Sharon's Fridge and The Whole Point of Reading
Modern ideologies are designed to empower the already powerful at the expense of families communities and entire nations – understanding works the other way
Hey folks!
My long time readers will have already heard me say “I really miss Marxist feminists from the eighties” – but for my chums on the right, please don’t tune-out – what I’m going after here is a Socratic critique of modern feminism, along with much else (that is, arguments that might actually get through to the thoughtful, rather than just feel satisfying to say). Function over catharsis, every damn time, right?
But really, as so often with such huge sentimental generalizations, I’m thinking of one much missed friend in particular, and her truly sublime combination of intellectual acuity and generous all-suffusing love.
When I was at my most hopeless, confused, rudderless and reckless (just after escaping my cult, at age 16) Sharon, the mother of a dear friend I met at a dance club, lifted me up again, made me feel clever and decent and valuable – like something precious with great potential – instead of unwanted garbage. When we talk of things which we cannot ever adequately express our thanks for, as long as we live – we mean this kind of stuff – deeply human gifts of patience and caring which transform us forever, and in raising us up and investing us with hope, obligate us to lift our heads up and care more for others, also.
I don’t want to give you the wrong impression – it wasn’t an intense effort (that probably would have scared me off anyhow, I felt so completely undeserving of love), it was a steady drip of nourishment as an aside, an attitude, an interest. It was about her basic way of being, and loving others around her.
In a funny way, I might also have said I missed 1950s housewives, but it took me many more years of living and understanding, to finally appreciate how many qualities my own wife’s mother Helen shared with Sharon, my Marxist feminist icon. No less than Sharon, Helen was instinctively recognized by waifs and runaways all around her whole neighbourhood as a source of sanctuary, love and hope. My wife Catherine even remembers that there were always treats hidden in the very back of the fridge which were not for Helen’s own daughters, but for other special young friends who needed her (and who remember to this day, decades later, what her simple demonstrations of caring meant to them). I am ashamed to admit I did not fully appreciate Helen’s magic until I was charged with delivering her eulogy, and afterwards, met (and deeply hugged) so many who had been profoundly touched by her love.
The point is that despite huge differences in temperament and intellectual direction, both of them changed the lives of countless other individuals, simply by really being there for them, in dark lonely and frightening moments – and they did it without ever once mentioning it, let alone seeking credit.
When I talk about the difference between a tool for analysis and a program, especially for leftists, I’m talking about people who could use Marxist economic analysis, and still show others great love, as compared to cruel dogmatists who would do mass harm to others, in pursuit of disproven theories. Many of my friends on the right mix these up – understandably – because for many of them (younger ones especially), they’ve seen far more cruel inhumane use of leftist dogma, than open love and smart tool use. That wrong-headed conflation is strong for many on the right, but it is the fault of false leftists that they ever made that link. I swear I’ve spent four decades saying “idiots and assholes aren’t ever on the team!” To me they self-disqualify by demonstration of low morality (ideas, ahead of real people). But of course there are many faction people who just want crushing numbers, instead of quality and message. My friends on the right also have the same problem – too many joiners really don’t get it.
There for an emotional thrill, the party, ‘cause someone they think is cute is into it – posers. Yes, they do bulk-out the numbers – but they also frequently give your opponents fantastic reasons to hate your side!
The mindless joiner-hordes on the other side are always the dumbest scariest people we can think of, when we want to take cheap-shots at our opponents. But they are not ever the ones we count on, on our own side (surely a clue, at least).
Sharon’s library did many fine things for my mind (introduced me to Doris Lessing, amongst others) but it was the fridge in her early nineties kitchen which displayed two cartoons I still can’t forget. One had a map of the muddle east including the nations of IsSurreal, I-Rant, and I-Rave. The other showed a long line outside the soup kitchen, one dishevelled fellow turns to the guy behind him in line and says, “Hey, did you hear? Capitalism won, pass it on!”
Every time I hear Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis – that liberal capitalist democracy had conquered all challengers and proven superior for all cases and all time – once taken dead seriously, and now the most ridiculous record of arrogance, I go there.
This is a powerful anchor for me, because at the time this triumphalist theory emerged, many who were doing just fine didn’t even notice (or care) that millions were already being brutally and suddenly impoverished by the new onrush of liquidation-consolidation capitalism (a mid-point development on the way to modern licensing rent-seeking and stock manipulation capitalism – which is even further removed from the real physical production capitalism which alone generates durable prosperity).
I have a sublime essay to share today (link below) which goes directly at the question in detail (and with great eloquence), but the short version is that Marxist feminism in the eighties (I want to say, pre-identitarian-mutation) still had a keen eye out for the grand manipulations of the powerful, to suppress citizen’s rights and interests, and force them to serve capital, instead of enriching their whole community.
And when I say grand, I don’t just mean expensive, the way we often think about it nowadays, but also in terms of the long arc of time. As I’ve mentioned many times over the years, and is absolutely clear on the open historical record, the strategic leaders of the western world implemented some very far-reaching cultural programs after the second world war, because they were terrified by their fresh awareness that such dangerous madness as fascism really could happen anywhere, even to them (us).
One of the ways this project is now being talked about (thanks to a book which I have yet to read, which inspired many great essays that I have enjoyed), is “The Destruction of the Strong Gods” – that is, the deliberate long-term undermining of those things we humans always feel most passionate about defending – the theory being that without so many points of deep passion in common, we’d be less troublesome in general, and certainly incapable of falling into mass madness via shared emotion.
Back to forever preparing for the previous war. That, and “be careful what you ask for...”
I just want to stop to emphasize something here, which is super important – many of us disagree with the outcomes and unexpectedly ruinous consequences of this project, but unless we start from their legitimate fear of fascism (and give it proper weight, which was massive) we mistake their motivations.
I have written a couple of times about the way that popular moral crusades actually drove the first push by Europeans to colonize Africa. After centuries of enriching their empires with slavery, the public which had just freshly weaned itself from that unholy benefit, decided any legacy slavery remaining in Africa was now their most pressing moral concern – and it must be stopped at all costs – even if they had to destroy traditional African civilization across the entire continent (as they did) to do that.
Yes – capitalists by the plenty seized upon this – as did grand strategists and exploiters of every stripe – and we could even argue the public ‘moral demand’ was encouraged, to allow them new evil leverage.
(They did just happen to become so outraged, right when the invention of Quinine finally allowed Europeans to travel further into the interior, without being struck down in huge numbers by malaria).
But all the same – had the masses not demanded intervention – in a state of complete ignorance about the nations they wanted to invade – the rest of the project would have been politically impossible.
