Name the Enemy

By in identity, juxtapositions, race, the geist of the zeit, the great awokening, tribalism No Comments

One of the more significant milestones in America’s culture wars is the relatively recent convergence on the term “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) as the label to describe the collection of concepts and ideas associated with American liberalism’s cultural “awokening” on the issue of race.

It’s a significant milestone for a few reasons. The most obvious is that being able to accurately and collectively name a topic of discussion is a prerequisite for actually having that discussion (a point I recently made in an essay on the related topic of cancel culture). And until now, nothing has really stuck. Terms like intersectionality, social justice, and identity politics have had their place in certain contexts, but none have ever been specific or accurate enough to debate the actual ideas of this particular ideological turn in American liberalism. And as for “wokeness,” the term has referred more to a general political disposition or personality (often in relation to issues that go beyond race) and it, too, suffers from a lack of definition or association with a specific set of ideas. And besides not being a very sophisticated term, it’s now most often used derisively, which isn’t a sound or honest place from which to have any sort of good faith debate.

But the other reason CRT’s adoption is an important development is that as these ideas have matured and spread among America’s class of elites and professionals, they’ve begun to make their way into the actual workings of America’s public and private institutions.

— Shant Mesrobian, “Why the Great Awokening Isn’t Allowed to Have a Name”

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But in the meantime, we must understand:

1) Criticizing Critical Race Theory as it operates in 2021 does not require perusing the oeuvre of Kimberlé Crenshaw, and the critique is not invalidated by the differences between what articles like that contained and what’s happening in our schools now.

2) Criticizing Critical Race Theory does not mean teaching students that America has been nothing but great. Constructive dialogue about complex and sensitive issues is impossible within the pretense that all matters reduce to binary oppositions. The Elect cannot reasonably insist America be more sensitive in their perspectives while responding to all critique with sandbox logic based on yes vs. no, off vs. on, and Selma vs. utopia.

Quibbles and cavils and performance art over what we call what’s happening in our schools are just that. The urgent thing is not what we call these developments, and pretending you have to be a legal scholar to have anything to say about them but Amen.

— John McWhorter, “You Are Not a Racist to Criticize Critical Race Theory”

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And it’s vital for the rest of us to understand that these kinds of lessons are directly downstream of an ideology that, according to an early Critical Race Theory text, “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of Constitutional law.” For these reasons, CRT insists that what we have always understood as liberal education is, in fact, a lie, because liberalism assumes that we are all individuals, capable of reasoning with each other as equals, where, in fact, we are mere representatives of racial constructs which are part of a permanent struggle between the oppressors (white) and oppressed (non-white).

This is not teaching about critical race theory; it is teaching in critical race theory. And it is compulsory and often hidden from parents. It contradicts the core foundations of our liberal society; and is presented not as one truth to be contrasted with others, but as the truth, the basis on which all other truths are built. That’s why teaching based on CRT will make children see themselves racially from the get-go, why it will separate them into different racial groups, why it will compel white kids to internalize their complicity in evil, tell black kids that all their troubles are a function of white people, banish objective measurements of success to avoid stigmatizing failure, and treat children of different races differently in a classically racist hierarchy.

And this is why — crucially — it will suppress any other way of seeing the world — because any other way, by definition, is merely perpetuating oppression. As Kendi constantly reminds us, it is either/or. An antiracist cannot exist with a liberalism that perpetuates racism. And it’s always the liberalism that has to go.

…The question is: what can a liberal society do when almost all of its educational, media, business and cultural elites have adopted an ideology that believes that liberal society needs to be dismantled? And the answer is: not much.

— Andrew Sullivan, “Don’t Ban CRT. Expose It.”

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The American experiment is fragile. It has always been fragile and always will be fragile because it is so extremely unnatural. ‘Unnatural’ in this context means in conflict with human nature. Jonah Goldberg has described the fragility of the American system by comparing it to a garden hacked out of a tropical jungle. A garden surrounded by jungle is unnatural. The gardeners must tend it with unremitting care lest the jungle return.

Treating our fellow human beings as individuals instead of treating them as members of groups is unnatural. Our brains evolved to think of people as members of groups; to trust and care for people who are like us and to be suspicious of people who are unlike us. Those traits had great survival value for human beings throughout millions of years of evolution. People who were trusting of outsiders were less likely to pass on their genes than people who were suspicious of them. People who were loyal to their tribe were more likely to pass on their genes than people who stood apart.

