In 1953, famed political philosopher and Jewish-German exile, Leo Strauss, coined a term to describe a trope that he increasingly saw circulating in public discourse: reductio ad Hilterum. Reductio ad Hitlerum is a fallacy used in arguments to discredit anything that can be associated with or compared to Hitler. Hitler liked dogs? Then liking dogs … Continue reading No, You’re Hitler!: A History and a Proposal
The Russian Trolls Are Hard at Work: Democrats/Liberals/Centrists Edition
There has been a veritable flood of new information this week about Russian interference in American elections, including the release of a Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee report confirming the Trump campaign’s coordination with Russian operatives before the 2016 election. In a press release issued upon the full release of the Intelligence Committee report, House Speaker … Continue reading The Russian Trolls Are Hard at Work: Democrats/Liberals/Centrists Edition
The Russian Trolls Are Hard at Work, and It’s Working
A little over a week ago, Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, William R. Evanina, released an update in the organization’s ongoing investigation into foreign efforts to influence American elections. Among its conclusions was the following: We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden … Continue reading The Russian Trolls Are Hard at Work, and It’s Working
The Rhetoric of Sacrificing [Grandma] for the Greater Good
About three weeks ago, archetypal vanilla milkshake, Tom Cotton (R.-Ark), introduced a bill in the Senate to prohibit federal funds from going to support the teaching of the “1619 Project” in public schools. If you haven’t seen it, the 1619 Project is a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles, poems, photographs, fiction, and more published in … Continue reading The Rhetoric of Sacrificing [Grandma] for the Greater Good
Rhetoric, Inevitability, and the Behavior of Voters
On November 5, 2016 — just three days before Election Day — the Princeton Election Consortium at Princeton University released results from a survey indicating that Hillary Clinton had a 99% chance of winning the presidency. The survey results raised doubts among some esteemed pollsters, but they also reinforced a lot of common sense about … Continue reading Rhetoric, Inevitability, and the Behavior of Voters
Americans Need to Stop Seeking Comfort in Feel-Good Riot Stories
Today marks one month since George Floyd was killed by four Minneapolis police officers. The uprisings that resulted from Floyd’s murder continue to rage across the country, and will likely continue for some time. In a number of cases, they’ve had significant positive results. Despite their continuation, news coverage of the uprisings has significantly died … Continue reading Americans Need to Stop Seeking Comfort in Feel-Good Riot Stories
What an Academic Book Review Does
Despite having a reputation for being an easy introduction to scholarly writing, book reviews in academic journals are a fairly-specialized genre. Their reputation for being easy comes from the fact that they're generally pretty short, so it's easy to juggle the relatively smaller number of demands than you'd have in an article or book chapter. … Continue reading What an Academic Book Review Does
What a 21-Year-Old Comedy Can Tell Us About Anti-Racism Protests
In times of high emotion or intense passion, it can be helpful to try and understand current events by triangulating them with less provocative parallels. Such is the case for people trying to make sense of the protests and riots growing across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. In the 1999 cult … Continue reading What a 21-Year-Old Comedy Can Tell Us About Anti-Racism Protests
The Rioters Are Not the Problem — We Are
Without the police brutalizing and murdering George Floyd, Minneapolis would not be on fire. But if we listen to the protestors chanting “No Justice, No Peace” and carrying signs that said “Stop Killing Black People,” Floyd’s murder was not the match that lit the flame. The failure to bring Floyd’s murderer to justice was. The … Continue reading The Rioters Are Not the Problem — We Are
Nazi Science: Coronavirus Edition
I decided to try posting this one on Medium. I posted the first few paragraphs below, and the full post can be accessed here: https://medium.com/@ryan.skinnell/nazi-science-coronavirus-edition-bac4c2a0ed15?sk=eb9579d771e4125548f77d2a84f7ddab Noted flim-flam artists and doctors of low repute—including Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil—have recently been trotted out by right-wing media outlets to bemoan Coronavirus social distancing directives as “worse than … Continue reading Nazi Science: Coronavirus Edition
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