Skip to content

Latest rant

Saturday, March 16, 2019

This is not going to be a post about the genius’s tone deaf but honest reaction to the killings in New Zealand. That’s been massively covered elsewhere, but I’ll note, as it is somewhat germane to this post, that his racist reaction is eliciting, at least here in the U.S., the now familiar “Trump being Trump” reaction. The rules are different for Trump individually, and Republicans in general.

Which brings me to the main point, something I’ve sort of been mulling over for several days. Recently the New London Day ran an editorialendorsing the idea of tolls here in Connecticut. In the course of that editorial it dismissed the Republican alternative of borrowing money to fix the roads, while reducing bonding authority for non essential things like education. All fine, as far as it goes, but this bit of prose really rankled:

Lamont is expending substantial political capital in pushing for tolls. They are unpopular. No one wants them. But Connecticut needs them.

This will fall to Democratic lawmakers holding ranks. Republicans appear lockstep in opposition. That is the politically expedient course. We urge local Republican lawmakers to break from the pack, yet we understand the political calculus to let Democrats own this. (Emphasis added)

I can tell you that without doubt if the situation were reversed the Day would not be so understanding, and it would call out local Democratic legislators by name. But when it comes to Republicans, the Day explicitly gives them a pass. “Sure”, it says “it would be nice if you did the right thing, but we totally understand if you want to play a cynical game”. Why does the Day in particular, and most of our media in general, give this sort of pass to Republicans? My own belief is that it’s because this has been the Republicans’ game plan for so long that the media has now been trained to perceive this behavior as normal, when Republicans engage in it. It’s a different story entirely when Democrats do it, of course, because they are expected to be responsible. After all, in the quote above the Day tells us that it is up to the Democrats to hold ranks to give Connecticut what it “needs”. If they don’t, they will have done the irresponsible thing, something only Republicans are allowed to do.

I will hazard a prediction. Local Senator Heather Somers (R) will engage in this cynical behavior until the very end. But the Day loves them some Heather. She can do no wrong. The Day will endorse her in 2020 without so much as mentioning her cynical failure to support giving Connecticut what it “needs”.

End of rant.

Filed in Rants | | Comments (0)

What if Obama had done this, part (insert high number here)

Monday, March 11, 2019

As Driftglass is wont to say, “it’s a funny old world”. 

As all of the internet knows, the genius recently referred to Apple CEO Tim Cook as “Tim Apple”. He is now busily lying about the fact, first claiming he said “Tim Cook of Apple”, a lie even his corrupt donors couldn’t swallow. Then he changed his tune. This from the article I’ve linked to above:

Now, however, Trump is claiming that he meant to call Cook the wrong name, changing his recollection of the event and keeping alive a stupid story that would have died had he just kept his mouth shut.

I have a bone to pick with this writer.

Nothing Trump does can keep this story alive, illustrative as it is of his stupidity and/or dementia, except in certain godforsaken nooks and crannies of the internet. The average Fox viewer will never hear of it. The other major media may mention it in passing, but it will haves no legs, because it’s just the genius being the genius, which we have all come to expect and therefore this evidence of serious mental and/or moral defect will vanish down the major media memory hole. I am not, by the way, arguing that it is a moral defect (though it may have been a mental defect) that caused him to call Cook “Apple”. The moral defect comes with the lie.

Now comes the obligatory refrain. Imagine, for a moment, if Obama had made this verbal slip and then lied about it. He once wore a tan suit and we heard about it for years. It would have been pundit fodder for months, and not just on Fox.

It is a funny old world, isn’t it?

Filed in The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (0)

We’re all fraudsters on this bus

Saturday, March 9, 2019

This isn’t a political post, per se, but it raises a question that has some bearing on our present plight, considering that the person occupying the White House built a career based on fraud, much of which involved misrepresenting his own abilities.

I ran across this articleon ProPublica. It’s titled I’m a Journalist. Apparently I’m also one of America’s “Top Doctors.”The journalist in question is Justin Volz. Volz writes:

My eyes narrowed when the woman on the voice message told me to call about my “Top Doctor” award.

They needed to “make sure everything’s accurate” before they sent me my plaque, she said.

It was a titillating irony. I don’t have a medical degree, and I’m not a physician. But I am an investigative journalist who specializes in health care. So I leaned forward in my seat with some anticipation when I returned the call last year. I spoke to a cheerful saleswoman named Anne at a company on New York’s Long Island that hands out the Top Doctor Awards. For some reason, she believed I was a physician and, even better, worthy of one of their awards. Puzzled and amused, I took notes.