…The combination of acquisitiveness and loyalty to the interests of one’s own group (be it defined by ethnicity or class) shaped human governments for the subsequent 10,000 years. The natural form of government was hierarchical, run by a dominant group that arranged affairs to its benefit and oppressed outsiders to a lesser or greater degree, usually greater. The rare attempts to try any other form of government were unstable and short-lived. The American founders’ idealism lay in their belief that an alternative was possible. Their genius was to design a system with multiple safeguards against the forces that had made previous attempts self-destruct.

America proved that a durable alternative to the natural form of government was possible — a constitutional republic combined with carefully circumscribed democracy. The idea behind that alternative eventually spread around the world, but neither the United States nor any other country that has made it work has ever been out of danger. If we decide that our system for tending the garden needs to be replaced, and if the replacement should prove to be even slightly less devoted to keeping nature at bay, the garden will be reclaimed by jungle within a few decades.

The introduction of identity politics into that carefully crafted constitutional system does not simply distract us from warding off the jungle. It is the jungle, the primitive sense of ‘us against them’ pressing in upon the garden. It not only permits but insists that the power of the state be used to reward favored groups at the expense of everyone else. That view of power is the defining characteristic of the natural form of government that humankind endured until the miracle at Philadelphia in 1787.

…Events since the summer of 2020 make me think it is too late to talk about if whites adopt identity politics. Many already have. That’s the parsimonious way to interpret the red-blue divisions over wearing masks, the widespread belief in red states that the 2020 election was stolen, and the rage that resulted in the invasion of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. This is all evidence that the federal government has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of many whites. If that reaction spreads, the continued ability of the federal government to enforce its edicts in the reddest portions of the nation will be thrown into question. The prospect of legal secession may be remote, but the prospect of reduced governability from Washington is not.

— Charles Murray, “Identity Crisis: How the Politics of Race Will Wreck America“

Obiter Scripta, no. 114

By in books, nietzsche, obiter scripta No Comments

But even Nietzsche’s antidemocratic moments are not all they are often cracked up to be. His philosophy, he wrote in 1887, will be best suited to those he calls “the most moderate”: “Those who do not require any extreme articles of faith; those who not only concede but love a fair amount of accidents and nonsense; those who can think of man with a considerable reduction of his value without becoming small and weak on that account.” These are the humans he considers “the strongest” — not those who can destroy the most, or the towering egotists of Ayn Rand’s imagination, but those pessimists who can withstand the most destruction without giving way to pity and resignation. “I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.” Like Don Quixote, the best pessimists have a strength of character and a sense of humor — for this world, both are needed.

— Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit

It amuses me to think that for all the competing radical claims on Nietzsche’s philosophy, for all the academics who have claimed the power to see into his heart of hearts and divine the true essence of his thought, it could be liberal individualism that proves most accommodating to his thought experiments after all. There’s certainly some surprising hints in that direction — his lifelong love of Epicurus and Montaigne, his paeans to humility and his disavowals of vindictiveness — could it be? Was Nietzsche a liberal individualist at heart whose enchanting rhetoric, like the broom of the sorcerer’s apprentice, simply got away from him and unleashed forces he couldn’t control? (I don’t think so, but like I said, it’s fun to imagine.)

We Proudly Declare Our Intractable Differences

By in juxtapositions, the geist of the zeit, tribalism No Comments

I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.

— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books

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Once upon a time, politics served the purpose of weaving together livable compromises out of divergent interests and values. We didn’t rely on political identities to give our lives meaning. Political parties, factions, and institutions were merely the instrumental means through which we brokered a relatively peaceful co-existence with those who didn’t see eye-to-eye with us. Occasionally, and often heroically, it was the basis upon which we mobilized opinion to annihilate those with truly anti-social agendas. But ultimately, it was the toolset with which we built a practical working peace.

Today, politics is a competition for tribal allegiance, the means by which we proudly declare our intractable differences with others. Like religion, it is an instrument we use to forge communities of kinship with one another, but only by declaring war on those who lie outside of them. It is no longer the basis for co-existence in a pluralist society, but the stick with which we draw our battle lines. It is the domain of sectarian holy war. In a democratic society, it will be the vehicle for our undoing.