We can now look with hindsight and say “had the people only known where it would lead, they would have demanded something different” (though that isn’t actually obvious), but it is still crucial to notice that there was a very sympathetic and positive motivation at the start of a great cascade of evil that still reverberates and causes harm to this day. (see: France just getting kicked-out the Sahel, FINALLY)
So we should begin by recognizing that it wasn’t crazy for them to want to think of ways to try to avoid the sort of social malady and mass-madness that leads to fascism. The problem, as so often, was their starting assumptions. The biggest error among those (still very active and destructive to this day) being the idea that social relations are arbitrary constructs, which can be deliberately changed by clever theorists, in order to ‘hack the code’ for better outcomes.
Before anyone thinks I’m calling for lawless anarchy – let me be clear – policy can indeed skew outcomes in a positive or negative direction. Can’t help thinking of the financier Charlie Munger’s gem “Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcomes” – the arrogance I’m talking about is the idea that government has a right to go way further than just lubricating and fair-playing-field-ing individuals – not just helping ‘the people’ do whatever they think right, rather, telling them what they should and must think.
Crossing that line – from the idea that the government is a thing which emerges from the popular will – to the idea that the government has the power and even duty to shape popular will, was the great sin and the dangerous hubris, all at once. A transgression not of any one right, but of the very idea of citizens rights to defy the state and the powerful. A clear and in every way dangerous undermining of democracy.
Of course ‘experts’ function better or worse, depending on the quality of institutions. We can encourage cynicism or civic duty with policy incentives, but we’ve even been doing that wrong for almost a century.
(And yes, for one last important digression – we must also acknowledge that some highly evil people are completely convinced they are doing their civic duty, as they do evil – because they’re stuck on a whole complex of wrong-headed hubristic or power-seeking axioms). Good intentions aren’t enough – neither is simple contact with reality – you need both of those and also the modesty not to trespass against common sense and the rights of others who see and live things differently.
Every theory that relies upon compelling, rather than advantaging and convincing, begins with righteousness and ends with violence (against common understanding and hopeful young spirits, even where not physical). Problem is, these days, we are so fractionated, factionalized and furious – ALL our theories are crazy and obnoxious in this way. In your face – fer us or agin’ us – kill or be killed – take no prisoners.
All of which is to say – we are the kind of a public that can get upset in large numbers in very stupid ways – and we ought to be watching OUR OWN TEAM (where we can have most effect) to help real community re-emerge, everywhere possible. That means aspiring toward talking and trusting ‘across the aisles’, not endless slap-fights.
Now let me get back to the deliberate great unravelling of western culture (via state level Anti-Fa?)
Having given them full (perhaps even excessive) credit for relatable motives, we now have to look carefully at some of the details they decided on, after conferring on themselves the power to wreck.
What sort of things did they identify as the potentially dangerous sources of passion and trouble which ought to be gradually eroded by a vast plan of consumerist distraction and disempowerment?
This list is where the arrogance really shows – downright frightening – basically – all the stuff we humans have loved most, since the dawn of civilization.
They identified the loyalty bonds of: Family, Community, Religion, Race, Territory, and even our quirky local cultural distinctions and expressions (though state projects to flatten those actually began much earlier – with radio and its novel capacity to generate national narratives), all of these were considered passions which people had rioted or fought wars over, which should be deliberately suppressed. (Fatal safety-ism?)
I have to stop here to note for my chums on the left, one of the most interesting things I’ve discovered, reading smart thinkers on the new right, is that looking at culture with a deeply religious or long-arc cultural perspective (and that special sense of greater historical timescale, also) predicted decades ago, and now very clearly reveals, many of the frightening consequences of this deliberate (and expensive) experiment in cultural engineering. It isn’t just things like using mass media and advertising to supplant involved citizenship with mere consumerism, eroding our sense of being in a democracy - real active coders, not mere locked-out users. Even things which we on the left have long thought sacred like converting education into edutainment, turned out to be just as fraught with huge reverberating unanticipated consequences, in many cases far worse than the problems the programs were meant to solve. (Attention-span is the one true universal mental tool, and we spent tax dollars to wreck it, and make that, the new normal).
But for my personal learning-curve, I got there with a bunch of other western socialists in the eighties, by asking “cui bono?” (who profits?) Again, just to be super clear, I abhor state-collectivist solutions, (and began raising objections which never ceased, as soon as I heard “Dictatorship of the proletariat”) but like so many complexes of ideas on the left, the analysis, used for purpose, is useful and productive. It’s the vast majority of wacky theories of “what to do about it” which have proven weak to lousy.
Caravaggio was an amazing painter, not so great a tennis partner (he literally murdered, over a game) – so I go to him for painting, not tennis. I could challenge his painting with his tennis record, but that wouldn’t just be confusing logical types with a fundamentally dishonest aim, it would also be dumb!
Take the understanding on offer, carefully observing what the tool is good for – reject the proven error.
Now here’s a crucial thing my chums on left and right rarely see at the same time.
TONS of people with weird-outcome intentions (some well-meant, but with crazy or presumptuous axioms, and some with outright exploitative and dishonest intentions) jumped on this big government cultural fire-sale play.
JUST LIKE COLONIALISM – having established a crazy plan (invade to “do good”) combines from finance, industry and the citizenry (often lead by do-gooder aristocrats, just as now) piled-on fast, to “help the state” and of course grab their own spot on the ground floor of a fast-growing enterprise. (See the many USAID links, from last time).
This means that my religious friends can find clear real valid evidence of assholes from the left doing them great damage – sometimes in ignorance (good intentions, crazy axioms) sometimes with coldly cynical tribalist spite.
BUT my friends on the left can find the exact same kind of strong true evidence for the way monopoly capitalism has deliberately eroded community – and are just as correct to see these signs and conspiracies (not theoretical – we’re living them!)
Even my secular chums in the middle and the libertarian side find plenty of strong true evidence of do-gooder corporatists (a hybrid neither of the polarized tribes likes to acknowledge, though they are EVERYWHERE) doing steady damage to long term citizens rights, freedoms and ranges of expression and lifestyle.
Again – all are correct, legitimate, worth railing against – and still not the place where it started (though opposing the specific quality of hubris and invasion which is common to all three destructive mass misunderstandings, really is a great place to meet and find perhaps unexpected common ground).
As a fellow who spent a lot of time trying to understand the Soviet Union while it was still a thing (and the history, rise and downfall of that vast project of failed idealism with screwy axioms) I have to point out that they also ran an anti-fascist experiment post war, which was almost an equal opposite failure to our own – since they were forever trying to create a new model human which did (and could) not exist.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Russia in the nineties – and USA screwing them into desperation and ruin, going for wholesale asset-stripping and short term weapons profits by expanding NATO, regardless of the societal cost, instead of helping them in a desperate moment and thus easily (that is, affordably) earning what they now want most – an alliance of the northern states against China.
Can’t help thinking about the way the early CIA toppled Democracy in Iran to re-install the widely hated Shah (as a favour for a British oil company) – how much would they pay now, to have that secular parliamentary democracy back in power again? (Are geopolitical windows, like limited-time sales?)
