Ask Nathan Anything: Quarantine Edition

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Given your takes on various First Republic Italian political parties, I'd love to see you do similar commentary on Japan's contemporary political parties.

LDP: Obviously cancer, but I appreciate that it still has a somewhat more developmentalist/dirigiste streak than other East Asian rightist parties.
Komeito: Used to be semi-respectable as its own thing but is increasingly a plain and simple LDP handmaiden that exists to hoover up the votes of Japan's largest formal religious group.
CDP-SDP: Probably the best of a bad lot, but that's not saying a ton. Reiwa Shinsengumi might supplant it in that role if it proves to be an intellectually serious medium-term force.
Ishin: As an all-time forum great would say, bad bad bad bad lol bad bad. Might actually be worse than the LDP On The Issues, although it's a lesser evil in terms of Japan's political culture.
DPP: lol
JCP: Less bad than other communist parties, and much less bad than the Japanese right, but still weird and cultish.
Reiwa Shinsengumi: See my comment on the CDP above.
Okinawa Whirlwind: Hilarious name.
Other minor parties: Uniformly bad, lol, or both.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

To what extent can we compare the "old school" social revolutions of, say, France and Russia with the Cold War-era social revolutions of the Third World and more contemporary "urban civic revolutions"?

The "old-school" revolutions have more in common with the former than the latter due to the more similar material conditions of not-yet-as-heavily-urbanized 1780s France and 1910s Russia--including the tendency to devolve into tyrannies almost as bad as the ones they deposed, a tendency that the urban civic revolutions haven't exhibited in the same way with the unfortunate exception of Egypt. Even so, the obvious racial aspect of the Cold War-era revolutions is a significant dissimilarity, unless you're willing to bite the bullet and say that the Russian Revolution included (at first) a significant specifically-Jewish ideological element.

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=431203.msg7970206#msg7970206

Thoughts on the WWI discussion in this thread, and perhaps on my response to GMac

We don't have enough WWI discussion on Atlas

I agree with you. I don't subscribe to the idea that WWI had anywhere near as clear-cut a "good side" and "bad side" as WWII (although the Central Powers, overall, were clearly worse), but the bizarre Russian equivalent of the Dolchstoßlegende that GMA is advancing is absurd.

Also thoughts on King Louis-Philipe?

I can't say I know a ton about him. Antonio has tried for years to get me interested in nineteenth-century France, with some success, but the July Monarchy is still probably the post-1789 regime I know the least about.

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Was the Glorious Revolution the first modern revolution?

ayy lmao

No, the French Revolution was, for better or for worse (normal, arguably-sane, boring answer). The Glorious Revolution, like the Restoration before it, was an elite-driven project more similar to a modern coup than to a revolution as we now understand the word.

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do you have any thoughts on Simone Weil's death?  for instance, does it seem like something she choose in some way?

I'm strongly of the belief that Weil was anorexic, and moreover that, like Catherine of Siena, it actually was anorexia nervosa rather than the anorexia mirabilis that we associate with other famously religious women who starved themselves. (Towards the end of Catherine's life her confessor actually ordered her to start eating again, and she could not.) It could be argued that rushing headlong into abusing her body the way she did, seemingly making no effort to hold herself back, derived from a suicidal impulse, but I'm not comfortable saying that it was pure choice on her part, because towards the end she was clearly badly ill mentally as well as physically.

What are your favourite Greek tragedies? Do you have a preference between any of the three Athenian tragic poets?

I like Antigone and Bacchae best. My overall preference is for Sophocles; I like Euripides as well and am largely unfamiliar with Aeschylus, although I'm hostile to the Oresteia because I feel that it's unusually misogynistic even by Classical Athenian standards.

Do you believe that 2026 will see a hinoe uma-related plunge in birth rates like 1966 or have Japanese society and demographics changed enough from then for that to happen?