— Leighton Woodhouse, “Fanatics“

Let Us Not Become Darker Ourselves On Their Account

By in foolosophy, free speech, moralizing, revillaging, the geist of the zeit, tribalism No Comments

Cameron Hilditch:

It’s true that the Overton window among Western elites is contracting like the trash compactor in the Death Star not only upon morally acceptable positions, but also on morally edifying ones. But the response of conservatives cannot be to lament the existence of this cultural regulation, or to pretend that there was a time when it didn’t exist. Instead, they have to defend the moral merits of their positions and argue that others (like the reverse-racism of intersectional politics and the mutilation of children by transgender activists) should be cancelled with unapologetic fervor. Our civilization cannot hide behind procedural liberalism when it comes to first principles, and it’s folly to pretend we can. Genuinely moral and political conflicts are, in some cases, unavoidable. Cancellation is the price we pay for civilization.

Hilditch’s point is one I worried about years ago — social norms have never resulted from opposing sides engaging in rational debate until consensus was achieved. At some point, the losing side surrenders or is beaten into sullen submission. The majority of people who don’t much care either way will go along with the new regime. Procedural liberalism, as wonderful as it is, is an anomaly. Tribal warfare is the norm. Without mutual trust and respect for the institutions in which proceduralism is embedded, tribalism will always take over. The fact that people on the left are so dismissive of concerns over cancel culture, if not positively supportive of it, is one of those revealed preferences indicating that they feel confident of controlling and directing it, not suffering from it. Most people are fine with tyrannical power as long as it’s assumed that they and their tribe will always be the ones wielding it.

Anyway, it’s true but trite that civilization has always depended on social sanctions as much as the rule of law. Cancel culture per se is a phenomenon of the late twenty-teens and early twenty-twenties, in which progressives harness the power of social media to punish and ostracize both enemies and erstwhile comrades for offenses both real and hallucinatory; petty vindictiveness in general has been around forever. Perhaps we can at least be thankful, as we watch the progressive ouroboros predictably continue to devour its tail in pursuit of perfect virtue, that we’re using tweets instead of guillotines this time around. Still, it saddens me to think that a charitable spirit of free speech, fair play and tolerance is one more thing we’ll have to pack up and take with us to the monastery, along with our books.

Obiter Scripta, no. 113

By in books, obiter scripta, waiting for the barbarians No Comments

We must accept the possibility that the habit of reading is a fad, long in duration, but now in its final stages — destined to be carried on in the future only by a few devotees. Horsemanship was, for over twenty centuries, an indispensable adult skill for the middle and upper classes in Europe and Asia, much more so than reading. And yet, within the space of a century, it has become merely an elite hobby. So may it be with reading. Computers will soon become so adept at spoken language and displaying information with icons that it is possible to imagine a generation arising that does not perceive written language to be necessary for the general public for day-to-day life — as a generation has already arisen that hardly knows how to read clocks, since time is everywhere displayed digitally. Our only hope is that the pleasures of reading, meager as they are in comparison to visual entertainment, will continue to seduce a regular few and prevent reading from becoming the technical skill of scientists and history professors. But that is a gamble with perilous odds, given the inconstancy of the human libido. Did not man and horse, after all, once seem as inseparable as…well, as man and woman once seemed?

— Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit

To the monasteries with us, my friends!

The Rectification of Names

By in the cult of multi, the geist of the zeit No Comments

Oliver Traldi:

But “critical race theory” is not the first name people like Rufo and Lindsay have used for the sort of thing they are talking about. Some have labeled the general phenomenon “wokeness.” That term has come under fire for being an appropriation of black slang. Before that, some called it “cultural Marxism.” That term was attacked for apparently anti-Semitic overtones. Jordan Peterson called it “postmodern neo-Marxism,” which was mocked for being an apparent contradiction in terms (I don’t myself think it’s an oxymoron). The term “postmodernism” is attacked for being unclear. When one simply calls it “social justice,” one hears the response that social justice is good by definition. And so on. You get the idea. There’s a concept or issue needing a name, but in the case of this one particular concept or issue, no name will do. We just need to discuss the problem of its name first, forever.

