It wasn't a band, but the late, unlamented The Historical Society, an organization formed in the 1990s by a bunch of historians who thought that the American Historical Association was too "PC" (or, as we'd say today, "too woke"), is the all-time winner in this category.
Even back when it was founded, the search engine thing was already a problem for The Historical Society.
(Even at the time, I found this hilarious. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch imo).
Mar 14, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
@nhannahjones is right to focus on the media angle hear. The media has consistently treated the CRT moral panic, invented by far-right activists like Chris Rufo, as if it were some righteous grassroots reaction to something real.
But while white supremacy has far too large a constituency in this country, it is still very much a minority opinion. Most parents don't want history teachers to be prohibited from teaching their children about slavery.
Aug 30, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Latest effort by @UofOklahoma to avoid adopting the only sensible masking policy (simply mandating masks on campus, period):
Now, if a student tests positive for COVID, masking will be mandatory _in that class_ for two weeks (i.e., while the student is quarantining).
Sounds like a step in the right direction?
You should know that there is no regular testing on campus...or even free voluntary testing. Testing is entirely voluntary and at the student's cost.
Apr 7, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Realizing this morning that life in a typically authoritarian 21st-century American university, in which faculty governance has been a bad joke for decades, teaches interesting lessons about the psychology of authoritarianism more broadly.
We're in the middle of a search for a new Provost here. Candidates are doing online forums. And I have little to no desire to listen. The faculty will have no say in the outcome.
Dec 13, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Among all the misogyny and pettiness of that WSJ op-ed on Jill Biden, this little, lazy falsehood stands out to me: " In contemporary universities, in the social sciences and humanities, calling oneself Dr. is thought bush league."
This is vastly not the case. Whether professors with doctorates are usually referred to as "Dr." or "Prof." varies regionally.
Nov 29, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This is (obviously) not the economic team we'd get from a President Sanders or a President Warren, but it's pretty good coming from Biden.
This is one of those moments in which serious bits of Left Twitter are distingushing themselves pretty clearly from less serious bits: the former are offering actual analysis of Biden's economic team; the latter are melting down over Neera Tanden, History's Greatest Monster.
Nov 8, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
The price of real political reconciliation is real repentence.
This country has made the mistake of attempting reconciliation without repentence. That what happened after Reconstruction collapsed in 1877.
We cannot afford to do that again.
And the problem is that we all know that there will be no repentence on the part of the people in power who led and enabled Trump, i.e. all Republican elected officials.
And there will be very little repentence on the part of the voters who supported them.
Nov 8, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Is there a common political take that is lazier than the argument that an election that results in divided government means that Americans want divided government?
To begin with, the Senate does not remotely reflect popular will (nor is it even designed to do so). And even the House, which in some sense is so designed, is gerrymandered to favor Republicans.
Nov 7, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I've already seen a bunch of Republicans suggesting this was an unusually close election. But it really wasn't. Biden will likely end up with both very solid wins in both the electoral college and the popular vote.
That an unusually large number of states were very close (and more _looked_ very close than will likely end up that way) made for a lot of tv drama but ultimately didn't make the election unusually close, at least for this young century.
Oct 19, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This piece is practically journalistic malpractice. The US has long lines because the GOP wants fewer people, especially people of color, voting. And when it controls state governments, it does what it can to make voting more difficult. Long lines are an intentional outcome. 1/
Long lines at polling places are not a technical problem. There's no mystery at all in how to eliminate lines. Plenty of (blue) states do so. Solving the problem of long lines will involve either shoring up the constitutional right to vote or simply defeating Republicans. 2/
Oct 18, 2020 • 8 tweets • 1 min read
At the start of the year, PM Jacinda Ardern was in danger of losing the next election in NZ. But she just won a historically large victory, likely allowing Labour to be the first party to govern NZ alone since 1993, when NZ reformed its constitution to encourage coalition govts.
Nobody should be surprised that the key to Ardern's victory was her successful response to COVID-19.
Oct 18, 2020 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
I find this Jill Lepore op ed extremely frustrating. 1/ washingtonpost.com/outlook/truth-…
To begin with, though Lepore treats them as essentially similar, a truth and reconciliation commission and criminal prosecutions of the Trump administration represent opposite impulses. 2/
Sep 20, 2020 • 20 tweets • 3 min read
That serious people argue against Democrats adding seats to the Supreme Court BECAUSE OF THE NORMS is extraordinary and depressing....though at some level unsurprising. 1/
I am not one of those who think that norms are unnecessary or a pack of shitlib nonsense (that was the Flavor of the Month among the anti-anti-Trump "left" a couple years back). In fact, I don't think any constitutional arrangement is meaningful without functioning norms. 2/
Aug 9, 2020 • 30 tweets • 5 min read
There are at least two things that distinguish the contemporary GOP from far-right, ethnonationalist parties in Europe: 1) the GOP is (in theory and practice) anti-majoritarian; 2) the GOP remains ideologically opposed to the welfare state, even for the Herrenvolk.
In Europe, parties like Poland's ruling far right Law and Justice Party have greatly expanded the welfare state. They won in part as a reaction to neoliberal policies of center-left or (as in the case of Poland) center-right parties that reduced the size of the social safety net.
Feb 23, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Broken Record Time: all wings of the Democratic Party need to turn out in November if we're going to beat Trump. I think some candidates will have an easier time doing this than others. 1/
But threatening not to vote for a particular candidate or predicting that that a particular candidate will necessarily fail to do this just makes it harder for Democrats to win in the fall. 2/
May 22, 2019 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
In evaluating House Democratic leadership's refusal to open an impeachment inquiry, historians' most common comparisons have been (understandably): Watergate (nicely discussed by @KevinMKruse), Clinton's impeachment, and Iran-Contra. But I've been thinking about another one: 1/
In November 2006, in the wake of Dems retaking the House in George W. Bush's second midterm elections, there was also a lot of talk about impeachment. But Nancy Pelosi, who was about to become Speaker for the first time, was having none of it. 2/
This piece focuses on comparisons between the two presidencies. But one of the main reasons this is Worse Than Watergate is that the Republican Party today is united in support for Trump. 1/
In 1974, some major GOP figures, including, crucially, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, abandoned Nixon. Of course, that Congressional GOP included moderates...and even liberals. 2/
