It’s only one tweet, but I’m going to treat it as massively indicative, because:
(1) It’s Friday night
(2) It’s more entertaining that way, and
(3) It actually might be massively indicative
Plunging straight into madness’ maw, therefore, we have this:
And now all the right wing, neoreactionary SuperPAC money will be shifted to other close US Senate races, like… http://t.co/13BvajioYm
— Les AuCoin (@lesaucoin) July 24, 2014
It’s happening.
If this sort of assortative mating continues, Civil War II is all but guaranteed. http://t.co/BsmwZgOSwb
— heartiste (@heartiste) July 22, 2014
(Bring it on.)
Comedy gold at New Scientist — it really needs to be read to be believed. Kate Douglas reviews Aaron Panofsky’s book Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the development of behavior genetics, rising to a glorious crescendo with a restatement of Lewontin’s Fallacy (without giving any indication of recognizing it). If this book and review are panic symptoms, which seems highly plausible, Neo-Lysenkoism has to be sensing the winter winds of change. In any case, it somehow all went wrong for them:
The founding principles of social responsibility suffered, usurped by a responsibility to the discipline itself and to scientific freedom. And controversy bred controversy as the prospect of achieving notoriety attracted new talent. In short, the field became weak and poorly integrated, with low status, limited funding, and publicity the main currency of academic reward. This, according to Panofsky, is why it is afflicted with “persistent, ungovernable controversy” …
As a guide to what regional Cathedral breakdown looks like, this works quite well.
An utterly compelling tangle of arguments at The Center for Evolutionary Psychology, where the intersection of science and society is ripped open by controversy over Kevin MacDonald and his relation to Darwinian biorealism. Evo Psych star John Tooby makes some important points about the politics of denunciation, bringing the distinct spectra of political allegiance and sociological genetics into complex collision. Where do the implications of Hamiltonian inclusive fitness lead? (HBD doesn’t quite come into focus, but it haunts the discussion from the edges.)
For a sense of how murky this gets:
Richard Fernandez makes a basic, but essential point:
Mention repealing Obamacare and you are told it is impossible; even John Boehner said, it’s the ‘law of the land’. Brown vs Board is the law of the land, Roe vs Wade is the law of the land, but Hobby Lobby or Citizens United is an abomination to be repealed or ignored soonest. It’s like a ratchet. It moves only in the way of the approved narrative.
This is the same insight identified by this blog as The Idea of Neoreaction, which is to say: recognition of a degenerative ratchet as the central mechanism of ‘progress’ (to the Left). Fernandez draws explicit attention to its constitutive asymmetry. Partisan polarity is revealed as a one-way conveyor, alternating between ‘stop’ and ‘go left’. Two-party democratic politics is structurally-established as an inevitable loser’s game for the Right. Once this is seen, how is the thought of ‘conservative activism’ in any way sustainable, except as a transparently futile joke? Hasn’t the line already been crossed to the dark side?
Fernandez is still hedging:
… the real news is this: it’s not working any more. Even Obamacare might actually be repealed. Liberal foreign policy might really go down in flames. Already the authorities are warning of bombs on inbound airline flights. And Obama might actually be the worst president since World War 2. Things used to be under control; what happened? […] History suggests that over time all conflict becomes symmetrical. Eventually both sides become equally brutal. […] If there is any lesson taught by history it is that man when driven far enough is the most dangerous and merciless life form on the planet.
It’s not at all clear to me what’s really being said here. Is this an anticipation of counter-revolution? Or is it merely the tired claim that the next election could really make a difference?
Even in the most depressing case, something is being seen that would very much rather not be seen. If acute conservative opinion is tiring of its role as the Cathedral’s loyal opposition, it indicates that the mechanism is beginning to break down.
Robert Zubrin’s intense (and appalled) discussion of Alexander Dugin’s revolt against the New Atlantis climaxes:
In short, Dugin’s Eurasianism is a satanic cult.
