Inconceivable

The rot runs deep. Kavanaugh is a fucking perjurer (and perhaps worse), and he'll get on the court. I almost really can't believe how aggressively Republicans were willing to trade the country for power. If we were cell-mates in prison, they'd have sold us for a pack of Lucky's.

I also fear there'll be no tumbrels, no climbing off the Fascist Slide – see, in part, above. If the election is rigged, and why should we assume it's not, where does it stop??

And now school has started, and it's really hard to look away from it all, but the year is going to be busy AF.

FSM help us.

Hint: Hitler only last 12 years in power, and some of his lieutenants were executed. Other supporters were blacklisted. Whenever the reckoning comes, I'll enjoy watching some of these folks swing. 

Yes. Yes, I will. 

How do you kill a giant stone Abraham Lincoln?

Extra crappy several months - more of the same (adjuncting all over the area and rubbing pennies together to get by), although the teaching was good. More US history giant survey (which is ridiculous - the entire story of American history in one semester), a world history giant survey (even more ridiculous for 6000 years in one semester), and then US II, which is enjoyable.

Even had a campus interview in a city I would have loved and in a place I would have been cool with, but that fell through to an inside hire. So that sucked. Now I have a summer ahead of me to writewritewritewrite and publish, wrap up some research in local collections, but still foreboding job prospects. There were jobs I applied for last fall with over 300 applicants. The pity is I really enjoy the teaching part, and I think - with some genuine modesty - that I'm really outstanding at it; the tragedy would be ending up totally outside looking in while other folks whom I know are shitty teachers get the jobs because they kiss ass better and give their dumb papers. It sure didn't sound like this in the brochure.

Soapboxing

Well this is the last week of school. I'm uneasy about it. Awesomes: graduating, being finished. Un-Awesomes: what next, where and how, and unsettlement. And evals. I hate unsettlement (sorry to pull a Dobelieu but it's an apt description). I myself have really enjoyed this last semester (much more so than fall), and gotten in some great classes that once or twice more around will become outstanding classes. But not my best work this semester, I feel. Definitely not. But I learned the most, worked the most, so, eh. Whatevs.
Hard however lately in classes to not get on my soapbox. Modern Europe a little difficult w/ McCarthy, and the obvious parallels to Communism and containment, and then Algieria and the FLN and, well, what some people knew years ago. Fun with McCarthy when Repub party is going off the rails. But lately to be frank, it was beyond what even I could have imagined. I was down with getting the Taliban out, knew the historical context, the Afghanistan mess. Cool with that. But Iraq from the beginning I knew just smelled rotten. Never for a moment doubted it was all bullshit. Knew it was being justified by 9-11 though it had nothing to do with it. I'm not unsympathetic - Saddam was a pretty horrible guy, even considering the "long, lamentable catalogue of human crime." [H/t: Sir Winston] Really, you know, it's hard to disagree with the sentiment that 'the world is better off without him.' But everything about the way it was handled was so blasè, so offensively naive and fully-assed (twice as worse as "half-assed"), justified with such BULLSHIT - you don't get to use that justification when you pooch it so badly. And what is coming out now about torture is just really stunning. I am not surprised - I was flying back from Rome when the torture scandal broke - I bought The Economist with the breaking story at Da Vinci. I knew it then. But I never believed I was actually right - there are some very evil people in the world, and they are banal indeed.

New Year, New Semester

The beginning of each semester is always very fun - mapping out a semester's worth of knowledge on syllabi, meeting new students and learning ways to encourage, educate and inspire them, mastering material to put into lectures. . . It's like the history dork's Christmas in September and January. One of my favorite images to show my students, neatly encapsulating my teaching philosophy, as only Calvin and Hobbes can do, is a great way to start a new semester:


I love this job until I get things to grade - it is the only part of teaching that actually feels like "work" to me. It's important, being fair and evaluating student performances consistently, but it's also tedious at times. There are only so many essay questions on the origins of the French Revolution that you can read until they all seem to say the same thing.

But I am teaching some very fun classes this semester. In addition to my two surveys of US and Modern European history, I'm doing a few focused classes on modern American history that I am really looking forward to. And with my dissertation's first draft completed and defended, I find myself with some extra time to read and learn even more! I have an awesome awesome job.