@xankarn@mastodon.online
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xankarn

@xankarn@mastodon.online

Associate Professor at SLAC. (NY, USA) and #Histodon working on #HistoricalJustice and #HistoricalDialogue. Personal acct, not representing employer. Interests: #HumanRights #Reconciliation #Restitution #Reparations

Social democracy when I can. Liberal democracy when I must.

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xankarn, to Law
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Won’t submit to legislative oversight.

Won’t commit to implementing a serious code of ethics.

Won’t lift a finger to save the Court’s legitimacy.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/30/politics/john-roberts-ethics-alito-flag-supreme-court-durbin/index.html

xankarn, to random
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I’m old enough to remember when the NYT published “news analysis” (Dec 2022) trying to convince readers that Musk’s politics were “complicated” rather than patently anti-democratic.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/technology/elon-musk-x-biden.html

xankarn, to random
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Roberts court to hear Trump’s “immunity” case at some point…maybe.

Meanwhile, one of the SCOTUS justices flies an insurrection flag which would disqualify any potential juror.

xankarn,
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P.S. Yes, I know.

xankarn, to random
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The MAGA base would be ineffectual except for the organizing and funding efforts of elites.

Trump has SCOTUS spouses and US senators doing his bidding, and Jan 6 “patriots” arriving in DC in private aircraft.

It’s in the interest of all these elite collaborators to pin this on “working class” resentment, but that’s not an honest assessment.

NYT: “Trump has capitalized on the anger, fears and resentments of a besieged but fundamentally decent working class.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/opinion/trump-history-transformative-president.html?unlocked_article_code=1.t00.6QYG.dnPVeHuCGUg4&smid=url-share

xankarn, to random
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Justice Alito, you’ll remember, shuns the SOTU, because attending a presidential address sends the wrong message about our independent judiciary.

The bad faith of some people knows no limits.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/us/justice-alito-upside-down-flag.html

xankarn, to random
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“In 1992, those whites scoring at the top of the authoritarianism scale split their two-party vote almost evenly between Bush and Clinton (51 to 49). In 2000 and 2004, the difference becomes statistically significant but still pretty small.

By 2012, those high-authoritarianism white voters went 68 to 32 for Romney over Obama. In both Trump elections it was 80 to 20 among those voters.

So from 50 Republican-50 Democrat to 80 Republican-20 Democrat in 24 years.“

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/opinion/trump-authoritarianism-democracy.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sU0.OOs2.Py-ND3D--YE1&smid=url-share

xankarn,
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👆

Here’s the thing. While the NYT continues to frame (largely) as a story of competing radicalizations—Woke v MAGA—the collapse of liberal is a mostly one-sided affair.

We’re a divided nation insofar as 40 million Americans are now all in on neo-Fascism and the various resentments, violent fantasies, and coercive agendas it harbors.

xankarn, to Eurovision
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If Putin is ever made to face the ICC, I hope they sentence him to compete in .

xankarn, to random
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From The Atlantic (May 2024):

“The Man Who Died for the Liberal Arts” by David Shribman, long-time editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, on letters his uncle, Phil Shribman, sent home while serving in the Pacific during WWII.

Gift link: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/05/philip-shribman-liberal-arts-wwii/677836/?gift=oEEh75L2AatCMMthY3HEk5_JN5t--Jzvr25McjqJKC0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

xankarn, to random
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Honest to fuck. No self respect.

makkhorn, to random

What's the dynamic here

xankarn,
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@makkhorn

Barr has said he supports Trump’s policies, even if he objects to some of Trump’s behavior.

He has said that objectionable behavior is not always illegal.

He has said that Biden and progressives are more dangerous to freedom and democracy than Trump, who can be restrained by institutions and norms.

The dynamic, imo, is Barr’s embrace of inequality and his hope of maintaining/strengthening illiberal power hierarchies.

xankarn,
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@jenzi @makkhorn

Not just in the room, but an active part of the effort to take a Trump off his leash. He wrote the summary of the Mueller Report specifically to exonerate him and minimize what irregularities had been uncovered.

