There’s a new essay in worrying in The Atlantic, by a nice young lady who pooh-poohs Trump, to the effect that students are now illiterate & soon most Americans will therefore be illiterate.
I'm troubled by the habit you and certain other schooled right wingers have developed of saying "the reality is," and then pronouncing what it supposedly rules out in advance. Unless you wish to wind up anti-democracy Yarvin-ish, maybe shy away from that phrase for a bit? Spencer Klavan, BTW, is an unrepentant suppressor. As for the "tech lords," good Lord, what a phrase! Sincerely, your anti-accelerationist Christian Open-Journalism-demanding populist-conservative friend.
Carl, I'd like to hear your argument. This complaining is rather disappointing, the associations are even more so. You're on a stack, on a digital device -- it's the only freedom of speech you can get & you are apparently unwilling to take that fact seriously.
I'm not pleased that I owe the little freedom of speech I have to Elon, but it's true.
If you want to pursue via email, go ahead. I'll just say here that I have a growing sense that our C.J. was on the right track when he called Republicans to try to restore a significant degree of platform politics.
It would be nice for the GOP to pass the Save America act. Supposedly, we still have a Congress, a Senate more to the point. If you want to get involved in Utah politics to help out -- that would be very patriotic of you.
I just don't see a lot of people doing it... The only platform we have is being created by a few men like DeSantis, Trump, Elon &c. If enough people rally & some of them are representatives, we might get a platform.
The previous platform failed because everybody was lying. Some were lying that we need more illegal immigration (2012 election autopsy), others were lying that we're not getting infinite illegal immigration (decent Republicans). But with the Biden admin, that & many other lies became untenable.
You are caught in a contradiction -- you want platform politics, but you'd be compelled to call everyone in platform politics a suppressor & oppose them. Spencer Klavan you don't like. You don't like me. Other rw people you also don't like. You like CJ -- who else? Who's left to be involved in this project?
Okay, so we'll do this here. Of course I like you and your core political stance! For that matter, I see eye to eye w/ S. Klavan on most issues, and he and I love many of the same books, and the Good Book also. What I say is that he was charged with some serious responsibilities as a Claremont editor, and failed to live up to them at a key moment, and that this failure continues, as the Suppression does.
As for the huge problem I myself and people who hold my position would face in practical politics--either in local party activism, or in running for office--due to the Suppression issue/insanity foisted upon us, well, it is huge, and I don't exactly know how to approach it. I.e., some ideas about how to cabin that commitment do occur to me, but as to whether they would work much for Dissident Conservative activists deploying them, I don't know. Obviously, w/ respect to electoral politics it stands as a major entry problem, as DC candidates would at times be ferociously opposed by major donors. I do know, however, that there is nothing long-term practical about the QUITE LITERAL "everybody is lying" stance that it takes for GOP and Dems to maintain the Suppression. It invites future disaster, and sows distrust everywhere.
What disturbs me about your talk here is the note of resignation in it, the shutting down of hopes and demands for ethical standards (which even in your sketched "everyone's lying GOP of 2012" seemed to be standard hopes and demands that that same "everyone" had to profess belief in), and the shutting them down in advance, according to some higher ethics demanded by what is real in politics, and being a serious person about the things that are real. When you talk the way you did here, it raises a fear in me that only tech-lord deals and such winds up with the stamp of the real for you--i.e., only they can oppose the HR/dumb-university-auto-progressivist class. So real tactics, i.e., tactics that are the ethical ones in the highest sense, require the cultivation of the tech execs, (and sure, some catering to their interests). But isn't it the case that insofar as writers/editors/scholars like yourself stand by serious standards, and that nationalist conservative activists and orgs do also, that all those types come into any room in which they meet a tech or finance type with a serious degree of moral authority? And a potential political authority whose potential is always present? Yes, conservative citizens and writers needed Elon and substack, and we owe both. But is there no way to communicate with enough citizens outside the channels controlled by such tech guys, or their ilk? Doesn't the maintenance of minimal dignity for the Political require that we assume there is?
