From "The past is never dead. It's not even past", 4/21
When I read Nichols' article, it struck me that as the South lost to the North in the American Civil War, as the Germans lost to the Allies in the First World War, as the Soviet Union lost to America in the Cold War, the most important result was to reinforce what was most dysfunctional, delusional, and extreme in the defeated societies precisely because they failed to confront why they were wrong. Instead they chose to stew in their humiliation. And that dysfunction in the South produced the KKK, Jim Crow, and the sense of white grievance that paved the way for Trump in the U.S; it produced Hitler and the Holocaust in Germany, and now Putin in Russia.
In each defeated society factions that sought to aggressively assert its delusions came to dominate the collective imaginary because these societies never faced the fact that they had been wrong. They never made amends. Rather they doubled down. They sought to prove, even if mostly to themselves, that their delusions were true. So they undertook to force, by any means necessary, to defeat those whom they saw as having humiliated them. Anything rather than to face the humiliation of admitting to themselves that they were wrong. Were the North after the Civil War, the Allies after WWI, or the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union without hypocrisy or fault? Of course not. But that's no excuse for failure to recognize your own faults, which in the South and the Soviet Union were egregious.
But why were Germany and Japan after WWII different? I think that it has primarily to do with each having been able to suppress the humiliations of past and to embrace a new national identity that focused on the future. They let the dead bury the dead, or at least pushed to the fringes those who didn't want to. Why some societies are capable of that while others are not is worth thinking about more, but clearly huge, irrepressible factions within American and Russian societies have not been able to do it. But a key factor is that as long as a society has a vital sense of future possibility, it finds a way to push the reactionaries to the fringes, but as soon as that sense of future possibility weakens, there is space for the reactionaries to thrive.
From "Reactionary Chic", 4/26
I remember thinking decades ago that what made gay culture interesting and energetic was its transgressiveness, it's being anti-establishment, it's being a place for those who couldn't stand the sanctimonies of the straight, conventional world to gather in a joyful communities of liberation and mutual support apart from all of that was too buttoned down, prim and proper. There was something my gay friends in New York and Seattle had that straight people did not, which was a vital sense of community that gave them a sense cohesiveness and energy and purpose. They had an elan, a verve, a joie de vivre, a disinhibited, creative craziness that most straight people I knew lacked, and I saw it as as being directly associated with their being counter-cultural, their being against and so liberated from establishment pieties.
And I wondered back then if the assimilation of gay culture into the mainstream would take the joy out of it, make it as boring as the culture it saw itself then in opposition to. It would appear so, at least insofar as the partisans of gay assimilation into the establishment have now become santimonious scolds. They've become the new establishment with a new set pieties. They've become the new gatekeeper regime of the boring and ordinary. It's annoying because all moralistic priggery is annoying, but as such it was inevitable that it would spawn a new counter-cultural reaction.
So it's ironic that the sexual identity politics of the 80s has spawned a new transgressive community on the Right that now occupies the space they once did. These days if you want to belong to a community that provides cohesiveness, energy, and purpose born of transgressiveness, you have few other choices than on the radically chic Right.
From "Civilization and Its Discontents", 4/29
The whole underlying prestige-centered honor code was barbaric through and through. Christianity replaces the ideas 'face' and 'honor' with 'dignity' and integrity. The whole movement of Christianity is one away from external identity props and toward the discovery of an interior identity, the 'face' that is created in the image and likeness of God, where we live as citizens of the Kingdom born within, as the gospels describe it. The idea of face and honor are irrelevancies for citizens who abide there.
Christianity transvalues honor into integrity. You can lose face if others take it from you, but having or losing your integrity does not depend on others. Honor is about the value that others give to you; integrity is a self-valuation that follows from an interior achievement.
...
Most of the "advanced" thought since Freud has been about finding ways to become more instinctual and less civilized, while remaining "nice." In other words, wild and crazy, but loveable--like John Belushi or Jack Black. These are our contemporary models for what it means to be un-alienated. The way this works in practice is while continuing to suppress aggression, give more free rein to the pursuit of sex and money, and to put an American-Dream happy face on both. Consumer capitalism provides the political-cultural framework that celebrates this solution to the problem of alienation. And it works insofar as it satisfies what is most vulgar in human desire, but fails in all the truly important ways. And then we fight endless wars to give an outlet for the aggression for those who need to earn a 'face' through mortal combat.
Freud's idea of civilization is the opposite of what I mean by it, but his is understandable because his experience of it was mainly of its collapse. The people he treated were living in cultural forms that had no inner vitality. That was Nietzsche's big idea--there was no there there anymore; there are only the empty forms, like a copse of dead trees. They point to something that once lived but no longer does.
