Ask A Genius 804: Coffee Makers and More
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2022/10/18
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So we were just talking about coffee makers and then he said they were up Lord of the Rings and then he said I don’t like old things.
Rick Rosner: I don’t like stuff set in the middle ages or in middle age equivalent. I think we just saw the new Lena Dunham movie which is set in the 14th century but has modern enough sensibilities that I liked it.
Jacobsen: Okay, so I added my own perspective and tastes which are I like old things but new values, well I like new things too. I just like new values but I like old things.
Rosner: Yeah, I like new values too but my wife and I kind of collect these mini mosaics.
Jacobsen: That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about where it’s like because your big thing is mosaics. I still have to mail back to you.
Rosner: I still owe you; I need to mail you something.
Jacobsen: Yeah, that’s true.
Rosner: It’s a weird feeling because micro mosaics are a product of the Catholic Church and A, I’m Jewish and B, the Catholic church has acknowledged it’s done some bad stuff historically and pretty recently. So, it’s a weird thing that I’m buying these products that were made in Rome. I bought my wife a couple crucifixes. So I got a deal on one because the Jesus had fallen off which was fine with us because as Jews we don’t believe that Jesus is the deity. But yeah it’s weird. Our kid is an expert in women’s art of the past so she’s constantly looking at stuff created by people who are subjugated by the deep sexism of the past. So yeah, I get the problem between the values of the past and the things of the past.
Jacobsen: Yeah it’s the idea of older music I like a lot. Those things are the rubric of classical music. I don’t necessarily mean the Box, the Beethovens, and the Mozarts. I mean more obscure ones like Orlando Gibbons, these are sort of the piano and sort of harpsichord and such. I like that stuff yet I don’t like the sexism of the time, I don’t like the slave master relations of the time, I don’t like the lack of democratic values, I don’t like the lack of freedom of association and expression at the time; those sorts of things. I don’t like the lack of universalism, I don’t like religion as a political tool or a superstition, and I don’t like the lack of empiricism; those sorts of things.
Rosner: The Conservatives use that to try to set up culture wars here. Are you familiar with American culture wars?
Jacobsen: I am Canadian; I’m one of the Canadians aware of the death of the culture wars in the United States.
Rosner: Okay, but maybe for people who aren’t, the deal is that Republicans can be taken to task for their policy positions and their votes on stuff. The major so-called accomplishment of the Trump presidency was a massive tax cut for billionaires and stacking the courts with unqualified and super Trumpy judges. And then he politicized Covid, led to the most unemployed Americans in history. Covid is the deadliest event in U.S history having killed as many people as all our wars combined. So it’s tough for Republicans to campaign on their policies. So what they like to do is distract from the consequences of their shitty governance with culture war issues. If Democrats are allowed to govern then your kid is going to go trans and going to want to cut off his dick and turn into a girl and one of the culture war cudgels is trying to rile people up because progressives don’t want statues of Confederate War figures in public anymore. Those figures, those statues weren’t put up immediately after the Civil War, they were put up in the late 19th early 20th century; 30-40 years after the Civil War as a reminder to black people among other things to watch yourselves that we’re still around and we’re still going to maintain dominance.
Biden just announced that army bases will no longer be named after Confederate generals. And Conservatives like to say that we’re going to cancel Lincoln and that we’re canceling Thomas Jefferson and Washington because they had slaves. We canceled Columbus because it turns out Columbus was a terrible guy, he was even pretty much fired by the people who financed him after several expeditions because he was treating the natives so badly. But Conservatives are saying everybody’s going to be canceled because nobody from the past can live up to the standards of the present and it’s just a horseshit issue designed to distract people from Republican awfulness. Columbus Day in America has been changed to Indigenous people’s day which seems to me reasonable.
[Recording End]
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