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5 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
In the midst of all the 1776-ing about the guy who was elected to the New Jersey Senate because he had a beef over a concealed carry permit, he's already doing the "I'm sorry if I said a bunch of hateful stuff" dance, because of course he did.
Just as the Founders dreamed of!
/1
I love the idea that ordinary citizens run to make a difference. My mother - woman with a 9th grade education - did it in our hometown to shut down a drug market on our street. She won. She shut it down. That's citizen action, right there.
/2
But "I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm just mad at the local cops" isn't civic involvement, it's score-settling. The guy has every right to run and win - and the guy he beat probably deserved it - but this isn't how you get better government. /3
But I can only note that the right-wing kooks celebrating the spirit of Jefferson did not feel the same way about the Latina who pushed out a future speaker Dem of the House in her New York congressional race.
Me, I wasn't a fan of that. But that's what consistency is about. /4x

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Tom Nichols Profile picture
6 Nov
A good read by @20committee on the arrest of Danchenko and the Steele dossier. A couple of comments from me: First, the idea that the dossier had disinformation in it was something I think most Russia-heads assumed. Like John, I warned back in the day that this was likely. /1
John goes farther here, wondering if the entire dossier wasn't just a setup by the Russians, the old CI problem of a "paper mill." I see it a little differently: Steele was paid to go find dirt. So he went and found dirt, knowing some of it *had* to be fed from the Russians. /2
Whether just about *all* of it came from the Russians is a different matter, or whether the Russians were using Steele as a dupe to create chaos. (I think they did, but I think Steele knew it because that's just par for the course.) So Steele produced a file of raw intel. /3
Read 9 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
5 Nov
Reminds me of nuclear weapons protests back in the 70s and 80s, which accomplished nothing, and assured that anti-nuke politicians and organizations were frozen out of the policy world.
Self-actualizing stunts like this convince no one, and I'd bet have zero effect on Manchin. /1
And before any of you get misty-eyed thinking protests against nukes got anywhere: Yes, people in the 80s were scared, and rightly so. The Cold War was getting hot. That didn't stop anything. And Reagan proposed SDI in part to undercut the arguments of anti-nuke protesters. /2
Reagan and Gorbachev took the first steps back from the brink, but I'd argue that super-dramatic protests actually made that harder to do for a while. Sometimes, protests make it harder for political leaders to back down, because they don't want to be seen as caving to them. /3
Read 4 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
27 Oct
The people who talk about a "civil war" and independence from the USA have no real idea what it would mean and don't really want it. They want their lives as they live them now, but with some sense that they've settled scores with people who look down on them. /1
They don't really want to know what life would be like without the US infrastructure. They want everything they have now, but with some sort of authority figure who says "It's okay to be terrible. We went and hurt those other folks. Oh, and here's some cash for your pain."
/2
Now, I suppose there are people who are just too stupid to understand that "secession" means "You have to fix all the highways that have that blue shield on them," and "you'll have to use MAGA Bucks instead of the dollar," but most of them really aren't that stupid. /3
Read 7 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
23 Oct
A quick thread here on working as an academic in the military. I agree with @CarrieALee1's thread on the upside, in general: The money/benefits are insanely good, no methodological warfare, policy-relevant research, etc.
BUT:
/1
cc @dbyman @notabattlechick @JRHunTx
@CarrieALee1 @dbyman @notabattlechick @JRHunTx There are downsides. You are working for people who do not understand education and who are, in the main, suspicious of educators. It's a culture clash that is built-in to the institutions. Many of your superiors have no idea what you do all day and think you're not "working." /2
Although tenure is now spreading to PME (thank heavens), the contract system breeds short-term thinking and a timid faculty that is centered way too much on pushing the right buttons for student evaluations. PME students was *way* overempowed in this regard. /3
Read 8 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
21 Oct
My former comrades on the right saying that "Because Mitch didn't dump the filibuster in 2017, he never will" are acting as if the past four years didn't happen. So, to use a political science term, let us engage in cutting the shit here for a moment. /1
McConnell and the GOP are without principle; their only principle is power and the expediencies that create power. In 2017, it was not in Mitch's interest to end the filibuster, especially with the risk that the GOP would lose seats in 2018. He knew he might need it. /2
This is the same McConnell whose respect for norms and tradition denied Garland a hearing and rammed through Barrett weeks before an election he knew Trump was likely to lose. He's a master of obstruction and opportunism. So let us cease this nonsense about Mitch's principles. /3
Read 10 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
30 Sep
This is a great piece about why nostalgia about that "better time" is bullshit. (Well, it's about more than that.) A few observations, and h/t @RuleandRuin
Why Is Every Young Person in America Watching ‘The Sopranos’?

/1

nytimes.com/2021/09/29/mag…
First, it's a great reflection on how nostalgia runs in regular and stupid cycles. The young people watching The Sopranos are nostalgic watching someone be nostalgic about the period before The Sopranos; nostalgia watching the 2000s while watching someone hating the 2000s. /2
Second, it's a warning that maybe we're now a lot more like Tony than we want to admit. I've said something like this is my recent book about the bored middle-class looking for meaning. That was Tony: Affluent, bored, somewhat self-hating, adrift and depressed. /3
Read 5 tweets

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