For Pete's sake, Damir, adherence to constitutional norms is damn well something to cluck about. Don't tell me you've "moved on" from Jan 6, 2021 and the protracted effort to overthrow a perfectly valid presidential election? It was a pretty serious constitutional violation; the Georgia episode alone -- "Just get me 11,000 votes, and the Republican congressmen will do the rest" -- should have landed the bastard in jail. Threatening to hold up aid to Ukraine unless they ginned up an investigation of a rival candidate's son also demonstrated a somewhat casual attitude to constitutional principles. As did his obstruction of every investigation of his crimes and misdemeanors. As did his recent effort to evade Senate approval for his nominees by means of recess appointments. And so much more.
Please, Damir, stop twittering about "new visions" -- that's just idle Beltway chatter. Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party has been waging relentless class war against the bottom half of the population. All the bottom half has is smart, honorable young intellectuals like you. Don't desert them in a vain attempt to craft some bit of discourse that will ever-so-briefly capture the attention of the empty-headed custodians of The Conversation.
George, isn’t the reality that the bottom half, in the United States at least, has fully embraced a completely different paradigm? What’s the matter with Kansas, etc. — shouldn’t we be moving on past that question at this point?
In any case, I don’t think I’m abandoning any of these questions as much as deprioritizing a whole slew of potential answers that feel exhausted to me right now.
Move on past "What's the Matter with Kansas?" just when its argument -- that Republicans succeed by disguising their support for plutocracy with almost exclusive reliance on ersatz "anti-elitist" rhetoric -- has attained maximum relevance? Frank exhorted Democrats to eschew cultural radicalism and return to an emphasis on economic equality. Have the Democrats tried this approach .and "exhausted" it ? No, of course not. So why "move on"?
Thanks for this Damir. I tend to see this moment for liberals as the 'You can't always get what you want' moment. They're facing a real challenge in not only substantiating their philosophy which has arguably helped create a set of circumstances which has created what I consider to be a very serious backlash which potentially threatens the substantial civil rights and political gains made in the late 20th century. But this backlash is precisely because of conditions which liberal philosophy either ignored or said was a good thing.
I think what keeps me up at night (besides my ever more precarious academic employment) is not the Trump Presidency but the notion of Presidentialism in politics and society itself. Seeing what is happening in South Korea, and even in my own country the UK, where we have no president but presidentialism is running amok makes me nervous that many of us are looking for that 'big figure' to fix things without recognising that the state and society are too complex for a singular person to fix today. There may have been a great man theory of history which held up in the past but I no longer believe this is true at all.
Entering a world where Zuckerberg and Musk control significant platforms also makes me increasingly nervous. One is run by a guy who thinks Augustus was amazing and the other is running around with the most powerful man in the world like an overgrown toddler trying to smash stuff up. This is not a recipe which is going to end well for our ability to communicate. Given that we increasingly rely on such platforms as well there seems to be little hope for radical change in society and politics without altering our behaviour online. Given bluesky's success some may think this is the answer but we see similar problems emerging in our use of that platform as well....
So, for me, I think we're entering a true period of simulacra where we are increasingly finding it difficult to find authenticity. This is why I am not so psyched about the rise of this new brand of conservatism. Just as Nietzche declared God is dead, I do fear deeper value is dead and all we have left is performance.
"chiding #Resistance types for thinking they were fighting for democracy when they were in fact lining up against the popular will."
Very clever of you and Shadi. But doesn't that mean that early abolitionists were anti-democratic because they were "fighting against the popular will"? Or that pacifists opposing World War I were anti-democratic? Or that suffragettes in the late 19th century were anti-democratic? Or that gay rights activists in the 1950s were anti-democratic? Or that anyone opposing a popular policy or state of affairs is therefore anti-democratic?
“But me, I’m no longer that interested in the debate on the political left. Paradoxically, Trump’s re-election has made me embrace that I am in fact a conservative after all, not just some kind of impish critic. It isn’t that Trump’s politics are themselves appealing. Rather it’s that I’ve fully come around to the idea that mid-century liberalism is dead — and that even in its hey-day, it has been corrosive and toxic.”
Yes! 😅 I’m very glad I stumbled upon this project and subscribing was an easy decision. I look forward to the future learning and thinking alongside you all.
Is social democracy left adjacent a little bit? People do like some aspects of social democracy like social security and dislike, to put it mildly, the health insurance industry. What the Republican Party and conservatives are really good at is using social conservatism to win elections.