But collusion with Russia isn’t the behavior that concerns Barr. In fact, aligning the country with Putin and authoritarianism is a key element in Barr’s defense of freedom against the forces of Woke.

xankarn, to random
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Intro to cultural history once again.

We're doing a unit on sub-culture and counter culture. Earlier this week, we focused on jazz hipsters and beatniks. Today we looked at Teds, Mods, Hippies, and Punks.

One of the key points in today's discussion was the absence of girls and women in histories of postwar counter-culture. (I told them about Kathleen Hanna's new memoir, which was reviewed positively in the NYT yesterday).

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/arts/music/kathleen-hanna-rebel-girl-memoir.html

xankarn,
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Why is it that girls and women are so often reduced to accessories in the story of male rebelliousness?

Part of it reflects real structures: namely, the subordination of women and girls in the home and within the family prior to the 1960s.

Part of it is that early histories of subculture were written when the academy was still overtly patriarchal.

xankarn,
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But even in the 1960s and in subsequent decades when women and girls begin to step out into public spaces in more assertive ways and when they gain access to spaces for experimentation (e.g., co-ed colleges), cultural history still reads them, too often, as arm candy or as muses rather than creative originals in their own right.

Kurt is a genius. Courtney is a ___.

That kind of nonsense.

xankarn,
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Again, some of this simply reflects the deep patriarchal patterns of postwar youth culture.

In The Cry of Jazz (1959), an amazing short documentary on the meaning of bebop improvisation and the racial history that informed jazz, you can see what kind of role women had in the cultural discourse. Men are the teachers and the carriers of the torch. Women, at best, are there to learn from male interlocutors.

https://youtu.be/fE00fzXpI04?si=SzYOJoTEAagDC1oX

xankarn,
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I showed the scandalous interview that Bill Grundy did with the Sex Pistols in December 1976, which killed the career of the former and vaulted the latter to new heights.

One of the things I point out there is Siouxsie Sioux, who stands in the background while Grundy engages the Pistols, and only becomes relevant when the host hits on her in an obviously creepy way.

She's taken to be a sex object on the periphery of punk, even though she was incredibly important to its gestation.

xankarn,
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You can watch that interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC16gG5Rtzs

xankarn,
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After you do, you should probably also watch this parody, which is its own kind of genius.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NQphQZXhFM

xankarn,
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All of this is just to say what's obvious.

Looking at histories of subculture through the lens of sex and gender is essential for understanding how power shapes our understanding of the past.

Women and girls get short shrift in histories of sub-culture both because of the patriarchal hierarchies they encountered and because of the patriarchal structure through which they are still examined.

The history of girls/women in sub-culture is there, but you wouldn't know it at first pass.

skinnylatte, to random
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When I first got a dog, I didn’t know anything about having dogs. Sometimes people stop me to ask me about getting a dog like Cookie and I tell them a friend gave her to me (true) and that without that link I wouldn’t get a purebred dog.

Next dog I get, if at all, will probably be a rescue. While Cookie ended up not having the typical Cav health issues, there’s a lot about the ‘dog breeder’ industry I despise as well

xankarn,
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@skinnylatte

I don’t disagree, but as someone who has had both purebred and rescues throughout my life, don’t underestimate what trauma and developmental disturbances the latter sometimes carry with them.

xankarn, to random
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In No Exit by Sartre, the condemned must live for all of eternity without mirrors, which they depended on during the course of their lives to maintain their self-image.

In hell, they will only be allowed to know themselves as they are seen and comprehended by others.

That’s what I suspect these long days in court are like for Trump. 1/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/21/us/politics/trump-trial-analysis.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mE0.s_6B.jsgLo7pP1Ijq&smid=url-share

xankarn,
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Worth noting that No Exit (1944) was written to encourage honest confrontation with the past and personal accountability, following France’s Vichy (fascist) period. 2/

xankarn,
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So, yeah, to the extent that Trump is capable of absorbing reality, I hope the next two months are excruciating for him. 3/

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