He does know better. But he's using Paris as a metonym for "foreign, cunning, sophisticated city-slicker trickery designed to bamboozle the good plain folks of Pittsburgh." He clearly believes this will work, rhetorically. That's dismaying--
both because it's stupid, obviously, but because it's personal. I live in Paris. I'm a US citizen. Am I excluded from the community of real and authentic Americans because I live in Paris? I suspect that's just what he means.
He's courting the votes of people who reject the idea of "Paris." What does "Paris" signify to most Americans? Art, literature, architecture, culture, fashion, wine. A list of associated words:
"Paris" is meant to represent, "snobs who look down on the good, plain people of Pittsburgh."

Paris is one of the world's great centers of literature, civilization, and culture. But all of that is for "snobs."
The problem with this kind of populist, class-war message is, first, that it encourages class war, which is a bit rich from a politician eager to denounce Democrats as "radical socialists."

But it's also an anti-civilization message.
The implication is that all the things for which Paris is justly renowned are to be hated and feared: They're un-American. Real Americans, in this understanding, are inward-looking, insecure, and incurious about the world and its grandeur and splendor.
Those attitudes are not the mark of a healthy and self-confident society.

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More from @ClaireBerlinski

27 Jan
This newsletter treats the emergence of anti-cosmopolitanism, too. I made a few points that seem deeply ominous in retrospect. claireberlinski.substack.com/publish/post/1…

Here's the genesis of @cosmo_globalist, though: ImageImage
@keithmfitz, we were discussing the phenomenon I discuss in this newsletter the other day--the emptying out of American political speech and its replacement with duckspeak. Image
This is what looks so ominous in retrospect. Though Americans tend to make a theistic or natural-law case for liberal democracy--we speak of rights "endowed by our creator"--in reality, the power of this has long rested upon pragmatism: Image
Read 10 tweets
27 Jan
Here are a few more things I've written in the past few years about partisanship, anti-cosmopolitanism, and the New Caesarism. I was just looking through the archives, and I thought these held up well. claireberlinski.substack.com/p/partisanship…
Read 5 tweets
27 Jan
I just came across an article I wrote in 2019 about the populist instinct to celebrate provincialism and ignorance as "authentically American" traits while intimating that curiosity about the world beyond America--and education--are unpatriotic. claireberlinski.substack.com/p/i-hereby-ris… Image
"It’s fine, even patriotic, not to know the difference between Russia and Ukraine or to care. Indeed, if you know anything at all about this conflict, you must not be a real American—because real Americans, authentic Americans are proudly ignorant."
"Ignorance and indifference are to be celebrated as authentic American values. It’s a form of blackmail, too, this esteem of ignorance. Carlson is inviting anyone who can find Ukraine on a map to exhibit (justified) contempt for him."
Read 6 tweets
25 Jan
Fauci tells us what we already know: Trump was too stupid to understand the difference between science and pseudoscience. I don't fault Trump for this. He didn't elect himself president. I fault everything about our political system and culture that resulted in his presidency--
And everyone around him who watched this, every day, as the pandemic consumed the country; everyone who surely *was* intelligent enough to understand what Fauci was saying to him, but went along with this anyway.
Pence, Pompeo, the whole cabinet. How did Ben Carson, a highly-trained physician, think it was okay to keep working for him and keep quiet about his *inability* to understand the biggest emergency the US has faced since the Second World War?
Read 7 tweets
23 Jan
I don't agree. You are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Per the 1984 Bail Reform Act, pre-trial detention is admissible only where there's a demonstrable risk of flight or witness intimidation, or immediate danger to the public. That's the law.
We must follow the law. Judge Frensley determined Munchel wasn't a flight risk and posed no immediate threat to the public.

Pretrial detention is antithetical to the principles of our justice system (although it happens *far* to often--but two wrongs don't make a right.)
The guy is guilty as sin. But from the point of view of the law, he is innocent until proven guilty--which means either he pleads guilty or is declared guilty by a jury of his peers. The law must guide everything we do. Otherwise, what's the difference between us and him?
Read 4 tweets
23 Jan
By the way, the @cosmo_globalist isn't a monolith: We have editorial disagreements about the best strategy. I believe the vaccine should be mandatory; @is_OwenLewis, who wrote this article, disagrees.
(Though he believes governments should use every tool short of force to urge it on citizens.)

I don't find the libertarian perspective on this persuasive at all. This is a global emergency; the virus is murdering and immiserating the entire planet.
Thirty years of of progress in alleviating one of the worst evils in the world--poverty--is being wiped out. Between 119 and 124 million souls will be plunged into absolute poverty this year: blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/updat…
Read 5 tweets

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