The Canadians have landed
Mom plus three fluffballs. Seen on an evening walk the other day.
Quote of the Day
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
- Groucho Marx
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Rufus & Martha Wainwright | Sweet Thames, flow softly
Long Read of the Day
Harvard Derangement Syndrome
This is Steven Pinker’s commentary on Trump’s assault on Harvard. I’ve never been much enamoured of the institution — which I habitually caricature as “a hedge-fund with a nice university attached”, so what I liked about the essay stemmed from the fact that its author has a track record of being vocal about some of its deficiencies. In that sense you could view the essay as a model of how civilised discourse might be conducted in an ideal world. It won’t have any impact in the parallel universe that is Trumpland, of course, but it’s an engaging and serious read.
Sample:
In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. My 2014 essay “The Trouble With Harvard” called for a transparent, meritocratic admissions policy to replace the current “eye-of-newt-wing-of-bat mysticism” which “conceals unknown mischief.” My 2023 “five-point plan to save Harvard from itself” urged the university to commit itself to free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering D.E.I. Last fall, on the anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, I explained “how I wish Harvard taught students to talk about Israel,” calling on the university to teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity. Two years ago I co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, which has since regularly challenged university policies and pressed for changes.
So I’m hardly an apologist for my employer when I say that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged. According to its critics, Harvard is a “national disgrace,” a “woke madrasa,” a “Maoist indoctrination camp,” a “ship of fools,” a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” a “cesspool of extremist riots” and an “Islamist outpost” in which the “dominant view on campus” is “destroy the Jews, and you’ve destroyed the root of Western civilization.”
And that’s before we get to President Trump’s opinion that Harvard is “an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution,” a “Liberal mess” and a “threat to Democracy,” which has been “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called future leaders.”
Microsoft shutting down email accounts of Trump’s foes should be worrying to us all
This week’s Observer column:
On 4 February, Netanyahu became the first foreign leader to visit Donald Trump after his inauguration. Two days later, with impeccable timing, his host issued one of his decrees – AKA executive orders – imposing sanctions on the ICC on the grounds that it had “abused its power by issuing baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former minister of defence Yoav Gallant”.
The decree goes on to threaten any person, institution or company that provides “financial, material, or technological support” to the ICC with sanctions backed by the full might of the US government.
As far as I know, only one senior official – the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan – has, to date, been thus sanctioned, but he is likely to be joined by others in due course. And that’s where things may become sticky for people in other jurisdictions who imagine they are immune to the wrath of King Donald.
Khan, who is a British subject, has already lost access to his bank accounts, which is what happens when you’re sanctioned. More interestingly, though, Microsoft has also blocked his email account…
So many books, so little time
I’m indebted to Alice O’Flynn for alerting me to this book and its remarkable author. I’ve just opened my copy, and this is how it starts:
Dear Reader: It seems, of all the books in all the world, you’ve picked mine. A most cheerful title that has the word fascism in it. Democracy is there as well, so it is easy to guess you are not in a good place. Kindly let me take the load off. After all, this is going to be quite a bumpy ride on a freight train, during which I’ll show you how your country can be lost.
Or not. It all depends on what you and I decide to do after this trip. So let’s start with some fun facts, shall we?
My commonplace booklet
I stumbled on the CSPAN recording of the Cabinet meeting that Trump called to mark his first 100 days in office, and watched it for a while until the sickbag beckoned. Contemplating it, the thought that came to mind was: “this is what it must have been like in Henry VIII’s court”. Every Cabinet member’s ‘report’ commenced with cloying testaments of the Great Leader’s sagacity, genius and inspiration.
And then, quite by accident, I read Fintan O’Toole’s Irish Times column (sadly paywalled) on sycophancy.
The Romans understood that the key to “imperial republics evolving into dictatorships” is sycophancy. The empire enters its decadent phase of chaos and barbarism when its elites succumb to the allure of obsequiousness. The great Roman historian Tacitus tells us that the republic died when “they all rushed into servitude – consuls, senators, and knights. The higher the rank, the greater the hypocrisy and haste”.
He also tells us that even the tyrannical emperor Tiberius was disgusted by the slavering: “Clearly, while he objected to the freedom of the people, he was also sickened by such abject submission from his ‘slaves’.” And here there may be a warning to those who think that the appropriate response to Trump’s emperor act is to play along with abject submission.
Spot on. Also, any world ‘leader’ who chooses to visit the Oval Throne Room for his or her moment of glory deserves everything that’s coming to him/her.
Here’s the latest victim, the South African president, as seen by ‘Gado’, the pen-name of the brilliant Kenyan cartoonist, Godfrey Mwampembwa.
Thanks to Msani Kym for spotting it. _
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