John Holbo Profile picture
19 Apr, 4 tweets, 2 min read
If this doesn't get 'likes' I'm complaining to the manager.
Incredible. Still only a few likes for a meme that has something for everyone: Neoliberals with a sense of detachment; anti-neoliberals; people who aren’t sure what ‘neoliberalism’ means.
Alright, nineteen 'likes' and four retweets seems fair. I am content.

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More from @jholbo1

20 Apr
Maybe I'll pile on this thread later, with the rest. For starters, I think we can agree Biden don't jive. The word is 'jibe'. But it's one of those words people get wrong. 1/
So I got curious. Whence 'jibe'? The odd thing is that this usage is opposite to other senses, seemingly. 'To jibe' is to sneer; or steer a boat in a way I wouldn't describe as 'harmonizing' with the wind. 2/ google.com/search?client=… Image
The OED says it's a mystery but the first instance, from 1813 - "it curricle-izes or gibes in but too well with the passing anecdotes of the day" - seems to suggest a clear solution and it isn't the phonetic connection to 'chime'. 3/
Read 13 tweets
19 Apr
New OBZ! Some delicate color here - lest one think Nietzche feels only contempt for these derpy denizens of the town. Do not these spots of color indicate an earnest wish on Z's, hence N's, part that the organ grinder not merely have his organs ground? 1/ onbeyondzarathustra.com/copy-of-gdfd-p… Image
Speaking of which! There is no 'team' in 'intestinal', but there is an 'I' and a 'test'. We are really getting to "Ye have made your way from worm to man, and much within you is still worm ..." 2/ Image
Look at the little guy's face? Is he not - we? As Alexander Pope writes:

"So morning insects that in muck begun,
Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the setting sun."

[I'll bet those lines crossed your mind, too.]

3/ Image
Read 6 tweets
19 Apr
Kerr BOTH thinks we should be talking about it as a thing that could be good AND that we are only permitted to use a word for it that implies it couldn't be good, 'court-packing'? C'mon, pick a lane. 1/
The D's need a philosophy of the judicial branch to counter 'originalist' argle-bargle from the right. 'Originalism' is a rhetoric not a philosophy (well, it's a bad philosophy, but so are most rhetorics.) But it's been hugely successful. 2/
D's need to counter that, undesirable as this is, the SC is now thoroughly politicized. Maybe it's all the fault of that darned Earl Warren, but, whatever, in recent decades the right has seen to it that its 6 R-appointed Justices are expected to be reliable partisans. 3/
Read 7 tweets
18 Apr
Anti-court-packing rhetoric ratchets up a notch NR. Some of this is guilty projection. NR has to get behind R's; R's are increasingly behind the Jan 6 insurrection, so, in all decency, you gotta try to peel some 'thuggish treason' off your team, stick it to the other team. 1/ ImageImage
Even so this is a bit much. I think D's need to push back. R's have, for decades, evolved this extreme rhetoric in which whatever D judges do is 'activism', whatever R judges do is not. (At NR, Whelan has a column that makes liberal = activism an alleged analytic legal truth.) 2/ Image
R's are always saying that D's are undermining the courts. But the opposite is true. R's have adopted a steady rhetoric that D judges, since they disagree with R's, who are doing the just plain right 'orginalist' thing, are illegitimate. 3/
Read 5 tweets
18 Apr
Hoo boy, kicker here is he doesn't say he checks resumes for evidence the student is a legacy admit at whatever top school, and downgrades accordingly. Even though he complains about legacy admissions as hypocrisy in the letter. 1/
The takeaway is: look, legacies are a thing. It's hypocrisy to get all worked up about race and NOT about legacy admits. (True!) Therefore, the status quo must be ... preserved? That's crazy. It isn't even two wrongs make a right. It's one wrong makes a right. 2/
The larger takeaway is that the enthusiastically favorable response to this letter, by Weiss and co., is proof Weiss and co. are empirically and morally delusional on the subject, like the letter writer himself. Severely so. 3/
Read 8 tweets
3 Mar
I read the news today o boy. Six Dr. Seuss books cancelled. 1/ washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
The books do contain negative stereotypes. It qualifies as a genuine minor dilemma. It is a fascinating, ethically fiddly topic to argue! At the same time, one of the two major parties in the US has, as its sole policy goal at present, vote suppression. 2/ apnews.com/article/dr-seu…
This generates a minor meta-dilemma. I don't want to forbid people debating the minor dilemma (just how harmful is it to small children that Seuss contains negative ethnic stereotypes?) just because voter suppression is more clear and consequential. Which it for sure is. 3/
Read 19 tweets

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