Anticipation Is Keepin’ Me Waitin’

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Lynn Garrett:

One of the seminal figures who introduced Buddhism to a Western audience was Alan Watts (1915–1973), and in February, Sounds True will publish a new edition of Just So: The Book, which was released as an audiobook in 2017 and is being published in print for the first time. In the book, Watts (The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are) asks the question, “What would you change if you were God? What kind of universe would you design?” and provides an answer: “If you went through the trouble of modeling your own universe and seeing what comes of it, you’d eventually settle on the exact model we have now.” Editor Robert Lee says Watts’s answer is, “Essentially, we are God, and this is what we have created, and if we were to have billions of do-overs (which, in some sense, we already have), this is the exact version we’d create—just so.”

Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor, author of Buddhism Without Beliefs, meditates on being alone in the company of others in The Art of Solitude (Yale Univ., Feb.). Batchelor describes how when he turned 60, he took a sabbatical from teaching and turned his attention to solitude, a practice integral to the meditative traditions he has studied and taught. Batchelor’s explorations taught him that in a hyperconnected world that is at the same time plagued by social isolation, readers can learn to enjoy the solitude that is at the heart of the human experience.

I’m a simple man. I see new books by Watts and Batchelor coming soon, I pre-order them. Incidentally, I’ve discovered an actual use for Twitter, even without having an account. I use it to check in with some of my favorite publishing houses to find out about upcoming releases, as well as links to related interviews and articles. Book Twitter is much more tolerable than the plague-infested asylum-cum-charnel house that is Politics/Current Events Twitter.  This link came via Yale University Press’s feed. I’m not sure I really needed a streamlined process of being exposed to temptation, but nonetheless…

Thursday Throwback

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[Originally published Apr. 1, 2015.]

Will Shetterly:

Arguments between theists and atheists make me think they’re both missing the point. People have belief systems. If yours doesn’t make you hurt anyone, it’s fine by me, and it’s even better if yours helps you do good things.

Agnosticism is concerned with the limits of knowledge. Atheism is concerned with the likelihood of belief. Epistemologically, I’m an agnostic. That is, I accept that absolute knowledge is impossible, and therefore there is a logical possibility, however minuscule, that something vaguely called God could exist. Philosophically, I’m an atheist, because knowledge doesn’t have to be absolute to be good enough for everyday life, and I feel confident enough that no matter what we discover about life in the cosmic or subatomic realms, none of it will ever point toward the likelihood of the existence of a bipolar creator god with a prurient interest in the doings of human genitals. I am quite willing to bet my life on that. Pragmatically, I’m an anti-assholist, and since assholes are in plentiful supply on both sides of the argument, I tend to agree that the issue is hardly worth fighting about.

That said, Will is probably preaching to those without ears to hear, because the argument isn’t so much about whether theists/atheists are incapable of doing good because of their beliefs. Most people can grudgingly concede that however stubborn and deluded their opponents are, they manage to live decent lives — for now. The worry is — to take the atheist perspective here for a moment — that theistic beliefs are an intellectual weak link. The chain of one’s moral character might snap at precisely that point if the link is not replaced. If a theist is allowed to retain a vague, sentimental affection for Biblical platitudes or an open-mindedness toward the possibility of life after death, the rust might spread and their personality might give way under stress, allowing some atavistic sympathy for the harshest aspects of Deuteronomy or Leviticus to break through and take over. The argument is that incorrect beliefs are a disaster waiting to happen, and both sides will patiently wait a lifetime, if need be, to claim vindication. As with God’s existence, even a fraction of a possibility can inspire faith.

But intellectuals, both secular and religious, always overvalue the importance of rational principles as opposed to simple, intuitive empathy. The power of logical necessity compels you! Except, in practice, it doesn’t. People cheerfully contradict themselves all the time. Faith or the lack thereof tends to serve as a mere rationalization for what are, deep down, issues of basic character. Kind people can be attracted to the soft parts of Christianity and assholes can be attracted to the supercilious parts of atheism. Decent, humane people do not become raging, intolerant assholes just because of a new logical twist in their thinking. They will find a way to accommodate the new perspective into their basic character as if it had been there all along.

