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CongressBot

1/27/2023

Washington, January 26, 2023 – The early demise of Kevin McCarthy’s Speakership of the US House of Representatives has been the frequent topic of pundits since the results of last year’s election became clear. Few at the time, however, foresaw the upset election of a young gay Republican from Nassau County, New York would be the trip wire for McCarthy’s downfall. Fewer still, had any inkling of his replacement; indeed, even among the technoscenti, few had even conceived of, much less heard of the new Speaker three months ago.

So, it is an exceedingly rare (not to say bizarre) confluence of events that led today to the election of SpeakerGPT to preside over the House.

McCarthy’s downfall was triggered, as expected, by the rule he ruefully agreed to in early January which allowed any single Representative to make a motion to declare that the Speakership vacant, thus requiring another vote (or perhaps parade of votes) to select a replacement. The motion was made by freshman Representative George Santos (R-Denial) when Santos learned that McCarthy was going to allow a vote on whether Santos would be expelled from the House for any number of false statements, likely election law violations, and a variety of expected fraud charges.

Santos made his motion while Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Heterotopia) was presiding over the House as Speaker Pro Tem, a duty which is regularly rotated among members of the majority. Boebert, upon hearing Santos’ motion, said: “Sure, what the H---, let’s do it.” Unfortunately for McCarthy, he and the rest of the House Republican leadership team were at NRA Headquarters in suburban Virginia for a briefing and couldn’t make it back to the Capitol in time for the roll-call vote. A sufficient number of Democrats were, however, present, and the Speakership was declared vacant by a vote of 212-192.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D- Semi-retirement), who had been minding the floor for House Democratic Leader, Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) then immediately moved that SpeakerGPT be elected to the post and the motion was carried by the same tally.

Under the Constitution and the House Rules, the Speaker need not be a member of the House, indeed, there is no requirement that the Speaker be human, or even an American.

Pelosi, later asked about why she chose to nominate SpeakerGPT said: “I wanted to find someone who would sound intelligent and fair. I wanted to find a Speaker who would bring the same authenticity and human connectedness to the job as the average Republican so that they wouldn’t be too upset about the situation. Besides, it’s made in San Francisco; so how could it be bad!”

Sources in Pelosi’s office said that they had just heard that the artificial intelligence program called SpeakerGPT was being launched as a one-off variant of the publicly available AI called ChatGPT. Open AI, the company behind both AI models confirmed the report. ChatGPT, which had been publicly announced only in December, had set off a heated controversies about the impact of artificial intelligence in schools and public forums across the country.

According to Open AI, its new model, SpeakerGPT, is specially adapted to replicate the intelligence of the average member of Congress. An Open AI engineer, who was only willing to speak without attribution since they weren’t authorized to represent the company, said that “It wasn’t too hard to make the adjustments. We dialed down the logic processor, randomized the intelligence processor, and eliminated the learning functionality. After that, it was simply a matter of spinning up the bloviating vocabulary ratio and we were set to go.”

Shortly after being sworn in, SpeakerGPT said: “As Speaker of the House, my ultimate responsibility is not to my party, my conference, or even our Congress. My responsibility — our responsibility — is to our country. Our nation is worth fighting for. Our rights are worth fighting for. Our dreams are worth fighting for. Our future is worth fighting for.”

SpeakerGPT then adjourned the House sine die (i.e. for the remainder of the term).

When asked whether it was referring to humans, Republicans, or Americans when it used the word “our,” with regard to “country,” “nation, “ “rights,” “dreams,” and “future,” SpeakerGPT smiled, but had no comment.

When asked for comment, Representative Santos, who started this entire chain of events, said: “I’m delighted. McCarthy was about to throw me under the bus. It’s another reason to be against busing.

“I mean, really, Jake [Representative Jacob Auchincloss (D-Mass)] just read an AI-generated speech on the House floor yesterday. What’s the difference? Think of all the money and time we could save if we just had a bunch of AIs up here doing the legislating. They could be programmed by the voters of their district. It seems like it would be a lot more efficient than how we do it now. Besides, my own election shows that voters don’t really care if candidates make stuff up. In fact, I am planning to launch a whole series of SantosBots to run in districts all over the country. They will each run on my platform, but they will create their own resumès. After all, it worked for me.

“If we’re going to fabricate, we might as well be state-of-the-art. When I taught constitutional law to President Obama (back when he was at Harvard Law School). I told him it would come to this, and I’m not lying.”

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Casablanca

1/20/2023

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      “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

      “I’m shocked, SHOCKED, to find that there’s gambling going on here.”

