The world will not snap back to normal after Democrats win an election. How do I know? Because they won in 2020 and the world only continued to go more floridly insane. We need to address the root cause of the insanity, which is the complete epistemological collapse we are living through.

I literally could not stop myself from inappropriately laughing out loud for real

I am often frustrated that my nominal allies conflate conceding on principles with conceeding face. Let people find a face-saving way to support what you want! "A retreating enemy should be offered all the face he can carry off. Just don’t let him carry off anything else." The Vor Game, Lois Bujold

Agree

I did, and obviously someone is lying. Probably both of them are eliding certain things. But frankly at his level yes it's naive to not be aware of your enemies. University politics are notoriously cutthroat. Ryan seems to have been outmaneuvered, though perhaps his letter is shaping a counterattack

Maybe supports the idea he was sincerely blindsided by how quickly he was toppled? Seems like he naively assumed "yeah yeah we'll back off on the woke a bit and they'll shut up." (deleted and reposted to fix a typo)

*Quiet ugh

As I think more another takeaway is Ryan tried to stay quite in hopes he could appease and make DoJ go away. That failed. Lesson seems to be fight in public, be transparent. Harvard's public responses also seem to align with this lesson?

Ryan is either prevaricating or was deeply naive about assuming it was business as usual and not a mob-style shakedown!

Everything he details is what one might do if they were responding to a good faith investigation, but it was clearly a DEI witchhunt! He got hoodwinked!

This letter is worded carefully and I don't want to victim blame but what jumps out at me is Ryan's naivety about what was coming his way. Failed to line up allies against the MAGA Board's coup and assumed business as usual rather than DoJ pressure tactics. Emblematic of elite failures nationwide

Lacked the life experience as a preteen to appreciate Taran Wanderer and thought it the most boring of the series. Reread them later and came away thinking it was the best one.

"we're going to slowly ramp up the federal minimum wage over the next decade according to annualized CPI data and if you disagree i will kill your dog" is the ideal Democratic Senator