Robot Jazz

Readers of this blog—again, to all eight of you, a hearty “Thanks!”—are used to me beginning with a running tally of how many days President Trump has worked to cover up the Epstein files. Which is to say: every day of his second term. Today, I offer no such blurb. This dispatch is all about the day’s news: congressional Republicans and the Trump White House are actively conspiring to scuttle a House floor vote that would force the full release of the FBI’s Epstein files. Headline: Top GOP and White House allies working behind the scenes to prevent Epstein vote on House floor Top congressional Republicans and White House allies are working behind the scenes to prevent a politically charged floor vote to release the government’s Jeffrey Epstein case files next month, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions. The intensifying effort to halt that floor vote comes as Reps. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, and Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, declared on Wednesday t...

  I remember when, in one of my early poli-sci classes, we covered the rise of Hitlerian fascism in Germany. At the end of the lecture, the most common emotion was one of bewilderment. Why didn't the German people stop Hitler before he led them into the abyss? Why didn't they take Hitler's expressed ideas, as he recorded in detail in  Mein Kampf, seriously and end his political career before it started? My professor's answer was brutal in its directness: because the German people wanted what he was selling. To be sure, some did oppose Hitler and even lost their lives due to their opposition, but the majority of the German people reveled in Hitler's vision for a Third Reich . They were on board for the madness, hence why there was never a popular uprising, even after the war turned against Germany.  How does a once-rational nation fall into madness? The answer varies depending on the specific situation, of course, but one general principle, as espoused by Plato in Th...

  One of the things that I have pointed out previously in this blog is that one of MAGA's guiding principles is that "we don't need no fancy book learnin'" as a 21st-century nation. From a profoundly stupid man as president to a profoundly brain-addled anti-science figure as head of Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the rest in between (such as FEMA head David Richardson being unfamiliar with hurricane season ), the entirety of Team Trump is built upon the idea that politics is merely a matter of uninformed opinion. As someone who has formerly studied politics, this attitude offends me in its, well, stupidity.  As any political scientist will confess, political science  is less a science than it is a form of meta-science. Whenever one has to deal with something human , the rules aren't made of steel but of plastic because oft irrational human emotion can be as powerful a motive force as hard data. Hence, why we shouldn't call it...

  I've been thoroughly enjoying reading Mary Chesnut's Diary from Dixie . While she and her family were staunch supporters of the slave-holding South, she was also a witty and intelligent woman who I suspect could have effortlessly charmed me into writing her love letters by candlelight.  Putting that aside, I was struck by an insightful observation she made about the various cults of personality that were forming in the confederate government, and the effect it was having on the cult leaders: Much love, admiration, worship hardens an idol’s heart. It becomes utterly callous and selfish. It expects to receive all and to give nothing. It even likes the excitement of seeing people suffer. When I read that, various people in this regime instantly sprung to mind, but first amongst these was the South African idiot savant himself, Elon Musk. This is why I rejoice in the news that Musk's pride and joy, Tesla, is suffering grave economic consequences from his destructive personal...