Notices by Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online), page 4

A father complains that his daughters have become cross-dressers, thanks to bicycle mania.

"I lay this to the bicycle craze. Both girls insisted on having bicycles, and then got to bloomers. Finally they have adopted male attire entirely."

In Kabul, it was reported, the Amir had purchased bikes for the women in his harem.

Meanwhile, in Turkey, the Sultan had banned these new machines, which he designated as "the devil's chariot."

More from the Good Rev. Gregory:

"The children are turned into the street or left at home to look after themselves while father and mother go spinning. It is a menace to morality. It makes women immodest. There is no telling what a woman will do after she has lost her womanliness. The bicycle opens the way for everlasting ruin to a multitude of young men and women who might otherwise escape."

@histodons

Cultural history class this week includes the #bicycle boom of the 1890s.

Newspapers from this period are filled with the complaints of men who say bicycles ruined their marriages, since wives only care to ride and no longer tend to their "duties."

The Rev. Thomas Gregory saw the bike as a threat to his parishioners' intellect and health.

"It annihilates the reading habit. The libraries are deserted. It is a menace to domestic virtues. It breaks up and destroys the home."

🚲 🧵

Jody Rosen digs through a lot of primary sources here:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/239537/two-wheels-good-by-jody-rosen/

#cycling #histodons

No facts.

No truth.

No democracy.

There’s no plainer way to put this.

EVERYTHING depends right now on the integrity of our information ecosystems and what behaviors we cultivate, model, and reward within them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/06/china-russia-republican-party-relations/678271/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Boost your friends and allies.

Screenshot the dim bulbs and bad actors.

#mastodon #culture #online

Justice Alito, you’ll remember, shuns the SOTU, because attending a presidential address sends the wrong message about our independent judiciary.

The bad faith of some people knows no limits.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/us/justice-alito-upside-down-flag.html

Worth noting that No Exit (1944) was written to encourage honest confrontation with the past and personal accountability, following France’s Vichy (fascist) period. 2/

In No Exit by Sartre, the condemned must live for all of eternity without mirrors, which they depended on during the course of their lives to maintain their self-image.

In hell, they will only be allowed to know themselves as they are seen and comprehended by others.

That’s what I suspect these long days in court are like for Trump. 1/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/21/us/politics/trump-trial-analysis.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mE0.s_6B.jsgLo7pP1Ijq&smid=url-share

So, yeah, to the extent that Trump is capable of absorbing reality, I hope the next two months are excruciating for him. 3/

@freemo

Good talk, Doc. Have a great day.

@freemo

Two ways of describing the same thing, but one that’s more exclusive (America) and the other (Union) that is more explicit about including diverse parts.

You may not agree but that’s what I meant to say.

Both speeches unfold in the context of dark days. In both speeches, the president addresses the nation at a moment of crisis.

For Trump, it’s American Carnage. Betrayal of ordinary people by Washington elites. Wasted resources spent in foreign lands to prop up undeserving others. Decaying infrastructure. Crap schools. Crime ridden cities overrun by gangs.

Today in my politics of history course we discussed how historical thinking features in political rhetoric.

I asked students to read two political speeches:

Trump’s inaugural address (Jan 20, 2017)

and

Biden’s inaugural address (Jan 20, 2021)

🧵 A few observations…

For Trump the crisis is unprecedented and sudden. American history is a story of triumphs, glories, winning, and virtue. Until it wasn’t. A mixed race president dragged us down from that perch and dumped us into a state of decay and disrepair. Trump had gone at other Republicans during the run-up contention, but in his inaugural address, blame rests almost solely on the shoulders of un-American, self-interested others, that is, people like Obama (who sat behind him during the speech).

But here’s a key difference:

For Biden, there is really nothing new in the appearance of these overlapping crises. The country has been through comparable travails: Valley Forge, Civil War, Great Depression, Vietnam and the struggle for Civil Rights, 9/11.

America has been severely tested before. Not once, but many times.

For Biden, it’s the lethality of COVID, a crashed and strangulated economy, the anguish of Black Lives Matter, and the Jan 6 effort to overturn the results of the election in an ugly and hateful outburst of political violence.

One of my students made an interesting observation. Where Trump fixates on America, Biden has more to say about our Union. This strikes me as highly significant.

America, for Trump, is all or nothing. Non-negotiable. Those who stand in lockstep w/ him are included. Those who do not are excluded, ostracized. America in Trump’s speech brooks no opposition.

Biden’s Union stands in contrast. It presumes and accepts difference and diversity. Disagreement does not disqualify one from citizenship.

For Biden, there can be no going back. Even if there is inspiration to be taken from our past (he invokes, e.g., Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation), there also are injustices and iniquities there which fall short of our ideals and aspirations. The crooked timber of the past can be used for instruction or even inspiration, but it cannot deliver by itself the straight mast which our ship requires to navigate the current storm.

We must go forward. But how?

So what to do? How does the country navigate out of its difficulties and regain its lost traction?

Here, the two speeches differ, and, really, we glimpse two wholly different visions of the USA and its history.

For Trump: salvation lies in the past. Make America Great Again presumes that America can be restored to its former glory by turning the clock back and restoring a previous order. The speech is punctuated by nostalgic cliches.