We in the west have never before been faced with quite such a stark presentation of the split between future visions. Some, in their fear of the obvious unravelling of the old systems of aspiration control and compliance, clearly want us to be eternally instructed by the stern authority of “our betters” and have every aspect of our lives limited by their paradigms (whatever they may happen to be, at any given time).
Take the worst of that post-war social arrogance and preachy invasiveness, and add AI web control. (I did a whole piece about denial, last time – or I’d go-off on a great big rant about it, right here).
NO – we do not want to adopt supremacist techo-feudalism (not left inflected or right inflected) just because tribes full of ignorant idiots don’t want to look in the mirror or have a quiet thought.
Daddy ain’t going to solve this for us – and if you’re still looking for that from the state – grow up.
Others remain convinced that humans almost always make better decisions than governments, and organic growth with fair guard-rails (encouraging experiments creative growth and small scale business, while discouraging community-and-innovation-stifling monopolies) beats the heck out of any model of monopolist tyranny dystopia which has ever been presented. There is no soma good enough, (nor an endlessly face-kicking boot, big enough). Time for a vision with room for love again, enchantment too.
The reason I keep running directly at the (so far, brick-wall) of anti-tribalism, is that the people in the second group, who have deep trust in the ingenuity and moral insight of families and communities (and yes, even nations) are not found on the left or the right alone, but all over the spectrum. One of the great frustrations of my life, is how often I see the overlap, even while they are engaged in gleeful tribal put-downs (based, as the most satisfying ones so often are, on a fundamentally dishonest understanding – conflating outcomes with motivations and errors with character).
This distinction – between the belief that nations are formed from the bottom-up (spirit of citizens), or by state institutions, top-down with both the duty and right of mass compulsion (that is, either an aspirationally representative state, or a programmatically institutionally authoritarian one) is perhaps an even clearer clue than the citizen/consumer contrast I’ve drawn so sharply of late. Because if you don’t see real people living lives very different from yours, only abstractions and opponents, you can’t gather and trust.
Now – lest you think I’m Pollyanna-ing my way past a whole pile of complex sticking points, in order to give some faint bullshit hope of a popular front, I’ll just say clearly – no, I’m not. I’m saying only that the most fundamental humane aims are shared by a clear majority of people who actively care and think.
The powerful and manipulative only want us all to think that our relativistic Hatfields (or McCoys, as the case may be) are a vicious mob of frothing violent nut-cases, because they want to keep us so afraid of each other, that we keep authorizing their invasive and often even violent state force (so frequently corrupted as to make that a bad bet for rights, from every side of the spectrum). So far, we keep falling for their propaganda games – after January the Sixth, people on the left and centre failed utterly to defend the rights of protesters on the right (ultimately sent 1500 to prison, the vast majority for non-violent offences – they literally turned ‘being there’ into a felony).
So far, there is no sign of any more principled behaviour from the right – though I am heartened by several nuanced and useful contributions like that of FIRE, from the emerging anti-tribalist “why not try principles?” side of the argument. (Still a tiny minority, but smart and well motivated – a hopeful sign of useful activity, if not yet quite the way we can actually move forward together, sincerely).
The point is that defending the rights or speech of people whose speech you like is easy. The important proof of principle is to show up and speak up when it isn’t your team getting hammered – because that alone proves that you remain on the side of all citizens rights, always. Stand for principle and for people, against gross state force.
Much as I hate factionalism itself – whichever faction figures this out first, will get a HUGE public goodwill boost, at no cost whatsoever (that is, the rising numbers and energy will overwhelm special interest objections, by making modest goals politically achievable, rather than seeking grand ideal maximalist outcomes in vain, as can and does happen so often, when any faction feels shut-out entirely, too long).
Not saying I am expecting a sudden outburst of principle to erupt (certainly not holding my breath) only that such basic common human consideration remains low-hanging fruit, for all of us. Free wealth, in fact, because recognizing the key value of common citizens rights (especially to resist and/or protest public institutions and even the state itself, on principle) is one of the first places where I’ve seen many tribalists first begin to lay down their arms and talk. You went out on a limb for our peeps, even though your peeps gave you shit for it? Hey, tell me about that, that isn’t a story any of my peeps have told me.
Again, no Pollyanna-ing (or ignoring the huge complex of dangers of idealist solutions). I’m saying we need to be talking, because we need cross pollination of best ideas and insights from everyone. Shared energies for solution, even more than that.
And for those of my friends who take great pleasure in holding an opposing tribe in contempt (still an outright majority, in these polarized times), rest assured. Taking this one step of both extending principle to the other side (being a loyal opposition, rather than a treacherous heel) and also listening to their attempts to understand you, really will not rot your brain or corrupt your ideological purity.
In fact – if you do decide to go on enjoying sport-contempt for awhile after, you’ll be able to do it with far more devastating precision, because you’ll be going after actual weaknesses you’ve begun to think about, rather than the cheap tribal caricatures both sides use so often, to no useful effect whatsoever.
I mean you do you, of course – but effect is what we’re after here, isn’t it?
After all, creating a trap of frustration, then maintaining and outright fetishizing that trap for emotional entertainment (see a superb critical essay about “The Patriarchy” below) is sadomasochism, not politics.
For my younger friends, who grew up with blurred boundaries already, let me assure you that all the nifty things that happen only inside your own head are not ever politics. People who tell you they are, are trying to use you, to get some kind of power or satisfaction from the transaction. Don’t buy it.
Politics is IRL (In Real Life) ONLY – and like the man said “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
Make a friend who you never agree with, but still respect (you’ll learn and grow more than you will from a hundred meetings of like (hive)-minded). Like I said above about not being contaminated, but at very least greatly improving your critique, always remember John Stuart Mill’s lovely line
“The man who knows only his own side of an argument, knows precious little of that.”
The other thing Sharon makes me think about is the purpose of culture. I don’t mean the heroic (and or ridiculous) sufferings of the artiste, I mean the way ideas percolate and show up in different forms and combinations, at different strengths. The period from the sixties to the nineties was a super strong time for science fiction in particular – and you don’t have to be a fan-boy to find real literature here.
Doris Lessing’s books (thanks again, Sharon) remain helpful to me decades later, for being so deeply insightful about the ways humans relate (small scale and huge). Her “Briefing for a descent into hell” is still the scariest fictional portrayal I’ve seen of our pattern of decline. “Shikasta” even more dazzlingly, goes from epic timescales in the opening, to a story about the “Trial of the White Race” in a time of global breakdown and chaos. Some outside forces are trying to help us get it right and heal – but some don’t want things to go well at all, they love chaos. Many of them, certain and righteous.
