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.
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I dunno man, there is a case to be made - and it isn't ironclad - for ICE types. But for your average National Guard volunteer, your statement is downright insulting and silly.
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but an important - and very real - part of military discipline is obeying the chain of command. This kind of thing demands just what we don't want, the need for enlisted personnel to engage in subordination and deep questioning of their legitimate command structure.
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I teach this to my classes as "federalism is for losers," eg, whichever side has the least power at the federal level is the one with the strongest feelings about federal vs state powers and jurisdiction.
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It was random selection from my local used bookstore, not particularly curated - the randomness is part of the fun. I read neuromancer and Mona Lisa overdrive both earlier this year, for what that’s worth.
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right, and to be fair here I'm cherry picking the show to meet a theory. I don't attribute this sort of of systematic political schema to the show itself, I think Tony Gilroy just wanted to have a sequence that was parallel to the Wannsee Conference and just did it (re: Ghorman mfg consent plan).
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...and that is part of the point the show is making with Ghorman, as far as I can tell. Ghorman is a wealthy, cultured core world, not one at the distance of Aldani or whatever unnamed massacred world Kleya was from. Those places could suffer with little dissent from the Senate.
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....at least when it came to the Senate and core planets. It appears that even from the start of the Imperial project (and even during the Clone Wars) almost no one blinked at horrific political suppression and state violence in the name of often-flimsy security goals if they happened in hinterlands
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point taken! But the larger point remains that the earlier phases of the Imperial project relied on a Senate where dissent was marginalized or subverted or disempowered. Only at the very end was formal political dissent outlawed and subject to real direct state violence.
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In a lot of ways we're seeing the END of the first version of the Imperial system at that point - once the Mon Mothma Incident on the Senate floor happens and the outlawing of dissent becomes more palpable, it's barely a year before the Emperor dispenses with the Senate entirely, right?
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...we also see tons of evidence that the Stormtrooper Corps doesn't have the same human weaknesses (empathy, second-guessing insane orders, professionalism) as the Army does. But also that the Stormtrooper Corps is a lot less militarily effective in some ways (accuracy, adaptation) than the Army.
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...on that note I would absolutely love to read/see a short piece of fiction about a contractor at Kuat Yards getting absolutely rich as hell off of amping up Imperial paranoia in order to install all kinds of un-needed internal security geegaws in every ship the yard turns out.
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Without taking Wookiepedia at its word and relying on The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, the state apparatus seemed willing to coexist with a market economy as long as that economy enabled and aquiesced to the needs of the security apparatus and the state's other maniac projects.
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not only that, but we see it moving from the broad presence of the Imperial Army (conscripts, noncoms, etc) to an overuse of the 'reliable' Stormtrooper Corps over the course of the series.
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on a serious note, Sheev's Empire seems weirdly rhyming to contemporary Russia. Outlying regions and ethnicities, a wealthy but crumbling/grumpy metropole, real but often-nastily-suppressed opposition and media, complex state security and army structure, personalistic demesnes for loyalists, etc.
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honestly haven't read those books since I was in high school or college. I might revisit them this summer, I have no idea if they've aged well or not.
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agreed! I think those stories would do well for an adaptation where transnats - Amazon, Google, Twitter, SpaceX and more - are even more important than they were when the books were written. Their over-optimism about the ease of terraforming in the face of modern science would have to be mitigated.
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if there's one critique I have of the current APUSH curriculum (as opposed to the old one) it is that there is a bit of an OVERCORRECTION and foreign policy history is really under emphasized in ways that limit student's informed-citizenship skills in the long run.
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yeah, I've been teaching AP US History for a decade+ and the curriculum mandates absolutely nothing about the interwar years in Asia or the Pacific theater generally, focuses almost totally on the domestic transformations the war wrought, so coverage of Japan/China varies enormously by instructor.
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I agree, many of the problems (especially around party systems) were only to be come apparent once those systems began running. But on the Presidency, the amendment process, and a few other issues the antifederalists were pretty clear-eyed and forward-looking.
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there's a reason there were a lot of pretty smart anti-federalists (looking at you, George Mason!), and why ratification was a near thing. There were problems with the document from the beginning and everyone knew it!
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Those are real benefits - I was primarily talking about K-12, where fewer of those materialize. However, based on my limited work in higher ed, many of those activities are pretty malleable and program-determined, so could fit themselves into a calendar w/o a "long break" via mini-mesters, etc.
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I've never been totally clear who the key constituency for this calendar structure is besides the momentum of zombie policies. Summer employers, I suppose?
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this particular one will impact some friends personally so it has me expressing myself less coherently
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oh yeah I am sure we are simpatico
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you realize this is all an excuse to fire the seen-as-culturally-liberal types who work at the army museums - history PhDs and public history MAs who also have military backgrounds - and that's where all this is really at?
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before a fully nationalized media system, it was possible and productive for the Senators and Governors to play the role of primary communicators for an opposition party when opposition party members held that role (LaFolette during WW1, for example). But our national media makes that hard.
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in a way this shouldn't be surprising! millions of people died! the world stopped cold and everyone had to, however briefly, radically change their daily lives! the idea that COVID could've been some kind of blip without enormous lasting impacts is just silly.
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Juan Linz only seems to get more insightful with time, not less, unlike some other theorists and political scientists from the 1970s-1990s.
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I have, no kidding, met members of the school community who were surprised that I was White because they heard me referred to as "Mr. Yu" all year.
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huh! I don't believe we've even met in person, so I appreciate it (well, I hope I appreciate it, unless I was being dragged from afar).
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On my desk right now! One of my summer projects is seeing if I can bang out a good project using Hammett's bio vs Chandlers and draw a connection to newer writer Qiu Xiaolong. Like so many pulp writers and editors, Hammett had his fingerprints on such a diverse array of work!
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also, did you read any Confucianism and modern day Confucian revival types in your non-western political theory class? They're a fascinating group I always wished I had more time to explore/think about.
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I'm looking forward to it a lot, but it will also be very tricky to calibrate the workload carefully. You remember how overloaded MLWGS kids can be, and this course is all-seniors to boot. So figuring our how to get the amount of reading such a course requires in will be....tricky.