There'll probably be some decline (unfortunately, because I think the superstition surrounding hinoe uma is ridiculous and offensive even taken at face value--what exactly is the problem with having a "strong personality" due to being born in one of these years?!), but the birth rates have gotten so low already that I don't expect it to make as much difference as it did in 1966.

I'll answer my mini-backlog of questions from KaiserDave later today!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

do you have any thoughts on Simone Weil's death?  for instance, does it seem like something she choose in some way?

I'm strongly of the belief that Weil was anorexic, and moreover that, like Catherine of Siena, it actually was anorexia nervosa rather than the anorexia mirabilis that we associate with other famously religious women who starved themselves. (Towards the end of Catherine's life her confessor actually ordered her to start eating again, and she could not.) It could be argued that rushing headlong into abusing her body the way she did, seemingly making no effort to hold herself back, derived from a suicidal impulse, but I'm not comfortable saying that it was pure choice on her part, because towards the end she was clearly badly ill mentally as well as physically.

From what I've been reading it seems like Simone was too ill to digest much at the end, like it sounds Catherine was. I don't know much about anorexia mirabilis but couldn't it lead to that as well?  Looking at the wikipedia page, Catherine, Columba of Rieti, and Marie of Oignies all died in their early-to-mid thirties, as Simone did, and as Christ did.  Could be a coincidence due to prognosis of illness, but I can't help but think it may be due at some level to an attempt to emulate or join with Christ.
Simone's main reason for not eating that she gave  - to be in solidarity with those who could not - was genuine I believe. But it was a substitute for the fact she couldn't do more, so food was something in her control. Is that what you are thinking of in terms of anorexia nervosa?  Or do you think her not eating was related to body image issues?

I refreshed my memory as to the definitions of nervosa and mirabilis and I was misremembering what the difference was. I absolutely think Weil was more motivated by spiritual concerns than what we'd today see as "body image issues"; I have read most of her body of work (and dressed up as her for Halloween once! Of course, I was a theology student at the time) and barely remember her devoting any writerly attention to her body at all, even in situations like her attempts to do heavy farm labor alluded to in Gravity and Grace where you'd think writing about her body would be pertinent. So in that sense you're correct to question my initial response; I was mistaken about my terms and I appreciate the correction.

I also think there's something to be said about the gendered pathologization of cases like hers and Catherine's. Almost nobody's mind goes to mental illness or eating disorders in discussions of male religious figures who were hard on their bodies in similar ways, like Simeon Stylites or for that matter Francis of Assisi. The fact that Weil is a major (arguably the major) female theologian of modern times probably has a lot to do with people's (including mine; this is something I've thought a lot about over the years!) fascination with this topic.

Curious to know if you’ve ever read Richard Werner’s Princes of the Yen (given your interest in Japan), and if so what you thought of his thesis that the Japanese stock market crash and the ensuing lost decade(s) were essentially part of a long term plan orchestrated by the BoJ to remake the Japanese economy along Western lines?

I'm not familiar with the book but I've heard the premise before. I don't buy it; it strikes me as "inscrutable orientals"-mongering to accuse the f**king Bank of Japan of all institutions of that kind of super-long-term thinking. Maybe MITI at its height could have launched such a scheme--but wouldn't have, because MITI's interests lay in continuing postwar developmentalism/dirigisme/whatever you want to call it for as long as possible.

I'll admit that the idea has a lot of explanatory power; it's just that I question its prima facie plausibility.

Opinion of

1. Rerum Novarum
2. Quadragesimo anno
3. Fratelli Tutti
?

All freedom encyclicals, although I think all three have their blind spots (too little Thomism in Rerum novarum, too much Thomism in Quadragesimo anno, and some "old pope yells at cloud"-iness about sociopolitical issues related to internet use in Fratelli tutti). I was lucky enough to get an embargoed copy of Fratelli tutti about twelve hours early because I write for a Catholic news and opinion website and I stayed up all night reading it. There need to be middlebrow popularizers for this tradition the way there are for theology of the body.

