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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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If it were true, Napoleon's romantic novel would be known as masterpiece

(anyway, political genius would pick other place to start his career than McGovern campaign)

Power? Job of modern politician is office job that consists of meetings and endless powerpoint presentations

People interested in raw up your face "powah" become cops, border or prison guards

Does non-existence of distinct specialized talents eliminate the role of experience, including experience of your and your family's network? Does the «job» of someone like Putin or Xi consist of powerpoint presentations? And since when is political power (a separate notion from «political office») a job at all, isn't this a hyperstition that commoners (very reasonably, but with incomplete success) try to force onto the class of masters? Do you assert that Derek Chauvin is psychologically the modern day Caesar, while the modern day's intellectual peer of Caesar is fiddling with Haskell monads, and there is no intersection of those categories?

You probably do not. But this is the level of your intellectually dishonest, motivated nitpicking that is not responsive to what I have said.