Christopher Mott's Blog

I just completed a quite excellent biography of the Emperor Diocletian, “Diocletian and the Military Restoration of Rome” by Lee Fratantuono. The author tells the story of what had to have been, adjusted for circumstances, one of the most successful emperors in Roman history. 

After the crisis of the 3rd Century, with the empire constantly torn between domestic upheaval, civil war, and foreign invasion, a military commander who was of lowly birth (either a freed slave or a descendant of ...

This is not meant to be a comprehensive review of Star Trek: The Next Generation, nor is it a deep dive take connecting it to political theory like I once did for Deep Space 9. This is simply an overview of what it was like to rewatch one of the defining shows of my childhood from start to finish (albeit with some skips) for the first time since it was being broadcast in real time back when I was in elementary school. 

This was the first non-cartoon television show I ever got into (not co...

I beg and cried for legions to save me from Boudicca’s evil reign. They heer my cries and take pity to free me and my island from bad woad-paint men. I then beg Alaric to save my family from evil Roman slavery which makes us sad and takes away our toys. I walk through time to find happy life but sometimes bad people rob happiness and make sadness. This bring tear to my eye. So I beg for freedom all around the world to be safe.

When my name was Ala’bama Texarkana, bad men came and burned m...

Since high school I have wanted to go to Uzbekistan. Mongolia was the first priority and I did that mere weeks after graduating. Somehow, however, Uzbekistan kept getting delayed even after I filled out my travel to-do list with so many other things.

But it finally just happened. I spent in particular time in the ancient trading cities of Samarkand and Bukhara. Samarkand has the top sites, but they are spread out between a modern and very lively city. Bukhara is smaller and more modest but m...

I was mere days from writing up a piece titled ‘Make Asylums Great Again’ when the assassination of Charlie Kirk, or specifically the response to it by the media, had necessitated a slight change of focus. But only a slight one. I have nothing to say about that case individually save that physically attacking the commentariat, loathsome as they often be, for their opinions is the height of moronic adventurism, undermines the ability to have a vibrant society, and risks martyring a partisan m...

I was at the vomitorium the other day with my esteemed colleagues of the Centralae Faction of the Senate, when the inevitable unfortunate reality of the Little Booted Emperor reared its ugly head in discussion. Most of the company was aghast of course that the Blonde Bumbler would declare his horse a member of our esteemed institution. I recommended offering a compromise: That we accept the top half of a horse instead, rather than the entire th...

I just finished Katja Hoyer’s book “Beyond the Wall” recently. The book attracted an insane amount of criticism for telling the 40 year history of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) in a remarkably unbiased and even handed way. Neither laudatory nor condemning, the book gave a history that understood the context of both why the little state had so many defectors it had to build a wall to keep people in, as...

It has been a long time since my formerly semi-regular tabletop rpg reviews and analysis on this site. Serendipity struck recently with my desire to acquire a new system with an explicit space-sci-fi focus coinciding with the arrival of the 25th anniversary remaster of System Shock 2, one of my favorite games of all time. This kicked off a rewatch of all the salvageable Alien movies (the first two being perfect top tier films of all time...

I have a chapter in an edited book coming out this week about how structural reform works best in national and localized contexts, rather than internationalist or teleological contexts. Additionally, next year I will have another book chapter about the evolution of early American neutrality in foreign policy. Because of this I feel only a short and informal July 4th thought is necessary for the moment.

I was a kid during the fever pitch of American exceptionalist ideology in the 90s. We ...

The one and only downside about leaving academia for first the policy and then the policy analysis community is that almost everything has to be framed as in the American interest. Now, since I wish to change my own country’s policies, this is hardly a bad thing on the whole. But boy does it ever make me long for times when I studied other countries’ strategies on wholly their own terms.

I wish to do that now, in what I am sure will be a scandalous exercise to centrists and journalists ev...