This is where I save interesting links.
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Is Classical Liberalism for Losers
https://www.thefp.com/p/tyler-cowen-is-classical-liberalism-for-losers
Excellent piece on classical liberalism and its long game and influence over moments in history that have long impacts, e.g. the US Constitution. I think I have many classical liberal tendencies, leaning left.
I counsel patience, and investment in good ideas and in talent, not a quest for power per se.
What is truly scarce in today’s world are classical liberal attitudes and beneficial classical liberal revolutions. You, too, can work toward those, as long as you are prepared for long periods of disappointment. In contrast, there will always be plenty of people who seek power. If you are skeptical of them, as classical liberal attitudes dictate, most of the time those expectations will be proven correct.
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Live Not by Lies
https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies
One to read over, and over again.
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‘Cry More Libs’ is not a Strategy
https://www.thefp.com/p/rod-dreher-trump-enemies
I’d read almost anything that’s self-critical of one’s own “party.” This should tell me what I need to know about my own ability (and responsibility) to do this.
This was a striking paragraph:
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The Emergency is Here
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This is sin
Go backwards 15 years in your life. Close your eyes.
Imagine anyone in your life who you respect making this image. What would your reaction be?
I think you would at least be confused. Hopefully, you’d be disappointed.
Whether the White House has allowed a Zoomer (just “doing their job”) to take over the twitter and run it as a right-wing meme account or not, the evil is clear all the same.
Its mockery and mememification of politics is deeply sad.
I am a Christian.
The is a difficult, and confusing, reality that God calls us to love everyone. Love even when the law says that one among us did not follow the law. We are called to show mercy even when we think we have the right answer.
This sort of antic from the White House twitter account is an expression of what’s going on in our cultural heart, if there is one. It’s deeply flawed. It’s brutally lacking in empathy. Or mercy.
The stakes of not showing mercy, kindness, and seeking justice are pretty clear:
Matthew 37 – 46
“Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’
“And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’
“Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons. For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’
“Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’
“And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’
“And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.”
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The Long Now
“The Long Now is the Fiat World of reality by declaration, where we are TOLD that inflation does not exist, where we are TOLD that wealth inequality and meager productivity and negative savings rates just “happen”, where we are TOLD that we must vote for ridiculous candidates to be a good Republican or a good Democrat, where we are TOLD that we must buy ridiculous securities to be a good investor, and where we are TOLD that we must borrow ridiculous sums to be a good parent or a good citizen.
And the most terrifying thing is that you start to think they might be right.“
The Long Now series is worth remembering. There are four parts. Here, I’ll collect some thoughts about part 4 and the series altogether, as best I know how.
I don’t fully understand Ben’s framework but what I can say is I am very drawn to what he’s saying and the way he frames it up.
To be a bit more rigorous than that: Mostly, what I hear him saying in this series, and in others of his notes, is that there is the seen world and the presented world. The presented world is politics-as-sport, the spending-machine, and wool-over-your-eyes. It outsources your thinking to the government or the party or the cultural state. The one that does not know you, but uses you.
The Long Now pushes down beauty. It removes discomfort by discouraging your thinking. It dresses up complex things for you in memetic doings.
It is to be fought against.
As Wendell Berry says:
“As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it.”
A few other pieces from part 4 that are worth remembering:
“In truth there is ZERO relationship between social security taxes and social security benefits today, other than sharing the words “social security”. In truth they are two entirely separate government programs, the former a regressive tax on workers that goes into the big pot of the annual budget and the latter a wealth transfer program to old people that comes out of that budget.”
“Management levered up our country and used the proceeds to provide a windfall gain for corporations and the rich. You know … “returning capital to job creators”. In exactly the same way that Management might lever up a company and use the proceeds for a big stock buyback. You know … “returning capital to shareholders”.
Both of these narratives – “returning capital to job creators” and “returning capital to shareholders” – had a truth to them, an important truth. I believed in the important truth of both of these narratives for most of my adult life! And yes, I’m using the past tense.
Because in the Long Now, the meaning of both narratives has been perverted beyond all recognition.
Both are now part and parcel of the Trickle-Down Lie, that the crumbs that fall off massa’s table are crumbs that you wouldn’t get otherwise, so let’s celebrate all those extra crumbs. Yay, crumbs!“
“You know, in one of my twitter fights with Angry-Billionaires-and-their-Renfields™, I was called “a bizarre combo of Zerohedge and self-help guru”. It was meant as an insult, of course, but for me … man, I wear it like a badge. Because I DO believe, in Zerohedge-esque fashion, that “the system” is designed by and for a Team Elite that, in the immortal words of The Outlaw Josey Wales, pisses down our backs and tells us it’s raining. And I DO believe, in self-help guru-esque fashion, that the only effective resistance to the Nudging State and the Nudging Oligarchy is through a bottom-up grassroots social movement that is driven by one thing and one thing only: each individual’s courage and determination to maintain their autonomy of mind … the courage and determination to believe that 2 + 2 = 4.