I asked how I had been selected. My peers had nominated me, she said buoyantly, and my patients had reviewed me. I must be a “leading physician,” she said.

Later:

On my call with Anne from Top Doctors, the conversation took a surreal turn.

“It says you work for a company called ProPublica,” she said, blithely. At least she had that right.

I responded that I did and that I was actually a journalist, not a doctor. Is that going to be a problem? I asked. Or can you still give me the “Top Doctor” award?

There was a pause. Clearly, I had thrown a baffling curve into her script. She quickly regrouped. “Yes,” she decided, I could have the award.

It’s an open secret in the legal profession that the various awards with which many lawyers festoon their websites are purchased by the honorees. Those seeking to honor me didn’t make contact by phone; they littered my email inbox on a daily basis.

The only financial advice I can recall giving my clients was that my social security clients should open checking accounts so they could get their checks direct deposited. Apparently that advice was good enough to qualify me for an award honoring me as the best financial adviser in the WORLD!. That one sticks in my head solely because it was so off the mark.

There is a certain magazine published in this state, which actually bears the name of this state, which gives such awards. Do I have proof that its readers choices are heavily influenced by the exchange of lucre? No, but I have my suspicion based on the fact that the lawyers it has honored have included some folks that are almost comically inept. I have some questions about the restaurants the readers have chosen as well.

I’ve often wondered whether these honoring institutions have some potential liability should some poor sucker, impressed by, for instance, my credentials as the world’s best financial adviser, should lose his or her shirt after following my advice. In truth, I humbly turned down the award, but in a different universe I accepted it, and there may now be several bankrupt advisees in that alternate universe. Do they have a case? I’d say they do, but I also recall that a lot of the awarding institutions (putting magazines aside for the moment) were located safely overseas.

So far as I know, neither the legal profession nor the medical, judging by Volz’s experience, bother to police the advertising of these awards, which are arguably false and deceptive representations. We have normalized fraud, which is sadly consistent with what we’ve done with the fraudster in chief.

Filed in Decline, Grifters | | Comments (0)

Some revisionist history

Thursday, March 7, 2019

I have to admit that I’ve always felt the Clinton impeachment backfired on the Republicans, but Philippe Reines, a former Hillary Spokesperson, makes a trenchant case that it was not:

The other thing that drives me crazy is this notion that the…Republicans suffered for impeachment in ’98. I’m not sure what that what that means. They lost a couple of Senate seats, but they held the Congress, they held the House in 2006, and they won the presidency in 2000 for eight years, they’re back here with Donald Trump. I would make the argument that the Republicans did a damn good job of poisoning impeachment forever more and that they are benefitting from that right now because all we’re doing is saying, well, it didn’t work out so well for them — for Bill Clinton so we shouldn’t do it again. How, exactly, did it NOT work out so well for them?

He’s right. Sure there were some minor inconveniences. Two of their major hypocrites (Livingston and Newt) had to retire because they’d done exactly what they accused Clinton of doing, and they lost a couple of seats in the midterms just prior to the impeachment trial, but all in all it worked out quite nicely. You could make a strong argument that it was the lingering effects of the impeachment that made the difference in the 2016 election, since they were able to get their actual crook elected by playing on a media enhancedand echo chamber claim that she was a crook. You could make just as strong a case that they won in 2000 because, besides stealing the election, they had persuaded enough people that there was just something wrong with those Democrats because Clinton was such a bad man.

Something to think about, particularly because the Democrats could put on an impeachment trial that would present persuasive evidence that the genius is a traitorous crook. The Republicans weren’t very persuasive during the Clinton trial. They changed no minds. The Senators who vote to acquit Trump might end up having lots of explaining to do.

Filed in Politics | | Comments (0)

Dems ready to disgrace themselves again

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Back in the olden days, way way back around 2007, the Democrats cravenly joined Republicans in voting for a resolution denouncing MoveOn for daring to criticize General David Petreaus. They had to demonstrate something, the First Amendment and truth be damned. It was never clear what they expected to gain by condemning their base. The irony in that particular situation is that it turned out that MoveOn was right in more ways than one. The good general barely escaped prison when it was revealed that he was funneling state secrets to his mistress.

