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15 Jul, 4 tweets, 1 min read
I'm going to explain, in one tweet - coming up - why people on the left who think "they saw it coming" became part of the problem.
You ready? It's in the next tweet. Here we go.
/1
Because the CJCS used "Reichstag fire" and it's *not even close to the top story tonight because of five years of REICHSTAG FIRE! from political hysterics*, and now Milley's comment is lost when it should be *the thing we're talking about*.
That's it. But there's more. /2
Instead of saying "Whoa, the CJCS was worried about Trump ginning up some kind of soft coup inside DoD," the reaction from some here is "see, I was right to say dumb shit five years ago, like the way my grandma was sure she had cancer every day until she finally had cancer." /3
I said years ago: "Keep your powder dry. Keep your credibility intact for the day you'll need it to convince your fellow citizens they're really in danger." But no. Politics as self-actualizing theater took over, and so here we are. Milley's comments will be gone in days. /4x

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Tom Nichols Profile picture
15 Jul
But you were. Many of you were. When you start yelling HITLER on day 1, you're burning out the ability of people to take seriously the threat when it actually arrives. You're like hypochondriacs who wear out the doctors who then won't believe they're truly sick later. /1
Yelling REICHSTAG! every day because you hated Trump is not the same as the CJCS saying he was worried about it after years of appointments of toadies. That does not make you prescient; it makes you complicit in creating noise that drowns out the signal in a moment of peril. /2
Even now, the takeaway from the story about Milley should not be "we were right! He was Hitler!" but rather "we should be cold as ice about what and who is a threat instead of a mass of hysterics." Choose your battles and win them. /3
Read 4 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
4 Jul
People on the left ask me how the left contributed to where we are. That's a long answer that includes "read Mark Lilla," but I'd add:

- much of postmodernism was and is an undermining of basic knowledge and reason
- recasting everything in politics in terms of race/gender

/1
- years of obsession with the White House combined with ignoring local and state politics
- an intolerance bred on campuses that has escaped into mainstream Dem politics that alienates the normals
- cultishness that is in many cases nearly as bad as Trumpism

/2
But with all that said, the center-left does have a kind of rule-based, good-government foundation to it that I prefer over the win-at-all-costs rightist culture warriors. I have said repeatedly that the Democrats are the better stewards of the Constitution now.
/3
Read 5 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
4 Jul
I am going to take issue with this @nytdavidbrooks piece because I think Brooks, and many others, are missing a crucial piece of the puzzle in the "death of truth" and the "unwinding of demcracy problem. Thread follows. /1

nytimes.com/2021/07/01/opi…
Brooks writes that Trumpers buy Trump's lies "because he tells stories of dispossession that feel true to many of them," and that kids on campuses are intolerant because they "feel entrapped by a moral order that feels unsafe and unjust." Maybe. But that's not the core issue. /2
What so many intellectuals miss is how bored and listless these people on both the right and left feel, and how energizing and *good* it feels to believe the lies, no matter what side they come from. It's ennobling. It's heroic. It's self-actualizing. /3
Read 13 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
30 Jun
So, it's been a long time since I dealt with Guard issues (which I did briefly many years ago), but what I think happened is that Noem is not funding this privately. This is Boob Bait for Bubba. I'll speculate here.
/1
How this works - I think - is that Noem is just responding to the request from TX. The State of SD says "this deployment will cost X dollars."
Some wealthy jackass says "oh, btw, I would like to contribute X dollars to the State of SD, no strings attached." /2
So Noem says "Well, lucky coincidence, but I woulda done it anyway - but isn't it nice that Rich Jackass is donating exactly that much to the state!"
It's all legally clean - no quid pro quo - but it's still a contrary to the notion of civil political control. /3
Read 5 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
28 Jun
Now, I'm not going to post @asatarbair's links, because the point, I suspect, of all this hooey is to bait people into debating him so others will see those links.
If they are as turgid as the 1960-ish Soviet level of his tweets, you are not missing anything. /1
@asatarbair My advice, however, to Dr. Bair, as a colleague, is that creating a stir on Twitter - and, ahem, I have created many - is not a substitute for basic competence in the scholarly field he has chosen to argue. /2
@asatarbair There's nothing wrong with pissing people off about music, food, and which James Bond was the best.
But teachers have a responsibility to know at least *something* about a scholarly matter before weighing in on it.
This is where Dr. Bair has gone very wrong. /3
Read 6 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
27 Jun
Okay, so a short thread on terrorism.
Basic idea is: Scaring civilians into demanding changes in government policy. But that's not enough.
For example, has to be non-state actors. If a *state* attacks civilians, we have a term for that: "War," or sometimes, "war crimes." /1
Also, the attacks have to be indiscriminate. They have to be aimed at *terrorizing*, in the sense that ordinary people fear for their lives. Attacking a military vessel overseas isn't even in the ballpark of "terrorism." Military people are armed and accept that risk. /2
All political violence is not terrorism. An anti-Vietnam riot outside the Pentagon is not "terror," in the way that the Weathermen planting a bomb in a post office was. One of them is violent protest; the other makes you afraid to mail a letter. /3
Read 10 tweets

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