The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be in the streets.
The revolution will be in our hearts.
It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do, precisely because no one will be watching.
But you won’t be alone.“
I’ve been thinking a lot about the political structure (or lack of it) lately. It’s unsettling me. Particularly, I think, because it feels sad. It’s not a “rising tide lifts all boats” environment. Maybe it hasn’t been, outside of wartime, ever. But right now it seems that it’s not just not that, but that it is instead one group of people in the boats while the other group is on the shore shooting heavy artillery at the boats.
Or, maybe the president sends all the boats he doesn’t like to a foreign prison in El Salvador in a full on attack on the constitution.
There’s no time to fully understand what’s happening. The zone has already been flooded. I cannot keep up.
Left is right. War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Freedom is slavery. Republicans are communist.
I think that’s what Ben’s getting at: “Listen. We know you’re busy. And we know what’s best for you. We know we’re asking for a bit more than is normal, but this is an emergency! Terrorists are at the door. The President is the only one who can save you. Let us take it from here. We can save the country.”
The Long Now keeps you from remembering the past and protecting the future by resisting these things right now. It might even deny the past exists or that the future will happen. Stay right here. Let us handle this today.
“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
George Orwell, 1984
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MAGA Maoism
An interesting and new framework for me on the “left-is-right and right-is-left” phenomenon that’s being revealed.
A few quotes:
“What exactly do these theories posit? Drawing deep from the wellsprings of Trump’s bleak and nihilistic mind, Trump’s unified grand theory of economics essentially holds that the very concept of voluntary economic exchange is impossible: every transaction must have a winner and a ‘sucker.’”
“Honestly, the right way to think about MAGA is through the lens of Maoism and other Third Worldist political movements and personality cults. It uniquely draws upon the dumbest, shittiest and most repulsive parts of each: Peron’s economic illiteracy; Mao’s ideological wars on reality; Juche’s exaltation of economic pain and hardship in service of national self-reliance; Idi Amin’s ethnic expulsions of minority groups.
I believe that the central motivating force behind the movement is a rejection of the Enlightenment and liberal modernity. In place of reason it exalts superstition, magical thinking and primitive suspicion of anything beyond direct experience. It is the ideology of the medieval peasant, the goat herder, the cab driver who blames all world problems on the Jews. Its motivating essence is simple: ‘”Burn anything I can’t understand.’”
“We’d rather feed on grass than betray the principles of Marxism–Leninism!” – Slogan in Hoxhaist Albania during a time of mass starvation
“Batya and Trump simply wish to forge a new proletarian consciousness in the American worker, you see.
Batya’s arguments about a ‘spiritual’ dimension to Trump’s tariff policy in fact reminded me of the messianic fervour communicated by young Trump acolytes in Mana Afsari’s recent essay on the Trump movement.”
“Trump supporters take this Gospel teaching and apply it to the MAGA movement. They are willing to endure any hardship and sacrifice everything – family, nation, material comfort, possibly even their own lives – for the sake of Trump’s brain dead tariff plan which in turn relies upon a brain dead ChatGPT tariff formula that doesn’t even make mathematical sense. You will own nothing and be happy!
Timothy Snyder recently diagnosed this millenarian, almost apocalyptic tendency within the MAGA movement: ‘That’s the point that you can’t actually justify any of this in terms of a conventional account of the interest of the United States. I think what is going on instead is a logic of sacrifice, of making things worse, which at its depth, it comes down to hero worship.’”
“This is MAGA Maoism. They hate everything good about Western civilisation: freedom of thought, freedom of expression, rule of law, presumption of innocence, trial by peers. They want death squads and struggle sessions against political enemies because they want to make America a Third World country.
They are going to fail, but my God they will inflict an insane and psychotic amount of destruction and suffering in the process.”
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Crashing the Car of Pax Americana
“You cannot unring this bell. Sure, you can reverse this policy and that policy, and god knows we’re going to get plenty of that, but you can never go back to the way things were before. Once you toss over the game table, even if you reset the table exactly as it was before, the other players must take into account the possibility that you will toss it over again. Their reactions in every game you play with them in the future will be different, much more wary and suspicious, and game outcomes that required a measure of trust and coordination will now be completely out of reach. You may still be the most able game player overall, but you will be surprised by how clever the less ‘powerful’ players can be, especially if they work together.”