I think my tentative answer is that European Christian Democracy is intellectually coherent. Most of what passes for social democracy is less so, having been hollowed out by its alliance with liberal universalist ideals.
You make these kinds of comments frequently, but I think they rest on double standards. You generally accept “it’s my religion” as an acceptable explanation without asking whether it’s intellectually coherent. As a result, religious arguments get a free pass from you on many of the deeply difficult questions.
Is “European Christian Democracy” even a coherent category? Europe is a diverse collection of nations that use different kinds of Christianity (when they are Christian at all) and that have almost all been through dramatic political changes over the past few hundred years. One of those changes is that most of them are far less Christian, and national Protestantisms are among the hardest hit.
What kinds of space are you willing to allow for ideological diversity within a country? Does a country, or even a political party, need to rest on a single coherent ideology that covers both the personal and the political? The Protestant/liberal tradition of having some separation between a broad but shallow official stance and a collection of deep and detailed personal stances is a useful innovation, not lightly to be cast aside in favour of the “coherence” of enforced conformity.
Within the liberal tradition, I completely agree that we could use more deep theories of value and less reliance on capitalism and proceduralism as ultimate structures (instead of containers for deeper structures). Greater attention to our philosophical roots is called for. I cannot accept that such philosophy ought to be confined to established religious traditions, though. Nor does it necessarily need to be imposed from above, politically speaking. Liberal proceduralism is, from this perspective, not so much incoherent as deliberately incomplete. Reminders of the incompleteness are justified but that needn’t mean we throw the whole thing out.
I don't think we disagree. But Christian Democracy ultimately lies on supra-rational/transcendent justifications, which is a feature, not a bug. And it's not like Christian Democrats have proven to be exclusivist bigots.
Meanwhile, I'd argue that the deliberate incompleteness works as long as it is quietly exploited so that more grounded traditions can co-exist. But it should never be celebrated as an end in and of itself.
I am so sorry; I am so very confused. Maybe I’m just lost. Just bear with me and humor me for a moment. Is there any truth to the ideas that the United States is basically an Enlightenment project. Being American is not really an ethnicity like most other ethnicities. Being American is to adhere to an idea of basic human equality which is as universal as it gets. America started out as a Anglo-Protestant thing but it was never explicitly written into the constitution and so the Enlightenment ideas behind the Declaration and Bill of Rights was able to grow to become something other than a particular language or religion or ethnicity. Like I said, I’m confused. Do people really dislike the idea of universal human rights that much? This is breaking my mind.
Start by reconciling universal human rights with the concept of citizenship. One is an empty construct, another is an emergent property of an anarchic world.
I guess what I was trying to say is that the American Enlightenment project does reconcile universal human rights with citizenship at least within the nation itself. To be American is not to be a particular ethnicity or follow a certain religion or even to speak a particular language. To be American is to believe certain basic Enlightenment principles about human equality. And besides, even patriotic Americans still believe that those who aren’t American are still human beings who are entitled to basic rights and freedoms, don’t they? Maybe I’m too Enlightenment brained to get this.
Universal human rights is an empty concept? The concept that inspired long and arduous battles for emancipation, the rights of women, equality before the law, the rights of noncombatants in warfare, and virtually every other achievement of civilization is "empty"?
I tend to agree. The only god republicans' worship is the almighty dollar, with it they've destroyed the working class, and their growing dividends prove that they have Christian God's favor, so why change?
Wow. The exact words I needed to hear. Have you been reading my mind (except for the John Hinckley part)? I don't know what the future will bring, but somehow I don't fear it (yet). We have the strength and resilience to deal with whatever comes our way. We've done it before and we can do it again.
Thank you for the invitation to share considerations about the near and reactionary future.
I admire Ann Telnaes' wit and drawings. It is a shame she left the publication but what is a person to do? Leaving the battlefield and saving one's resources in order to fight another day has merit. In contradistinction, hanging in there and doing battle with the forces of evil in order for good to prevail is another avenue of valorous endeavor. What are your thoughts on the issue?
I really am not at liberty to say very much about the Telnaes drama, as it is well above my pay grade to do so. I will say that the public narrative is all wrong — believe me, it has a lot less to do with principle and more to do with Ann’s own interests. She has revealed just how petty and self-aggrandizing she is. I’m glad I won’t have to call her a colleague any more.
