Interesting factoid: Molotov, who lived into his mid 90’s to watch the USSR crumble, said Lenin was far harsher a ruler than Stalin. This is startling given the discrepancy in ordering mass murder and repression but has a logical basis 1/ First, Lenin’s tenure in power before his most serious stroke was very short compared to Stalin’s

Second, Lenin was an abstract intellectual and theorist who thought in abstract concepts. Those concepts represented large # of “class enemies”

His temperament was very irritable

Why was this Pulitzer worthy photo so powerful?

In part, culturally archetypal aesthetic composition in the body language. But more importantly Cognitive Dissonance

A short thread Trump is, to put it mildly. a polarizing figure. A lot of that comes from his political style and personality which is hyped, swaggering, braggadocio and bullying. It rubs many ppl the wrong way while strongly attracting others. There’s a gender norm component to it too

So 2/

Historian of Islam and military history of the Islsmic world @Occidentaljihad asked me about this FP article

Some thoughts on the teaching of history and national security a 🧵

https://twitter.com/occidentaljihad/status/1768298918733889981

In some ways, it’s difficult to be objective here as the study of history has deeply shaped my intellect as well as my career, but I’ll try to be measured and fair

The author gets a lot of things right and raises some of the right red flags but avoids an uncomfortable reality 2/

One of the changes that has occurred post October 7 in US politics is that the formerly undisputed ability of the far left to police liberals into line by labeling any criticism of wokeness/DEI ideology as “right wing” and wreck reputations or careers is breaking down 1/ This tentative change is a reversion to historical norms. For most of the 20th century liberals & trade unionists did not regard illiberal hard left radicals as friends or allies but as opponents within the broad left

This only changed after Nixon was elected in 1969

There’s a lot of people who can’t emotionally handle the stress and anxiety of conflict and as a result cannot do strategy, tactics or negotiation effectively. Worse, they will blow it for your team in an effort to relieve their own inner turmoil by doing the following: 1/ Showing all your cards
Offering concessions just to negotiate
Wanting to unilaterally concede all leverage as an opening move to “buy” goodwill of other side
Making idle threats
Trading serious concessions for vague promises or symbolic gestures
Drawing red lines impulsively 2/

The SCOTUS decision was about gatekeeping into the ruling class as most higher Ed is open admission

Harvard wants wealthy whites & handpicked representatives of minority groups, also wealthy if possible but not 100% required

This means someone needs to be excluded 1/ That someone are poor to middle class highly qualified Asian-American and white applicants who do not have some extraordinary talent in athletics or music or whatever. A big cluster of exclusion to make room for legacies

Harvard will find a new rationale to exclude these ppl

I have yet to look at the GOP “parent’s bill of rights” bill yet. Given the frothing hatred for public Ed of billionaires & far right ideologues I’m sure it includes horrible things and can’t pass the Senate much less Biden’s desk

That said, we need a tough-love reality check 1/ The number of parents who think that schools should conceal important information about their child from them is about zero. And it will be reflected in massive electoral supermajorities

If you don’t understand this simple political fact you are a child 2/