From "The Praying Coach in Bremerton", 4/30
While I am myself someone who prays, I am not someone who believes that God has or should have a rooting interest in my team winning, and it goes against everything that I believe that I should pray to him that he may help me to defeat my opponent. I'm not saying that this is what [Coach] Kennedy prayed about because I don't know, but a court precedent would open the door to coaches who would pray in this way, and if I were a religious student athlete, I would feel that I was being coerced to pray to a God I don't believe in because my God doesn't take sides in such matters. Such a coach is not praying to the transcendent God revealed in the gospels but to a sublunary, local deity like Mars, the Roman god of war.
And to take it a step further, once you set the precedent, what is to prevent a coach from praying to Moloch or Satan--or some Wiccan deity? Is [David] French willing to stand by some other coach if such entities are the object of his worship and parents and school administrators object? Do you really want to open that can of worms? Where do you draw the line? Once again, the fundamental problem here is trying to litigate a metaphysical matter in the political sphere. It just doesn't work.
If the coach prays for each student to do his best and may the better team win, let him do that quietly and by himself, and then publicly tell his students that he knows that each has his best game in him on that day. That would be laudable. And it would be the more Christian way to pray. Coach Kennedy and David French might well be reminded of Jesus's advice on the matter:
And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matt 6:5ff)
From "The Woe of Roe 1" 5/4
I would like to live in a society in which abortion was considered always a last resort and in a society that did everything it could to make the need to resort to such an extreme step as infrequent as possible. And I would like to live in a society that could grapple with its psychological and moral complexities in a sane, humane way. But we do not live in such a society; we live in one in which nothing matters except which side of the culture war claims your allegiance. ...
Now that fifty years have passed, you can't just go back to 1973 to rectify the mistake made then by the making same mistake now. Roberts seems to get this in a Burkean conservative way that his naive, non-contextual "originalist" colleagues do not. For these absolutists, history be damned--we're right either sub specie aeternitatis, or because they read a 235-year-old political document the way fundamentalist read the Bible. Absolutists have a role to play to stimulate debate, but sensible people should never allow them to set policy.
And so regardless which side of the culture war you lean toward, you have to understand that something like abortion should not be fodder in such a such conflict. It's too complex, too much is at stake, and it's something that should have been dealt with gradually and in ways that respected traditional mores and norms without being completely constricted by them. But it wasn't. So now we have a mess that is likely to be thrown back to the states in the midst of the culture war that Roe initiated. And so abortion just becomes another issue to be resolved by our politics of dysfunction, which makes sensible, serious legislation less likely to be passed.
From "Arendt on the Cynicism of the Masses", 5/9
The conditions for totalitarianism require the mass alienation of people from the "system", and the conditions that engender that mass alienation are both material and metaphysical. Metaphysical is maybe not the right word, because other things provide meaning in people's lives that are only metaphysical-ish. But the point is that people can put up with horrifying material conditions if there's a deeply felt meaningful justification for them to do so. Look at Ukraine. People can endure significant levels of suffering if it is understood as a necessary sacrifice for a plausible, imagined positive future.
But if the great majority in a society is suffering materially and for no good reason, and if there's no reason to think that things are going to get better--then watch out. That's our situation in the U.S. Once there's widespread cynicism about how the system works and whom it serves, it's hard to see how you save it.
From "The Radicalized Elites on the Right 1", 5/14
The real enemies for both Deneen and Ahmari are not Liberals, but global technocapitalism and its Neoliberal presuppositions. Both dominate political and economic elites who support its unhindered expansion and domination of the political economy. Deneen and Ahmari are absolutely right that those Neoliberal values are hegemonic in the halls of power whether in Congress or in corporate C-suites. They are absolutely right that technocapitalism is destructive of the social and economic infrastructure that is essential for the flourishing of ordinary Americans in local communities. Both want to break up monopolies, they want to impose limits on the greed of corporate Saurons to shape American values and political policies.
Both are absolutely right about all that, and ... there are lots of other people on the Left who agree with them that you will not find on the Right, at least the Right whose story Continetti tells in his book. So again, why don't they hook up with Jayapal/Sanders/Warren Democrats? Why could someone as smart as Ahmari support Donald Trump and Victor Orban? ...
Conservatives don't pay attention to the reality that's right in front of their noses; it's only the underlying "philosophy" that matters. I remember having a conversation with one of my Clinton-despising Republican brothers in the 90s. I agreed with him that Clinton was a sleaze and I couldn't vote for him (I voted Nader), but I was amazed at how he saw Clinton as a socialist. ... The Republicans had a president in Clinton who wanted to give them what they wanted, but they couldn't say yes. Even then it was never about policy. He was on the other team. He was a "Liberal". And for that reason, people like my brother saw Clinton as the embodiment of everything that they hated, and it therefore made it impossible that they could actually agree on policy. Deneen and Ahmari, it would seem, are cut from the same cloth.