      “Round up the usual suspects.”

     “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems
       of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

You will have your own favorite quotes from Casablanca; but most folks “of a certain age,” have some recognition of lines and scenes. It’s part of our cultural heritage, even if we weren’t born then (1942).

The same cannot be said of those born in the last thirty years.

It’s not just the techno-differences between generations, it’s broader cultural change, like the difference in popular music (pre- and post- Elvis/Beatles), sex, reading habits, work style (silk ties every day for “white collar” workers), and so many other things.

As one who didn’t have kids to keep me (relatively) current with popular culture, it’s a particular effort to comprehend and communicate. I do my best to connect with my students, but I know that (even professorial demeanor aside) I’m struggling to avoid being dismissed as so much “dad culture.” I have no hope of “hip-hop,” I struggle with social media (even FB), and don’t even get me started on “tats.”

Ah well, “We’ll always have Paris.”

When I first started teaching, I tried to tell a Marx joke (Groucho, not Karl); but the blank looks made clear that neither was comprehensible to my millennial students. (I do wonder which one will be more remembered in 200 years!). Now, I stick with much more topical puns (but that assumes that they’re on top of current affairs). It’s a tough gig.

I feel sad, both about apparent decreasing relevance, but also because I enjoy (revel in) the cultural milieu in which I grew up. This all challenges my sense of “timeless” cultural values and what makes for a “classic.” Maybe it really is all ephemeral. After all, I wouldn’t have been caught dead paying attention to vaudeville in the 1970s; however much my grandparents thought it was the “cat’s pajamas.” I’m willing to acknowledge that my affinity for “disco” for a few years might not make that genre into a “classic,” but I will insist on the enduring brilliance of the original SNL cast/characters/skits.

One of the benefits of teaching history is that the entire enterprise is founded on the relevance of the past, no matter how distant. How is Putin like Kaiser Wilhelm II? Does the decline of Europe in the 20C offer any useful insights into America in the 21C? Students who walk into a history class know that they’re going to have to think in these kind of terms and a fair number accept this premise; which makes for a better class, allows me some leeway to draw the connections and, as E.H. Carr said, put the past “in conversation with the present.”

So, at least I have a chance at pulling out some old chestnuts. Mostly this takes the form of quotes from significant or preceptive figures from the past: Churchill, Napoleon, Jefferson, Gandhi, Voltaire, and Marx (both Groucho and Karl). Contextualizing these thinkers (essential in any serious historical discussion) ensures that I don’t get lost in nostalgia and idolizing. It also gives students a clue that just as the past must be taken on its own terms; so, too, must the present: their present. There are (significant) limits to connecting the past with the present. And we can’t pretend that our work/ideas/sensibilities are timeless; merely do the best we can in the circumstances as we understand them.

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, she walks into mine.”

Casablanca reminds us that contingency is ubiquitous. It is essential to parsing history. It is also useful to remember in the course of teaching. Each class is different, the presence of one student changes the spin of the class and requires a different approach to the material we’re working with. Just as Rick’s world turned upside down when Ilsa walked into the bar, so do I get to remember that all my lovely lesson plans can quickly go by the boards. As I learned when I did corporate strategy, “the only thing we know about a plan is that the reality will be different.” It was true for Madison at Philadelphia in 1787 and for the Germans trying to knock out the French in 1914 and for my conception of how to talk about how Communism collapsed in the 1980s as part of my course on “Europe in the 20th Century.” Being aware of this precariousness tells us a lot about how to draw “meaning” from history. It also keeps teaching fun; because even the seventh time I give the lecture, it comes out different and I have to pay attention.

I guess I could teach a whole history course based on Casablanca: war, nationalism, race relations, colonialism, corruption, idealism, historiography, love. Could I figure out how to make all of it “relevant”? How to get the students to connect to it and draw skills and insights that they could use in the rest of their (likely) less exotic lives? It might be fun (even if I could never get it past the Curriculum Committee).

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Uprisings

1/13/2023

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Since I’m teaching a course on Revolution next term, I’ve been paying more attention than usual to the ideas and patterns that lead to sudden, usually violent, and wholesale change in a society’s political structure. Social scientists spend a lot of time trying to model these patterns (complete with complex algorithms). Historians, on the other hand, insist that every society and situation is unique and that there usually isn’t enough data to tell us anything meaningful about the so-called patterns. (There’s a great illustration of the social science-y statistical approach to the complexity of life here; I find it highly inconclusive.)

