Friday, July 04, 2025
On Independence Day I usually contemplate what the United States means, and how that meaning compares to the reality. I have always argued that the Constitution is aspirational but today it seems that it is no longer even pretextual. Our institutions have failed us, because we have failed ourselves. We can’t know what comes next, but it is going to come as a shock to quite a lot of people. I'm not the sort of person who would normally advocate tearing it all down, but in this case it's been torn down- we have to think about how we are going to rebuild it.
Tuesday, July 01, 2025
June was a good month for live music if nothing else: Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder at Sportsmans Park; Steve Earle at Asbury Hall (not as political as I'd have expected the day after the No Kings protests); and Samantha Fish with Texas Headhunters opening. The Headhunters, sort of a Texas blues supergroup, are worth following up with.
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Number 50 at my polling place at about ten after nine.
There is only one race on the Buffalo ballot- mayor. For a long time there has been a notable logjam in local politics which started breaking up when Brian Higgins left Congress to go into show business (in mid-term- thanks for nothing Brian). We have an opportunity for meaningful change which is why I support Sean Ryan.
Friday, June 13, 2025
America has slid into a place where I am no longer comfortable describing it as a democracy. Hauling a United States Senator out of a room in irons. Arresting a judge. Raiding businesses, deporting persons illegally, dictating to academic institutions, governing by executive fiat, deploying troops to an American city to oppress dissent.... And here's the thing: the people who voted for Trump, for the most part, aren't troubled by this at all. They think it's good. Democratic values aren't the values that they care about.
For years I have told my students that American Constitutional Law is aspirational. In a way that's always been a kind of apology, a way of explaining to them that if we want things in our society to improve we all need to work at improving them. Credit where it's due, the judiciary is mostly doing good work in upholding the rule of law, but the people we are up against have weaponized due process, exploiting the rules intended to allow the orderly resolution of disputes to break things while the courts try to do their work. We are six months in, and I am not sure our institutions will survive the damage that is already done.
Thursday, June 05, 2025
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
I took my parents to buy a new TV the other day, and starting thinking about how the experience of buying electronics has changed. Dude, I used to read Stereo Review every month. Even the ads (maybe I especially the ads) were magical, and I spent what in hindsight was a lot of time window shopping for turntables and tape decks. Stereo equipment was cool. The buttons, knobs, dials and switches were cool. The lights were cool. The sound quality (which was, after all, the point) was exciting to explore. It just ain't like that anymore. Audio equipment is pretty much a commodity item now unless you are going super high-end. Most of my casual listening is Bluetooth from my phone over small speakers, and although I can hear the difference in quality I am not driven to bust out the vinyl very frequently. As with record shopping something that once brought me a great deal of idle pleasure has been lost.