Fast forward about 12 years, and we now have the Democrats prepared to directly or indirectly condemn one of their own for having the temerity to tell the truth: that Israel, through its lobbying arm at AIPAC, exercises far too much control over American foreign policy. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, absolutely verboten for an American politician to criticize Israel in any way. If one does so, one is accused, by AIPAC and its adherents, of being an anti-Semite, even though there are substantial numbers of American Jews that feel the same way about Israeli influence over our foreign policy. See, e.g., the author of the piece to which I’ve linked. Democrats are now lining up for a chance to pile on to Ilhan Omar, it not being sufficient that she is a GOP whipping girl. They have to demonstrate something, just like they did with Petreaus. The fact that what she said is true makes her offense all the worse.

There have, it should be pointed out, been examples of GOP racism too numerous to list over the course of the last several years (make that decades), the latest being the dog and pony show put on by Mark Meadows at the Cohen hearing. And, of course, the very stable genius has by any measure engaged in racist behavior and is unquestionably a racist. How long is the line of Republicans willing to condemn the racism of their Dear Leader or any of their colleagues? Bear in mind, we’re talking real racism here as opposed to policy differences. If a demand were made on them to condemn one of their own, they would simply accuse those making the demand of impugning them, because, according to them, acting like a racist, voting like a racist, confirming racist judges and racist attorneys general, and talking like a racist doesn’t make you a racist.

This vote will do the Democrats no good. It is wrong on the merits. It will curry favor with no one. It will win them no votes. It will lose them some. They will do it anyway.

Filed in Democrats | | Comments (0)

Random thoughts on 2020

Sunday, March 3, 2019

I don’t have a firm favorite for the 2020 Democratic nomination. I know who I don’t want to get it. That would be Kristin Gillibrand, Tulsi Gabbard, and Amy Klochubar. I also don’t want Sherrod Brown, but for a different reason than the other three. We can’t afford to lose that Ohio Senate seat.

Putting all that aside, my main concern is that Trump’s numbers being where they are, and the high probability that the rest of his family as well as a number of his other hanger ons will be indicted or in jail by 2020, that we may be getting too confident about the ultimate outcome of the race. I agree with digby:

Personally, I think that most people want to beat Trump more than anything. But at this stage, they’re thinking of the things that affect their lives and want to be sure that Democrats nominate someone who reflects those values and commitments. Primaries are the mechanism by which we sort all that out in a big, diverse coalition.

But it’s also possible that more than a few people think there’s no way Trump can possibly be re-elected and that’s just not true. I really hope that people who know better make that clear. Trump’s base is mesmerized by him. And there’s a reason for that:

That base is amazingly solid and all it’s going to take is for him to siphon off a few percentage points and sneak in again.

I can’t help but hark back to 2016. On this date three long years ago I wrote the following in my journal:

I have begun to think, however, that the odds of Trump’s winning are swinging in his favor. We may be electing our Hitler. He’ll be running against Hillary, which he can do from both the right and the left. It’s truly rather scary. She is unbelievably uninspiring. In addition, I read today that one of her former aides has been given immunity to testify about the email server issue. That’s scary because it’s something he can harp on, and the press will run with. I think it’s a nothingburger and I’m really surprised that the Justice Department is even looking into it, never mind feeling the need to grant anyone immunity. But it may be all we hear about in the summer, after the press comes around and decides that after all, Donald, by virtue of having gotten the nomination, is now respectable and responsible, being that he’s a Republican.

Maybe she’s got her shit together to take him down, but I doubt it. She’s bought into beltway wisdom before, and she may still believe that he’ll crash and burn on his own. All it will take to make him the new Fuehrer is for the economy to tank, which it very well may, a result, ironically, of Obama’s refusal to rein in the banks.

I wasn’t entirely right. He didn’t need an economic downturn. He beat her for the other reasons I mentioned. But the fact is that by the time November rolled around, I had bought into the conventional wisdom and was absolutely certain she’d win. We can’t afford to do that this time around. Nor can we afford a third party milquetoast candidate to drain off the small percentage of “centrists”. Howard Schultz may become the man responsible for ending democracy in this country and insuring that the climate crisis goes unaddressed.

