State of the Discussion

@wonkie, I forget who said it but, "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." :^)

"Ride of the Valkyries" is excellent for the soundtrack of certain sorts of movie scenes, and has been used often for that purpose, probably most famously for the helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now. (Or perhaps for the Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon "What's Opera, Doc?", often referred to as "Kill the Wabbit".) But it's only five minutes out of a five-hour opera. And even in five minutes it suffers from repeated cases of "Oh, yes, there's supposed to be a melody here someplace, isn't there?"

Personally, I think Wagner could have been brilliant writing movie scores where the running time constraint was imposed on him. Think John Williams' score for the original Star Wars, very much in the Wagner mold, and often cited as the best movie score ever written.

I found the video interesting in pieces, but the combination of a uncertain sync between video and audio and the lower fidelity of the audio made it hard for me to stay focused. It made Solti's conducting feel less than intuitive and had me constantly wondering if what he was signaling was the moment I was hearing.

Chasing down the audio recording in full fidelity on Apple Music and losing the video completely eliminated that feeling of disorientation, as did chasing down a more recent live performance video from Dudamel where the conducting seemed better matched to the audio.

Between watching that and another performance with Gatti conducting, I started to really get a sense for the different impressions that one can get based on where one's visual attention is drawn. The gaze plays a powerful role in what the ear seems to hear in these videos.

One thing that I have found effective in teaching is that the moments when I am being critical of something are always more powerful for the class when I can find a way to tell them from the perspective of "we," rather than "I," and when that narrative incorporates how "I" learned to view the problem through a perspective that helps put "us" back in a position with more agency to address "our" problem.

That, and starting with questions and listening rather than with advice and instructions seem to be the magic mix.

This post was about how Dem pols should talk and I firmly believe they should be VERY LOUD AND HARSH IN THEIR CRITICISMS of the R party. Use the F word. Actually, both of them.

However, I don't think they should say anything about MAGAs and should talk to them. The goal must be to defuse the polarization.

As for me, I have MAGA friends and acquaintances and no desire to hurt their feelings. However, I also think that I'm not going to be complicit. At all. So, I post stuff on FB that flat out contradicts a lot of MAGA beliefs. For example, I posted an article about Saint Charlie of Free Speech for Conservatives Only and how people who criticized him have been attacked. At least one of my FB friends loves Kirk.
We still seem to be friends.

My biggest complaint about the assessment culture that has set in across academia (and the overall rise of big quant that coincides with the monetization of big data) is that there are a lot more people with the tools to gather and measure the data than there are people who have the understanding, expertise, and rigor to tease out when the things we measure actually measure the right things.

I'm interested in reading Limits of the Numerical one of these days: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo146791774.html

It seems the sort of book that can take on the technocratic push for quantitative over qualitative data gathering and analysis. I find that the voices that most often get amplified in management meetings dealing in quantitative assessment are the voices that are on the wrong side of Einstein's admonition that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

I don’t believe – I’m not willing to believe – that half the voters are evil. We need to talk to them respectfully and sympathetically. We’ve all been taken in at some time by liars: it’s our side’s job to point out the lies, not to judge the liars’ victims. [Emphasis added]

I think this is another piece of the puzzle when trying to break thru. Be up front about having been bamboozled ourselves. Just to avoid the suggestion that "we're smart enough to have seen thru it, but you re so dumb you got conned." It helps if you've got an example of where you got taken in initially. And if it's something that they can see thru, all the better. (Perhaps "when I was in school, socialism looked attractive. Took me a while to see that it wasn't workable in the real world." Even if you still do think it is workable, it can be a useful example.)

I'm pretty sure my taste doesn't qualify as eclectic. But even YouTube doesn't provide video for something like Buddy Holly records.

I've seen videos for other artists' work from similarly far back, where it's obviously added on recently. But some of the "original cast" classics are audio only.

Yes, on that last paragraph! In academia, but also in business, where we get a "measurement-friendly agenda". To me it feels particularly pernicious when work and rewards are steered to things that can be most easily justified by measurement, without much work to tie those measurements to actual good outcomes.

See also Goodhart's Law, which states that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure", or McNamara on body count. Although it's pretty common to lament that since publication count became a target it's become a poor measure, I don't know that I've seen any effective action to work around it - although I never experienced the British system that limited academics to something like reporting only your five "best" papers, regardless of how many you'd published?

We should call Trump and his collaborators what they are. I learn that he's been hosting an "anti-antifa roundtable". To support that the contention that "antifa" is an actual organization, one speaker announced that "Antifa is real. Antifa has been around in various iterations for almost a hundred years in some instances going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany."

So that's clear, they're proudly against the opponents of fascism. "Anti-antifascist" is a clumsy way of expressing what they actually are - pro-fascist.

These people are evil. But - I want to write that in big letters - half the voting population of the USA votes for them. I don't believe - I'm not willing to believe - that half the voters are evil. We need to talk to them respectfully and sympathetically. We've all been taken in at some time by liars: it's our side's job to point out the lies, not to judge the liars' victims.

"So, Democrats have three words for this: no fucking way. It's literally life or death. We will not let Republicans blow up our health care system."

THANK YOU CHUCK!!!!!!