Opinion of Napoleon Bonaparte?

I have mixed feelings on him. He's the locus classicus for a historical figure the scope of whose legacy is such that he's hard to get a clear moral picture of. Continental political history also just isn't really my forte. What I will say is that I once got into a flame war on another website with a Norwegian communist who kept insisting that Napoleon was "far-right", which struck and still strikes me as completely absurd (although not as absurd as calling Julius Caesar far-right, which this person also did).

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Since you were asked about Napoleon, opinion of Louis XIV? I feel like they're often held to a double standard.

bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad LOL bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad

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Henry, no offense, but I don't really think you have the high ground when it comes to the evils of assessing early modern figures through disposition towards (proto)liberalism rather than on internationalist or human rights grounds.

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What do you think of ‘free verse’? I’ve always thought it’s just an excuse to write poorly, and it’s also surely an oxymoron; but that’s probably me being narrow minded.

I think there's some excellent free verse out there, but it has to be written by somebody who has a great ear for the natural rhythms of the language. Good poets do, but I agree with the common observation that mediocre poets just write highly emotional prose while pressing "enter" a bunch of times and call it a day. "Prufrock" is technically free verse but it still "feels like" poetry because each individual line is incredibly carefully constructed; often a few in a row will be metrical, and the last line of the poem ("Till human voices wake us, and we drown") is perfect iambic pentameter. Much of, for example, Mary Oliver's work was written with a similar concern for rhythm and balance. Conversely this poem, which is wildly popular among the sorts of consistent life ethic-oriented young Christian women who make up much of my social circle, is difficult to identify as poetry except by how it looks on the page. (I actually love this as writing and think about it all the time; but it's difficult to justify except as a prose poem, and I tend to think of it as one.)

What I hate about free verse is that it's so dominant in English poetry today that many poets have lost the ability to (or never learn to) write decent metrical poetry even if they want to. That awful poem that that guy wrote for the Trump inauguration is a great example of the kind of disaster that can befall them (and the language!) when they try. I have a friend in an MFA program who would like to use rhyme and meter but feels the need to avoid doing so because whenever she does her professors and the people in her workshops unload on it and accuse her of pastiche (at best) or unseriousness (at worst). So "free verse", which was developed precisely to, well, free poetic expression from the perceived constraints of meter, has become just as much of an ossified orthodoxy as the persnickety Victorian fixation on meter that it replaced. Like many such orthodoxies, it's impoverishing English poetry and at this point is probably best rebelled against. To that end I enjoy using very strict forms when I try my hand at poetry, like villanelles and triolets.

A lot of the people who would be very good metrical poets of the old school are in songwriting now. You look at a bunch of Leonard Cohen or even Florence Welch lyrics and you'll see an awful lot that could easily have been published in poetry collections fifty or a hundred years ago--indeed, many Leonard Cohen and Florence Welch lyrics have been published as poems. But by and large the only fans of their poetry are people who discovered them through their music, because so many Very Serious Poetry People are mired in free verse orthodoxy.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

indeed, many Leonard Cohen and Florence Welch lyrics have been published as poems. But by and large the only fans of their poetry are people who discovered them through their music, because so many Very Serious Poetry People are mired in free verse orthodoxy.

You'll be delighted to know that Cohen's poetry sells well.

I am.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Do you prefer emo to classic rock?

Depends on the emo and depends on the classic rock, but at least some of the time yes. I'd much rather listen to Sunny Day Real Estate than, like, Foreigner.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What's your favorite kind of bird?

My favorite bird is the great blue heron, although I also like lots of smaller birds such as red-winged blackbirds and common grackles.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Given your takes on various First Republic Italian political parties, I'd love to see you do similar commentary on Japan's contemporary political parties.

