The photos of the "crowds" at the tank parade remind me of when Bill Hicks would come on stage in an almost-empty club, scan the room slowly, and announce "I've had more people in bed than this" ...
When the president sends a cabinet member on TV to announce "We are using the military to liberate an American city from its elected leaders," where do you go from there. What is left to say. The idea of that being anything short of a near-universal "Wait, what the fuck is going on" moment proves how far we've backslid.
This is from 2022 but it was absolutely right. The practiced buffoonery of Trump 1, all the "just kiddings" and "seriously but not literallys" absolutely succeeded in desensitizing people who are hardly paying any attention to the harder stuff they always intended to do next. ...
The basic fallacy in chasing votes by being "tough on immigration" is that the modal American's position on the issue is "Deport the Bad ones and keep the Good ones," and they alone know who is which, and that simply does not translate into workable policy. So this kind of gestapo stuff horrifies some of the same people who cheered when Trump promised to do it. There are true sociopaths who love this, but "No, I meant only the BAD immigrants! Not my coworker/friend/neighbor!" is as likely a reaction as enthusiasm. You cannot do immigration policy that satisfies these people because what they want is nonsensical.
So by the time center-left parties fully commit to chasing the far right by "getting tough" on immigration, the backlash has already begun to build and they walk right into it. "I thought you people wanted this!" No, they want something impossible and convinced themselves they'd could have it - the "eat whatever you want AND lose weight!" of immigration policies.
It is hard to grasp but large masses of Americans are both racist/xenophobic AND not racist/xenophobic enough to applaud what Trump is doing. It's goldilocks shit, they want a level of racism/xenophobia calibrated exactly to their personal preferences, and you just can't make that policy. Don't try. ...
AP: Trump extends olive branch, invites Musk to White House cellar to taste some brand new amontillado ...
J. Dryden says:
As a fellow educator, may I just say: Amen, and Amen, and Amen. GOOD cheating–the cheating that actually takes MORE intelligence and creativity than the assignment itself, is something to be admired (if not forgiven, since anyone who gets CAUGHT cheating has already violated the primal law of intellectual malfeasance–"It's only cheating if you get caught"), but lazy cheating is really just a student's way of saying: "My dumb-ass grader is WAY too stupid to notice my lame-ass chicanery." But guess what, kids? When it comes to cheating–and pretty much everything else–we're smarter than you. All of us. Why? Because trying to cheat a teacher is like trying to tell a old bartender a joke he hasn't heard before–you can't. We've heard/seen it ALL, and while you may think you're the first to attempt this brilliant ploy, you're actually the 679th. And it didn't fool us the first time. Jackasses…
RC says:
That's damn funny… but what's more interesting is that the word "cheater" can be rearranged to spell "teacher."
Deal with that!
Anonymous says:
Those of you who know me may know this story. But I feel I'd better keep my name out of it. Anyway… In a course I taught (of mainly first-year students) at the U of Illinois, students were required to turn in photocopies of all their research in addition to their actual papers. (If they used a book or something, the could just turn in photocopies of relevant sections. This wasn't my policy, it was my course director's.) Anyway…
I had a student who was already late turning in a major paper. She must have been in a pretty big damn hurry to get it all together, because she stapled a copy of someone else's paper on the same topic from the same course from a previous semester in with her "research." If you've taken the time to do research, why not just write the damn paper? It wasn't even a good paper. Such laziness.
It gets better. When I confronted her about it, she told me she got it from ANOTHER student in the class, whose roommate had taken the class a few semesters before and chosen the same topic. This student, who had given the first student the paper, had joined the class late in the semester because of health problems. Normally, at the beginning of the semester, we have the students sign an "Academic Integrity" form, just acknowledging that they are aware of the university's standards. It's a lot of freshman, so we just give them a heads-up on college standards (compared to high school, where you might get by on "I didn't know it was cheating"-type plagiarizing nonsense). This particular student was a junior, though, so I didn't worry too much about the getting the form signed. The form has no binding power, anyway — it's just a reminder. The University policy is in effect for all classes, whether or not they have such a form. The truly astounding part is that, in her defense, this student's main argument was that she hadn't turned in her "I promise not to cheat" form. Thereby arguing that she hadn't agreed not to cheat? Needless to say, she didn't fare too well. Neither did her roommate, who contributed the paper with her name still on it. I'm pretty sure they all got formal notes about cheating put in their university files.
jenn says:
at least your kids have the good sense to look to wikipedia?