Timing may be all in 2020. Some sort of economic downturn is inevitable. The nation and the world would be well served if it happened soon enough to have maximum impact on the 2020 election. The last time around (2008) it happened too late to have that much impact on the election itself, though Obama still won, but it left him to take the political heat for a situation caused by his immediate predecessor. FDR, by contrast, got in when the impact had already been felt, so everyone knew where to place the blame. It is remarkable that Trump is so unpopular given the superficial health of the economy, but that could easily change. The Republicans are good at staying on message; the Democrats are terrible. The media is reflexively both siderist, so we can look forward to them glomming on to some minor imperfection in our candidate and equating it with Trump’s criminality. After all they did that last time.

Filed in Presidential Politics | | Comments (1)

The Church of Perpetual Bullshit

Monday, February 25, 2019

The Catholic bishops, many of whom are probably secret abusers themselves, are gathering in Rome to discuss the deeply complex issue of what they should do about the legions of sexually abusive priests. They have, according to this article, concluded that, shockingly, the problem is not restricted to the U.S., but is worldwide. Imagine that, people are the same everywhere. The linked article was in yesterday’s paper. Today we learn that Pope Francis has hit on the only solution he can think of: calling priestly abusers even worse names than he ever did before. That ought to solve the problem!

You have to wonder about the fact that they never appear to discuss the fact that the job requirements for being a priest may have something to do with the prevalence of sexual deviants within their ranks. After all, while sexual abuse is not unknown among the clergy of other sects, it is comparatively rare. According to the Church of the One True Faith (that overstates the number by one, by the way), god created man, installed within him a sex drive, ordered him to be fruitful and multiply, and decreed that the act of sex was the sole manner through which new life could be created. But, oddly enough, god also decreed that sex was evil, and that one could not truly prove his (it’s always a him) love for god unless he ditched all that “be fruitful and multiply” stuff. So, only abstainers are admitted to the priesthood, and the bishops are still surprised that it turns out that people willing to claim compliance with that requirement include a lot of deviants. 

The obvious solution to the Church’s problem is to abolish the medieval requirement of priestly celibacy, but that’s never discussed. You have to wonder why. There are probably a lot of decent, though deluded, men who would be glad to be priests if they could live normal lives. Given a few generations, they’d crowd out the deviants. Jesus never ordered the apostles to live celibate lives, and for hundreds of years priests could marry. The only ones that didn’t were, as Randy Newman sang in a slightly different context, “some fools in the desert, with nothing else to do, so scared of the dark they didn’t know if they were coming or going”. Celibacy was the alleged answer to nepotism. It didn’t work and it’s still not working.

But I blather. End of post. One more thing. Randy Newman’s Faust album from which the above quote is taken, is a great and, as is usual with his stuff, underrated album. (Do they still call them albums?)

Filed in Religion | | Comments (0)

A learned legal opinion

Friday, February 22, 2019

A few thoughts on the legality of Trump’s emergency!declaration.

If we had the same quality of courts we had even 20 years ago, there would probably be little question that the declaration would not survive judicial scrutiny. But we live in a time when the court is very possibly a more partisan and ideological institution than it has ever been. Every once in a while Roberts will want to preserve his reputation by not going too far over the line, but in the end, decisions will be made consistent with the preferences of the judges, and not the law or the constitution. In all likelihood, while a lower court judge or judges may call it for what it is (after all Trump said out loud that he didn’t have to do it), but the Supreme Court is likely to duck the issue by calling it a political question, or by ruling that for one reason or another the plaintiffs bringing the case lack standing to object to the institution of a dictatorship.

The Democrats have been making the argument that if his declaration is upheld, the next president (if the dictator allows new elections during an emergency) can declare climate change an emergency, etc. That’s a good argument, and, who knows, may actually give Roberts pause, but I doubt it. I think we’re getting into an era where the courts will begin implicitly ruling that IOKYAR, but not if you’re a Democrat. It’s easy enough to draw distinctions when you are playing with standing rules or the political question doctrine. That’s surely what they would do, so any Democratic emergency would be quickly squelched. Still, worth making the argument, as it appears to be working with some Republican lawmakers. I don’t know why, since they should know better than me that the court is now a corrupt institution.

But speaking of potential unintended consequences, I got a kick recently out of the fact that Clarence Thomas wants to overrule New York Times v. Sullivan. In that case the Warren Court (oh, blessed days) held that when the plaintiff is a “public figure”, he or she must prove actual malice in order to prevail in a libel case. In a regular peanut butter and jelly libel case, you need only prove that you’ve been libeled. You don’t even have to prove that the libel was untrue. Back in the olden days, the English courts actually held or are reputed to have held that the greater the truth the greater the libel. Nowadays truth is a defense that must be proven by the defendant, though the curious case discussed at the foregoing link calls even that into question.