LDP: Obviously cancer, but I appreciate that it still has a somewhat more developmentalist/dirigiste streak than other East Asian rightist parties.
Komeito: Used to be semi-respectable as its own thing but is increasingly a plain and simple LDP handmaiden that exists to hoover up the votes of Japan's largest formal religious group.
CDP-SDP: Probably the best of a bad lot, but that's not saying a ton. Reiwa Shinsengumi might supplant it in that role if it proves to be an intellectually serious medium-term force.
Ishin: As an all-time forum great would say, bad bad bad bad lol bad bad. Might actually be worse than the LDP On The Issues, although it's a lesser evil in terms of Japan's political culture.
DPP: lol
JCP: Less bad than other communist parties, and much less bad than the Japanese right, but still weird and cultish.
Reiwa Shinsengumi: See my comment on the CDP above.
Okinawa Whirlwind: Hilarious name.
Other minor parties: Uniformly bad, lol, or both.

Sorry for bumping this but I just realized - no separate opinion for The Party to Protect the People from NHK (or whatever its full official name is now, they change it all the time but it still remains among the best party names in the world)? That's sad.

There is literally a mid-2000s anime, based on a novel, whose main character thinks the NHK is a conspiracy to keep him a shut-in, where the (very dark) central joke is that this is the sort of insane, baseless conclusion somebody with too poor an understanding of the world to think of some other external force to blame his personal problems on would come to. The fact that this is now the platform of a political party for which people actually vote is as compelling a piece of evidence that we live in a post-irony world as any I know.

Since Battista bumped this thread, what is your opinion of the major factions within the LDP?

Kishida's faction, which descends from Ikeda Hayato's old reformed-post-fascist philoamerican developmentalist wing, is probably the least bad On The Issues right now (since whatever faction it is that Noda Seiko represents is not going to have enough clout to take the party leadership anytime soon). I do find it mildly concerning that Kishida's support base is almost entirely within the Diet itself and the LDP grassroots was in the tank for the much more right-wing Kono; Japan is probably the only major developed country left where people haven't gotten sick of the mavericky "reformist" neoliberal shtick yet, even though they had five full years of Koizumi to see it be tried and found wanting. It's curious that Kishida is a member of Nippon Kaigi and Kono isn't; my preferred interpretation for right now is that Nippon Kaigi, while it has a very clear and absolutely terrifying policy agenda, is the sort of organization where whether you're in it or not depends on whom you know as much as or more than on what you believe.

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What do you think?

Currently thinking about Ursula K. Le Guin because I'm reading an old Ace Double copy of Planet of Exile I found somewhere.

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This seems to have been lost in the deluge of other threads on this board, so I'll bump as I'm eager to hear your thoughts

I'm planning to answer tomorrow. I was going to do so today but I had an incredibly tiring day.

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Are you a film guy? Do you have any favourite films?

Yeah, I love movies. My favorite movie of all time is the 1970s Japanese B-movie Hausu/House, which I love for its weirdly heartfelt qualities (much of it was written by a ten-year-old girl) combined with its over-the-top, schlocky, shoestring aesthetics. The movie I say is my favorite when snobby people ask me is either Meet Me in St. Louis, Early Summer, or This Gun for Hire, depending on who I'm talking to--and I do love all those movies. I've recently discovered Powell and Pressburger (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp; Black Narcissus) and they're great too. Also To Have and Have Not, Suspiria (the original, not the compromised second draft), the Peter Jackson Fellowship of the Ring (not so much any of his other Tolkien adaptations), Roman Holiday, Local Hero, Ugetsu, the Roberto Rossellini St. Francis movie, lots of Guillermo Del Toro's stuff...I could go on.

Best book of the Iliad? Virgil or Homer?

I'm not as familiar with the Iliad as I am with the Odyssey, unfortunately, but I like when Achilles fights the river.

Virgil thematically, Homer stylistically.

Do you see much tension between social liberalism and leftism? (I've knowingly kept this fairly vague.)