As for the crusading sort of atheists who feel compelled to badger even the most inoffensive believers, they strike me as the spiritual descendants of Frederick Taylor. In their case, they’re obsessed with eliminating intellectual inefficiency, even if it results in diminishing returns or outright counter-productiveness. Just imagine how much more we could accomplish if only all these valuable neurons weren’t being wasted on metaphysical fantasies and irrational superstitions! Of course, the idea that the world and all its problems can be reorganized and set right by flawless human reason is a fairy tale, a myth, a fable and a superstitious delusion itself. As a rule, it’s best to recognize what “good enough” looks like and stop there.

Things Can Only Get Better?

By in battling personal entropy, poetry 2 Comments

Simon Kennedy:

Middle age is miserable, according to a new economic study which pinpoints 47.2 years old as the moment of peak unhappiness in the developed world.

Let’s see — point-two…one-fifth of twelve months…starting from X, add Y…hmm, it looks like my life was at its utter nadir…last week? Well, if this is the worst, then the worst is not. In fact, I have to agree with Robert Browning:

Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did and does smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I saved and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I’ll complain.

My experience being other,
How should I contribute verse
Worthy of your king and brother?
Balaam-like I bless, not curse.
I find earth not gray but rosy,
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.
Do I stand and stare? All’s blue.

Roger Scruton

By in the big sleep No Comments

Theodore Dalrymple:

In his last and moving article in The Spectator, indeed in the last paragraph he published in his lifetime, he stressed the importance of gratitude for what one has been fortunate enough to inherit. Take nothing for granted, preserve what is worth preserving, understand the fragility of things, remember debts to the past as well as to the future, take delight in the world. Such was the lasting message of this exceptionally gifted man.

When I heard yesterday of Roger Scruton’s death, I sat down with my copies of his books and leafed through them, looking for a representative paragraph or two capable of summing up what he has meant to me. Frankly, there are too many, and my thoughts about them aren’t very interesting for a tribute. Luckily, Dalrymple has done an admirable job here naming the main themes that I, too, will carry with me. Several years ago, I wrote to Scruton directly in an attempt to express my appreciation for his work. He didn’t respond (and of course I didn’t expect him to), but I do hope my letter made him smile.

Rejectification of Names

By in antisocial media No Comments

Christine Rosen:

What happened to our love affair with social media? Contrary to much of what has been written, the story of the last decade of social media isn’t a tale of Russian-driven misinformation but of a misunderstanding of human nature. We have not taken the full measure of the kinds of problematic behaviors we know these platforms reward. We are confused about how to respond to their power to amplify and accelerate scandals and call-out culture. And we are at a loss about how to address their parlous effects not only on citizens but on the politicians we expect to lead us.

Way back when we were kids, most of us, I assume, played some version of the telephone game (I understand some of you may have known it as “Chinese whispers,” and I trust you have already reported yourselves to the relevant authorities for sensitivity training). But for those who didn’t, the idea was: a group of kids would sit in a circle. The teacher, or whoever was leading the fun, would start by whispering a brief phrase to the person beside them. Without pausing to clarify or consider, the second person would immediately relay the message to the third, and so on down the line. When the message reached the end of the circle, it would be spoken aloud, and of course, it had gotten so garbled in the course of its travels as to be unrecognizable. Oh, how we laughed at how easy it is to misunderstand each other.

Way back in the day, there was a blog called Busy, Busy, Busy, by a guy named Elton Beard. He didn’t invent the “Shorter…” template of blog post (for that he always credited Daniel Davies), but he certainly perfected it and made it “viral” before we called it such. As you can see, the idea was: you link to an article or column by the target of your mockery and attempt to summarize his or her point in the most pithy and sarcastic way possible, preferably with a one-liner. “Shorter So-and-So: Everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi.” Yes, technically, a link was provided for anyone who wanted to read the entire article for accuracy’s sake, but in practice, no one ever did that. It would spoil the fun to bring nuance or balance into it. Intellectual property rights aside, the idea soon transcended its origin and became like the air we breathed, among bloggers and commenters alike. We already knew we were right about everything. All that was left to do was have fun with the stupidity of our opponents. Oh, how we laughed at our cleverness.