For Pete's sake, Damir, adherence to constitutional norms is damn well something to cluck about. Don't tell me you've "moved on" from Jan 6, 2021 and the protracted effort to overthrow a perfectly valid presidential election? It was a pretty serious constitutional violation; the Georgia episode alone -- "Just get me 11,000 votes, and the Republican congressmen will do the rest" -- should have landed the bastard in jail. Threatening to hold up aid to Ukraine unless they ginned up an investigation of a rival candidate's son also demonstrated a somewhat casual attitude to constitutional principles. As did his obstruction of every investigation of his crimes and misdemeanors. As did his recent effort to evade Senate approval for his nominees by means of recess appointments. And so much more.
Please, Damir, stop twittering about "new visions" -- that's just idle Beltway chatter. Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party has been waging relentless class war against the bottom half of the population. All the bottom half has is smart, honorable young intellectuals like you. Don't desert them in a vain attempt to craft some bit of discourse that will ever-so-briefly capture the attention of the empty-headed custodians of The Conversation.
George, isn’t the reality that the bottom half, in the United States at least, has fully embraced a completely different paradigm? What’s the matter with Kansas, etc. — shouldn’t we be moving on past that question at this point?
In any case, I don’t think I’m abandoning any of these questions as much as deprioritizing a whole slew of potential answers that feel exhausted to me right now.
Move on past "What's the Matter with Kansas?" just when its argument -- that Republicans succeed by disguising their support for plutocracy with almost exclusive reliance on ersatz "anti-elitist" rhetoric -- has attained maximum relevance? Frank exhorted Democrats to eschew cultural radicalism and return to an emphasis on economic equality. Have the Democrats tried this approach .and "exhausted" it ? No, of course not. So why "move on"?
Thanks for this Damir. I tend to see this moment for liberals as the 'You can't always get what you want' moment. They're facing a real challenge in not only substantiating their philosophy which has arguably helped create a set of circumstances which has created what I consider to be a very serious backlash which potentially threatens the substantial civil rights and political gains made in the late 20th century. But this backlash is precisely because of conditions which liberal philosophy either ignored or said was a good thing.
I think what keeps me up at night (besides my ever more precarious academic employment) is not the Trump Presidency but the notion of Presidentialism in politics and society itself. Seeing what is happening in South Korea, and even in my own country the UK, where we have no president but presidentialism is running amok makes me nervous that many of us are looking for that 'big figure' to fix things without recognising that the state and society are too complex for a singular person to fix today. There may have been a great man theory of history which held up in the past but I no longer believe this is true at all.
Entering a world where Zuckerberg and Musk control significant platforms also makes me increasingly nervous. One is run by a guy who thinks Augustus was amazing and the other is running around with the most powerful man in the world like an overgrown toddler trying to smash stuff up. This is not a recipe which is going to end well for our ability to communicate. Given that we increasingly rely on such platforms as well there seems to be little hope for radical change in society and politics without altering our behaviour online. Given bluesky's success some may think this is the answer but we see similar problems emerging in our use of that platform as well....
So, for me, I think we're entering a true period of simulacra where we are increasingly finding it difficult to find authenticity. This is why I am not so psyched about the rise of this new brand of conservatism. Just as Nietzche declared God is dead, I do fear deeper value is dead and all we have left is performance.
"chiding #Resistance types for thinking they were fighting for democracy when they were in fact lining up against the popular will."
Very clever of you and Shadi. But doesn't that mean that early abolitionists were anti-democratic because they were "fighting against the popular will"? Or that pacifists opposing World War I were anti-democratic? Or that suffragettes in the late 19th century were anti-democratic? Or that gay rights activists in the 1950s were anti-democratic? Or that anyone opposing a popular policy or state of affairs is therefore anti-democratic?
Sorry, but I don't get your "joke."
“But me, I’m no longer that interested in the debate on the political left. Paradoxically, Trump’s re-election has made me embrace that I am in fact a conservative after all, not just some kind of impish critic. It isn’t that Trump’s politics are themselves appealing. Rather it’s that I’ve fully come around to the idea that mid-century liberalism is dead — and that even in its hey-day, it has been corrosive and toxic.”
Yes! 😅 I’m very glad I stumbled upon this project and subscribing was an easy decision. I look forward to the future learning and thinking alongside you all.
Is social democracy left adjacent a little bit? People do like some aspects of social democracy like social security and dislike, to put it mildly, the health insurance industry. What the Republican Party and conservatives are really good at is using social conservatism to win elections.