In terms of issue emphasis, absolutely; see that recent thread in Individual Politics where posters with more or less identical views On The Issues started sniping at one another in occasionally quite personal terms on whether or not to take a hypothetical deal trading an abortion ban for single-payer and 100% clean energy. It wasn't that anybody involved was happy about the idea of a complete abortion ban (not even I have any tolerance for the idea of going full El Salvador on the issue), but, again, the question of issue emphasis did create serious friction anyway between posters who were primarily "leftist" and posters who were primarily "socially liberal".

Substantively, I don't think there's necessarily much tension, at least if "social liberalism" is defined as a concern with redressing past and present injustices around race, gender, etc., rather than merely liberating the individual from unchosen obligations for the sake of liberating the individual from unchosen obligations--a project incompatible with the goals of the traditional left and the traditional right.

Which "national shade" of conservatism do you find most attractive/least unattractive? (For example, British conservatism tends to be quite liberal in the traditional sense, Spanish conservatism is very authoritarian and Catholic, American conservatism is fiercely republican and sceptical of central authority etc. etc. - obviously these things reflect the history of the respective countries.)

Most of my interest in conservative thought is in Canadian Red Toryism in the traditional sense. George P. Grant is my favorite right-of-center political philosopher, and I'm sympathetic to the way in which old-school Canadian nationalism emphasized Canada's "nation of nations" status and supported things like Cold War neutrality and the welfare state to avoid turning the country into an appendage of the United States. That tradition has almost been wiped out by crass Albertan petrostate libertarianism now, of course.

Can someone be cancelled for going as a Fremen for Halloween? Asking for a friend...

Short answer: Let's just do it and be legends, man.
Long answer: Probably, yes, but a summer camp I went to in 2007 had a costume ball at one point where a kid dressed up as an "enemy combatant" complete with turban and scimitar, and the satire on Bush-era perceptions of Why We Were In Iraq was, even if unintentional, so on-point and so straight-up funny that even in retrospect I don't really care that it was #problematic as well.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Which "national shade" of conservatism do you find most attractive/least unattractive? (For example, British conservatism tends to be quite liberal in the traditional sense, Spanish conservatism is very authoritarian and Catholic, American conservatism is fiercely republican and sceptical of central authority etc. etc. - obviously these things reflect the history of the respective countries.)

Most of my interest in conservative thought is in Canadian Red Toryism in the traditional sense. George P. Grant is my favorite right-of-center political philosopher, and I'm sympathetic to the way in which old-school Canadian nationalism emphasized Canada's "nation of nations" status and supported things like Cold War neutrality and the welfare state to avoid turning the country into an appendage of the United States. That tradition has almost been wiped out by crass Albertan petrostate libertarianism now, of course.

Red Toryism is definitely very interesting, and perhaps the closest to "true conservatism" (insofar as that means anything...). There was an attempt in 2009 to try and revive this in Britain - obviously nothing came of it in the Cameron years, though you might make an argument that the Johnson government is "Red Toryism done badly." Would you have voted Tory in the Diefenbaker elections then?

I'm not sure. There are definitely respects in which I like Diefenbaker better than Pearson--I don't buy into the conspiracy theory that the CIA rigged the 1963 election, but the fact that it seems like something the early-60s CIA might do on Pearson's behalf speaks volumes--but I have very strong emotional and cultural identification with "the left" writ large; this is itself perhaps one of my most conservative political traits since the reason for it is that leftist values are ones with which my family raised me! So it's possible, especially in 1958 when seemingly everyone under the sun was voting PC, but I think the Coldwell/Douglas-led CCF/NDP would have been my party of choice in those years.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Can someone be cancelled for going as a Fremen for Halloween? Asking for a friend...

Short answer: Let's just do it and be legends, man.
Long answer: Probably, yes, but a summer camp I went to in 2007 had a costume ball at one point where a kid dressed up as an "enemy combatant" complete with turban and scimitar, and the satire on Bush-era perceptions of Why We Were In Iraq was, even if unintentional, so on-point and so straight-up funny that even in retrospect I don't really care that it was #problematic as well.

