Enjoying the view from Limbo
The danger of political identity.— The moment one begins to identify oneself with a party, movement, or faction, one has also begun to shift one’s intellectual center of gravity from the solid ground of the mind’s own observations and perceived needs to the anxious and ever-shifting social imperatives of remaining a partisan in good standing, imperatives that perforce become increasingly compelling and emotionally...
Answers to a few of the near-universal talking points apropos the deliberate Vance-Trump ambush of Volodymyr Zelensky: This was not, not for one second, “a shouting match.” A shouting match is an argument in which both sides are shouting. Zelensky never shouted, never lost his cool, but merely expressed his points with a certain amount of exasperation and animation which were clearly and...
Cause and effect. — Prod people into desperation by denying and disemboweling everything they ever held dear. When they actually become desperate and begin to act as desperate men do, accuse them of being extremists and assert the need for stern measures to tamp down their irrational outbursts. Voter’s dialectic. — “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Fool me...
I have seen headlines over the past few days railing against the incredible racist fascism on display at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. Dismissing this as just the usual mainstream media hyperbole and something-out-of-nothing-ism, I refused even to allow myself to scan any of the articles to find out what the supposed controversy was all about. Today, however, I admit to having...
by Daren Jonescu · Published September 18, 2024 · Last modified September 21, 2024
Howard Stern is a deeply unfunny man who has parlayed amorality into a form of media immortality by creating a niche, the “shock jock,” in which unfunny people can pass themselves off as humorists merely by being willing to say what semi-civilized people would have the decency not to say in public. He is thereby peculiarly responsible for vulgarizing the taste and gutterizing...
On conservation of energy.— In a millennium, nothing I own today will exist in a recognizable way. In ten millennia, nothing anyone owns today will so exist. In a hundred millennia, today’s existence itself, which is to say our world, will no longer be present in any remotely identifiable form. In a thousand millennia, we will all be a wisp of a rumor;...
Ideas and Reflections / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 11, 2024 · Last modified February 29, 2024
A few days ago, Armond White at National Review published his retrospective assessment of Rob Reiner’s cult favorite comedy, The Princess Bride. His basic take on the movie, which as he notes with disapproval is often affectionately cited by conservatives (i.e., NR writers and readers), is that it lacks both artistic and moral coherence, and owes its enduring popularity to the fact that...
Liberty's Labors Lost / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published April 14, 2023 · Last modified April 15, 2023
The United States of America Today: A Dialogue Truth: Donald Trump, with his self-seeking demagoguery, fear-and-lie-grounded radicalization of millions of his supporters, and open praise and normalization of tyrants and tyrannical methods at home and abroad, has done catastrophic and possibly irreparable harm to his country. Tribalism: But what about Biden, Hillary, and Obama! Truth: Fine. In that case reason affords you two...
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published April 5, 2023
Hostility, incivility, and outright barbarism are breaking out in our midst, on a mass scale. This proves that John Stuart Mill was wrong, and indeed that all progressive views of historico-political development — using progressive in its earlier theoretical sense, rather than in its current euphemistic sense — were wrong. There is no “stage of development” at which a society or civilization…
America Descending / Pandemic that Ate a Planet / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published January 16, 2023
Death counts, be not proud.– If you want to sound credible criticizing pandemic alarmists for padding the Covid death numbers and overstating the efficacy and safety of the vaccines, then it would be a good idea to stop shouting “Aha! The vaccine again!” every time an athlete, actress, or geriatric rock star happens to die. Reminder to both tribes: Dying was invented, and...
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