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29 Dec, 6 tweets, 3 min read
I realize I am starting generational warfare by criticizing this piece today in @TheAtlantic about how the "Simpsons" life is no longer attainable, but the writer just didn't watch enough of The Simpsons and this is shoehorning some nostalgia about 1990 into a *cartoon* /1
@TheAtlantic When I say that younger people are whining about a life that didn't exist, this is what I mean. The writer is (by my math) about 39? The Simpsons *wasn't real and it was predicated on being a 1950s life and that was the joke, you see*

/2
@TheAtlantic Yes, Homer had a good job with a high school diploma. That was the joke. In a 1993 episode, it's revealed that he was SUPPOSED to have a college degree. He was a fake. He was incompetent. He shouldn't have had that job. /3
"This lifestyle was not fantastical in the slightest—nothing, for example, like the ridiculously large Manhattan apartments in Friends."

Except it was COMPLETELY fantastical. The kids never aged. Money was always short but not a crisis. Nothing changed. Because: *cartoon* /4
The whole point of The Simpsons is that it was a parody of a life a lot earlier than 1989, when it began. THAT WAS THE JOKE. It wasn't supposed to be a representation of a real place. They never named Springfield (which was on a seacoast, by the way). /5
If you believe the American dream is unattainable because you cannot live in 2020 the way you think Homer Simpson lived in 1995, maybe you should pray for ol' Grimey and stop comparing your life to a cartoon that is *already lampooning your values in a way you don't get* /6x

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Tom Nichols Profile picture
16 Dec
I *do* like Pete! That's the point! I think he's a talented man who should, you know, win a statewide seat, or at least a seat in Congress, or run something bigger than a city before heading to the Cabinet. That's my only position on it but I forgot that Pete has a nutty cult. /1
The reason, apparently, that no one came at me nearly this hard about my objection to Lloyd Austin - a far more consequential pick and far more worrisome than Pete - is because Lloyd Austin doesn't have a cult of TV-addicted celebrity worship out there plumping for him. /2
But in the end, what I'm really pleading for here with a subset of Twitter Democrats is to *be consistent and hold your party to the standards that matter, not the shitty standard of the Trump era.* Don't engage in lazy "but he won Iowa" or "Elaine Chao was awful arguments. /3
Read 4 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
12 Dec
I am sorry to see a man whose writing I have very much enjoyed - Joseph Epstein - descend to this kind of crap in the @WSJ.

Especially because on his main point - about the honorific - I mostly agree with him. But this piece is cringe-inducing and dripping with resentment. /1
@WSJ Epstein wrote a wonderful book on resentment and its uglier brother, "ressentiment," and it is amazing that he is completely unaware of the degree to which something he understands so well now afflicts him so mightily. This piece is not only resentful, but self-pitying. /2
Epstein attempts to dress that resentment and self-pity behind a breezy style for which he would have likely clobbered a hapless student in his own classes. The lack of self-awareness is remarkable in a writer whose candidness was part of his appeal. /3
Read 4 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
8 Dec
Liberal friends, over the past few years many of you said "I plan to be consistent on basic principle when it's our guy in office!" Well, here's your chance. If you think a general running the DoD is a bad idea, it can't be a *good* idea now just because Biden did it. /1
This has zero to do with Lloyd Austin. Yes, he's qualified. Yes, the president should have his team. But this requires Congress - for the second time in four years - to pass a law saying "we didn't really mean it about that other law we passed prohibiting this thing." /2
If you voted for Biden to restore norms, saying "yeah, but Trump did worse, and this isn't so bad, and Trump something something," then you're not restoring norms. You're making a special pleading that your norm-breaking is better than the other guy's norm-breaking. /3
Read 4 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
7 Dec
So, this is a teaching story I often tell on the road, and a kind of teaching we should get back to. In 1985, after working my way through college and an MA, I finally got a PhD scholarship. I thought I was the cat's ass for that. /1
And I swaggered into Intro to Political Philosophy (my PhD minor was in political theory), taught by tall, stern, crew-cut Jesuit named Father James Schall. Schall was tough as nails and I fought with him about...wait for it... Plato.

Because I was, you know, smart. /2
Jim had read Plato in Greek and all that, but hey, I was 24 and wicked smart. Anyway, at the end of it all, I manage to get an A. I feel like Superman.
So I run into Father Schall at the dept Christmas party, and I am totally full of myself. /3
Read 6 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
6 Dec
You need to read this great piece by @RuleandRuin about how the GOP got where it is.
You should read it because it answers the important questions.
1. What happened?
2. How could you have been in the GOP?
3. Does the left have this problem?

/1

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/1…
@RuleandRuin First, Kabaservice explains how the Tea Party was really a movement of people who hated everything about government (except for stuff they wanted), and how badly they sucked at the job of governing. The Tea Party died because "I hate this job" is not how you build a party. /2
@RuleandRuin Second, Geoff notes that every cycle of GOP populism was subsumed by people who knew they had to actually govern, which is how Goldwater, Reagan, and even Boehner became more moderate over time. That's how parties work. /3
Read 6 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
2 Dec
A short thread about cultural resentment. I am old enough to remember when rural and small-town people were considered virtuous upright upright, and city dwellers were considered diseased bags of walking sin. /1
There was a reason for this: the cities were a collapsing mess, and “real America“ judged the people who lived in them. Especially if they were black or some other shade of non-white, but also plenty of hate for the white pinko elites. /2
Ted Cruz talking about “New York values“ was an attempt to do that kind of nostalgic throwback. But everyone was in on it. Even Billy Joel sang songs about the dead future of sinking Manhattan out at sea. /3
Read 9 tweets

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