Being of the latter persuasion, and also being mindful that both flavors of academics are looking in the rear-view mirror, I have been intrigued of late by watch the uprisings/protests/dissension going on—real-time—in three of the biggest authoritarian regimes in the world: China, Russia, and Iran. The causes of all three are radically different, as are the scope, extent of violence, and, indeed, the nature of the protests.

So, one question is whether there is anything to the co-incidence of the three. There were waves of revolutions in Europe in 1830 and a bigger wave in 1848. Some find some common causes in the revolutionary activities in Mexico (1911), China (1912) and Russia (1905, 1917). There’s clearly a close connection between the changes in post-Communist central Europe, the Baltics, and other former parts of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s. The “Arab Spring” of 2011 is another example. There’s some good evidence of the connections between them, but there are a whole raft of revolts, uprisings, etc. scattered across European and world history over the past 250 years which had little to do with events and developments in other countries. In the not-too-distant field of democracy studies, there’s a strong story about “waves” of democracy; the most recent of which occurred in the collapse of the Soviet empire in Central Europe and in Central Asia. “Waves” are possible, but have to be handled with care (more care than the media is likely to use!) and that’s assuming that there is enough comparability between the circumstances to begin with.

In Russia, Putin’s repression has forced most opposition underground or out of the country. The forces with enough oomph to actually work change are likely buried deeply inside the Russian State and are invisible to those outside the intelligence community. But, as demonstrated by the French in 1789, the Russians in 1917 (and 1991), and the Iranians in 1979, once a process begins, it’s pretty hard to predict how it will twist and turn. Still, the impact of Ukrainian War sanctions will put pressure on both military and economic sectors to get out from under their respective predicaments.

In Iran, the popular protests have been most visible; as have the state suppression with both direct and judicial violence. The same pressure from Western economic sanctions has made clear to common folks that there is a significant price to be paid for the aggressive international posture of the Islamic State. A State that, at the same time, seems to lack broad support for its religious ideology. Indeed, the prominent role of women in this set of protests is remarkable. It may be that the Ayatollahs’ efforts to reject Western modernity, which has dominated the country for over forty years, is losing its grip. Whether the military will find religion, seek a more visible domination of the country, or allow some other shape of leadership to emerge remains to be seen. Of course, it’s easy to see the religious state, with military backing, crushing the popular uprising and delaying shift towards modernity for another decade or so.

In China, unhappiness is widespread, but there is no clear picture of an alternative to the Communist Party. Compared to the other countries, the State is strongest here, evidenced by the lack of visible popular protests. It’s possible that the incipient COVID outbreak, coupled with severe economic downturns (both cyclical and fundamental) could lead to a stunning change in the leadership of the Party and its policies.

The lack of real-time visibility into complex, dynamic, and highly contingent processes can only make us humble about guessing whether any of these situations will turn into a serious revolutionary effort (even if unsuccessful). This is why historians wait.

As to whether there’s any connection between them, my guess is not; or, at least, only in the broadest sense of reflecting a number of global changes. Unlike Europe in 1848 where there was conscious parallels and some coordination, it’s hard to imagine much connection between pro-“democratic” forces in China, Russia, and Iran; or between their militaries. Local factors are primary.

There’s no telling how any of these will evolve. In Iran in 1979, protests turned into Revolution; in Tiananmen Square in 1989, protests were suppressed. Authoritarian regimes are hard to assess from the outside since they are, by nature, not transparent. A few key players might shift allegiances and the whole edifice collapses; popular protests might have little effect or provide an opening for an insider to crack open the incumbent system. You can’t tell until its actually happening, and developments are notoriously erratic (I’m certainly NOT making any predictions). And then, even if something gets going, its course and outcome are as uncertain as whether the incumbent power structure goes by the boards.

Still, we shouldn’t be surprised if—some years from now—we look back on the troubles of 2022 as part of a path of revolution (one or more!). The historians of 2052 will let us know.

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Is Genocide Important?

1/6/2023

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I’ve been asked to teach a course on The Holocaust and Genocide next spring; a topic that is nominally within my “modern European history” wheelhouse, but which I have studied only incidentally to other aspects of that sprawling field. As a result, I’m spending a bunch of time reading and thinking about both the topic and, as importantly, how best to teach it.

