December 2020

The Scarlet C

By in fresh hell, the geist of the zeit, tribalism No Comments

Kevin Williamson:

Declaring those with views and priorities different from your own scary — or extreme or whatever other moralistic adjective is in vogue at the moment — isn’t a way to advance that debate, but a way to avoid having the debate at all, and to prevent its being had by others.

On that note, I happened to see a tweet from Bari Weiss today, enthusing over her discovery of Christopher Lasch:

So far, so anodyne, you might think. Lasch is indeed a writer worth reading. However, this is Twitter, so:

“Mild-mannered conservatism”! Bring me the smelling salts; I feel faint!

Someone makes the obvious response, to which our Twitter Torquemada retorts:

A lyric from the late, great Lemmy Kilmister, who died five years ago yesterday, comes to mind: “You are the spooks you’re chasing; you know not what you do.” There’s a certain “chef’s kiss” perfection to this little vignette that just delights me — “His observations were accurate, but his conclusions were unacceptable to me, so he’s not just mistaken, he’s evil.” I see we’ve learned absolutely nothing from the last four years of squandered intellectual integrity. When your entire political identity is based upon opposition to “conservatism,” however reasonable and mild-mannered, this is the sort of logical dead-end you end up in. Well, if you’re going to demonize someone as inoffensive as Lasch, don’t be surprised when forbidden fruit like Joseph de Maistre or Carl Schmitt start to seem tempting to people who are tired of your neverending hysterics.

A Pile of Manure Fertilizing All Your Fears

By in media/propaganda No Comments

Yascha Mounk:

By disposition, I trust the functioning of establishment institutions and the decent intentions of my compatriots. In a country with rapidly falling social trust and growing political dysfunction, I try to hold on to my belief that some key organizations are doing their best. Until a few years ago, it was obvious to me that I can trust what is written in the newspaper or what I am told by public health authorities.

Now, I am losing that trust. I still believe that most people, including the journalists who write for established newspapers and the civil servants who staff federal agencies, are the heroes in their own stories. They genuinely mean well. And yet, I no longer trust any institution in American life to such an extent that I am willing to rely on its account of the world without looking into important matters on my own.

On cue, the reliably-ridiculous Guardian dims the lights, holds the flashlight under its chin, and warns us in a spooooky voice that the real danger to the well-informed citizen is…podcasts. Why, a cynic might get the impression that what these media outlets fear the most is not “misinformation,” which they are fine with as long as they have a monopoly in distribution, but competition. The other day, just to pick one immediate example, I listened to one of Joe Rogan’s podcasts from earlier in the autumn, a conversation with Douglas Murray. Today, I see that the august New York Times is elevating the discourse by publishing “news” items that shouldn’t even qualify as Facebook drama. It’s a stark contrast. The chasm between the two in terms of substance and quality is evident to anyone who cares to compare. And yet, not content with the embarrassing lack of integrity and professionalism they showed during the pandemic this year, let alone their absurd four-year LARPing as the Hashtag Resistance, members of the media decide at year’s end to treat us to congratulatory orgies and shameless acts of autofellatio. The asteroid can’t come soon enough for this dinosaur industry.

Obiter Scripta, no. 104

By in books, foolosophy, obiter scripta No Comments

One of the diseases of our spectacle-riddled culture is that we forget that the invisible life has all the human splendor of the visible one, and often more. I have had in mind all along, and have appealed to where possible, the humble bookworm, the amateur naturalist, the contemplative taxi driver. If you, like me, are naturally drawn to achievement, collect examples of ordinary thinkers — human beings whose splendor is known only to a few, their family, their neighbors, their coworkers. Settle back in awe from time to time, as I do, in thinking about the vast treasury of thought and experience that will never be available to us.

— Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life

I like to assume that my audience consists of precisely this type of anonymous foolosopher. You could be thumbing your phones or keeping up with the Kardashians, but instead, you choose to seek out random, uneven thoughts from an ordinary joe about books, current events, and life in general. That makes you pretty special, if a little odd.

Noteworthies (49)

By in noteworthies 2 Comments

• Matthew Crawford, “How Race Politics Liberated the Elites”

The white bourgeoisie became invested in a political drama in which their own moral standing depends on black people remaining permanently aggrieved. Unless their special status as ur-victim is maintained, African-Americans cannot serve as patrons for the wider project of liberation. If you question this victimisation, you are questioning the rottenness of America. And if you do that, you are threatening the social order, strangely enough. For it is now an order governed by the freelance moralists of the cosmopolitan consensus. Somehow these free agents, ostensibly guided by individual conscience, have coalesced into something resembling a tribe, one that is greatly angered by rejection of its moral expertise.

