TRUTH

Does ASHE actually accept papers?

The Bush administration also made its case publicly for an extended period before attacking. Sure, they brazenly lied. But the lack of public deliberation here is striking. Although other US military ops (e.g. Panama 1989) were sprung on everyone with little warning as well.

Or perhaps it is the perennial assaults of Trump 2 that has shut down such debate. But unraveling what “we” did wrong, to contribute to making Trump seem like possibly a better option to many, many people, is at least one-half of the mystery we need to unravel if we are to escape this nightmare.

To be clear, this is mostly a question. I know this sounds paranoid. But part of my brain also thinks it might be true, at least among the tech accelerationists.

Clearly there is also the “war on woke” that is driving this as well, and I think that is forefront for most of the administration. But the tech world clearly has a lot to gain here as well by destroying HE as it exists.

There is a fair amount of animosity against HE in the tech world for this reason. The notion that colleges are illegitimately occupying market space that should be open for digital badging and the like.

Carey’s so-called “university of everywhere” (really a University of Big Tech) hasn’t manifested as quickly as foretold. HE is potentially a big profit source, but you have to get the established institutions out of the way.

I would love to watch Trump try to windsurf. I’m not even sure he can swim.

I think the failing is that is keeps trying to return to the realist model that dominates sociology as a whole. The “hard world” of structure and interest and power and “action”. But the central insights about human intersubjectivity are inconsistent with this model, so they end up being ditched.

My experience reading sociology’s contributions to culture is simply that it is less valuable, nearly uniformly, than these other fields. It makes advances mostly when it imports insights - from anthropology, semiotics, cognitive science. It mulches these for a time and then spins its wheels.

The study of “culture” is, I think, the most difficult area of social research conceptually. It is also the most central. So many fields contribute - linguistics, anthro, biology, psych, philosophy. It is hard to get a handle on all. I have sympathy.

a) because Musk’s target audience won’t see the fact checks, just the lies. We aren’t the target.