I dunno what you think about Yarvin, but that interview he did w/ R&L a month or so ago contains a disturbing moment or two indicative of what he feels figures like Trump and Elon have modelled for future political activism. It's a model that demands obedience to (from a "base"), and long-periods of quiet about, some half-stated longer-term program/strategy which the leader or leader-set have concocted. It kicks democratic oversight and back-and-forth out the door, and commits itself to nothing solid. Or, only some inner (but possibly wide) circle has a sense of the real commitments. So trust in those, in genius, and in yes, in elasticity, become the watchwords. Here is the medium-term and practical effects, then, of Yarvin's monarchist/aristocratic vision. It lines up all-too-well, I think, with some of the devious "tech-lord" proclivities of the still-cloaked men and women who gave us all the Covid/Vax operation. (Though Yarvin is one of the few rw-ers who seems close, at times, to denouncing the Suppression.) It also lines up with the some of the worst dynamics that have emerged from Trump-modelled, or Trump-circle-modelled, leadership. (I of course admit that many good things have come and still will from him and his circle!) It also lines up, sort of, with the kind of leadership we associate with the "Influencer"--at least those of them who seem to have a coherent aim, like Carlson. And it definitely lines up with indefinite continuance of the Suppression.
The Declaration, the Constitution, and the 13th were platform politics. Were anti- "systematic-mendacity politics." Were pro-publicity, and thus, anti-hidden-elites, politics. A guy like Hamilton was back-room to a degree, but ultimately had to bring all the key stuff into the light of democratic judgment. Am I some kind of deeply irresponsible, because naive, political thinker for assuming that our politics for the 21st century must be guided by such examples? A guy like Yarvin says so. And worryingly, some of your ways of talking these days seem to say something similar.
Of course I have no movement, and no inside track to anyone who does! Does the "contradiction" in that require silent acceptance of the Suppression, or things like the tactical quasi-silence/deflection initially tried by rw leaders vis-a-vis the Carlson-Fuentes Affair? It's our leaders, I say, who are forcing everyone into contradiction after contradiction. I don't think I deserve the shorthand of "you don't like x, you don't like y, and you don't like anyone" to describe the pickle our side's leaders have put me in, and ultimately, have put all of us in.
I'm troubled by the habit you and certain other schooled right wingers have developed of saying "the reality is," and then pronouncing what it supposedly rules out in advance. Unless you wish to wind up anti-democracy Yarvin-ish, maybe shy away from that phrase for a bit? Spencer Klavan, BTW, is an unrepentant suppressor. As for the "tech lords," good Lord, what a phrase! Sincerely, your anti-accelerationist Christian Open-Journalism-demanding populist-conservative friend.
Carl, I'd like to hear your argument. This complaining is rather disappointing, the associations are even more so. You're on a stack, on a digital device -- it's the only freedom of speech you can get & you are apparently unwilling to take that fact seriously.
I'm not pleased that I owe the little freedom of speech I have to Elon, but it's true.
So yeah, techno-lords.
If you want to pursue via email, go ahead. I'll just say here that I have a growing sense that our C.J. was on the right track when he called Republicans to try to restore a significant degree of platform politics.
Completely agreed about platform politics.
It would be nice for the GOP to pass the Save America act. Supposedly, we still have a Congress, a Senate more to the point. If you want to get involved in Utah politics to help out -- that would be very patriotic of you.
I just don't see a lot of people doing it... The only platform we have is being created by a few men like DeSantis, Trump, Elon &c. If enough people rally & some of them are representatives, we might get a platform.
The previous platform failed because everybody was lying. Some were lying that we need more illegal immigration (2012 election autopsy), others were lying that we're not getting infinite illegal immigration (decent Republicans). But with the Biden admin, that & many other lies became untenable.
You are caught in a contradiction -- you want platform politics, but you'd be compelled to call everyone in platform politics a suppressor & oppose them. Spencer Klavan you don't like. You don't like me. Other rw people you also don't like. You like CJ -- who else? Who's left to be involved in this project?
Okay, so we'll do this here. Of course I like you and your core political stance! For that matter, I see eye to eye w/ S. Klavan on most issues, and he and I love many of the same books, and the Good Book also. What I say is that he was charged with some serious responsibilities as a Claremont editor, and failed to live up to them at a key moment, and that this failure continues, as the Suppression does.