• Roland Elliot Brown,  “Jocko vs. Evil”

Part of what makes Willink’s “evil” podcasts remarkable is that, though he would be unlikely to call himself an intellectual (he is highly intelligent but sometimes seems surprised to learn of the types of conversations going on in academic or media settings) he operates on what has long been considered intellectual territory, covering subjects Americans might typically expect to read about in The New York Review of Books. Willink’s audience appears to be comprised (at a guess) largely of US military types and first responders, martial artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, and the patriotic wing of the self-help crowd. In some instances, he may be reaching an under-served audience, parts of which could be expected to end up on the frontiers of good and evil in their working lives.

• Honoria Plum, “2020 Escape to Wodehouse”

Wodehouse has often been classified as escapism, as grounds for derision by his critics or apology by admirers. But in 2020, readers are giving themselves permission to look for literary escape and are finding Wodehouse is just the tonic they’re after.

It’s no longer possible to keep up with the many articles and Wodehouse recommendations that continue to pop up, particularly online, but I’ve included a selection from 2020 for further reading at the end of this piece.

• Will Collins, “Memoirs of a Microaggressor”

The legacy of mass affluence, combined with a surplus of college graduates and a recent narrowing of economic opportunities, has introduced the educated middle classes to neuroses formerly reserved for the aristocracy. The subtle means of distinguishing oneself from the crude and the ignorant have changed — racially-tinged snobbery has been replaced by performative anti-racism — but the goal of signifying status remains.

• Gary Saul Morson, “Fyodor Dostoevsky: Philosopher of Freedom”

Dostoevsky understood not only our need for freedom but also our desire to rid ourselves of it. Freedom comes with a terrible cost, and social movements that promise to relieve us of it will always command a following.

Masks Are Slipping

By in non compos mentis, race, the geist of the zeit No Comments

Do I contradict myself? Well, to offer a counterpoint to yesterday’s theme, sometimes it might be important to keep within touching distance of current events, in order to keep an eye on what the bastards are up to:


As David Harsanyi observes, “This is what happens when “science” and the racial identitarianism of the modern intellectual Left collide.” Though I would suggest it’s not so much a “collision” as a passionate embrace with tongue kissing and heavy petting.

I’ve been reading several collections of rare and unusual words recently, and it’s a good thing, because I really need a term that captures all the nuances I’ve felt this year while watching the credentialed expert class sacrifice all their professional credibility and intellectual integrity on the altar of fashionable racial madness. “Astonished” and “shocked” just don’t seem strong enough. Blutterbunged? Stamagastered? Forglopned?

If Only We Were Fruitful Fields

By in foolosophy, nietzsche 3 Comments

The fruitful field. — All rejection and negation points to a lack of fruitfulness: if only we were fruitful fields, we would at bottom let nothing perish unused and see in every event, thing and man welcome manure, rain or sunshine.

— Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

In the introduction to Essays in Idleness and Hojoki, translator Meredith McKinney writes of her two subjects:

Like Chomei, though perhaps for different reasons, Kenko chose to avoid direct mention of the political upheavals and occasional outright warfare of his day, although they form the backdrop to much that he describes, and would have touched him closely at times. He frequently laments the past, when the courtly culture that he loved was in its heyday and unsullied by the rougher ways of the contemporary world, but he was a pragmatic man. Where Chomei was prone to gloom and to impulsive reactions that led him to flee the mundane world and bury himself ever deeper in the hills, Kenko, for all his admonitions to do likewise, was in fact far too intrigued by the world to turn his back on it. The contradictions that drove Chomei to despair and self-accusation sit happily together in Kenko’s writing, and in his life. His times demanded adaptability to an often inconsistent and multi-layered world, and he was a man well suited to his times.

I thought of this while reading The Most Reverend “Dr.” Douglas Graychin Dalrymple Esq. &c’s latest musings. I have also avoided the news for a while. More from overwork than principle, to be honest, but still. For the majority of the day, all I know is what happens within the four walls of the warehouse. If there’s an English or German football game to watch later, that might be the only exposure I get to the outside world that day. I generally get my news second- and third-hand, by reading other people who sometimes mention it. In fact, if I didn’t enjoy scribbling for a hobby, I very well might go weeks without knowing what’s going on the world. Does that make this a bad habit? I hope not.

