{"id":3527,"date":"2010-08-28T23:50:25","date_gmt":"2010-08-29T06:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=3527"},"modified":"2010-08-28T23:50:25","modified_gmt":"2010-08-29T06:50:25","slug":"nation-of-know-nothings-intervention-now-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2010\/08\/28\/nation-of-know-nothings-intervention-now-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Nation of know-nothings: &#8220;intervention, now&#8221; time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes I think it would be great to have just a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tumblr.com\/\">tumblr<\/a>, a sort of Walter Benjamin 2.0 version of blogging (see Benjamin&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelemming.com\/lemming\/dissertation-web\/home\/structure.html\">Arcades<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hup.harvard.edu\/catalog.php?isbn=9780674008021\">Project<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>But I can repurpose my blog to the same ends, I guess (quasi-surrealistically), and just post this one paragraph from Timothy Egan&#8217;s excellent column, <a href=\"http:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/08\/25\/building-a-nation-of-know-nothings\/\">Building a Nation of Know-Nothings<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans  believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy.  Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a  Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five  believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren\u2019t sure from which  country the United States gained its independence? (<a href=\"http:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/08\/25\/building-a-nation-of-know-nothings\/\">source<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yes, that would be nice, &#8220;to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless,&#8221; if only they were harmelss. I&#8217;m sick of how Americans&#8217; belief in nonsense continues to wreck the country &#8211; and the world. A laconic <strong>tumblr<\/strong> post would be just the thing, so I wouldn&#8217;t actually have to <em>think<\/em> about the moronic stupidity of what I&#8217;m posting about. Props, Timothy Egan, for doing it for us &#8211; here&#8217;s hoping that enough people get a clue that <em>laissez-faire<\/em> has serious drawbacks, especially when it&#8217;s manipulated by evil geniuses like Limbaugh and his ilk.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 135px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_UmNWUIln4MA\/TB6aLm5u7WI\/AAAAAAAADxY\/wxDOgR0KlVk\/S165\/AngelusNovus.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"125\" height=\"165\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Paul Klee&#039;s Angelus Novus, a work Benjamin theorized on: this angel faces the past, he is being blown into the future and he gazes, horror-struck, at the wreckage piling up before him (our past and present). The gusts that propel him, backwards, into the future emanate from history.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes I think it would be great to have just a tumblr, a sort of Walter Benjamin 2.0 version of blogging (see Benjamin&#8217;s Arcades Project). But I can repurpose my blog to the same ends, I guess (quasi-surrealistically), and just post this one paragraph from Timothy Egan&#8217;s excellent column, Building a Nation of Know-Nothings: It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3527"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3532,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3527\/revisions\/3532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}