Despite inevitable NRO simplifications, it’s a gripping read throughout.
(Much of interest also in the obstreperous comment thread.)
ADDED: Gregory Hood on Zubrin on Dugin.
Richard Fernandez has written many brilliant things, so this might not — necessarily — be his greatest moment, but it’s the post most perfectly substituting for what this blog would want to have said. Discussing the prospect of impeachment proceedings against the POTUS, he speaks through the avatar of an imagined Republican senator, to say exactly what is needed:
And after we get rid of him, after a decent interval, aren’t we’re going to do again? This time with an historic Woman president, Asian president, Gay president? You really need never run out of Jonahs.
But you see, I’m not going to vote for conviction. [murmur in the crowd]
I vote to let him remain president. I’m going to stick him to you. Vote to let him remain in office knowing full well what a screw up he is. Knowing he’ll screw up again; sink your portfolios, bankrupt your industries, make such a mess of defending this country there’ll be blood in the streets and crowds are going to be looking for the guys who endorsed this man into office. He’s going to bring the whole thing down, and you with it.
Because you see he was what he always was. That at least is his excuse. But you knew better, all you people. All you exquisitely educated, creased-pants people. You knew better and put this poor fool in office.
I say …
‘Dark Enlightenment’ describes a form of government as well as ‘Enlightenment’ does, which is to say: it doesn’t at all. On those grounds alone, George Dvorsky’s inclusion of DE among twelve possible “Futuristic Forms of Government That Could One Day Rule the World” is profoundly misguided. This is not to say the list is entirely without interest.
Its greatest value lies in the abundance of mutually inconsistent political futures, few if any of which will happen. It therefore provides the opportunity for negative thoughts, and more particularly for systematic negative idealization. Which futures are most deserving of prevention?
This blog has no doubt. The epitome of political disaster occupies fourth place in Dvorsky’s list (among a number of other hideous outcomes): Democratic World Government.
Dvorsky seems to quite like it:
We may very well be on our way to achieving the Star Trek-like vision of a global-scale liberal democracy — one capable of ending nuclear proliferation, ensuring global security, intervening to end genocide, defending human rights, and putting a stop to human-caused climate change.
The whole of Robert O. Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism (2004) is available here. In the final pages (p.218), following detailed historical analysis, it cautiously advances a cultural-political definition:
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraint goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Since the topic regularly re-surfaces, it seems worth recording Paxton’s formulation as a reference point, especially as its emphases differ significantly from those this blog (and its critics) have tended to stress. An important conclusion of Paxton’s study is that no purely ideological account of fascism is able to capture what is an essentially historical phenomenon, which is to say a process, rooted in the degeneration of democracy. (Wikipedia offers some background on his work.)
Due to our rigorous aversion to partisan vulgarity, we couldn’t possibly comment on this:
The majority leader pummeled the airwaves, spending more than $5 million on the race, including a direct-mail piece that took a harder line against immigration reform than Cantor previously had advocated. […] In many ways, however, the show of force gave more oxygen to the little-known Brat, who had few resources and almost no outside cash funding his underdog effort. To Cantor’s millions, Brat raised only $200,000, and spent even less, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. […] Among those who advocate changing the nation’s immigration rules, Cantor’s loss seems likely to dash all hope that the House will act on any legislation to provide a citizenship path for some immigrants — as Cantor had once proposed. […] Many had expected the chamber could turn to the issue once primary season had ended and lawmakers no longer had to worry about protecting their right flank.
“At least they cooked that freaking duck …”
The Dark Dream scenario up to and beyond 2016 isn’t hard to piece together:
* GOP lock on Congress to ensure maximum obstruction.
* Tea-Party insurgency driving the GOP into right-wing extremism®.
* Secessionist ambitions spreading like a forest fire.
* A radical progressive Democrat in the White House, to keep a Cathedral clown-face glued onto the collapse.
Carry on.
ADDED: Jim.
ADDED: I like the cut of Zachary Werrell’s jib.