I like to think of this as my virtual front porch. I don’t go out and get involved in the world, and I sure don’t invite the world into my inner sanctum, but I’m happy to sit a spell and watch the world go by while I mumble smart-ass remarks about it. Of course I think I’m superior to the boobs and twits I see making fools of themselves. Of course I know better and realize that that fleeting sense of superciliousness is itself part of the game. The insecure adolescent, the aspiring intellectual, the political partisan, the obsessive nerd, the amateur insult comic, the absolute flaming idiot — I recognize myself in each one as they pass by. They may wave, and I may flip them off in return, but I mean it in the nicest way possible.

Chesterton said something about the alcoholic and the teetotaler making the same mistake by treating wine as a drug, not a drink. In the same spirit, there are two ways to take the world too seriously. One is to get emotionally involved in it, and another is to be emotionally removed from it. As foolish and stupid as it often is, it’s still my world, and I still love it.

Interlude: Tchaikovsky, “Tea (Chinese Dance) – The Nutcracker Suite”

By in music No Comments

One of my favorite pieces of Christmas music. So irresistibly cheerful. The only problem is it’s only a minute long. Therefore, we should listen to a few alternative arrangements as well.

And possibly the best of the bunch (they actually have a recording of The Nutcracker Suite for sale at their website, if you enjoy your Tchaikovsky funky. I bought it and got a personal thank-you email, which was a nice touch) :

Well, It Took a Lot of Work to Be the Ass That I Am

By in education, fresh hell, jests japes jokes jollies No Comments

Bruce Bawer:

Which brings us, as it happens, to the real thrust of Epstein’s essay. At bottom, it wasn’t a dig at Jill Biden. No, that was just Epstein’s way of introducing his actual, and serious, subject. And that subject was the increasing meaninglessness of advanced degrees in the humanities and social sciences.

“The Ph.D.,” Epstein lamented, “may once have held prestige, but that has been diminished by the erosion of seriousness and the relaxation of standards in university education generally, at any rate outside the sciences.”

For the record, I have un-remembered every essay of Epstein’s that I may have read, I have deleted every post in which I quoted him, and I have used all of his books for kindling. It’s the least I can offer to help undo the grave besmirchment our clerisy has suffered from this insolent autodidact.

Verily, Verily, I Say Unto Thee (19)

By in books, philosophy, verily No Comments

Elayne Allen:

In her new book, Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living, historian Elizabeth Lasch-Quinn offers a clear-eyed diagnosis of what she considers today’s culture of therapy. “We live in an era of the aphorism and the several-step program promising to fix everything imaginable,” she writes. But without a deeper vision of what life is about, we are subject to a tyranny of selfhood. Lasch-Quinn explains, “With no vision of the good, we are lost and bereft. All our projects become self-serving.”

…In elegant prose, Lasch-Quinn encourages us to look beyond self-optimization or political activism. At some point, we must ask ourselves: What if there actually is a coherent purpose of existence? What if living is an art? Ancient philosophy, she contends, can help us navigate these questions. She surveys five ancient schools of thought—Gnosticism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism, and Platonism—for possible guidance, locating echoes of their themes in contemporary culture.

Sounds interesting. I’ve enjoyed both her and her father’s books. Well, I guess that’s my Christmas present sorted!

Smaller and Smaller Dragons

By in the geist of the zeit, the great awokening, world football No Comments

Brendan O’Neill:

The Millwall incident was fairly minor in the scheme of things. But the furious, even demented response to it is incredibly revealing. It confirms that there is a chasm-sized gap between the elites and ordinary people. And it confirms that the woke elites will brook no dissent whatsoever to their divisive agendas of critical race theory and woke re-education. I predict more booing. I hope there’s more booing.

For roughly 350 years, since the birth of liberalism as a political philosophy, those whom we might generally describe as intellectuals in pursuit of progress have understood themselves as opposed to the oppressive nature of state, church, and even culture itself. The phenomenon that some are calling “woke capitalism” seems to be the paradoxical result of this pursuit, in which a small minority of dissidents protesting in the most harmless way possible have to somehow be portrayed as the heirs of this oppressive legacy, still in power, still threatening to reverse progress. A couple thousand fans booing a ridiculous empty gesture at a sporting event is a threat to life and liberty, but a wealthy football league threatening to use the invasive power of surveillance technology to punish them (for breaking what law?) is just the poor, scrappy underdog trying to protect himself. St. George has become a pathetic spectacle, skewering tiny lizards and lashing out at anyone who dares to suggest that they aren’t fire-breathing monsters, or, furthermore, that he is actually becoming something of an oppressor himself. What will it take to bring a moment of crushing self-awareness to this old warrior? Or is it too late, and he’s just doomed to decline into violent senility?

1 2