“The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire” is probably the best first-read, for her science fiction. Taking so much of modern politics in a context just enough unlike us, so she can be devastatingly honest and revealing (about our own wilful mass-stupidities, especially). Every time I hear some imbecile with a megaphone spouting angry ignorant shite (and getting a crowd to answer it, gleefully), I think of the way this book opens, with a doctor arriving to treat his planet’s ambassador, because the poor bastard has been struck down by the local disease of undulant rhetoric.
And if you want to understand how sweet passionate kids can go way wrong into madness her not at all science fiction piece “The Good Terrorist” is an absolute must. Again, razor-sharp insights throughout.
Mind you, it was the author Sharon’s brilliant (also generous and influential) partner got me into, who I really can’t get out of my head these days. John Brunner singlehandedly invented Cyberpunk (though he is rarely credited – just read his outstanding early seventies “Shockwave Rider” and you’ll know it too – then devour “Stand on Zanzibar” and “The Sheep Look Up” also).
His peak period was late sixties to early seventies, and he saw a bleak future ahead, including “Muckers” (people run amuck) who just liked to wreck things (kill people) for fun, out of boredom, or for a moment of attention. Terrortainment.
He also predicted special zones (whole cities) where citizens could live tax free, and even get a small allowance, because the government had completely given up on providing basic services to them altogether (too expensive, infrastructure too far degraded). Fertile new havens for crazy artists, criminals and eccentrics of all kinds.
“Stand on Zanzibar” (for which he even invented a very catchy French-hybrid slang) is a rush of a book – super exciting for any writer (he said in an interview later, that while writing it, his feet hardly touched the floor for weeks, which is so sympathetic it makes me laugh out loud, still). Critics appreciated the skill and imagination, but criticized him for such a dark future vision – so he came back with “The Sheep Look Up” – twice as bleak and hard-hitting (opens with a meeting of insurance executives panicking because actuarial lifespans are decreasing fast, threatening their whole business model).
He also gave us “Trainites” who were huge fans of the brilliant reclusive inventor Austin Train, who invented an increasingly popular steam-powered car, which his fans were sure would save the environment after all (and give them lots of social hero points, for jumping on the bandwagon first).
Funny enough already – but the bit that gives me shivers is that he has Train himself (and others) come to the conclusion that steam-powered cars actually aren’t the solution, in fact they are directly harmful – but they do finally know how we can make prosperity and atmospheric health work together, won’t be easy, but if we can just convince enough people to think clearly, and understand the realities involved...
Of course the trainites – by then a furious righteous mob – become the exact immovable social force standing in the way of saving humanity itself. I mean sure, maybe a bit too ‘nail on the head’ but the guy wrote it in 1969, ‘kay?
So when I tell my young friends to make friends with books – find writers they love, then keep looking further, for stuff they don’t know they love yet, it isn’t just because we get so many great and inspiring ideas, and because they give us so much pleasure. Books can be medicinal too, innoculants, even.
Especially for a world filled with trainites, muckers, good terrorists – and so much undulant rhetoric.
So – where do I go, when I sit down to write? Heart first, always.
I wrote my second-last book, Stymie and Toffel, because I was heartbroken by how much vast scale tragedy children are now faced with. Not just the unavoidable degradations of any decadent (late stage) society, they are also outright taught stuff which definitely worries them greatly, but they can’t do anything much about. Learned helplessness frustration and hopelessness – how any of that could “help the environment” is beyond me – but there is no question it hurts the hearts of a whole lot of children deeply.
So – seeing the deluge of hopelessness propaganda, I did an end-run around the tangle of their (also faulty) central arguments. I said, okay, we can have a bit of fun with a dystopia, by turning the whole thing on it’s head!
Stymie and Toffel are a couple of orphaned kids who are taken in by a childless couple with a spare room. The setting is a Toronto without gasoline engines or a central electric power grid (plenty of junk-workarounds, though). Donkey carts are back (and elevator operators who hand-turn geared winches to lift people-baskets, to keep all those high-rise buildings useful), and the whole point of their crazy adventure is just to point out – HUMAN KINDNESS WILL SURVIVE EVERYTHING.
I mean that, too. We get knocked down, we make new hope for and with each other, again and again. I honestly don’t know of anything more central to what people are.
Love and loyalty and being someone’s rock without ever saying a word, friends and challenge and danger and wits – even communities borne of appreciation interest or talent – that’s what humans do – not governments or experts, and not just during our high watermarks or great flowerings. Sometimes the most bittersweet rich and moving works, come from just this sort of downward phase of a great culture. When Ironic Verdigris finally begins to set in.
Anyhow, I owed it to Sharon and Helen to try to give a whole lot of scared kids a hug in a book, and assure them that friends and love and loyalty and all of their dreams will still count, even if things do get a bit screwy, for the next few years (decades?).
Don’t ever stop trying, or knowing that bothering to do the good thing is always worth it.
Even if you never told another soul you helped, you helped.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ll put a link to my post about Stymie and Toffel below. Still have several copies left, just drop me an email if you’re interested (used to have a nice spiffy automated store at my old WordPress site, but that’s down for good).
Stymie and Toffel
Hello friends! I am overjoyed to announce my latest book - Stymie and Toffel - a whimsical Toronto tale of dystopian uplift for older kids and especially imaginative adults, with 19 superb illustrations by Andrew (Rewfoe) Foerster, has finally arrived, is utterly fantastic and is now for sale!
But I really don’t mean to be flogging shamelessly (already blushing, actually) just advocating for love.
As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry put it, “love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
Which is a great set-up for a piece that looks kind of trivial (so many dumb arbitrary ‘rankings’ these days) but actually contains a beautiful clue, to a theme I can never repeat enough. Within limits, we live in the universe we acknowledge. If you don’t believe in love and honour, you won’t see much of them. But if you do believe in love and honour and family and friends and community, your whole life gets richer because of that openness and awareness on your part.
Same goes for art, of course – some days the whole world can seem like it is trying to teach you a painting, or a symphony, or a great novel which will finally explain everything to the dullards, with perfect elegance and humour. But it works for many other kinds of awareness too, engineering, textiles, cooking, gardening and cultivating – how much we can be bothered, is how big our world gets.
And “...Our wellbeing depends on our PERCEPTION of others’ benevolence...” – just wow, right?
“...Following this year’s theme of “caring and sharing,” among the report’s key findings were widespread pessimism “about the benevolence of others.” The report cited studies where researchers dropped wallets on the street in cities around the world and found that people were far more likely to return the wallets than expected among those surveyed.
Learning that fact – that the world is kinder than you expect – can be helpful on its own, the report says.
“There is a wealth of evidence about the extent of caring behaviour around the world,” the report reads. “Our wellbeing depends on our perceptions of others’ benevolence, as well as their actual benevolence. Since we underestimate the kindness of others, our wellbeing can be improved by receiving information about their true benevolence.”