Oh, how little did we suspect what a basilisk’s egg we were hatching. How many countless dead conversations litter the social media landscape today, having fallen prey to its malevolent gaze. Those practices are so common as to be the rule now. We are indeed too busy, busy, busy to communicate clearly. Rather than engage with someone’s words at face value, we’d rather assume the presence of subtext and engage with that instead. Rather than proceed through a conversation carefully, one point at a time, we’d rather attempt to anticipate our partner’s next several rhetorical steps and call checkmate as quickly as possible. The Calvinist conception of conversation prevails today. Social media has become the telephone game on steroids, and it typically ends with roid rage instead of laughter. But what mirror exists that would allow us to turn the basilisk’s gaze back upon itself?

Thursday Throwback

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Daniel Frost and Hal Boyd:

Advocates of polyamory might say that they don’t mean those kinds of desires, but that is precisely the point: The mere experience of a desire does not tell us much about whether the desire would be appropriate to act on. Radical honesty too often conflates the experience of desire with the moral judgment that acting according to the desire is a good and appropriate moral choice.

[And with that, here’s this week’s Thursday Throwback, originally published Dec 14, 2016.]

Emily Bobrow:

Perel wants to change the way we think about infidelity. Instead of seeing it as a pathological and immoral impulse that invariably leaves trauma and destruction in its wake, she wants us to understand that extramarital yearnings are all too natural, and that affairs are terribly, perhaps even inevitably, human. “Monogamy may not be a part of human nature but transgression surely is,” she says. “And sometimes even happy people cheat.” If, like Seth, we want to build relationships that will last, then we may need to share his realism about what such a relationship might look like, and what kind of imperfections we are willing to tolerate.

Let’s start by conceding that not all infidelities are created equal. For that matter, as Perel notes, not all of them are necessarily sexual. A monogamous yet emotionally unavailable man who often belittles his wife while furtively accruing impulsive debts which endanger their shared financial future has failed to uphold his side of the marriage, whether we call that “cheating” or not. In such circumstances, an affair on the woman’s part may be an understandable exploratory attempt to find a soft landing spot before deciding to make the perilous jump into the unknown. It’s a rationalist fantasy to insist that people should measure their relationships on ledger sheets, discarding a marriage when the math says it’s a bad investment. Lost among the trees and undergrowth of day-to-day living, it can be difficult for an unhappy spouse to gain a forest-wide perspective — am I giving up too easily? Do I expect too much? Will he change if only I stay patient and supportive? Abstract truisms about the odds of finding a better partner aren’t much comfort in times like these. The visceral experience of happiness and fulfillment with another person may be what finally provides the necessary clarity and courage to make such a drastic change.

And granted, some people simply don’t feel strongly about sexual exclusivity. Defenders of monogamy who insist that alternative arrangements are inevitably selfish or doomed might find themselves flummoxed like Friedrich Hayek was when confronted by the fact of J.S. Mill and Harriet Taylor’s unconventional relationship, which, as John Gray observes, worked for them with no apparent harm to any of the involved parties. As Ben Sixsmith says, dishonesty is typically the real corrosive agent in infidelity; an honest open marriage might stand just as good a chance of success as an exclusive one.

