Caught with Your Pants Down: The Strange Case of Mayor John Roth of Mahwah

I’m about to recount an almost entirely inconsequential political incident, the strange case of John F. Roth, mayor of Mahwah, a small, affluent town in northeastern New Jersey. But while the incident is almost entirely inconsequential, I’d say that precisely one feature has broad significance. Let’s see if you and I agree on what it is.

About a month ago, John F. Roth, the mayor of Mahwah, went to a party at the home of a Mahwah Township employee. You’re not going to believe this, but alcohol was served at this party. Yes, alcohol. And–hold on to your hats here–but Roth actually consumed some of this alcohol. I wouldn’t lie about something like this. Having done so, he managed to get drunk. He must have realized that he was drunk, because instead of driving home–like a normal person–he decided to walk into a bedroom or guestroom of the house, take off his pants, and fall asleep on a bed. He was later discovered pants-less in that very bed. A call was placed to his wife, who arrived to retrieve him. Retrieved, I gather that he went home to sleep it off, very possibly pants-less, in his own bed. Continue reading

Cancel Culture Blues: The Strange Case of Steven Wilson

I need to stop reading stories like this, because if I do, I’m in danger of lapsing into Michael Young’s running dog reactionary views on cancel culture.* I’m still a big fan of cancellation as an idea, but if this is what “cancel culture” is going to be, then my thought is: leave me the hell out of it. But this isn’t what cancel culture has to be. We have a choice about what form it will take.

[Steven] Wilson was the chief executive of Ascend, the consortium of central Brooklyn charter schools he built, beginning with plans devised on his dining room table in 2007.

But Mr. Wilson was effectively barred from celebrating with his students.

Several weeks earlier, he had written a blog post embracing the values of a classical education; some younger members of his staff perceived it as racially traumatizing. Others found it simply tone-deaf. He was in a kind of purgatory, still employed by Ascend but taken out of its day-to-day operation.

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War with Iran (19): The Crumbling Edifice of Lies

In installment #13 of this series, “Reality Bites,” I identified four egregious falsehoods or outright lies at the heart of the Trump Administration’s case for escalation against Iran.

  1. Iran is the aggressor; we’re merely responding to their aggression.
  2. Qasim Suleimani was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, which obliged us to respond to the threat he posed.
  3. Suleimani’s assassination was an attempt to forestall an imminent attack on American facilities.
  4. There were no American casualties after the Iranian missile attack on Iraqi/U.S. bases in Iraq.

The first two claims stand as written. The second two have been reinforced since I wrote them. Re (3): An “imminent attack” took place weeks after the assassination (“imminent,” at any rate, just before it happened). Assassinating Suleimani did nothing to stop it. Re (4): there were in fact dozens of American casualties after the Iranian missile attack, not none.

In the mental fog induced by impeachment, no politician, whether Democrat or Republican, has managed even the minimal candor required to clarify the issue at stake: we face a proxy war that we must either fight or abandon; fighting it will be costly and pointless, which ought to be enough to persuade us not to try. Continue reading

In Defense of Democratic War Socialism

I love the Democratic Party. I love it with the ardent zeal of an apostate Republican. But some days I wonder.

Many of my friends and comrades are Bernie Sibs dearly in love with the ideals of “democratic socialism.” There used to be a time when you weren’t allowed to use the word “socialism” in American discourse. Now, the neo-liberal corporate sellout media is cashing in on it. And if you’re not a democratic socialist–you don’t want free tuition, free health care, free subway rides, free everything, etc.–well, then from a Bernie standpoint it’s pretty obvious that you stand with the plutocratic 99%. And trashing Hillary Clinton–something I’m only too happy to do–doesn’t give you any points with this crowd. As far as they’re concerned, it’s either dirigisme or oligarchy. Continue reading

On This Solemn Day

When I was eight years old, I wrote to the President of the United States–Jimmy Carter, at the time–asking him to change the national anthem from “The Star Spangled Banner” to “America the Beautiful” (I think it was) on the grounds that the former was unbecomingly and demoralizingly war-loving. The White House wrote back a polite but non-committal response, pointing out that the anthem was what it was through an act of Congress, and suggesting that I take the matter up with my local representative, Dean Gallo, a flag-waving war monger eager to start a war with just about anyone. I never did. Continue reading

Nathan Thrall on Trump’s “Peace Plan”

The best short discussion of Trump’s so-called peace plan for Israel/Palestine that I’ve seen, by Nathan Thrall (ht: Susan Gordon). Hard to improve on, or argue with, any of this:

The Trump plan, much like the decades-long peace process that it crowns, gives Israel cover to perpetuate what is known as the status quo: Israel as the sole sovereign controlling the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, depriving millions of stateless people of basic civil rights, restricting their movement, criminalizing speech that may harm “public order,” jailing them in indefinite “administrative detention” without trial or charge, and dispossessing them of their land — all while congressional leaders, the European Union and much of the rest of the world applaud and encourage this charade, solemnly expressing their commitment to the resumption of “meaningful negotiations.”

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Albert Aghazarian, RIP

Many of us are mourning the loss of the Palestinian historian Albert Aghazarian, a Jerusalem native long associated with Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah. I met him briefly but memorably in 2013, on my first trip to Palestine; he provided simultaneous translation of the three lectures I gave at Al Quds University on my first trip there in June of that year. The lectures were on Lockean political philosophy and its relevance to Palestine. Without him, there wouldn’t have been any lectures. Continue reading

social injustice and individual obligation

Suppose that society can wrong individuals and groups within society (as I think it can).  If one (or some group) is wronged in any way, one can legitimately complain (object, demand, etc.). If one is wronged by society, one complains to… society.  But society is not an agent, so such a complaint cannot function as it would if one were privately wronged. And so, though we can say that society is obligated to right the wrong, it seems we must cash this out in terms of the obligations of individuals.  Continue reading

Assuming the Original Position

Say what you want about John Rawls, but he doesn’t deserve to be invoked by Alan Dershowitz in defense of Donald Trump–on the floor of the U.S. Senate, no less. And yet here we are.

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.

Curious what Trump or Dershowitz think of that one, or if they have any idea what it means.


Dershowitz on Rawls at 3:23:30:

https://www.wgbh.org/news/politics/2020/01/27/watch-live-trumps-impeachment-trial-resumes

War with Iran (18): Dialogue of the Deaf

You’ve probably seen that meme of the couple in bed, where the woman suspects that the guy is thinking of other women, and the guy is lying there thinking about video games or whatever. That meme is a perfect encapsulation of the communicative relationship between Iran and the American people. The Iranians are trying to tell us, “Hey, our proxies have hit your embassy after weeks of trying!” And we’re sitting there, fixated on Kobe Bryant. The attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad took place last night, but wasn’t reported in The New York Times until 5:15 this morning. I mostly read about it in obscure foreign outlets. A helicopter crash that kills a former basketball star is a breaking story, but a direct missile attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad isn’t. Priorities.  Continue reading