That maybe the dumbest most pseudo -intellectual thing I've ever read. As my old philosopher professor said, "most philosophical mistakes are made in the first 3 pages. If you believe Donald Trump no core beliefs? Then tell me what Joe Biden's core beliefs are? Kamala Harris? Hillary Clinton? He has held every position under the sun. As for the belief the conservative American electorate is dangerous, are you kidding me? Who wants to end free speech? Take away your gun? Open the border? End prosecuting crime? End policing? Destroy education? Sexualize and Trans children? Cancel and silence opposition? Should I go on? The left destroys EVERYTHING it touches with or without allusions to Rousseau.
MMMM??? Could there be a Communist Party after Stalin? After Mao? After Tito? What happened after Franco died? What happened after Pinochet died.
I met a Polish economist, who lived under communism. and asked him what sustained the system. He said the terror.
What I see is the persistence of culture. Russia has returned to the Tsar and the Boyars. China has returned to the Emperor and the Mandarinate. History doesn't repeat but it sure as hell rhymes.
An interesting piece with a whiff of the echo-chamber about it, your bias and blinkers given away by your usage of 'terrible' when describing the nations capabilities. You conclude that you don't know but perhaps more appropriately, you may well know but don't understand.
trump has shown the rot in American culture. It used to take terrible privation and suffering to drive people into horrible totalitarian political systems like fascism, in the modern US it seems merely being unhappy about societal changes that usually don't even directly affect an individual can drive about a third of the country into eliminationist fantasies. Mostly because there's an entire grievance/grift industry telling Americans every day that their world is ending and the Other is coming for their kids/home/guns/retirement/etc.
I think it is largely the result of a polity that no longer thinks of politics as a practical way of managing society and finding compromise, to an ego suffused battleground where any compromise is anathema and worthy of violent opposition. And that polity was formed by the creating of various organizations in the non-profit (Heritage foundation, Federalist society) and media spaces (FOX, Twitter, internet cesspools like 4chan) that are in fact dedicated to the destruction of traditional classical liberal policies and the creation of institutions and systems that guarantee eternal rule by an aggrieved minority.
We use fascism as shorthand because of the similarity of authoritarian tendencies, but it really goes beyond that. Most of the cutting edge thinkers (loosely speaking) on the right want to overturn not just democracy but the Enlightenment itself (https://theweek.com/articles/937611/conservatives-who-want-undo-enlightenment). I am at a loss as to what can cause that kind of nihilism and how to combat it.
I don't know if it is a trait that brings some kind of evolutionary advantage, or maybe just a byproduct of evolution (i think the latter) but we humans have a strong innate tendency to form groups that oppose each other. It's not just politics, you can see this in culture, soccer fandom, religion and what not. So the corollary is that the "chance of fascism" will always be there. All we can do is to build institutions that encourage thinking things through before acting. And give other possibilities a chance before joining the ancestral call to defend your group from the other ones.
This was an excellent essay. Thank you. Still digesting this one.
That maybe the dumbest most pseudo -intellectual thing I've ever read. As my old philosopher professor said, "most philosophical mistakes are made in the first 3 pages. If you believe Donald Trump no core beliefs? Then tell me what Joe Biden's core beliefs are? Kamala Harris? Hillary Clinton? He has held every position under the sun. As for the belief the conservative American electorate is dangerous, are you kidding me? Who wants to end free speech? Take away your gun? Open the border? End prosecuting crime? End policing? Destroy education? Sexualize and Trans children? Cancel and silence opposition? Should I go on? The left destroys EVERYTHING it touches with or without allusions to Rousseau.
MMMM??? Could there be a Communist Party after Stalin? After Mao? After Tito? What happened after Franco died? What happened after Pinochet died.
I met a Polish economist, who lived under communism. and asked him what sustained the system. He said the terror.
What I see is the persistence of culture. Russia has returned to the Tsar and the Boyars. China has returned to the Emperor and the Mandarinate. History doesn't repeat but it sure as hell rhymes.
An interesting piece with a whiff of the echo-chamber about it, your bias and blinkers given away by your usage of 'terrible' when describing the nations capabilities. You conclude that you don't know but perhaps more appropriately, you may well know but don't understand.
trump has shown the rot in American culture. It used to take terrible privation and suffering to drive people into horrible totalitarian political systems like fascism, in the modern US it seems merely being unhappy about societal changes that usually don't even directly affect an individual can drive about a third of the country into eliminationist fantasies. Mostly because there's an entire grievance/grift industry telling Americans every day that their world is ending and the Other is coming for their kids/home/guns/retirement/etc.
I think it is largely the result of a polity that no longer thinks of politics as a practical way of managing society and finding compromise, to an ego suffused battleground where any compromise is anathema and worthy of violent opposition. And that polity was formed by the creating of various organizations in the non-profit (Heritage foundation, Federalist society) and media spaces (FOX, Twitter, internet cesspools like 4chan) that are in fact dedicated to the destruction of traditional classical liberal policies and the creation of institutions and systems that guarantee eternal rule by an aggrieved minority.
We use fascism as shorthand because of the similarity of authoritarian tendencies, but it really goes beyond that. Most of the cutting edge thinkers (loosely speaking) on the right want to overturn not just democracy but the Enlightenment itself (https://theweek.com/articles/937611/conservatives-who-want-undo-enlightenment). I am at a loss as to what can cause that kind of nihilism and how to combat it.
I don't know if it is a trait that brings some kind of evolutionary advantage, or maybe just a byproduct of evolution (i think the latter) but we humans have a strong innate tendency to form groups that oppose each other. It's not just politics, you can see this in culture, soccer fandom, religion and what not. So the corollary is that the "chance of fascism" will always be there. All we can do is to build institutions that encourage thinking things through before acting. And give other possibilities a chance before joining the ancestral call to defend your group from the other ones.