Loneliness was another challenge identified in the research, especially among young people. Researchers found in some regions that larger households of four to five people were associated with the most happiness, but that as recently as 2023, 19 per cent of young adults globally said they had “no one they could count on for social support,” up nearly 40 per cent from 2006.
Gestures as simple as sharing a meal were associated with lower levels of loneliness, and could potentially contribute to well-being overall, the research showed.”
Canada Slips to 18th in World Happiness Rankings - from CTV
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” (H.L Mencken).
Now here is that superb Marxist feminist critique of modern feminism (Sharon would have loved it). The tricky thing about things we care about, is that we have a very hard time really seeing what they are!
This is also a great example of a Socratic approach – use arguments which are already familiar, to challenge arguments which have taken on a strange form. (Saves a lot of fighting about terms, and begins from intellectual respect, unlike so many simply frustra(ted and ting) exchanges).
“...Feminists enjoy the slogan: “Smash the Patriarchy.” But here’s the thing: capitalism smashed the patriarchy because a regime of fixed sex-based roles, rigid hierarchical authority, and paternal control over both household and women’s sexuality were incompatible with its forces of production.
Capitalism needs women as wage labourers and consumers and as mothers and wives. The pre-capitalist family—with its extended obligations and paternal control over reproduction and sexuality—became a fetter to capitalist development. Capitalism dissolved these obligations, replacing them with market dependence. Sex and intimacy were increasingly commodified, and today, sexuality itself is a key site of profit, from advertising to pornography to dating apps.
First-wave feminism emerged during the decline of the Father as Master—the figure who laid down the Law. Patriarchal power was vertical, flowing from the top down, and enforced through institutions like the family, the church, private property, and the state. This authority was explicit, tied to men’s positions as kings, lords, priests, and heads of households. But the rigid, localized authority of the Father was contradictory to capitalist development. By the time second-wave feminism hit the shore, the Father as Master was but a shadow—a socio-symbolic relic haunting a system that had structurally, if not symbolically, fully humbled him.”
– and
“…The Patriarchy1 fantasy is far from benign: feminism can only sustain this imaginary by keeping the ghost of the despotic Father alive, forever misrecognising the real subsumption of patriarchal relations by capital as its own victory, a story of “women’s liberation.” In reality, feminism’s role under capitalism is to manage contradictions. Big Sister Feminism doesn’t fight patriarchy; she manages relations between and amongst the sexes on capitalism’s behalf. Capitalism still needs wives and mothers, of course, but it also needs women as workers, consumers, prostitutes, and OnlyFans content creators. The breakdown of patriarchal rule created a void, leaving men and women unsure about the new “rules of the game.” Big Sister does nothing to abolish the conditions that generate this neurosis—precarity, commodified intimacy, economic atomisation. Instead, she obsesses over the dangers of “toxic masculinity,” endlessly devising (and selling) new awareness campaigns, speech codes, and HR policies to justify her role as the only thing standing between society and the unleashed inner Andrew Tate.”
And here is a perfect complementary piece going further into the psychology (the meaning, not the use)
Here is another great deep think piece from the always insightful “Tree of Woe” about Techno Feudalism and Digital Serfdom (Shockwave Rider comes immediately to mind again – should we induct Alvin Toffler next to Edward Teller in the pantheon of PLEASE DON’T FREAKIN’ DO THAT evil consequences?)
Also, what I said before about the foolishness of thinking economics “ickiness adjacent?” (smacks of the notorious disdain of the British elite, for engineering). Contract law, too – no seriously, read this one!
Here’s an incredible piece from Michael Hudson (what I was saying last week about the political and historical converging, as you get older? How about this smart and thought-provoking take.
“The Mesopotamian State Solved the Debt Problem That Western Civilization Has Not“
“The dichotomy between public and private is coterminous with the origin of the city.” As he points out in At the Origins of Politics: “The increased size of the settlements created a critical mass, whereby face-to-face association no longer was possible among each member of the social group.” The relationship was political. “On the etymological level, the terms ‘urbanism’ and ‘politics’ are equivalent, given that they both derive from the word for ‘city’ in Latin and Greek respectively.” His term “state-city” emphasizes the overall political and administrative context.
He views industrialization as the economic dimension of the urban revolution that occurred in the late fourth millennium BC. The scale and social complexity of mining (or trading for metal) and metallurgy, beer-making, and weaving involved increasingly impersonal relationships as industrial organizations created products beyond the ability of individuals to make by themselves. The evolution was from direct personal contact to being part of a long, specialized chain.
Describing this takeoff as the first Axial Age, Buccellati explains how economic and social relations had been transformed over the 50,000-year evolution from small Paleolithic groups to urban industrial production, trade, and property relations. The technology and administration of production transformed the character of labor and what Buccellati calls para-perceptual thought. The moral principles of mutual aid, group solidarity, protection of the needy, and basic rights to means of self-support were retained from pre-urban practice but were administered on the state level.
“The state was never able to eliminate or even ignore the people… political ideology became a way for the leadership to justify itself in front of the base,” bolstered by religious attitudes to popularize an “Ideology of Control… the ideology of command, of leadership not necessarily based on coercive means.” Even in the face of “ever-increasing gaps in prestige and economic ability,” the rhetoric of kingship promoted “a sense of solidarity that transcends the limit of reciprocal face-to-face recognition.”
For the king, the aim was to make “submission not just tolerable but actually desirable.” That enabled Mesopotamian rule to be personal and indeed dynastic. “The king was not just the most powerful private individual; he embodied a distinct organism.” Kings were described as serving heaven, as reflected in Hammurapi’s stele depicting him presenting his laws to the god of justice, Shamash (or in some interpretations, receiving them from Shamash).
“The private model was thus superimposed from scratch on the public one,” merging the state and religion as every new king pointed to his ancestors as if this meant continuity of the law. The principle of kings being hereditary was accepted “without ever being formulated in theoretical terms.”
What I was saying about productive capitalism, versus our own financilized (speculative) variant? Here is a superb and very detailed piece about why Trump’s plan to bring chip manufacturing back to USA won’t work (Biden’s was also doomed, for the exact same structural and obvious reasons). China isn’t winning because they are nasty – they are gaining steady ground because they plan and play a long game. (Go)
“...It is clear that this is the United States’ primary, if not only, concern in its race with China and that they have taken a stance that they will not “allow” any country to be technologically superior to them, no matter what the qualitative accomplishments are in benefiting a population. It is about the military and political hegemony, they are not truly concerned about the future well-being of their populace.
An independent commission established by Congress recently concluded: “If a potential adversary bests the United States in semiconductors over the long term or suddenly cuts off U.S. access to cutting-edge chips entirely, it could gain the upper hand in every domain of warfare.”
The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reports “China’s leaders have set a goal to build a ‘fully modern’ military by 2027 based on ‘informatization,’ ‘intelligentization,’ and ‘mechanization,’ investing heavily in technical areas which support such an approach, such as AI, quantum computing, hypersonics, and microelectronics.”
