We've been hearing this a lot: the House managers have successfully shown how horrible the January 6 insurrection was and also highlighted Donald Trump's vulgar comments. But they haven't really proven the connection between Trump's comments and the attack. This is nonsense. 1/

There is a criminal case to be made against Trump for his role in inciting the inspiration, and @CREWcrew has made that case in its criminal sedition complaint against Trump. But this is not a criminal case, and does not require that kind of proof. 2/
https://t.co/S0vB0ncImu
On a basic level, this case is painfully obvious. Donald Trump spent weeks and months and years saying, falsely, the election would be fraudulent and then that it had been stolen. This primed his supporters to believe their democratic rights were being take away. 3/
Trump spent weeks and months and years fueling a sense of grievance among his supporters and hostility to any political opponents, as well as condoning violence or mildly condemning it with a clear wink and a nod obviously meant to encourage it. 4/
In the weeks after the election, he compounded his big lie that he had won with efforts to take bogus claims to courts and to pressure officials at every level of government to overturn the results. He portrayed the across the board rejections as further persecution. 5/
He then heavily promoted the January 6 event to his supporters as a time to pressure Congress and even the Vice President to overturn the results of the election. He whipped up grievance and hostility and told them to go to the Capitol and fight. 6/
The mob did what he told them to do, going to the Capitol and fighting, vandalizing, maiming, and killing. He continued to fan the flames with hostile tweets, failed to condemn the violence, and finally called for peace with the same sympathetic wink and nod to the mob. 7/
All of this is obvious to anyone who has been paying attention, though the House managers' powerful case has made it so much more vivid and painful. But still the President's supporters in Congress have their heads in the sand. 8/
Enough! We saw where burying your heads in the sand got us. No more. Do your damn jobs for once. Hold this man accountable for attacking our country, our democracy, and our people. Make sure he can never do it again. It could not be more obvious. 9/

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x