About giving up hate and experiencing pain instead. I don't think MAGAs are in pain any more than the usual for middle class Americans. I don't think that's why they like to hate. The concept of MAGAs as these poor sad people who have been left behind, the Forgotten Americans, working class and ignored by Dems, struggling to get by etc is mostly wrong. MAGAs tend to be better off than Dems, more likely to own homes as opposed to renting and are mostly middle class, They are over represented in government. Their lack of any real grievances is what makes them so appalling. Demographics & Group Affinities – Panel Study of the MAGA Movement The only thing they would lose if they gave up hating is their goddawful snobbery about being superior to everyone else and the entertainment they get from the thrill of horror as they armchair hero their lives away in front of the TV>

It's a long time since I read The Fire Next Time, but I just saw somewhere this quotation from it, which resonated:

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain"

I think contemplating that makes certain kinds of people very afraid.

I wonder if a useful approach might be to ask, not why they are afraid, but why they are concerned.

For a lot of people, admitting to being afraid is shameful. (And, for some men, an attack on their manhood.). But there's nothing wrong with being concerned. It might be a way to get the conversation to the place you want it to go. Without getting the reflexive rejection of the whole thing.

Just a thought.

I'm pretty much happy to talk to anybody about whatever, but I more or less insist on sticking to reality. If folks insist on doubling down on stuff that is simply factually wrong, I excuse myself from the conversation.

What I take away from most of my fairly limited collection of conversations with MAGAs is that they feel threatened. They are afraid. I don't really understand why, and the reasons are probably different for different people. That is what I'd really like to talk to them about, but it's hard to steer the conversation in that direction.

Nobody likes to admit they're basically just afraid.

I was at a local ICE office yesterday for a protest and noticed that they've begun putting badging and insignia on their vehicles. Some of them, anyway, some are still unmarked.

One of the slogans on the vehicles reads "Defending the homeland". And it just kind of made me laugh. Defending the homeland from the guy who mows your lawn? Your waiter? The woman taking care of your grandmother in the nursing home? The people picking lettuce?

What's the threat?

The Stephen Millers Kristi Noems and Kash Patels of the world understand and work on that sense of threat by making absurd claims. 5% of the population of Chicago are violent antifa extremists! Tren de Agua has taken over downtown Portland!

It's risible, but it resonates with people who are already afraid. I want to understand why they're afraid. But it's hard to get the conversation to that point.

There's also the whole nativist / nationalist streak in American history and in our national character. It's been there from the get. The early English folks looked down on and were suspicious of the German immigrants. Then both were suspicious of the Irish. Then all of them were suspicious of the eastern and southern Europeans. Then the Hispanics. Everybody hated the Chinese until pretty recently. And everybody has always had issues with black people, who have been here longer than almost everyone else, and mostly had no choice about being here in the first place.

The endless argument about who is a "real American".

I'm still trying to understand WTF people are on about when they talk about "western civilization", which of course is yet another thing that is always on the verge of being subsumed by the latest wave of People Who Are Not Like Us.

It's all fear. Toxic, destructive fear.

I would like to talk to MAGAs about what the hell it is they are afraid of. What is that they think is going to happen. What precious thing are they going to lose.

I'm not sure how to get to that conversation. I sure as hell am tired to debating with them about crap like whether the Haitians are eating their pets, or whether blacks are roaming the streets looking for white people to assault. Or whether ICE are engaged in nightly hand to hand combat with the armies of antifa.

What's going on is too fraught right now to waste time on bullshit.

As an observation, for 80 years the pattern has been that from time to time Israel expands its borders somewhat, and from time to time it expels some of the non-Jewish population (for various values of expel). It seems to me unlikely that this is going to suddenly change.

What's amazing to me is how few commentators, explaining why Trump has so recently started putting real pressure on Netanyahu, are making the connection with a) Trump's fury with Israel attacking Qatar, his favourite gold-drenched plane donors, and b) what must be his growing understanding that the old automatic calculation that American presidents need to keep the US Jewish community sweet is changing, and has changed, as a result of Israel's extraordinarily disproportionate reaction to the admittedly horrific events of 10/7/23.

From what little I've seen, it appears that this is an achievement of the President of Egypt. Certainly far more his than Trump's.

If Trump deserves any credit at all, it is for being so utterly inconsistent, even on a day to day basis, that Bibi got nervous.

I actually agree with pretty much all of this, particularly with describing openly what much of the R/Trumpian project really does to ordinary people. I think it's particularly effective to expose the lies, call them lies, and provide clear proof. The fact that, on the shutdown, D messages on the loss of health care are cutting through is a good example. It seems obvious to me that the finer points of progressive ideological concerns do not cut through to the electorate, or move the Overton window (except in the wrong direction).

Big thumbs up for Josh Johnson. It is astonishing to me that he can craft a bit that is structured and crafted, but sounds like someone telling a story at a party off the cuff to a bunch of friends. Pretty amazing.

His bit on Bad Bunny has some points that I want to use in a future post, but for now, just enjoy.
https://youtu.be/QU93N7saW_E?si=vJCj4XdfM9fEkjwM

I'd be interested to see the corruption index. My sense is that Russia, for example, is at a whole different level from China.

I think it's possible to have a growing economy dispite widespread corruption. But much harder than without that corruption. Also, I'd argue that there is a point where corruption gets so bad that economic growth becomes impossible. Clearly China isn't there. But I'm not sure how close they might be to the limit.

Although, for those who have issues, white on black uses a lot less battery. My phone, at least, swaps to that automatically when the battery gets low.