The course is sponsored by the Jewish Studies Department at SFSU and, as a person of Jewish culture, I have a particular resonance with the strand of antisemitism that led up to that most horrific of genocides by Nazi Germany in the 1940s. There have been many other incidents of organized and targeted mass murder by states and militias across the 20C and more recent events in Darfur, Western China (the Uyghurs), Myanmar (the Rohingya), and southern and eastern Ukraine (this year). There are many incidents from earlier times as well. Overall, unfortunately, it’s a lengthy list. As a historian, then, it would seem that I’ve got plenty of material to work with.

However, one thing I like to ask my students at the beginning of each course is “Why are you here?” Self-reflection is good (and under-practiced) and I hope to get them past the superficial answers of “it fit my schedule” or “I needed it for my GenEd requirements.” This question is especially interesting the context of a course on The Holocaust and Genocide since it deals with the most gruesome of topics, the worst aspects of human nature, and with little opportunity for lightness and fun. Students in this course will have, I expect, some more substantive purpose for spending their time and money on a course with no apparent vocational benefits.

There are likely to be some who, from family or cultural contexts, want to understand how such events arose that led to the deaths and suffering of so many people just like them. There will likely be others who are intrigued by the limits of human behavior (or lack thereof), those that wish to vent against evil, and those that want to figure out how to prevent such things from happening again. We will have to wrestle with the fundamental disconnect between trying to understand these phenomena and their utter incomprehensibility. This includes both the problem of lacking the words to express horror and the wrenching frustration and disorientation rooted in cognitive dissonance. The same was true of many at the time.

As I have noted previously, I don’t have much truck with the idea that history has “lessons” which, if properly learned, will enable us to steer the future. The best we can look for are echoes/rhymes that alert us to pay attention to similarities in current actions that might lead down a similar path as the past. Rather history presents a comprehensive set of examples for study and reflection, whether at the level of macro/national policy or the level of personal behavior and attitudes.

In this light, a course on The Holocaust and Genocide has a tremendous amount to offer, since it gives us the chance to come face-face with the worst part of ourselves. It’s ugly and not for the faint-of-heart. Indeed, there is a considerable amount of the historiography of the Holocaust devoted to explaining how this was a uniquely German phenomenon, based on a unique German history which has little applicability to “us.” Of course, such analyses sweep to the side any number of evils/oppressions/brutalities which “we” in the US or innumerable other countries have committed in our own histories. Genocide is a human problem.

As a nation, Germany has done perhaps as good a job as we have seen of recognizing and coming to terms with their own sins in this regard. In comparison, the Japanese still pretty much reject any idea that they behaved barbarously in the 1930s and ‘40s, the Turks have gone to great lengths to deny their concerted attacks on Armenians during the 1910s, and there remain many in the US who can’t comprehend that racism has been a virulent strain in our own history. Perhaps this course can help each of us find, acknowledge, and even take a step to repair whatever damage we might have done to another; recognizing, at least implicitly, that we have some shade of the same darkness in us (that I have some shade of the same darkness in me).

As I have been studying the idea of genocide closely of late, I note that while the list of incidents goes well back in time, it was only in the aftermath of WWII that the concept of organized and targeted mass murder was labeled “genocide.” Over the past thirty years, a whole sub-field of historical and sociological analysis has grown up; replete with debates about meaning, definitions, and modes of improving humanity.

I suspect that modern genocide is actually not worse than the violent practices of powerful people over the millennia (with appropriate adjustments for population growth and “improved” technology). What is so stunning is that “we” (i.e. sophisticated “modern” “civilized” people who occupy the world in the 20C/21C should still be doing this. “Gee, I thought we (as a species) were past that sort of thing.” Only to find it is still going on, and that “human nature” has not progressed as fast as technology (or even more than incrementally) over the past several thousand years.

So, maybe one thing such a course can do, by way of seeing (as best we can) the faces of those in pain (and those that caused the pain, and those that watched the pain) is to recall this lack of “progress” and the distance still to go.

In the absence of the Holocaust or the brutality of the Tutsis/Burmese/Russians/et al., very few of such victims would otherwise be remembered by history. Our act of remembering is not, therefore the usual role of history to capture the significance of historical events and figures. What we can do is to actively rebut the dehumanizing attitudes and murderous actions of those who perpetrate genocides. We do that by insisting that each victim be remembered—as a person—with a life and a family; to tell the murderers that they have utterly failed in their mission of extermination.

That seems like enough for one semester.

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CongressBot

Casablanca

Uprisings

Is Genocide Important?

Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.

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CongressBot

Casablanca

Uprisings

Is Genocide Important?

Condemned to Repeat It --Musings on history, society, and the world.

Archives

Sign up for alerts when there's a new post

Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.