You fortify me in this moment of weakness. Thank you.

The only problematic thing that kid did that day was not tie their shoelaces 100% perfectly, imo.

Did you go to the same summer camp I did (Center for Talented Youth, Lancaster, PA, July 2007), or is the implication that you remember the same kid I do part of a joke I don't get? If the former, wow, what a small world.

Are you a film guy? Do you have any favourite films?

Yeah, I love movies. My favorite movie of all time is the 1970s Japanese B-movie Hausu/House, which I love for its weirdly heartfelt qualities (much of it was written by a ten-year-old girl) combined with its over-the-top, schlocky, shoestring aesthetics. The movie I say is my favorite when snobby people ask me is either Meet Me in St. Louis, Early Summer, or This Gun for Hire, depending on who I'm talking to--and I do love all those movies. I've recently discovered Powell and Pressburger (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp; Black Narcissus) and they're great too. Also To Have and Have Not, Suspiria (the original, not the compromised second draft), the Peter Jackson Fellowship of the Ring (not so much any of his other Tolkien adaptations), Roman Holiday, Local Hero, Ugetsu, the Roberto Rossellini St. Francis movie, lots of Guillermo Del Toro's stuff...I could go on.

Very curious about this; I've come across people who disliked the adaptations but this is the first time I've seen someone like one of the films but not the rest.

I like other Lord of the Rings movies a lot as well, but the the annoying (to me) deviations from the books' plot and themes start in connection with the Rohan plotline, so the other two aren't personal favorites of mine.

Also, how seriously do you take the political themes of your films? Like, if a film has right-leaning themes (say, most Westerns), is that a deal breaker?

Not necessarily; it depends more on how the theme is communicated than on how left-wing or right-wing it is. There's a lot of "conservative" art that I enjoy--Tolkien, Guareschi, Waugh, (some) Mishima--and that extends to adaptations thereof. What I can't abide is crassly racist, sexist, or aporophobic prick-waving, but it is (or was once) possible to be right-wing without indulging in that overmuch.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Did you go to the same summer camp I did (Center for Talented Youth, Lancaster, PA, July 2007), or is the implication that you remember the same kid I do part of a joke I don't get? If the former, wow, what a small world.

I did not go to that summer camp. What I said was satire on the idea that the whole "enemy combatant" thing the kid did was offensive.
(If it counts for anything, I'm Muslim and Arab and found the whole thing hilarious and brilliant)

Yeah, what was being suggested--that some really dumb racism and Orientalism was going into the "enemy combatant" concept as the Bush administration was using it at the time--was a completely true observation, executed in a hilarious way. I knew the kid and he was against the war so I took it very differently than if he had been some random pro-Bush hack (or the son of random pro-Bush hacks since at that age most kids' politics still basically reflect their parents').

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As a teacher, do you feel the kids suffered greatly from remote learning, and are you glad to be back in the classroom again?

I'm not really back in the classroom now because I'm feeling out a career change; I'm doing archive work at a small museum here in Upstate New York.

Having said that, though, yes, I absolutely feel that kids, especially younger kids, suffered from remote learning. There just really is no substitute for the social and hands-on dynamics of in-person instruction at any level below college. I guess it was better than nothing, and I personally enjoyed working from home a lot, but from a students-first standpoint it went absolutely terribly and the teachers' unions really made a serious tactical and, frankly, moral mistake by dying on the hill of keeping kids at home indefinitely. By the time I finally did get back in the classroom, in late April and early May of last school year, everybody was just so relieved that the months and months of technical difficulties as a bunch of indigent six-year-olds valiantly attempted to spend seven hours a day on Zoom were over.

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When was the last time you participated in Reconciliation?

Either this past Saturday or the Saturday before; I don't remember which right now. I should do so again ASAP because I lost my temper and said some very uncharitable things in a discussion with a friend earlier tonight.