Notice here the irony, that the greatest fear of the US is that China does to the US what the US has in fact been doing to China all along. And all they can see as a benefit to being on top in the chip race is military supremacy.
There is never any discussion of how chip manufacturing will raise the standard of living of the American citizen. There are only statements of domestic and global so-called “security” but security from what exactly? Last time I checked, it was the US bombing several countries every year.”
And here’s a sharp take on the mighty (once cute upstart) Apple, jumping the shark big-time (Boeing style)
“...Last March, Jonathan Kanter at the Antitrust Division filed an antitrust suit against Apple, alleging that it focuses more on monopoly maintenance than innovation. The complaint noted the company spends twice as much on stock buybacks than research. But more importantly, the suit showed Apple’s executives are explicit in demanding that the company not innovate too much for consumers. Here’s one part of the complaint.
For example, Apple’s vice president of iPhone marketing explained in February 2020: “In looking at it with hindsight, I think going forward we need to set a stake in the ground for what features we think are ‘good enough’ for the consumer. I would argue were [sic] already doing *more* than what would have been good enough.” After identifying old features that “would have been good enough today if we hadn’t introduced [updated features] already,” she explained, “anything new and especially expensive needs to be rigorously challenged before it’s allowed into the consumer phone.”
It’s pretty clear that Tim Cook has positioned Apple to be focused on raw financial returns and efficiency, and not innovation. But now that game is over. It has been over for some time, now everyone, including major investors like Bill Gurley, realize it.”
Lee Fang is a superb investigative journalist – helps us pick out the crucial subtlety, where we could go stupid in two different directions, with mere tribalism (de-banking OR banking-deregulation). The guy is all about these key distinctions (Thanks, dude!)
“...As free speech has become a battleground for everyday Americans — waged on college campuses, over political correctness in the workplace, and on social media platforms — a simultaneous legal revolution has taken shape. Corporate actors seeking to eviscerate rules and restrictions on business conduct have attempted to conflate commercial action with free expression. In other words, the business elite is piggybacking off the free speech debate for its own ends.
This piggybacking has been taking place for decades. Lawyers have poked and prodded, attempting to find new legal manoeuvres to classify business behaviour as protected speech. In this vein, Southwest and Spirit Airlines have repeatedly litigated to block a regulation that required airlines to display the full price of tickets. Another example comes via the private rating agencies that were responsible for falsely certifying the safety of risky mortgage-backed securities in the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis. In court, the agencies argued that they were simply expressing First Amendment-protected speech, and were thus exempt from fraud lawsuits.”
The point of real journalism (almost extinct now, for a couple of decades) is that it helps you understand REALITY – rather than the blizzard of bullshit they so often offer us - even while taking advantage of the truth they profit by obscuring.
“…Publicly, Burns fulfilled one of the responsibilities of any top intelligence official: scaremongering about a fragile America besieged by unseen forces, from terrorism to TikTok. But in private, he is bullish on America. His investments show this, armed, one presumes, with the best information and insight on the state of the world. And Burns knows Trump, his plans on Ukraine and the Middle East and his propensity to use tariffs to bully countries around the world.
Fear, it seems, is for the little people, who must assent to forever swelling national security budgets, always to stave off the latest supposed crisis.”
El Gato Malo (from Bad Cattitude) would probably not ever call himself an anti-tribalist, but he’s one of my favourite reads on the right, because he critiques with principle insight and fire – very useful! (and almost always hilarious, too)
“...this is why the idea of “a bunch of friends who are friends first and partisans later because they are people who have ideas and can disagree with one another and remain friends instead of performance artists who ARE their ideas but are pretending be people and attack any departure from doctrine” is unparseable for them.
they simply cannot believe it, cannot believe in it. it is simply too far outside of anything they have ever experienced, like sunshine to goblins raised in caves.”
Here’s a very strong piece from the unique and courageous Matt Orfalea about the Forgotten Hero of My Lai – Hugh Thompson Jr
Do you regularly read analysis and commentary from India? You should, so many brilliant writers, and their geopolitical perspective is unique (reveals much that we prefer to hide from ourselves – entirely to our own detriment, perhaps even outright peril).
“...In the US, the government is controlled by banks and corporations. In China, the reverse happened: The government sits above the capitalists to ensure that free market works for the people. The Chinese government spent enormous amount of money on infrastructure, education, technology, R&D, and a thriving ecosystem of not just manufacturing but technologies of all sorts – while America was busy bombing Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria etc.
Many Americans foolishly still think of China as a land of cheap labor, but more than half of all industrial robots in the world are being installed in Chinese factories every year. While Chinese companies were copy-cats in 2001 when China joined the WTO, they are now true innovators in smartphones, electric cars, e-commerce, robots, humanoids, drones, artificial intelligence etc.”
Here’s some excellent clarity where we very rarely see it (on subjects we prefer not to think much or clearly about, anyhow). “Realism” might seem crude, but unkind? No.
“...Interest is the defining concept of philosophical and historical realism. Humanity is a war of all against all (Hobbes); leaders and statesmen must have a balance or face a paradox of ruling through love and risking indiscipline and chaos, or ruling through fear and risking revolt (Machiavelli); and an enemy’s enemy is always an ally (Kautilya). War is simply a form of politics (Clausewitz), and prudence, restraint, and balance are, therefore, the keys to statecraft (Talleyrand, Metternich, Castlereagh). After all, there are “no eternal allies or perpetual enemies, but only interests which are eternal and perpetual” (Palmerston). This is the view of the realist school of thought.”
and
“...Realism maintains that universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation, but that they must be filtered through the concrete circumstances of time and place. The individual may say for himself: “Fiat justitia, pereat mundus (Let justice be done, even if the world perish),” but the state has no right to say so…There can be no political morality without prudence; that is, without consideration of the political consequences of seemingly moral action.”
Here’s part one of a very deep and insightful three part series about shifting Geopolitics and BRICS
The War of Two Worlds Has Begun - part one - on Sonar21
Here’s a wide-ranging piece about Rapprochement with Russia which is not only smart and full of witness and texture, but also gourgeous as writing!
Here’s Irina Slav again - the funniest acid wit writer I follow in energy, with a point which is both crucial and very widely ignored (especially by those who “CARE”).
The single most important thing greenies (trainites) refuse to see is – green tech isn’t displacing old generation, it’s just ADDING capacity (and also accellerating the demand for power at a near shocking rate). Big oil is weird, but not dumb.
“New sources add to the energy mix and complement existing sources. They do not replace them. That is why the current strategy of prematurely switching to immature alternatives has been so self-destructive,” Amin Nasser said last week in a statement during CERAWeek. And he didn’t stop there.
