Sam Ulmschneider
@samulmschneider.bsky.social
Teaching Constitutional studies, poli sci, political theory, US history topics in Virginia. Own views & comments, these don't reflect my institutional affiliations. Husband / cat person / Madisonian / Lincolnite / Trekkie / strategy gamer / metalhead.
I'd like to read a good history of folk music, esp post-1960s resurgence. I haven't much clue what the underlying dynamics are that roots/folk spaces, which culturally ought to be right leaning by most rights, are rarely home to the UKIP/Trump types as much as they are to granola-acceptance types.
November 25, 2025 at 3:40 AM
I'd like to read a good history of folk music, esp post-1960s resurgence. I haven't much clue what the underlying dynamics are that roots/folk spaces, which culturally ought to be right leaning by most rights, are rarely home to the UKIP/Trump types as much as they are to granola-acceptance types.
It would be nice if we valued some degree of articulation, precision, and modulation in one's public speaking instead of the mangled mumbling and disjointed syllables on display here. Almost like teaching, oh, rhetoric or something.
November 25, 2025 at 1:03 AM
It would be nice if we valued some degree of articulation, precision, and modulation in one's public speaking instead of the mangled mumbling and disjointed syllables on display here. Almost like teaching, oh, rhetoric or something.
I'm very glad about this one, but I'll be curious how broadly it paints 'reconstruction as a concept. I guess that knocks out one of my potential topics! But there's lots of other good ideas.
November 25, 2025 at 12:57 AM
I'm very glad about this one, but I'll be curious how broadly it paints 'reconstruction as a concept. I guess that knocks out one of my potential topics! But there's lots of other good ideas.
I knew about the LBJ one, I am not clear on if the other is just 'reconstruction' or a little more narrowly tailored and specific to particular experiences/narratives. But regardless, it's fun to imagine what he should do next beyond those!
November 25, 2025 at 12:56 AM
I knew about the LBJ one, I am not clear on if the other is just 'reconstruction' or a little more narrowly tailored and specific to particular experiences/narratives. But regardless, it's fun to imagine what he should do next beyond those!
I'm not sure if Emancipation to Exodus is 'Reconstruction' or something more tailored and narrow. I did know he has a couple coming, my post was more about what else people'd like to see.
November 25, 2025 at 12:43 AM
I'm not sure if Emancipation to Exodus is 'Reconstruction' or something more tailored and narrow. I did know he has a couple coming, my post was more about what else people'd like to see.
Wait, I thought LBJ/Great Society was the only one of these that was confirmed? Unless I missed something, which is totally possible.
November 25, 2025 at 12:33 AM
Wait, I thought LBJ/Great Society was the only one of these that was confirmed? Unless I missed something, which is totally possible.
I agree with you. And EYES ON THE PRIZE, great as it is, doesn't cast a broad enough net into the late 19th and early 20th century or benefit from recent works like Wilkerson's WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS and so on. It also has less of a cultural angle (think Bill Cosby) than Burns could bring.
November 25, 2025 at 12:29 AM
I agree with you. And EYES ON THE PRIZE, great as it is, doesn't cast a broad enough net into the late 19th and early 20th century or benefit from recent works like Wilkerson's WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS and so on. It also has less of a cultural angle (think Bill Cosby) than Burns could bring.
That's true, so for once I agree (sort of) w National Review. But also that's like....five minutes of one episode? And maybe another five of a second, later episode? It's also something where there is a lot of intellectual scrum and it's easy to get misled/turned around by diff'r interp traditions.
November 25, 2025 at 12:28 AM
That's true, so for once I agree (sort of) w National Review. But also that's like....five minutes of one episode? And maybe another five of a second, later episode? It's also something where there is a lot of intellectual scrum and it's easy to get misled/turned around by diff'r interp traditions.
Oh, this is a GREAT idea and I'd love to see it. He hasn't really done one on a single product either, despite the proof of concept in so many history books.
November 25, 2025 at 12:25 AM
Oh, this is a GREAT idea and I'd love to see it. He hasn't really done one on a single product either, despite the proof of concept in so many history books.
to be serious with your joke for a sec, I'd absolutely watch Ken Burns' 'The Internet'
November 25, 2025 at 12:24 AM
to be serious with your joke for a sec, I'd absolutely watch Ken Burns' 'The Internet'
Oooh that one is terrible comparatively but I also have noticed he's stayed away from pure politics/institutions for a long while now.
November 25, 2025 at 12:19 AM
Oooh that one is terrible comparatively but I also have noticed he's stayed away from pure politics/institutions for a long while now.
I am about halfway through. It is good documentary filmmaking, which means it's inherently....OK history at best. But it doesn't get anything WRONG to be sure, at least not so far. Not that I'd expect it would.
November 25, 2025 at 12:12 AM
I am about halfway through. It is good documentary filmmaking, which means it's inherently....OK history at best. But it doesn't get anything WRONG to be sure, at least not so far. Not that I'd expect it would.
It's also old enough that the earliest pioneers - Afrikaa Bambataa and the like - will soon be gone, and also old enough that there's a large and thriving scholarly community studying it to provide talking heads and correctives. I would love to see it though I'm SURE it'd have some real problems.
November 24, 2025 at 11:53 PM
It's also old enough that the earliest pioneers - Afrikaa Bambataa and the like - will soon be gone, and also old enough that there's a large and thriving scholarly community studying it to provide talking heads and correctives. I would love to see it though I'm SURE it'd have some real problems.
