My Stuff

https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/rwolff_umass_edu/EkxJV79tnlBDol82i7bXs7gBAUHadkylrmLgWbXv2nYq_A?e=UcbbW0

Coming Soon:

The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."





Total Pageviews

Sunday, December 22, 2019

SO, WHAT ELSE IS NEW?


In the good old days, before Twitter, before SnapChat, before Google, before YouTube, before FaceBook, before the Internet, before computers, before Cable News, before Xerox machines, almost before electric typewriters, when there were three networks, each with a half hour of news a night, it was possible to think that if you had an idea, and hadn’t heard it on the Huntley/Brinkley show or in the orotund tones of Walter Cronkhite, it was probably original and worthy of expression, even perhaps of the immortality of print.  But then, everybody on earth got a megaphone, and it turned out that America was chock full of people who had your idea, some of whom had been so impolite as to express it before you got a chance to.

I was going to write a blog post explaining that Pelosi’s decision to delay transmission of the impeachment vote to the Senate was yet another master stroke, designed not at all to put pressure on McConnell, but instead to drive Trump wild until he demanded a trial with witnesses so that he could get the acquittal he so desperately craves.  I was going to, that is, until I spent a little time this morning reading today’s spate of opinions, and discovered that my shrewd observation was already old news.

Well, if I may paraphrase Rick in Casablanca, I’ll always have the Subjective Deduction.

8 comments:

s. wallerstein said...

But politics isn't about originality. I was looking for something original, I'd read poetry.

In politics you say what has been said before, first of all, to show your support for certain ideas or ways of thinking and second of all, to stimulate political conversation with your immediate peers, that is, in this case the readers of your blog.

So when you want to converse about something, post about it, without worrying whether others have said it beforehand. Plagiarism is not penalized in politics.

Jerry Fresia said...

Along those lines, Nancy's masterstroke didn't originate with her, it seems. DIdn't John Dean and Lawrence Tribe tee that up for her? In fact, back months ago, when she was against impeachment, several people were pointing out that there's no reason to send along whatever is sent along to the Senate anyway. How long can we wait? Why not just wait to see if he gets re-elected and bring the whole thing up again at the beginning of his second term?

I must confess, however, I didn't think she would play hardball. Good for her. I hope she slaps Trump around some more. That she's good at and it is fun to watch.




RMcD said...

Somewhat on topic:

https://publicseminar.org/2019/12/nancy-pelosis-leverage-over-mitch-mcconnell/

Jerry Brown said...

Well I don't care whether it might have been said before- when you say it, it has far more credibility with me than any of the talking heads on the media.

Anonymous said...

Pelosi can bat with the best of them, but what captivated me was that she seemed like the only adult in the room.

David Auerbach said...

I like thinking that what Rick said was "We'll always have tsuris".

Jerry Fresia said...

Anonymous,

Perhaps, and that's the problem. There's a reason why HRC lost, McConnell does as much damage as Trump, the public doesn't really get "Ukraine" and Trump's approval ratings are going up in the face of impeachment. It's the "adults in the room" syndrome: from the Clintons on through Obama, Pelosi, and now Biden. Here's an example: Pelosi when asked, years ago, if Bush should be impeached over the Iraq war, responded...words to the effect..."That's about intelligence, that's my wheelhouse. I knew there were no WMDs (as a member of the Gang of Eight). I don't think President Bush should be impeached for" - and then she stopped, searching for the right word, no doubt wanting to say "for lying us into war" but of course she couldn't say that, especially given that she was in on the lie, so she finally said, "for misrepresenting" the facts." Imagine, not impeaching a president for lying us into an incredibly costly war. You're right. She's one of the adults in the room whose endless calculating/instrumental reasoning helps explain the rise not just of neoliberalism but of neofascism. And she knows how to run tactical circles around Trump; but get him out of office, after the big left leaning, blue wave of 2018? Can't do it. Adults in the room always need to tamp down and block progressive, left impulses that regularly breach corporate "guard rails." The fact that we have a watered down impeachment with no time on the clock to genuinely pull the curtain back is because of the adults in the room.

LFC said...

@David Auerbach

That's a good one.

Doesn't fit the context of the orig. scene of course, but still funny.