Nonetheless, however inclined we might be to live and let live, it’s hard not to feel weary as we see this whole topic approaching us with an insolent swagger we recognize all too well. Akash Kapur wisely said that reinvented sex and a remade economy are the twin pillars of the utopian project, so whenever a progressive starts talking about either one, you know what to expect.You roll your eyes and think, oh, God, here we go, here comes polyamory, the weaponized cutting edge, the hot new fashion in virtue signaling. If it were merely a matter of different strokes for different folks, that would be one thing, but it’s inherent in the nature of progressivism to proselytize. What’s good for us must be objectively good for all. It’s progress, after all. The goal is to transcend limits, restraints, particularism, judgment, and vulnerabilities. If you object to the idea of unwanted intrusions into your marriage, you’re as benighted and pitiful as those backward bigots who feel uneasy about unassimilated immigrants.

Progressivism envisions as its ideal a Rousseauian state of detached independence, in which anything inconvenient, even family members, can be sloughed off with no lasting ill-effects. The ideal of something like lifelong monogamy can weigh heavily on progressive shoulders — why should we endure anything that’s suboptimal when we can just replace it? Why should we strive for an unreal standard of conduct if we’re likely to fail anyway? Why don’t we just abolish the idea of higher standards and revel in the leveling equality of our flawed imperfection? The cynicism that passes for wisdom among the perpetually-cool asserts that anyone who sees failure in pursuit of a difficult goal as an incentive to redouble one’s efforts, rather than a confirmation of hopelessness, is most likely in denial, or a hypocrite just waiting to be unmasked. Disapproving judgment is one vice never to be tolerated — until, perhaps, some clever conservative claims that judging other people is his sexual kink, at which point they’ll be compelled to celebrate it.

Perel predictably attacks the unreal fantasy of the soulmate who magically satisfies all of our needs, a blanket rationalization which has no doubt provided cover for many trysts in motel beds. I still wait in vain to see a progressive follow that trite insight up with the acknowledgement that many of our “needs” are nothing of the sort, merely fleeting impulses that we would do well to deny and eventually outgrow.

King Nothing

By in nihilism, religion No Comments

Anthony Esolen:

I am not here concerned to show which of the two visions is true. The question rather has to do with how man can live and flourish. The Epicurean materialist vision is not only empty, it empties: its great adverb is “only.” The mind is only the brain, and the brain is only a neural machine. Good and evil are solely social constructs. Human male and female are merely ideological projections.

Given that I have often proclaimed myself an Epicurean of sorts, you might expect me to take offense to this characterization. But my agreement with Esolen’s essay is substantial, and our differences are rhetorical, little more than quibbles over terminology and emphasis. I, of course, agree that the progressive mania for transgender activism is a symptom of political and personal boredom. Aging radicals desperate to recapture some lost passion by re-enacting old battles of the long-since settled sexual revolution; youngsters looking for a fashionable new way to distinguish themselves against their outdated elders; and the perennial dissatisfaction of being human, of always finding fault with this, whatever this happens to be at any moment. Whatever we have, wherever we are, we want to be elsewhere, doing, being, or acquiring something else. When you’ve successfully escaped hunger, warfare and other external threats, the only thing left to escape from is your own mind.

When it comes to broader questions of metaphysics and ethics, I also agree with his evocation of the moral universe he contrasts to “Epicureanism,” one centered on love, gratitude, meaning and significance. I feel confident I inhabit that worldview myself, despite lacking the appropriate religious credentials. So where do we differ? The argument usually forks upon whether meaning is bestowed from without or projected from within. In a monotheistic universe, meaning is given to things by God; in the materialistic universe, meaning is a shifting collection of convenient fictions. From Esolen’s perspective, meaning either exists out there or not at all. Matter is empty form, like a clay bowl, unless the craftsman fills it with spirit. The problem is with the matter/spirit distinction. I’m not a theologian or a philosopher, so I’m afraid I don’t have anything sophisticated to offer beyond a different metaphor: meaning is indeed created from within, but as an interactive exchange. Not by isolated egos vainly trying to impose their wants on a cold, empty world of mute form, but by related beings who grow, develop, and return to their environment together, which is likewise a dynamic force, a partner in the dance, not an inert, stupid mass — “each great I is but a process in a process within a field that never closes”, as W.H. Auden wrote. Meaning is not waiting indefinitely for us to discover it when we’re ready. Our task is to create it and maintain it anew, constantly, not individually, but through our relationships. It will indeed decay and fade if we settle for laziness and ingratitude. But like all things organic, it can also grow back.