It was flawed but mostly because it took positions within wars about the aesthetics of jazz and between jazz musicians about which outgrowths and genres were insufficiently respected and which were overhyped. It didn't have fundamental historical flaws (the way Civil War came close to having).
November 24, 2025 at 11:49 PM
It was flawed but mostly because it took positions within wars about the aesthetics of jazz and between jazz musicians about which outgrowths and genres were insufficiently respected and which were overhyped. It didn't have fundamental historical flaws (the way Civil War came close to having).
I figure Ken Burns has one, maybe two big documentary series in him before he fully retires. What do you think they should be? My votes include Football, Hip-Hop, World War 1, Reconstruction (though Skip Gates did this one well), Iraq/Afghanistan, 19th Century Expansionism.
November 24, 2025 at 11:46 PM
I figure Ken Burns has one, maybe two big documentary series in him before he fully retires. What do you think they should be? My votes include Football, Hip-Hop, World War 1, Reconstruction (though Skip Gates did this one well), Iraq/Afghanistan, 19th Century Expansionism.
yes, I believe in the classical canon of the culture of the West...yes, I mean "Queen of the Black Coast," that's not what you meant by the classical canon? Why ever not?
November 24, 2025 at 11:39 PM
yes, I believe in the classical canon of the culture of the West...yes, I mean "Queen of the Black Coast," that's not what you meant by the classical canon? Why ever not?
before COVID I used to re-read Moby Dick, which I used to call my favorite book, once every couple of years and I'll admit I haven't since like....2017 maybe? I need to read it again but also need some fellow adults to talk it out with, which is harder and harder to find these days.
November 22, 2025 at 1:24 AM
before COVID I used to re-read Moby Dick, which I used to call my favorite book, once every couple of years and I'll admit I haven't since like....2017 maybe? I need to read it again but also need some fellow adults to talk it out with, which is harder and harder to find these days.
or to read deeply, or to read for themselves. Can't replace the delightfully confusing experience of reading Moby-Dick with a set of memetic amusements nor the book's profoundly unsettling ideas with a set of pat and obvious moral lessons.
November 22, 2025 at 1:14 AM
or to read deeply, or to read for themselves. Can't replace the delightfully confusing experience of reading Moby-Dick with a set of memetic amusements nor the book's profoundly unsettling ideas with a set of pat and obvious moral lessons.
I agree that the blog entry's attempt to avoid Ishmael's extremely funny, trenchant, and VERY risque, borderline extreme, theological, sexual, and social commentary is sidelining an important part of the book, but you can do the other stuff the blog discusses (clam chowder) w/o so avoiding Ishmael.
November 22, 2025 at 1:09 AM
I agree that the blog entry's attempt to avoid Ishmael's extremely funny, trenchant, and VERY risque, borderline extreme, theological, sexual, and social commentary is sidelining an important part of the book, but you can do the other stuff the blog discusses (clam chowder) w/o so avoiding Ishmael.
I wonder how many Trump-Mamdani voters there are (that's the subset of people who this statement assumes exist and are important). I'm open to be convinced that there are many such people or very few but don't have super strong priors either way...and the truth of this statement kinda hinges on it.
November 22, 2025 at 1:07 AM
I wonder how many Trump-Mamdani voters there are (that's the subset of people who this statement assumes exist and are important). I'm open to be convinced that there are many such people or very few but don't have super strong priors either way...and the truth of this statement kinda hinges on it.
also nothing....inherently ideologically conservative about the approach described in this short blog entry? Making kids sketch a whale or eat an anchovy has no conservative/liberal valence I can really absorb.
November 22, 2025 at 12:47 AM
also nothing....inherently ideologically conservative about the approach described in this short blog entry? Making kids sketch a whale or eat an anchovy has no conservative/liberal valence I can really absorb.
being ideology is infinitely better when you're self-aware about it. I may have to borrow 'Infinite Bastard Generator' that's a great turn of phrase.
November 22, 2025 at 12:45 AM
being ideology is infinitely better when you're self-aware about it. I may have to borrow 'Infinite Bastard Generator' that's a great turn of phrase.
Reposted by Sam Ulmschneider
I don't mean this in an "I told you so" way, but it was very obvious to me that the Mamdani/Trump meeting would go the way it did, because Mamdani is ascendant, popular, powerful and charismatic, all things that Trump wants to glom on to. Trump has no principles; it's not like he has converted.
November 21, 2025 at 11:44 PM
I don't mean this in an "I told you so" way, but it was very obvious to me that the Mamdani/Trump meeting would go the way it did, because Mamdani is ascendant, popular, powerful and charismatic, all things that Trump wants to glom on to. Trump has no principles; it's not like he has converted.
Butler's 'Awash in a Sea of Faith' and Noll's book on Christianity in the Revolution basically changed my whole worldview and sent me down the path I'd write for my MA thesis, so I am 100% on the same page with you - but I feel the anxiety of the Baptists instead!
November 22, 2025 at 12:36 AM
Butler's 'Awash in a Sea of Faith' and Noll's book on Christianity in the Revolution basically changed my whole worldview and sent me down the path I'd write for my MA thesis, so I am 100% on the same page with you - but I feel the anxiety of the Baptists instead!
no that's a very good insight! Being President (ESPECIALLY in the early 19th century and double especially immediately following Washington) is not a position of much overriding power and one that's really hard to execute well as a result. It's important to remember how constrained early Prez are.
November 22, 2025 at 12:32 AM
no that's a very good insight! Being President (ESPECIALLY in the early 19th century and double especially immediately following Washington) is not a position of much overriding power and one that's really hard to execute well as a result. It's important to remember how constrained early Prez are.