Park MacDougald:

I’m personally sympathetic to the argument that CRT has Marxist influences and overtones, but if it were genuinely Marxist, it would be hard to explain why it has been so eagerly adopted by major corporations, billionaires, and Ivy League universities, none of which are particularly interested in proletarian revolution. Rather, I think the meaning of CRT, wokeness, intersectionality, whatever, is simple and hiding in plain sight. It is nothing more, and nothing less, than the ideology of the modern Democratic Party. Or, more precisely, it is the ideological glue that holds together the modern Democratic coalition, with its new economy oligarchs, affluent college-educated professionals (particularly single women), socialists, and racial and sexual minorities (of course, these groups are not mutually exclusive). As Christopher Caldwell observed in a November essay in the New Republic, “civil rights, broadly understood” (his term for what I’m calling CRT) is the “reconciler-of-contradictions” within the Democratic Party, analogous to the role that anti-communism used to play in “fusionist” conservatism — that is, providing an ideological least common denominator that could unite the downscale religious believers and upscale businessmen and Cold War hawks who made up the Reagan coalition.

The Decibels of This Disenchanting Discourse Continue to Dampen the Day

By in language No Comments

Andrew Sullivan:

This is a kind of bewildering, private language. But the whole point of the guide is to make it our public language, to force other people to use these invented words, to make the entire society learn and repeat the equivalent of their own post-modern sanskrit. This is our contemporary version of what Orwell went on to describe as “newspeak” in Nineteen Eighty-Four: a vocabulary designed to make certain ideas literally unthinkable because woke language has banished them from use. Repeat the words “structural racism” and “white supremacy” and “cisheteropatriarchy” often enough, and people come to believe these things exist unquestioningly. Talk about the LGBTQIA2S+ community and eventually, people will believe it exists (spoiler alert: it doesn’t).

And that is the only recourse an average citizen has when buried by this avalanche of abstraction: ask the language-launderers what they are really talking about. When some doofus apologizes for the “terrible pain” they have caused to the whatever community, ask them to give a specific example of that “pain.” When someone says “structural racism,” ask: what actual “structures” are you referring to? How do they actually work? Give concrete examples.

When someone calls American society “white supremacy”, ask them how you could show that America is not a form of “white supremacy”. When someone uses the word “Latinx”, ask them which country does that refer to. When someone says something is “problematic”, ask them to whom? When you’re told you’re meeting with members of the BIPOC or AANHPI communities, ask them first to translate and then why this is in any way relevant, and why every single member of those communities are expected to have the same opinion. And when you’re told that today is IDAHOBIT Day, ask them if you can speak to Frodo.

Yes, some humor is key to fighting back. But the core truth is: we do not have to speak this debased and decadent language. It is designed to overwhelm and confuse and smother and subdue. And the more it is used by elites, the more normal Americans, still living in the real world, feel utterly alienated by their masters, and the deeper our divide goes. Reclaiming our discourse from these ideological contraptions will make our writing better. It will help us think more clearly. And it could help re-start a genuinely national conversation. In everyday English, the language of democracy.

I think it’s adorable that Sullivan seems to believe that these impertinent questions would result in welcome enlightenment for those being questioned, followed by honest, good-faith conversation. Who knew that human resources departments and academic grievance studies could be dissolved by the equivalent of a child pointing out that the Emperor is a nudist? Did Sullivan likewise give up his religious faith when asked by Christopher Hitchens to define his terms and provide his proof?

Most amusing of all, though, is that final paragraph: in a newsletter about Orwell, our politics, and the English language, we get this flowery call to action including that old favorite of mine, “a national conversation.” This is the language of newspaper editors and op-ed columnists, the gatekeepers of a dying industry who spend all their time talking to their peers and deluding themselves into believing that they’re mouthpieces for the zeitgeist. Leave aside the fact that “conversation,” in the abstract, is one of the very terms that have been captured, tortured, and brainwashed into service as progressive jargon (whenever a progressive says, “We need to have a conversation about X,” it’s a safe bet that they mean, “Sit down and shut up while we lecture you about how this or that anodyne thing is actually racistsexisttransphobic”). Let’s follow his advice and ask him: What does that even mean? “Re-start”? Does that mean there once was a time when a “national conversation” existed? If so, when? Assuming we get it “re-started,” in a nation of 330 million people, who gets to participate, and how? How will their representatives be chosen? Where will this “conversation” take place? Are we all jumping on the same Zoom call at an appointed time? What is the babbling bedlam of social media, if not the closest thing to a national conversation we could get? And what sane person wants more of that?