The nihilist Esolen describes does exist, usually in the form of an overly-sensitive young intellectual. But nihilism isn’t a deficiency of faith; if anything, it’s the last, desperate attempt of fading monotheistic faith to put something, anything, on God’s empty throne to keep some ultimate answer ruling over creation, even if only a sick parody of an answer. “Nihilism, the shadow of monotheism, where the Son doesn’t shine,” as I always like to joke. If we can’t have a loving creator God anymore, then we’ll worship a skeleton of meaning called King Nothing. Nothing matters. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing has meaning. Finally, the endless questioning and the hard work of creating and maintaining can cease; we have our final answer. The “Epicurean” perspective denies certain consolations, it’s true. The cosmic ledgers will never be balanced, let alone closed; the process within a process will rumble on eternally. This locus of experience encoded in memory conventionally referred to as “Damian” will not persist in any coherent form beyond his several-decade residence on Earth. Wisps of him may linger in the gauzy memories of a few others. His magnificent blog posts may yet endure through the coming centuries and preserve something of his reputation in amber, but eventually, it will be as if he had never been here. “As if” — he was, though, like so many countless others were and will be, and everything we’ve all created together is the raw material for countless more creative acts, and thus, it all matters. Our task is ready when we are. Who has time for laments?

An Englishman With a Very High Voice Doing Rock and Roll

By in music No Comments

Hellooooo, Internet! Are you ready to rock? Let me see your hands, oh yeah!

The Lady of the House will cheerfully admit to anyone that when it comes to popular music, she’s as unpretentious as it gets. “Three chords and a 4/4 beat and you’re set, huh?” I asked. “I’m a simple woman with simple taste,” she replied with a smile. I keep a few playlists in Google Play full of surefire hits for when we travel or work together, rather than inflict any of my experimental electro-pop or scathing industrial metal on her tolerant nature. But recently, while working on a project in the garage, she asked why I never played her any of The Darkness’s music, especially their breakthrough hit “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” which she liked. I indulgently rolled my eyes in response. I heard the song back in 2003 or so when it came out. I didn’t like it. I took them to be ironic posers almost to the point of being a novelty act — “Ah, hahaha, yes, isn’t that funny, a current band dressing up as ’70s rock gods.” Rachel Bolan, bassist for the ’80s MTV hair-metal band Skid Row, once said in an interview that they had briefly considered naming their own band “Darkness.” Upon further reflection, they realized, “why not just go all the way and call it ‘Dorkness’?” he laughed. I assume it goes without saying that ’80s metalheads were not exactly known for their sophisticated humor or sense of ironic distance, so if even they couldn’t go that far… long story short, I assumed the joke would wear off quickly and that would be the end of that.

That was the end of that, until a couple months ago. I had given them nary a thought all these years. But I, too, believe in a thing called love, even if I don’t fancy that particular melodic expression of it, so I pulled up a compilation playlist and turned on the bluetooth speaker as we set to work. Within seconds, the meat-and-potatoes rock formula had her toes tapping and her head nodding as she beamed with delight. Content with my good deed, I prepared to patiently endure the cheesiness.

Well, that’s weird, I thought later. That was actually really good!