“New sources cannot even meet the growth in demand, while the proven sources needed to fill the gap are demonized and discarded. It is a fast-track to dystopia, not utopia. In short, the net result of 10 trillion dollars over 2 decades is to basically stand still and consume record quantities of coal,” he continued, oblivious to the things this was doing to some people’s blood pressure. And he didn’t stop there either.
“Not exactly mission accomplished! In fact, there is more chance of Elvis speaking next than the current plan working! And a wave of public dissatisfaction with transition reality is crashing over countries, companies, and consumers alike.”
Generalities and factionalism destroy the ability to be morally clear about all kinds of subjects. How does one say the policy of a particular Israeli government is profoundly unsound (as much by the principles of Machiavelli, as by any other code), without being accused of anti-semitism? We should not have this problem at all, since politics and religion are completely distinct logical types, but we do.
Likewise, when it comes to issues around trans, any attempt to question the legal and medical protocols now in place is taken as an assault on obviously stressed and troubled individuals. Nope, two different logical types once again, and when you aren’t allowed to question institutions you are in a dictatorship.
In the case of the legal and medical framework now dominant in many places, we are told repeatedly that any questioning of their dogma and approach is an attempt at conversion therapy. But some from inside the medicalization movement have come to the conclusion that it was always rooted in deeply homophobic ideas about gender – putting gay kids on the path to lifetime suffering in tragic numbers.
For those who wonder how I do my homework – here’s a twin example of getting a whiff from a smart summarizer and analyst, or else going straight for the hard source itself (still can’t believe RAND shares so much these days – used to be very hard stuff to dig out – mostly from old university libraries with scowling stack-guardians).
Here’s the actual RAND report itself (taxdollars at play). No it isn’t a conspiracy theory, it was a plan from the start, and an insanely expensive one in lives and money.
Here’s a smart thinker from the centre right, talking about a very irritating guy from I don’t know where (Harris is one of those intellects so obnoxious, I don’t even care if he’s got a point, learn respect for humans, then come talk to me again). All that being said, Harris is important and influential, and here, my favourite writer from a stoic view, MC Bowen, proves (to me) even smarter and more insightful still.
Lest I forget the agenda topper for my fellow Canadians – how about this illuminated resume?
Anyone who thinks the man from Goldman Sachs (and Bilderbergers, and years worth of dealings with IBS and every other backroom bunch of creeps going, more or less) will save Canada from the onslaught of the evil greedy capitalist yanks, is quite beyond saving. (mentally, self-evidently, soul also questionable).
The Liberals have very clearly told Canadians they don’t care – not about Canada or Canadians and certainly not about democracy itself (the man has literally NEVER been elected by the public to any office, anywhere). Screw representation of public will they proclaim shamelessly (yet again). The party learned nothing from the intellectual crash and burns of Michael Ignatieff or Stephane Dion, it seems.
I want to say it is all just so damn sad, but what it really is, is way beyond infuriating.
Tara Henley’s also excellent (and considerably more concise) take on the jackass
And of course Matt Ehret piles on the links and the history like no one else can!
Fortissax is one of my favourite young writers on the Canadian new right (and I don’t say young to be patronizing, but because I recognize the quality of vital energy, and wish I still had such stuff in quantity myself!) ;o)
Sometimes I feel he’s “high sticking” but that’s cool – he’s smart and fearless – you’re bound to go skidding into the boards now and then, when you’re trying for a real outside play – points for nerve!
Plus, I freakin’ love the guy’s illustrations (often stylized woodcuts).
Pieces of a New National Iconography! (and even when he’s bitter, he’s funny)
Are you one of those, who thought Syria just got “Liberated” (by AlQaida, really?)
Really not, folks – and these massacres are of communities who have been there thousands of years – survived the mongols, the crusades and countless wars and revolts we have long forgotten – but they will not survive our “global stewardship”. (we suck)
Syria’s Sectarian Massacres - By Aaron Mate
Here’s another take from the fantastic new team (of veterans) at Drop Site
Here is one of those questions which simply may not be asked – despite the results of our system being highly, and increasingly, questionable!
“...Third, I have to mention my lived experience. I was born in former Yugoslavia and grew up under the one-party communist regime under the evil dictator Josip Broz Tito. After the regime collapsed (I was 21 at the time), we had wars of secession and the newly independent countries there copy-pasted the Western system of governance: all wonderful liberal democracies, bursting at the seams with freedom and human rights. I also lived in democratic United States, Switzerland and also the cradle of Western democracy and birthplace of Magna Carta, Great Britain.
Then, for the last 28 years I've lived in the nondemocratic Principality of Monaco. With the possible exception of Switzerland, my lived experience leaves me in no doubt that life tends to be much better under nondemocratic regimes. The transformation of Croatia from a federal republic of the communist Yugoslavia to the independent liberal democracy that we have today, has been a massive negative. If you polled the citizens of former Yugoslavia whether life was better under Josip Broz Tito or under Western style liberal democracy, an overwhelming majority would opt for the evil dictator.”
Here’s another scary clue from the energy world – now that AI needs power – will we all pay for it?
The Tarriff Landscape - Are Consumers Paying for Data Centres - from GridBrief
Here’s something very strong and useful, about what a nation is (not a company, just like a person is neither a machine nor a computer – despite much insistence on both points for decades, from the imbecile ‘expert’ ruling class that truly loves to leash us).
“....There are thus few experiences employees find as irritating as that common workplace psyop in which management proclaims the corporate office to be a “family.” Employees know implicitly that it is natural affections and iron-clad mutual loyalties, or at least strong relational bonds, that are precisely what distinguish a family. Their corporate employer, in contrast, won’t hesitate to dump them by the wayside the moment they fall into the wrong column of a spreadsheet. For their part, employees are liable to return the sentiment and retain no lasting loyalty to the company – though perhaps plenty of resentment.
What angered people about the two CEOs’ comments was that – like so many of today’s elites – they displayed no sense of loyalty or obligation to Americans as a nation. A nation is not a corporation. A nation is a particular people, with a distinct culture, permanently bound together by shared relationship with place, past, and each other. A house becomes a home through relationship with the family that lives in it, a connection forged out of time and memory between concrete particularity of place and the lives of a specific group of people present, past, and yet unborn. We can say this house is home because it is our home. In much the same way, a country becomes our homeland because it is ours – and the we of that “ours” is the nation, which transcends geography, government, and GDP.