As an aside: Orwell’s rules for clear writing and thinking didn’t prevent him from believing in the prospect of a “true” socialism that would somehow avoid the inevitable denouement, so maybe we could stop acting as if he were some kind of oracle. It’s a fine thing to refuse to bullshit and to be bullshat, but it’s just one virtue among many, none of which will truly save us.

It’s Not the Way It Used to Be. People Ain’t the Way They Used to Be

By in antisocial media, juxtapositions, revillaging, the madness of crowds 6 Comments

Many moons ago, I realized that by the time I learn enough about a big “news” story to realize I don’t care, the story turns out to be BS anyway. And so it is with the tale of Ellie Kemper, the actress and comedian from The Office and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, who was branded a “KKK Queen” this week.

Why? Because people started tweeting a rumor, based on a misunderstanding about some debutante ball in St. Louis that Kemper attended as a teenager over 20 years ago, and Twitter put it on their “What’s happening” sidebar of trending topics. It turns out that the claim is complete garbage and Kemper has never had anything to do with the Klan, but mere facts won’t do her or anyone else much good in 2021 America. The mob is always hungry for blood, and Kemper is this week’s special.

Once somebody decides to go after you on social media, there’s nothing you can do to defend yourself. Defying the mob is framed in the press as “doubling down,” and groveling for forgiveness just emboldens your tormentors. Kafka was an amateur, man.

There’s an entire media ecosystem devoted to whipping up these fake outrages for clicks. Why go after Ellie Kemper? Why not go after Ellie Kemper. Or you, or me, or anybody. We can be cancelled at any moment, for any reason or no reason at all.

If you’ve got enough money, all you can do is hide out until the mob moves on to another target. But if you can’t afford to just disappear for days or weeks or months… shrug emoji!

This sort of crap generates traffic for Twitter, which is why they amplify it. They know there’s a mob with torches and pitchforks at the ready, just waiting to be pointed toward the next victim. And Jack Dorsey sits on his billions and watches what he’s done.

With great power comes great irresponsibility.

— Jim Treacher

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Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box. Mrs. Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. “Come on,” she said. “Hurry up.”

Mrs. Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she said, gasping for breath. “I can’t run at all. You’ll have to go ahead and I’ll catch up with you.”

The children had stones already, and someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles.

Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. “It isn’t fair,” she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head.

Old Man Warner was saying, “Come on, come on, everyone.” Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.

“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

— Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery“

Once You’ve Made That Money, It Costs More Now. It Might Cost a Lot More Than You Think

By in books, foolosophy, getting and spending No Comments

Ben Sixsmith:

I use celebrities only as an example of a depressing fact about human beings. We refer to “f*ck you money” as being that mystical point at which one is rich enough to achieve blissful independence from the presumptuous demands of bosses, clients or critics. But almost no one achieves it. People with tens of millions of pounds in the bank want to get tens of millions more. People at the top of their professions have no wish to lose their exalted spots. There is no point at which desire lets conscience reign supreme.

Our library reopened to the public for the first time in a year. (Speaking of which, the hospital is the only place that still requires masks; everything else is getting back to normal — even in Charlottesville, a city so progressive it elects mayors like this, freedom is ringing.) I went in and looked over the new nonfiction releases, where I saw Confess, the autobiography of Judas Priest singer Rob Halford. I’m always up for reading a yarn about the glory days of classic Brih’ish ‘eavy meh’ul, so I checked it out.

Halford was one of the first metal icons to come out of the closet, in 1998, when it took some actual courage as a public figure to do so, unlike today, when publicly identifying as someone in need of attention is just something you do concurrently with the announcement of your new book/podcast/TV show/clothing line. It’s poignant to be reminded how even a rich celebrity could live in fear and frustration, terrified of being exposed, even before the all-seeing Eye of the Internet. The more money they made, the more records they sold, the more arenas they packed, the more Halford feared what the exposure of his homosexuality would do, not only to him, but to his bandmates. It wouldn’t be fair to them, he thought, to jeopardize their hard-earned careers, just so that he could fully express himself. And so he stayed in the closet out of loyalty to others.

If money were all people cared about, then it would be much easier to have a “fuck-you” amount of it. Ironically, that point will never be reached because even rich celebrities care about some things — status, love, and other soft vulnerabilities — more than riches.

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