Enjoying the view from Limbo
History always and understandably focuses its judgment, criticism, and disdain on the famous leaders who “caused all the damage”: the demagogues, cult figures, or scheming rhetoricians who exploited human weakness and/or difficult times for their own benefit. Rarely do we consider the fuel that powered the destructive excesses of these historic leaders, namely the populations that fell for the demagoguery, joined the cult,...
Predictably, the day after the midterms, Republican voters are divided on the meaning of the results. Hardcore Trump cultists are following their lord and master in calling this loss of the House of Representatives a great victory, since at least the GOP held the Senate. The all-night social media “conservative movement” types are in the depths of despair, as they were just sure...
Though the most recent polls showed Ted Cruz trouncing Beto O’Rourke in Texas, the actual result was quite close — no surprise there, since polls are fraudulent from the get-go, and will only be as accurate as the laws of probability allow. But what has shaken a lot of Republicans is the fact that Texas, a surefire Republican stronghold, has shown so strongly...
Today, Americans voted in a midterm election that has been cast by both teams…er, I mean parties, as a referendum on Donald Trump. Hence the results will establish exactly what the 2016 presidential election established, namely whether American voters prefer a mindless drift into communism or a mindless drift into mindlessness; servitude or stupidity; destitution and mob amorality or greed and vulgar populism....
Polls are just propaganda tools used to manipulate public events by dampening or engendering enthusiasm, specifically by fostering and then actively exploiting an infantile simulacrum of thought according to which “momentum,” as a collective human phenomenon, is real and quantifiable (which it is not, and never can be), while five hundred people’s ambiguous answers to leading questions are treated as persuasive rhetoric. Yes,...
My American friends will be voting in their midterm elections on Tuesday, November 6th. And when I say “My American friends,” I mean that sincerely, on more than one level. Thus it is with equal sincerity that I say “I’m so sorry,” to all principled Americans today. For your political system has been completely and intractably undermined by competing factions of unprincipled careerists,...
Someone in Tennessee has hung an effigy of U.S. Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn from a tree, accompanied by the amusing slogan, “STOP THE HATE.” In response to this, I see that Soopermexican at Right Scoop is describing this as “the winner of the political demonstration most lacking in self-awareness.” I disagree. “Lack of self-awareness” is giving them too much benefit of the doubt....
Yesterday, a university junior I had not seen in a while stopped by my office to talk about her life these days, or rather her frustrated sense that she was not really living a life, but merely, as she put it, “enduring” one. She expressed concern that her existence, consisting almost entirely of study perceived as an obligation, a part-time job perceived as...
In Part I of this discussion, I addressed the mistaken view that the alleged suppression of non-progressive (or any other) opinion by a privately-owned internet platform such as Google or Facebook constitutes a violation of the right to free speech. There is another, more subtle argument I have encountered recently, however, one more in the spirit of John Stuart Mill, namely that although...
America Descending / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published October 30, 2018 · Last modified October 31, 2018
Might some black people be offended by the traditional vaudeville-style of performance now called “blackface”? Yes, obviously many are. Does it follow from this that anyone who refers to blackface, or even uses the word incorrectly to refer to something very different from a vaudeville-style parody of a black performer, as Megyn Kelly did last week, deserves public shaming, banishment from good society,...
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