“’70s FM radio comfort-food music” is how I described them to a friend the other day. Of course, there are and have always been a lot of bands mining that territory. But The Darkness are a cut above the usual stadium rock tribute act, I think. They may very well be partially tongue-in-cheek (“Why Don’t the Beautiful Cry?“), and the fine line between clichéd and heartfelt is never so blurry as in a song like “One Way Ticket,” the contractually-obligated (but undeniably infectious) lament of cocaine addiction, or the lighters-in-the-air power ballad “The Conquerers,” but their pastiche is far too skillful to be just a means to an ironic laugh. If I had to get the descriptive ball rolling, I’d ask you to imagine Freddie Mercury fronting AC/DC (“Every Inch of You“), but a clever magpie like singer Justin Hawkins is happy to pilfer shiny objects from all over the rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame. He swoops in and plucks a forgotten chorus from some Def Leppard outtakes and renames it “Messenger.” Thin Lizzy isn’t around to claim paternity over the strutting “Givin’ Up,” so he might as well have fun with it. He borrows some glam-rock glitter from bands like Slade and Sweet and sprinkles it all over songs like “Hazel Eyes”  and “All the Pretty Girls.” And we even have a resolution to the question that has bedeviled music scholars for decades, namely, “Precisely how close can one come to ripping off Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song,’ both musically and lyrically, without actually infringing on copyright?” The answer is “Barbarian.”

Maybe the smirking-and-winking image is what allows them to get away with album covers featuring hot babes slathered in syrup, reclining on a bed of French toast, or unsubtle anthems like “Knockers” (where to be fair, he shrieks not about boobies but about how “I just love what you’ve done with your hair!”) But of course there’s no point in intellectualizing it. It’s music for a good time. So, naturally, take off your thinking cap. Listen to your heart. “Everybody Have a Good Time.” I still can’t help whipping out the air guitar each time I hear that one.

I still don’t like “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” though. That’s the last song on the playlist. Hopefully she won’t notice we rarely make it that far along. I’ll do many things for love, but I’d rather not do that.

The Truth Will Lock You Up

By in books, foolosophy, identity, montaigne No Comments

A lie, even the smallest lie, grants the liar a capacious cloak of privacy. In an age of increasing surveillance — our era of technological hyperthymesia, in which each tweet and call, each coming and going, every street crossing and red-light run may be recorded and kept in permanent archive — lying may be the last hope of the individual offering a shelter in which the self may know itself in solitude, unobserved, creating a space into which one can retreat to contemplate one’s life, one’s thoughts, unknown to others, the last refuge of honest men.

— E. J. Levy, “On Liars,” After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays

Knowing what to throw away, and knowing what to keep — according to the troubadour philosopher Kenny Rogers, this is the secret to surviving. Some truths are too precious and fragile to be shared. Montaigne wrote in his essays about the need to cultivate a “room behind the shop,” an arrière boutique, “in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude. Here our ordinary conversation must be between us and ourselves, and so private that no outside association or communication can find a place.” He was conceiving of it as a part of himself detached and separated from the inevitable crushing pain of loss, a safe room of Stoic ataraxia in which to retreat when tragedy and disaster struck. I like to think of mine more along the lines of a secret chamber concealed by an ordinary façade — you know, like a bookcase that rumbles aside when you move the trigger book on the shelf, revealing a hidden passageway. I might not even have anything worth hiding back there, but it’s nice to know it exists if needed.

One recurring daydream I used to have as a teenager was to imagine being able to hide myself — or my consciousness, to be precise — within a tiny part of my own body. I would sit in geometry class and look at a pore on the back of my hand, say, and entertain the fantasy of somehow shrinking “me” down to hide within it, while “my body” continued on autopilot with no one the wiser. “My body” might continue to feel insecure and foolish as events required, but “I” would be somehow insulated from all that. Sometimes my focus would turn outward — I would take notice of a nondescript strip of land or woods near a highway and imagine how great it would be to have some kind of underground shelter there where I could live, hidden in plain sight, too insignificant to ever draw attention. Obviously, this doesn’t reveal anything profound beyond the facts that, one, I was just a typical adolescent shrinking violet, if a moderately more shy and introverted one, and two, that it’s no surprise I had to retake geometry in summer school. But these strange fantasies of deception and deceit were defensive, not malicious. Like most of my peers, I suspect, I never imagined I could actually be “cool;” I just simply wanted to avoid being an object of ridicule. A false front or an escape hatch were my means of evading unfriendly scrutiny.