As for the huge problem I myself and people who hold my position would face in practical politics--either in local party activism, or in running for office--due to the Suppression issue/insanity foisted upon us, well, it is huge, and I don't exactly know how to approach it. I.e., some ideas about how to cabin that commitment do occur to me, but as to whether they would work much for Dissident Conservative activists deploying them, I don't know. Obviously, w/ respect to electoral politics it stands as a major entry problem, as DC candidates would at times be ferociously opposed by major donors. I do know, however, that there is nothing long-term practical about the QUITE LITERAL "everybody is lying" stance that it takes for GOP and Dems to maintain the Suppression. It invites future disaster, and sows distrust everywhere.
What disturbs me about your talk here is the note of resignation in it, the shutting down of hopes and demands for ethical standards (which even in your sketched "everyone's lying GOP of 2012" seemed to be standard hopes and demands that that same "everyone" had to profess belief in), and the shutting them down in advance, according to some higher ethics demanded by what is real in politics, and being a serious person about the things that are real. When you talk the way you did here, it raises a fear in me that only tech-lord deals and such winds up with the stamp of the real for you--i.e., only they can oppose the HR/dumb-university-auto-progressivist class. So real tactics, i.e., tactics that are the ethical ones in the highest sense, require the cultivation of the tech execs, (and sure, some catering to their interests). But isn't it the case that insofar as writers/editors/scholars like yourself stand by serious standards, and that nationalist conservative activists and orgs do also, that all those types come into any room in which they meet a tech or finance type with a serious degree of moral authority? And a potential political authority whose potential is always present? Yes, conservative citizens and writers needed Elon and substack, and we owe both. But is there no way to communicate with enough citizens outside the channels controlled by such tech guys, or their ilk? Doesn't the maintenance of minimal dignity for the Political require that we assume there is?
I dunno what you think about Yarvin, but that interview he did w/ R&L a month or so ago contains a disturbing moment or two indicative of what he feels figures like Trump and Elon have modelled for future political activism. It's a model that demands obedience to (from a "base"), and long-periods of quiet about, some half-stated longer-term program/strategy which the leader or leader-set have concocted. It kicks democratic oversight and back-and-forth out the door, and commits itself to nothing solid. Or, only some inner (but possibly wide) circle has a sense of the real commitments. So trust in those, in genius, and in yes, in elasticity, become the watchwords. Here is the medium-term and practical effects, then, of Yarvin's monarchist/aristocratic vision. It lines up all-too-well, I think, with some of the devious "tech-lord" proclivities of the still-cloaked men and women who gave us all the Covid/Vax operation. (Though Yarvin is one of the few rw-ers who seems close, at times, to denouncing the Suppression.) It also lines up with the some of the worst dynamics that have emerged from Trump-modelled, or Trump-circle-modelled, leadership. (I of course admit that many good things have come and still will from him and his circle!) It also lines up, sort of, with the kind of leadership we associate with the "Influencer"--at least those of them who seem to have a coherent aim, like Carlson. And it definitely lines up with indefinite continuance of the Suppression.
The Declaration, the Constitution, and the 13th were platform politics. Were anti- "systematic-mendacity politics." Were pro-publicity, and thus, anti-hidden-elites, politics. A guy like Hamilton was back-room to a degree, but ultimately had to bring all the key stuff into the light of democratic judgment. Am I some kind of deeply irresponsible, because naive, political thinker for assuming that our politics for the 21st century must be guided by such examples? A guy like Yarvin says so. And worryingly, some of your ways of talking these days seem to say something similar.
Of course I have no movement, and no inside track to anyone who does! Does the "contradiction" in that require silent acceptance of the Suppression, or things like the tactical quasi-silence/deflection initially tried by rw leaders vis-a-vis the Carlson-Fuentes Affair? It's our leaders, I say, who are forcing everyone into contradiction after contradiction. I don't think I deserve the shorthand of "you don't like x, you don't like y, and you don't like anyone" to describe the pickle our side's leaders have put me in, and ultimately, have put all of us in.