From "What Do You Believe", 5/24
What you think you know is in fact only in the final analysis what you believe because of what for most are unexamined presuppositions. No matter how "facts-based" you think you are, your facts are meaningful only insofar as they fit within an interpretive frame that is shaped by your metaphysics, whether you are aware of having a metaphysics or not. So be careful about what your metaphysics is, because insofar as it provides an interpretive frame that translates reality into knowledge, it might be filtering huge swaths of reality that would otherwise enrich your life if you had a metaphysics that allowed for richer possibilities.
From "Crazy Always Wins", 6/4
The problem is not that there are many sane, decent people who own guns, but that there are so many unstable Americans who do--or can get them so easily when they feel the "need" for one. And so the only real remedy is to address the underlying causes of the identity loss and its ontological dizziness that has made America so crazy. This is partly a metaphysical question, but it's also a social political one caused primarily by the destructive effects of Neoliberalism on the American social fabric. The second flows from the first, but the most egregious negative effects can be remedied by a politics of decency that strives to support American families.
...There is not that much in economic policy differences that separates social conservatives on the Red Team like Patrick Deneen, Oren Cass, Sohrab Ahmari, and Erika Bachiochi from social Liberals on the Blue Team like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren when it comes to policies designed to help American families. Both factions understand how destructive Neoliberalism has been in the lives of most ordinary Americans, but they can't get together mostly because of differences about sex and identity politics. But that's part of what makes us so crazy now. Progressives have become the party of "woke" and Conservatives the party of "anti-woke". As I said above, nothing else has political salience.
From "Progressives vs. Jacobins", 6/11
Jacobins are moral absolutists who are incapable of patience and who too easily feel contempt for anybody who does not share their absolutism. Such absolutism is mostly performative for other absolutists and, to say the least, alienating for everybody else. And it's counterproductive if you have any understanding about how politics work. Jacobins have no real understanding of human nature or a sense for how humans--and human societies--actually grow and change. For them there's no faith in the long arc of the moral universe bending toward justice; it must be justice now, and it must be forced down the throat of anybody who resists.
It's for that reason that Progressives are not Jacobins. Progressives in my definition believe that both moral and material progress are a possibility, but that it is a long, difficult slog toward their achievement. Jacobins--whether on the Left or the Right--are like adolescent idealists who are spirited enough to feel deeply the transcendent power of Justice, who see clearly and are disgusted by the hypocrisy of those in charge, and who in their youthful zeal want to destroy the whole corrupt thing. ...
There is simply no true material progress without moral progress--the two are one and the same. One without the other isn't progress. That's why developments in technology are not progress by themselves. They become part of the movement toward progress when they serve moral ends. Technocapitalism has no moral ends. But there is no true individual moral progress that does not in some small way have a correlative transformative material effect on the world. The progress of the human spirit is deeply entwined with the spiritual renewal of the earth.
From "The Case against Trump--and the GOP", 6/20
It very well might be wishful thinking on my part, but holding these hearings now could be the one thing that prevents a GOP sweep in the midterms. It's up to the Dems to make the case that it's not just Trump who is culpable, but every GOP congressperson who refused to vote against his impeachment and conviction. They need to make the case that the vast majority of Republicans were essentially part of an effort to whitewash what was clearly a failed coup. That makes them as a group fundamentally unworthy of public trust. The committee has an enormous amount of evidence to make this case.
This might be enough to scare conservative-leaning independents and suburban, Youngkin-adjacent Republicans from giving McConnell and McCarthy back their respective houses. At Charlie Syke's Newsletter, Terri wrote this in a comment about the first hearing last night:
Am I naive to think that most Americans are capable of understanding what Terri does? That the GOP no longer has legitimacy? That some things are more important than inflation and baby formula? Maybe, but we'll see.
From "Hip to be Catholic", 6/15
I remain Catholic for the same reason I remain an American. I see what is best in both for all that is embarrassing and corrupt in both. I came to see Catholicism as the great tradition of the West. And for whatever its failures and crimes, it is still the custodian of the great marriage of Greek thought with Jewish revelation--and a liturgical tradition that preserves a participatory epistemology/aesthetic that must be retrieved by the broader culture in the future one way or the other. ...
The Church, for all its failings and limitations, points to this deep, originary source and seeks in its liturgies to connect us to it. All true art, whether or not it is churchy, is deeply liturgical in this sense. That the Church isn't doing this particularly well in this moment is really a reflection of how it has been weakened in a society whose cultural operating system is a Rationalist Materialism in which it cannot thrive. And so it's understandable that the future for such a church seems rather bleak. ...
The Church, however, performs an important function for the broader society in its preserving a portal to the Living Real, which at this moment for the most part works underground and out of sight. If in good faith, you knock on this portal, it shall be opened unto you. But to be truly receptive to it requires that you be open to having most of your presuppositions turned upside down.