Anyway, this may be a case in which the good justice (well, he’s not actually a good justice) should perhaps be careful what he wishes for. He is, probably at least in part, responding to Trump’s desire to have libel laws relaxed. Trump too, might consider being more careful in what he wishes for.

Libel actions can be brought in both state and federal courts. For the most part, a federal court does not apply federal law to such a case. It applies the law of the state with jurisdiction. Generally speaking, each state is free to develop its own tort law, including libel law. Sullivanis a limitation on states libel law to the extent that it limits the degree to which the states can punish certain speech. If Sullivanis overturned, then the State Supreme courts will, in the absence of any federal limitation, be allowed to develop libel law in any way they choose. So let us suppose that a given state, say, New York, decides to go back to the pre-Sullivan days and treat libel of a public figure no differently that any other libel case. Ask yourself, who is more likely to be at the losing end of the following lawsuits:

  • Trump versus anyone who has called him a serial liar.
  • Hillary Clinton vs. Trump for calling her a crook.

Remember, “anyone” would bear the burden of proving the truth of the statement that Trump is a serial liar. How hard do you think that would be? Trump would bear the burden of proving Hillary a crook. No one has done that so far, and a lot of people have tried. Since these cases would be heard in state courts, and the decisions of the highest state courts would be final (absent a federal question) then the Supreme Court would have a very difficult time imposing an IOKYAR rule.

I should think, as well, that the folks at Fox might not be happy about such a change, as it doesn’t sit well with their business plan. I actually think that some Democrats should think seriously about bringing libel cases even under the current rules. Trump’s lies about Hillary, for instance, probably meet the actual malicestandard.

I really think Judge Thomas would not be happy if he got his way on this one.

Filed in Hypocrisy, Lawyer stuff | | Comments (0)

What’s in a word?

Friday, February 22, 2019

The word socialism is being bandied about lately. Some of the Democratic presidential candidates are being asked if they’d describe themselves as socialist, and of course, Republicans sling the word around as an all around dismissal of any and all Democratic proposals. It’s a tactic at least as old as the New Deal. Social Security was socialism, and Saint Ronald got his political start by labeling Medicare as socialism. Once socialisticprograms pass and become popular with the American people, the right drops the label as applied to those programs, because keeping it up risks cleansing the word of all those terrible associations. In fact, there are a few indications that they’ve already gone to the well a bit too often, and a lot of Americans are beginning to say that if, for instance, Medicare for all is socialism, then bring it on.

One of the things I’ve never understood about Democrats confronted with this word, or, for that matter, journalists who bandy it about, is the fact that no one ever bothers to either demand a definition of the term or to offer such a definition. The so called Tea Party threw the term around constantly, but no one ever asked them what they meant by the term. It was just generally understood that it was a bad thing, and if Obama was one (which he’s not) he must be a bad man. The right has gone Humpty Dumpty one better. When they use a word it means exactly what they want it to mean in that moment, nothing more and nothing less.

Were I a Democratic candidate asked if I was a socialist, I’d demand that my interlocutor define the term. Chances are good they’d be unable to do so, or that any definition they provided would be a cartoon version of the real thing. Were I debating a Republican opponent, I’d demand he or she state whether Social Security and/or Medicare are socialist (they are), reminding them as I did about Saint Ronald, et. al.

In typical Democratic fashion, too many of our candidates accept the implied bogeyman definition of the term when queried on the subject. This is part and parcel of the Democratic tendency to adopt Republican terminology, e.g., allowing the right to get away with pro-lifeinstead of any number of terms the Democrats could use that would be far more accurate, e.g., anti-woman.

Filed in Language | | Comments (0)

Book report

Thursday, February 21, 2019

I’ve mentioned in a couple of recent posts that I’ve been reading Jill Lepore’s These Truths, a history of the U.S. Given it’s subject, it’s a predictably long read, almost 800 pages not counting about 100 pages of footnotes. I’ve just finished it. I slowed down a bit toward the end, as, to be frank, it was a bit painful reading about times through which I’ve lived, knowing how they’ve turned out so far. There have been other times in our history when things have looked pretty bad, e.g.,1860, but not having been there, I can read about them with a bit more detachment.

My original statement that I highly recommend the book still stands, but I have to point out that the last chapters, documenting the years from Vietnam forwards, are a bit infested with an unwarranted and poorly documented both siderism, which sadly approaches the level of the “both sides are equally bad” meme spread by so many mainstream journalists.