I think my tentative answer is that European Christian Democracy is intellectually coherent. Most of what passes for social democracy is less so, having been hollowed out by its alliance with liberal universalist ideals.
You make these kinds of comments frequently, but I think they rest on double standards. You generally accept “it’s my religion” as an acceptable explanation without asking whether it’s intellectually coherent. As a result, religious arguments get a free pass from you on many of the deeply difficult questions.
Is “European Christian Democracy” even a coherent category? Europe is a diverse collection of nations that use different kinds of Christianity (when they are Christian at all) and that have almost all been through dramatic political changes over the past few hundred years. One of those changes is that most of them are far less Christian, and national Protestantisms are among the hardest hit.
What kinds of space are you willing to allow for ideological diversity within a country? Does a country, or even a political party, need to rest on a single coherent ideology that covers both the personal and the political? The Protestant/liberal tradition of having some separation between a broad but shallow official stance and a collection of deep and detailed personal stances is a useful innovation, not lightly to be cast aside in favour of the “coherence” of enforced conformity.
Within the liberal tradition, I completely agree that we could use more deep theories of value and less reliance on capitalism and proceduralism as ultimate structures (instead of containers for deeper structures). Greater attention to our philosophical roots is called for. I cannot accept that such philosophy ought to be confined to established religious traditions, though. Nor does it necessarily need to be imposed from above, politically speaking. Liberal proceduralism is, from this perspective, not so much incoherent as deliberately incomplete. Reminders of the incompleteness are justified but that needn’t mean we throw the whole thing out.
I don't think we disagree. But Christian Democracy ultimately lies on supra-rational/transcendent justifications, which is a feature, not a bug. And it's not like Christian Democrats have proven to be exclusivist bigots.
Meanwhile, I'd argue that the deliberate incompleteness works as long as it is quietly exploited so that more grounded traditions can co-exist. But it should never be celebrated as an end in and of itself.
I am so sorry; I am so very confused. Maybe I’m just lost. Just bear with me and humor me for a moment. Is there any truth to the ideas that the United States is basically an Enlightenment project. Being American is not really an ethnicity like most other ethnicities. Being American is to adhere to an idea of basic human equality which is as universal as it gets. America started out as a Anglo-Protestant thing but it was never explicitly written into the constitution and so the Enlightenment ideas behind the Declaration and Bill of Rights was able to grow to become something other than a particular language or religion or ethnicity. Like I said, I’m confused. Do people really dislike the idea of universal human rights that much? This is breaking my mind.
Start by reconciling universal human rights with the concept of citizenship. One is an empty construct, another is an emergent property of an anarchic world.
I guess what I was trying to say is that the American Enlightenment project does reconcile universal human rights with citizenship at least within the nation itself. To be American is not to be a particular ethnicity or follow a certain religion or even to speak a particular language. To be American is to believe certain basic Enlightenment principles about human equality. And besides, even patriotic Americans still believe that those who aren’t American are still human beings who are entitled to basic rights and freedoms, don’t they? Maybe I’m too Enlightenment brained to get this.
Universal human rights is an empty concept? The concept that inspired long and arduous battles for emancipation, the rights of women, equality before the law, the rights of noncombatants in warfare, and virtually every other achievement of civilization is "empty"?
I tend to agree. The only god republicans' worship is the almighty dollar, with it they've destroyed the working class, and their growing dividends prove that they have Christian God's favor, so why change?
The working class love them. I give up.
Wow. The exact words I needed to hear. Have you been reading my mind (except for the John Hinckley part)? I don't know what the future will bring, but somehow I don't fear it (yet). We have the strength and resilience to deal with whatever comes our way. We've done it before and we can do it again.
Thank you for the invitation to share considerations about the near and reactionary future.
I admire Ann Telnaes' wit and drawings. It is a shame she left the publication but what is a person to do? Leaving the battlefield and saving one's resources in order to fight another day has merit. In contradistinction, hanging in there and doing battle with the forces of evil in order for good to prevail is another avenue of valorous endeavor. What are your thoughts on the issue?
I really am not at liberty to say very much about the Telnaes drama, as it is well above my pay grade to do so. I will say that the public narrative is all wrong — believe me, it has a lot less to do with principle and more to do with Ann’s own interests. She has revealed just how petty and self-aggrandizing she is. I’m glad I won’t have to call her a colleague any more.