TODAY'S LATIN LESSON

One of my favorite Latin tags is sub specie aeternitatis, under the aspect of eternity.  That, I learned three score years ago, is the way we philosophers are supposed to view things, reaching always for the eternal truths and shunning the intellectual fashions of the moment.  When I began this blog ten years ago and more, I spent days, even weeks, writing long detailed analyses of books and problems, content to leave comments on the passing scene to those not blessed with a philosophic temperament.  Well, to steal another Latin tag, this time from my favorite author, Karl Marx, quantum mutatus ab illo.  [How changed is Hector from before.]

Now, I experience each twist and turn of the news cycle as a lifetime. A day becomes a century, a week an era, a month an epoch.  I cannot type fast enough to write a comment on a tidbit of BREAKING NEWS before it is overtaken and consigned to the trash heap of history by a tidbit even newer.

 My favorite tidbit this morning is John Yoo’s abrupt reversal of his characterization of Lt. Col. Vindman’s actions as espionage.  Today Yoo says he was referring to the Ukrainians, that he honors Vindman’s service, and that what Trump did was indeed to offer a quid pro quo [we cannot seem to get away from the Latin.]  I infer that Yoo’s colleagues let him know that unless he took it back he might as well not return to the UC Berkeley School of Law. 

Meanwhile, I hang on very word of the MSNBC commentators, waiting to hear whether John Bolton will testify.  Bolton, it is my impression, has a more than ordinarily inflated ego, so I think we all ought to say loudly and often how absolutely crucial his testimony would be and how admirable we think it would be for him to come forward.

Sigh, it is no fun being a mayfly.  Would anyone be interested in a seventeen part post on Hume’s theory of our belief in the continued and independent existence of objects?

THE GANG THAT CAN SHOOT STRAIGHT AFTER ALL

The Beltway commentary on the Democrats has it that they are an unorganized group of feckless political ne’er do wells who cannot seem to fix on a message or follow through on a plan.  This is the twenty-first century version of Will Rogers’ famous old quip, “I do not belong to any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”  And yet, with a discipline and focus that would make a Republican proud, the House Democrats are proceeding steadily, deliberately, single-mindedly toward public hearings the week after next and a vote on impeachment before Thanksgiving.

I have no idea at all how it will turn out.  It begins to look as though much may depend on whether John Bolton testifies.  But the House will impeach Trump, and there will be some sort of trial in the Senate, all before the Iowa caucuses.

Say what you will about Nancy Pelosi, she is a Speaker for the ages.

I leave for Paris on December 6^th.  I hope I do not miss the fun.

BUTT-DIALING AND OTHER ARCANA

I have, I believe, already recounted my embarrassing encounter with the TSA in which they asked to see my elecronics [a random check] and burst out laughing when I showed them my little IPhone 5S.   I have never felt so inadequate.  Now comes Rudy Giuliani twice butt-dialing a reporter who recorded revealing conversations intended to be private..

I infer that if you put your IPhone 10 in your hip pocket and then sit on it, you can inadvertently speed dial someone.  But there is no way I could do that with an IPhone 5S.  So once again, I am revealed as hopelessly 2014.

The shame, the shame.

MY WEEK

In 1980, my first wife and I moved with our sons from Northampton to Belmont, Massachusetts so that she could take up a professorship at MIT.  For the next seven years, I commuted back to Amherst to teach at UMass, making the drive three times a week.  In the Fall of 1982, the New School in New York sought me for the chairmanship of their Philosophy Department, and for a semester I commuted down to New York every Tuesday to teach a course there while I negotiated with them.  So that semester on Sundays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I was in Belmont, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I was in Amherst, and on Tuesdays I was in New York.  It got so that I had to check my watch to tell where I was.  I feel a little like that this week, what with going to Columbia on Tuesday, running a Building 5 Precinct meeting on Thursday, and trying to keep up with this blog, all the while checking my IPhone or the TV every few minutes for the latest news about the impeachment investigation.

Well, the House will vote to impeach Trump, apparently before Thanksgiving.  Some sort of trial will then take place in the Senate, and at least now it seems all but certain that fewer than 67 senators will vote to convict.  Trump will grow more frantic, desperately and unsuccessfully trying to control the news cycle.  Will the process hurt Trump’s reelection chances?  I believe so, but Lord knows I am not a seer or even a pundit, so your guess is as good as mine.

Meanwhile, the Democratic nomination contest grinds on.  Biden’s decision to take PAC money suggests his campaign is on the ropes, regardless of the polls.  Bernie is back, Elizabeth continues her slow, steady rise, Tim Ryan has finally thrown in the towel and Tulsi Gabbard is apparently contemplating a third party run.  No doubt someone reading this blog will conclude that she is the true hope of real radicals, and will explain to us why Sanders and Warren are really tools of the ruling elite and are actually greater dangers than Trump, so that a protest vote for Gabbard risks nothing.  Ho hum.  I have seen this movie before.

Meanwhile the Yankees have for the first time in a century gone for an entire decade without making it to the World Series, so I can die happy.

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY PEDAGOGY

I am home again after another tiring but rewarding trip to New York to teach at Columbia.  Next week I am carrying out a multi-media pedagogical experiment.  The reading is large chunks of Edwin Wilmsen’s brilliant ideological critique of the work of ethnographer Richard Lee and associates, and by extension of the entire field of Cultural Anthropology.  However, I shall not be lecturing.  Instead the students are instructed to watch on YouTube four of the ten lectures I posted on Ideological Critique – the four devoted to Wilmsen – and then to come into class with questions and comments.  This is the first time I have tried this.  We shall see whether it works.

JUST SO WE ARE CLEAR

Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria may cost him the presidency, but it is not an impeachable offense.  It is nowhere near as disastrous as the decision by Kennedy and Johnson to take over France’s colonial war in Vietnam, nor as disastrous as George W. Bush’s decision to initiate an offensive war against Iraq.  The Constitution clearly gives the president the right to make that sort of decision, so long as Congress cedes the warmaking power, which it did long ago.  The voters had opportunities to defeat Humphrey in the primaries, and later Bush in the general, and they [or at least the Supreme Court] chose not to.  On the other hand, Trump’s attempt to get Zelensky to meddle in a U. S. election clearly is an impeachable offence.

Nancy Pelosi was right that if we waited, Trump would impeach himself.  She could have added that he might very well convict himself in the Senate as well.

A GREAT WAY TO SPEND NINETY MINUTES

If you have Netflix, watch their latest creation, Laundromat, concerning the so-called Panama Papers.  Believe it or not, it stars Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, and Antonio Bandaras.