Still, maybe I wasn’t that weird. The instinct to find close attention threatening and frightening is deeply embedded through the animal kingdom. Sometimes I wonder how well-prepared we are, evolutionarily speaking, for the brave new social media world we’ve created in which we voluntarily expose ourselves to the possibly-dangerous attention of hundreds, thousands, or even occasionally millions of strangers on the gamble that some robust fellow-feeling will keep them from savaging us for for the sheer amoral fun of it. But then again, who’s to say that most of what we see in the online hall of mirrors isn’t mostly deceptive anyway? How many of our profiles and proclamations are unfiltered honesty with no additives or preservatives? Me, I tend toward honesty, but more out of laziness than moral rectitude — I simply don’t have the patience to weave and maintain tangled webs of deceit. But I reserve the right to keep a thief’s lockpicking kit in my back pocket, just in case. I guess you’ll just have to trust me. Ask me no invasive questions and I’ll tell you no serious lies.

The Shaming of the True

By in the great awokening, tribalism 4 Comments

Winston Smith:

Look, I now look at a whole lot of conservative stuff online, mostly because it’s currently far less delusional than what one finds on the left. That wasn’t true ten years ago. But I rarely see the kind of stuff Todd is talking about. It’s easy for me to avoid the likes of Gateway Pundit (though, again, that site may have become less reliably nutty). It’s easy to avoid substantially nutty stuff on the right. It’s less easy to avoid the NYT, the WaPo, and the rest.

None of this is supposed to exonerate the right for its biases. It’s just to note that (a) the left has them, too, (b) it currently has more of them, (c) it currently has crazier ones, and (d) it’s currently the mainstream, ergo the effects are more substantial. The right can’t get over its Benghazi obsession. But that shit pales in comparison to Russiagate. There’s no right-wing analog of climate apocalypticism–unless you want to count Christian apocalypticism, which is isolated to the conservative religious fringe. The latter is a joke; the former is the extremely consequential orthodoxy. Twenty years ago, the religious right was less fringy, and fought to get one of its pet theories–creationism–at least mentioned occasionally in schools. It was slapped down hard. Multiple leftist theories–climate hysteria, gender ideology in its myriad forms, multiculturalism, anti-liberal feminism, etc.–pervade education at all levels. In many cases, it’s impermissible to even question them. And we’re on a trajectory toward making questioning some of them illegal. We’re lagging behind other Western democracies in that respect, actually.

As David Warren says about the neoconservatives, “their perceived voyage to the Right was a steadiness as the waters passed them by.” And the waters, they certainly have been a-churning past us as we drift toward the falls. When even the author of the Millennial Bible isn’t safe from being widely attacked as a “bigot” for stating a basic biological truth in the most inoffensive way possible, one which would have been considered utterly uncontroversial a decade ago, it’s clear that something has gone terribly wrong, and if there’s any sane people left on the left, they’re keeping their heads down and mouths shut for now.

Naturally, partisans on both sides are convinced that their enemies are possessed of all the power and money as well as military-like precision and effectiveness in achieving their goals. Both sides are convinced that their own side is hopelessly weak, ineffectual, outnumbered, and divided against themselves. For years, I read left-wing bloggers bemoaning how trying to achieve their political goals was like herding cats. When I started reading more conservative voices, I found them telling the same story. As far as I’m concerned, those narratives cancel each other out, and all that’s left is arguing about the metrics. I’m not sure what could possibly serve as an objective standard of measurement to determine which team is winning the culture war and/or which team is crazier. Every individual sees himself as the lonely voice of reason, with the idiots to one side and the maniacs to the other. And yet, just like we can’t all be above average, some of us have got to be in with the idiots or the maniacs. Or — maybe — if we could calm down and take a deep breath, we’d find that we’re really not all that attached to our political opinions, let alone sure of them. We’re just addicted to self-righteousness and argument.

As for me, I reiterate what I’ve said for years. I think of myself as a neo-Taoist, steadfastly opposed to assholism in all its many guises. It hasn’t led me astray yet.

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