From "Sociopathic Artificial Intelligence 1", 6/20
I do not think that artificial intelligence will ever be able replicate human consciousness. That's not really even an interesting question from where I stand. The not-boring question is whether AI and machine learning evolve a kind of inhuman consciousness that will supplant or push aside human consciousness.
I think there is reason to fear that machines can become more sociopathically intelligent than human beings and operate at a level that is incomprehensible to human intelligence. And I think there is reason to fear that with a malevolent programmer or even with an unintentional programming mistake, machines can become a destructive, malevolent, and uncontrollable by humans. ... Artificial Intelligence need not be seen as possibly attaining human consciousness to warrant our alarmed interest. ...
The problem for human beings in the future lies in that the kind of mentality that drives technocapitalism is sociopathic, at least insofar as its principals proceed without any consideration for or connection with the Living Real. Technocapitalism's energies are Social Darwinist, and so its Social Darwinist biases will be consciously or unconsciously programmed into the machines it makes. And therein lies the danger. Humans can make machines that mimic and exaggerate by their sheer power of intelligence the worst traits of sociopathic Technocapitalist thinking and behavior. And that's what will happen unless they are held in check by human beings who embody the best traits of being human. Is there anybody among the principals in technnocapitalism either here or in Europe or Asia who embodies what is best in being human?
No? What could go wrong?
From Sociopathic Artificial Intelligence 2, 6/22
Our situation vis a vis AI is very much like the one depicted in Don't Look Up. In that movie, the impending disaster was a comet heading toward the earth that is a MacGuffin for what could be any potential human extinction event from eco-catastrophe to the rise of the machines. The most important insight around which the premise of the film is based is that even when confronted with extinction, humans are so fragmented, so distracted, and so morally feckless that they are incapable of uniting around an obvious human value--survival. The logic of technocapitalism is the default, and that logic, left unchecked, leads to the extinction of the human project. Only a few sociopaths escape to despoil a planet elsewhere.
So as long as the nihilistic, sociopathic logic of technocapitalism and its Rationalist-Materialist metaphysical imaginary plays such an outsized role in shaping our moral and material priorities, what reason have we to think that any kind of resistance to its logic can be mounted? What reason have we to think that any good can come of just letting that logic play out? And where within the Rationalist-Materialist imaginary can we get a foothold to push back against this logic?
From "The Woe of Roe 2", 6/25
So the problem is not just [the Court's] decision on this issue, but the lack of judicial constraint that it portends. Thomas and Alito are fanatics. And the others? Gorsuch and Barrett seem cluelessly, nerdily naive in their Federalist Society ideological bubble. Kavanagh is a chameleon. No surprise there. Roberts seems, relative to the others, to be more in touch with reality. But as has been pointed out, he no longer matters as a swing vote now after the Barrett appointment. I have to say that I was open to giving Barrett the benefit of the doubt. I thought she might be a conservative more in the Roberts vein, but alas.
Whether or not this is a Pyrrhic victory for the conservatives remains to be seen. Like the original Roe decision, the decision to overturn it now is perceived by huge swaths of Americans as overreach, and overreach did then and will now create a backlash. It would be ironic indeed if this decision, even moreso than the revelations of the J6 Committee, leads the country to retain the Democrats in power come November. One thing's for sure, though. Whatever legitimacy the court might have had until now is gone for the foreseeable future. For the conservatives on the court and elsewhere, it's about the exercise of raw power.
From "I Was Wrong about Trump--and Some Thoughts on Cassidy Hutchinson", 6/29
We will learn nothing in coming weeks...that exonerates [Trump] or makes him look better. The only question is whether learning all this will matter. Will this information break the spell on the Trump-supporting public as it broke the spell for Cassidy Hutchinson?
Her testimony was remarkable on so many levels. Who is this young woman? What was she--three years out of college? Why was someone so young so quickly promoted to a position of such importance? Could they no longer find anybody older and more experienced willing to take the job? Why was she so highly thought of and trusted by all those she interacted with from Pat Cipollone to Rudy Giuliani? Why would she presume to be taken seriously when she tells Meadows, a man more than twice her age with decades of insider experience, not to go to the Willard Hotel plot meeting? Why would anybody confide in her or take her seriously in the way people seem to have? Again, why would she have been so trusted?
She is clearly, bright, competent, and well spoken. But more important I think is that she's a Conservative idealist, a true believer, who had not yet been made cynical. I wouldn't be surprised if it was her youth, her naïveté, and her idealism that made her so trustworthy in the eyes of her Machiavellian elders. Perhaps she reminded them of a younger version of themselves before politics killed their idealism. If she believed in what they were doing, then maybe they could believe in themselves. They were like the dad who wanted his innocent daughter to trust and believe in him, and as long as she did, all's right with the world. And she did, until she couldn't anymore.