Unlike a corporation, a nation really is much like a family. And, like a family, it is characterized by strong relational bonds that are covenantal, not contractual. It establishes moral obligations of solidarity and subsidiarity that cannot be simply abandoned. Much as we naturally would, and should, put our own children’s lives and wellbeing ahead of others’, a nation is obligated to distinguish its own from others and to put the wellbeing of its own first. If it fails to do so then it can no longer remain a nation any more than a family could remain a family were it to try to extend the fold of its care equally to all humanity. Only once our immediate duties to those closest to us are fulfilled can concern for the good of others be rightly extended further outward. And though we may choose to adopt a child into our family, we cannot as readily toss them aside. We cannot, say, swap out our child for a different one who is more likely to get better grades in math class or is willing to perform chores for a lesser allowance. A nation-state is no more justly able to replace its own people or neglect its unique obligations to them simply because doing so seems more profitable or convenient.”
and
“...Here, then, can we see the long historical roots of the open, neoliberal state pointed to as an ideal by Ramaswamy and Musk. Innocently or not, these libertarian-leaning businessmen’s conception of the polity is almost indistinguishable from the “post-national state” that devoutly left-wing leaders like Canada’s Justin Trudeau have set out to devolve their countries into. The “globalism” so often decried by populists is neither left nor right but the logical product of the rationalist universalism embraced by the 20th century’s post-war consensus. It is the inevitable result of treating people, and peoples, as interchangeable units in a mechanical system – that is, of regarding them without any distinguishing sense of love.”
Here’s Simplicius the Thinker, in his Dark Futura guise, looking further into AI madness at scale (don’t read before bedtime, without some comforting cocoa handy)
Stalwart Kit Klarenberg with way more clues than I, coming to the same conclusion – game over.
In case anyone thought I was exaggerating European political war-madness – ask one of sharpest critics of German policy on Substack – Eugippius. Oh, and sorry for giving Merz a trailing T – won’t happen again.
“...Merz spent the entire campaign assuring CDU voters that he would never, ever, under any circumstances at all, in any conceivable universe, agree to lift the German debt brake. Campaign Merz was the Pigeon of Fiscal Responsibility, and he even had his stalwart opposition to deficit spending in excess of 0.35% of GDP inscribed into his party’s election programme. Merz rhapsodised on the wonders of the debt brake at every opportunity He said strict deficit spending rules are necessary to “protect the money and tax burdens of the younger generation” and that “we collect one trillion Euros in taxes a year,” and he asked, “shouldn’t we be able to make do with that?”
Merz no longer believes we should be able to make do with that, and the story of his turnabout is so farcical, I can hardly believe it. Last Tuesday, all of the Eurotards managed to terrify themselves that Donald Trump would announce the withdrawal of the United States from NATO in his pending congressional address. I said in my last post that this was not going to happen, but none of our Eurotard ruling class have any good lines of communication to the Trump administration or any understanding of American intentions at all. Thus Merz apparently believed these crazy rumours, and in a fit of panic he decided that Germany should abolish the debt brake after all. Overnight, he announced plans to reform the German constitution to exempt much defence spending from debt limits entirely, and also to establish a 500 billion-Euro “special fund” for infrastructure spending. (In German politics, “special fund” is a euphemism for “great big wad of debt.”)
Altogether, Merz’s proposed spending spree will reach something approaching 20% of German GDP. To piss away all of this money, Merz will need a two-thirds vote of the parliament, and so he’ll have to force his plan through in the last days of the present Bundestag, as the establishment parties will no longer have the necessary votes when the new Bundestag sits at the end of the month (the AfD and the Left Party will be too powerful then). Democracy!”
More (entirely just) anger about war plans and what they will inevitably displace (our lives and thriving).
Here’s perhaps the world’s greatest example of a bleeding heart and a true heart, all in one (once more, we’ve all got to learn to distinguish the active approaches and tools, from a long trail of dogma using similar words, but for empty or malign ends).
I know Aleksander Dugin Ist Verboten, to some (like Swan Lake, Gogol and Borscht), but this is one of the sharpest and most plausible theories I’ve heard, about how a guy who was dead-set against all the secret power centres, could still win power.
“...However, even earlier, while analyzing the phenomenon of Trump’s revolution — a topic to which I dedicated my latest book — I proposed the hypothesis that Trump would never have been able to implement such radical changes or even get elected and survive until inauguration if he had not received exceptional support from powerful entities within the deep state itself. Over decades of uncontested power, globalists achieved such extensive influence in the United States and worldwide that they exercised total control over politics, economics, media, diplomacy, culture, and the arts. Trump’s ambitious initiative to end all of this at once — despite significant support from the American masses horrified by the liberal globalists’ policies that transformed the U.S. into a bizarre spectacle and ruins — could not have succeeded unless a fundamental and abrupt decision had been made at some deeper level.
Yet here arises a paradox. How could the deep state possibly greenlight its own destruction? Of course, if there were a split within its structure, with one faction choosing to support Trump while the other retained its previous ideological stance — as I previously hypothesized — this contradiction would be resolved. But then, logically, upon taking power, Trump and his supporters would have ceased referring to the deep state altogether and would no longer advocate its elimination. Such calls might have remained mere electoral slogans; purges would occur without much fanfare, and a revised deep state would operate under new guidelines.”
Now, a few bits of culture and uplift (by way of a digestive aid, if not outright apology) ;o)
First, for lovers of the word (and library) – here is a modern pro-book manifesto of real power!
“....It’s self-evident that reading can make you smarter via knowledge acquisition, though it’s not the only way absorb information. What reading does do is give you, in the context of our phone-addicted age, a small superpower. You are able to focus much more deeply than your peers. Reading becomes the equivalent of lifting weights and getting a gym body. A machine can lift weights for you, but you won’t build any muscle until you subject your flesh to the strain of training. Athletes understand the importance of practice—that it’s literally impossible to get better at a sport without shooting thousands of baskets, hitting thousands of baseballs, or executing thousands of tackles. Today’s youth, sadly, are out of practice when it comes to reading and questing for knowledge. They, like most of us, have farmed out memory itself to the internet. I pity the twenty-somethings or teens who grew up on smartphones. I pity the middle-aged person who has gotten their attention span obliterated by Facebook on their smartphone. The best way to win that concentration back—that firm and durable intelligence—is through the practice of reading books.”
CS Lewis is always a name to conjure with. Honestly can’t say I’ve encountered any other vintage thinker in the western tradition who has inspired more truly fascinating essays than he. This one is (also) a real gem!
Finally, here’s another oblique and delicious treat for writers, readers and rememberers of all kinds.
A lovely idea from the brilliant neuroscientist Eric Hoel, which is simultaneously super-fertile for writers, sentimental in a completely sincere (and nourishing) way, and even perhaps spiritual – so damn tasty!
I shared this one as a note, but it belongs here also, for any who still can't quite untangle the healthy from the oppresive, on the left (honestly never seen it said better, or with more spirit)
https://paulsnyders.substack.com/p/the-distinction-not-clearly-made
One funny insight from Sharon’s brilliant partner, rings ever more true today.
“In politics – the Russians play Chess, the Chinese play Go, the Americans play Poker”
Only nowadays, I’m pretty sure he’d agree the Americans have moved on to Cornhole!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