. Distance Ed can work if done right, but "let's virtualize" was always a stupid idea. /1
Right now, Zoom works, and it will get us through the coming year. Because it has to. But the virtual online education advocates were always wrong, b/c they were wrong about human beings learn things. This began 20 years ago and it was stupid then and it's stupid now. /2
I will say: @HarvardExt always had this right, and approached it carefully. There's a mixture of classes and they had faculty fully on board for experimentation. Very different from the "let's turn everything into the U of Phoenix" people like my old boss all those yrs ago. /3
If anything good comes out of this for education, it's that a forced transition to online-only was just as bad an idea as it was always going to be, and now we *know* it and we can move on. Humans learn from humans. Distance can work but classrooms are still the best option. /4x

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More from @RadioFreeTom

Tom Nichols Profile picture
Apr 17
Once again, a comment that I think is anodyne and self-evident has produced a bunch of ridiculously ahistorical objections from people who somehow think we were *more decadent* 30 years ago, an objection that makes no sense on almost any level.
/1
We are a far more affluent, leisure-oriented - and generally trashy - mass culture than we once were. (Note: *mass* culture.) "But gosh, edgy stuff happened back then!"
Exactly: What was once edge is now mainstream.
Are we more tolerant now? Yes. Of *anything.* /2
In politics, we now live in a time where almost *nothing* is disqualifying. (You folks defending Clinton - he's a stepping stone to that unhappy state we're in now. He's the guy who cemented the idea that character doesn't matter if you're getting what you want.) /3
Read 7 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
Feb 19
This is exactly right. Money doesn't buy respect. It's why Trump spent his life looking at Manhattan with that nose-pressed-to-the-glass feeling; no matter how much money he made, he was a vulgar boor who wasn't welcome there. Short 🧵before I go on vacation this week.
/1
I didn't just come to this conclusion about Trump (or Carlson or anyone else) off the cuff; it's part of what I wrote about in my last book. So much of American politics among elites on the right is driven by a frustrated ambition, a sense of being denied respect. /2
Look at the early Trump circle: I called Trump "Patron Saint of the Third String." Guys like Bannon were people who clearly felt snubbed, even after attending good schools and making money. Others, like, Gorka, had little chance a career without latching on to Trump. /3
Read 9 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
Dec 20, 2023
Reading Tim Alberta's wrenching piece about the idolatry of American evangelicals. Read it, and realize that C.S. Lewis (as always) saw it coming and warned us. /1

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
As Lewis warned in Screwtape:

"Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. "
/2
"Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours-and the more 'religious' (on those terms) the more securely ours.

I could show you a pretty cageful down here."

/3
Read 4 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
Dec 15, 2023
Here, @jimgeraghty makes a some unwarranted assumptions. You'd think after the "no coup in 2020" pieces, we wouldn't be doing this again, but to his credit, he offers a reasoned (if wrong) argument. /1

A Reality Check on the Trump-as-Dictator Prophecies nationalreview.com/the-morning-jo…
Jim writes:
"if our existing checks and balances under the Constitution aren’t strong enough to stop abuses of power by Trump . . . why would you think that they’re strong enough to stop abuses of power by Joe Biden or anyone else?"

This is a really odd non-sequitur.
/2
First, saying "if these measures won't stop the worst guy in the world, then why aren't you worried about how they won't stop anyone else?" Like "laws about murder didn't stop Ted Bundy, so anyone could be a serial killer!"
Uh, okay, I guess, but that's not the point. /3
Read 7 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
Dec 14, 2023
I didn't go into it in my piece today on Ukraine, but I also hope we can finally junk the Powell Doctrine. It's a misleading wish list of ideal conditions that has entranced strategists and military planners for years./1
Actually, it's the Weinberger-Powell doctrine, and it's not a doctrine. It's a list of reasons never to use force unless you can win instantly against a weak enemy and achieve a totally clear objective in a popular war. /2

atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atla…
On the face of it, who could disagree with war as a last resort, for a vital interest, with support from the American people?
Great!
All you need is a weak, stupid, cooperative adversary that everyone hates, and total military superiority.
Wars don't usually happen that way. /3
Read 8 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
Dec 3, 2023
I know it's obvious that Trump changes positions on a dime and how it's mystifying that his cult doesn't care, but picking all this apart is a fool's errand.
They stick with him because he channels their diffuse anger about their lives at other Americans. But it's worse now:
/1
After 2016, Trump voters thought they'd really made their point, pushed back change in America, and gained respect by electing a POTUS.
All that blew up in their faces: They found out they're not a majority, and worse, the disdain of their fellow citizens only intensified. /2
2020 and J6 compounded their sense of humiliation and grievance. The know Trump is making fools of them, but they will never admit it. And Biden winning was like a national slap in the face.
So now they're with him no matter what. They don't care about policy or positions. /3
Read 5 tweets

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