1. As a certified political scientist, I can now confirm that the Arkansas Senate race is all but over. Tom Cotton (R) will beat Mark Pryor (D). Sure, the incumbent Pryor shot himself in the foot with a vicious and yet absurd attempt to peg his challenger Cotton of being soft-on-Ebola, and yes, recent polls put Cotton ahead. Yes, for various reasons detailed by Fred Barnes, Arkansas’ delayed turn to the GOP is happening now. But the decisive piece of evidence for me was found in this 2012 post “Conservative Rock Star,” by the great Jay Nordlinger. The fact revealed in it that makes Cotton’s victory certain is not his inspiring military service in Iraq, not his Harvard/Claremont pedigree (his teachers include Mansfield and Kesler!), but the fact that he hails from just outside Dardanelles, in Yell County! Well, as any reader of True Girt knows, that’s where Mattie Ross is from, and the place that in her view is the universe’s locus point of Southern-yet-Western-yet-not-barbarically-Texan goodness. She was a die-hard Southern Democrat, but you just know she’d switch to vote for Tom. See, there are all sorts of specialized fields that make up my kind of political science, but True Grit-studies is the one that trumps all the others!

2. I annoy some with my posts’ attempts to strike the proper balance on disputed political questions, so try this for a change: Scottish independence is little more than an instance of an increasingly secular and left-leaning population embracing a cause for no good reason. It is an instance of ennui and modern identity politics causing a people to do something utterly foolish, harmful, embarrassing, spiteful, and counter-productive. It is a democratic madness, a work of the Devil, and we should all pray that the “yes” vote fails this week. If you need to see why, explore what I linked to several months ago on this.

3. You didn’t miss the greatest, or least most deliciously populist, American political speech of recent memory, did you? I am quite serious. Pass it on. On facebook especially.

4. There’s a fine piece on Vasily Grossman’s work over on the NRO main page. One of the more significant literary analysts of totalitarianism, particularly of the Soviet variety, after Solzhenitsyn. Here’s inviting our Flagg Taylor, who as the editor of both The Great Lie and (w/ yours truly as the co-editor) Totalitarianism on Screen unsurprisingly knows all about Grossman, to expand upon what Reggie Gibbs says.