Part of this meme arises from the idea that if there are two sides having trouble getting along and finding common ground, it must be the fault of both. This ignores the fact that if one side insists on a world view that dismisses real facts out of hand and insists on basing policy on “alternative facts”, e.g., denying global warming, denying the existence of racism, claiming tax cuts for the rich pay for themselves despite multiple such cuts that had no such effect, claiming that massive amounts of drugs are coming across the Southern border rather than ports of entry, etc., then it becomes impossible to find common ground, no matter how hard one tries. Obama spent about six years in a vain attempt to do just that, and look what it got him and us.

There is, in sum, such a thing as truth. If one side is insisting on adherence to truth, that is not the same as insisting on falsehood.

Additionally, just because one can identify some strain on the left that can be cast as a mirror image of something happening on the right, doesn’t mean they are actually equivalent. Being an academic, Lepore often “balances” descriptions of right wing extremism with some campus craziness like speech codes or claims of cultural appropriation. That claimed equivalence may make some people feel comfortable,but it ignores the fact that those campus movements have extremely little impact on society at large, while the right wing movements with which they are contrasted have a significant impact on public policy. The PC police don’t run the Democratic Party or have much influence in it; the latter day Nazis and racists most certainly have outsized influence in, and arguably control, the Republican Party.

In the world of the internet, for instance, it may be true that Tumblr is a left wing version of Reddit (I don’t read either), but there is no left wing equivalent to Infowars or the Drudge Report, nor do Democratic politicians take up any left wing fantasies equivalent to the right wing fantasies cooked up by the likes of Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh, nor do they, as Trump and other influential Republicans have done, give such fantasists credibility by genuflecting to them, as Republicans routinely do. No one, particularly no prominent Democrat, ever claimed, for instance, that Donald Trump is actually an android programmed to hand our foreign policy over to the Russians, though the evidence for that is stronger than the evidence that Obama was born anywhere but in Hawaii. Republican politicians either embraced that meme outright, or refused to dismiss it.

One paragraph particularly struck me. In one section of the book, Lepore discusses right wing internet fabrications at length, detailing them extensively. She concludes the section as follows:

Jaundiced journalists began to found online political fact-checking sites like PolitiFact, which rated the statements of politicians on a Truth-O-Meter. “I’m no fan of dictionaries or reference books: they’re elitist,” the satirist Stephen Colbert said in 2005, when he coined “truthiness” while lampooning George W. Bush. “I don’t trust books. They’re all fact, no heart. And that’s exactly what’s pulling our country apart today.” But eventually liberals would respond to the conservative media by imitating them-two squirrels, chasing each other down a tree. (Emphasis added)

That’s the end of the discussion. After exhaustively documenting right wing media factual distortions and outright lies, she accuses liberals of doing the same thing, without specifying a single instance. None of the left wing squirrels are identified. I am sure if you dug deep enough you could find a left wing website that has spread lies, but I can’t think of one. Spreading the truth, larded with opinion, is not the same thing as spreading lies larded with opinion. If there is a left wing equivalent of InfoWars, I’m unaware of it, and I’m familiar with most of the left wing websites. You can probably find inaccuracies at both Daily Kosand Talking Points Memo, two of the most popular lefty on line sites, but you would be hard put to find anything that is simply made up, like Alex Jones allegation that Sandy Hook was a fake. Nor, again, will you find any Democratic politician lending credence to such a site or its creators. They’re too busy running away from their quite rational progressive base, so they don’t have the time to genuflect to extremists it would take them hours of research to find.

There’s no question in my mind, after reading her book, that Lepore would situate herself to the left of center if you asked her where she stood. It’s a shame she felt obliged to engage in an unwarranted both siderism.

Nonetheless, the book is worth reading. Like so many works of current history, it brings home the fact that at least in terms of historical writing, the North has finally won the civil war. When I learned American history in the ‘50s (I was a history fanatic early on) and ‘60s, it was a given that the “Radical” Republicans, who gave us the 13th through 15th Amendments (without which our democracy would have long since perished), were the bad guys, standing in the way of the reunification that the country so sorely needed. That meme, which sub silentiojustified the Klan, segregation, and the virtual re-enslavement of black Americans, has been overturned, and Lepore does a good job of dispensing with other myths that dominated the teaching of history in the past.

Filed in Book reports | | Comments (0)