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Another tariff link, sorry
This Twitter article by Molson Hart, with manufacturing experience and grasp of the details, is one of the best commentaries I’ve read on the Trump tariff’s so far.
Some thoughts and highlights from the article.
He 14 reasons why the Trump tariffs won’t work.
Lots of dire warnings in this. Again, lots of good fine grain details on a complex subject.
Having the inside knowledge Molson has is important to understanding this issue. I think one can also rely on their own ignorance (cope) in a scenario like this by thinking about how possible and likely all of this “reshoring to bring back the jobs” really is.
Meaning, it is generous to say that I know nothing about manufacturing, supply chains, and the like. I do know, though, that it takes like 6-9 weeks to get a passport in the U.S.
It seems unimaginable to me that it wouldn’t take YEARS to move buildings, train workers, and build do the work efficiently, all while we’re saying it won’t cause a recession and don’t look at the stock market folks because it doesn’t matter.
Because it’s so possible to wrap my head around it, I can only chalk this up to grift. EDIT (4/7/25): Or, that he really might go hard psyop on the 3rd term talk and this is all pretext.
Here are some highlights for the Twitter article:
4. The effective cost of labor in the United States is higher than it looks
“In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.
Chinese workers much less likely to physically attack each other and their manager. They don’t take 30 minute bathroom breaks on company time. They don’t often quit because their out-of-state mother of their children discovered their new job and now receives 60% of their wages as child support. They don’t disappear because they’ve gone on meth benders.
And they don’t fall asleep on a box midshift because their pay from yesterday got converted into pills. And they can do their times tables. To manufacture, you need to be able to consistently and accurately multiply 7 times 9 and read in English, and a disturbingly large portion of the American workforce cannot do that.”
This tracks, relatively, with anecdotes from a friend who works in manufacturing and has talked about the quality of the workforce.
5. We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture
“When you start manufacturing, every single component, from factory to factory, needs to be moved, increasing the number of trucks on the road many times.
Paving more roads, modernizing our seaports, improving our airports, speeding up our train terminals, and building power plants in the costliest nation in the world to build is a huge undertaking that people are not appreciating when they say “well, we’ll just make it in America”.”
6. Made in America will take time.
“It takes at least, in the most favorable of jurisdictions, 2 years (if you can get the permits) to build a factory in the United States. I know because I’ve done it. From there, it can take 6 months to a year for it to become efficient. It can take months for products to come off the assembly lines. All this ignores all the infrastructure that will need to be built (new roads, new power plants, etc.) to service the new factory.
By the time “made in America” has begun, we will be electing a new president.”
This isn’t a totally quack conspiracy, because Trump’s already floating a third term, but part of me wonders if they just know they’re gonna try and blow right into a third term and so it wouldn’t hold that a this all can’t be accomplished in his “last” term.
8. Most Americans are going to hate manufacturing
“Americans want less crime, good schools for their kids, and inexpensive healthcare.
They don’t want to be sewing shirts.
The people most excited about this new tariff policy tend to be those who’ve never actually made anything, because if you have, you’d know how hard the work is.
When I first went to China as a naive 24 year old, I told my supplier I was going to “work a day in his factory!” I lasted 4 hours. It was freezing cold, middle of winter, I had to crouch on a small stool, hunched over, assembling little parts with my fingers at 1/4 the speed of the women next to me. My back hurt, my fingers hurt. It was horrible. That’s a lot of manufacturing.
And enjoy the blackouts, the dangerous trucks on the road, the additional pollution, etc. Be careful what you wish for America. Doing office work and selling ideas and assets is a lot easier than making actual things.”
9. The labor does not exist to make good products
“The United States is trying to bring back the jobs that China doesn’t even want. They have policies to reduce low value manufacturing, yet we are applying tariffs to bring it back. It’s incomprehensible.”
12. Enforcement of the tariffs will be uneven and manipulated
Imagine two companies which import goods into the United States. One is based in China, while the other is based in the United States. They both lie about the value of their goods so that they have to pay less tariffs.
What happens to the China company? Perhaps they lose a shipment when it’s seized by the US government for cheating, but they won’t pay additional fines because they’re in China, where they’re impervious to the US legal system.
What happens to the USA company? Owners go to prison.
Who do you think is going to cheat more on tariffs, the China or the US company?
Exactly.
So, in other words, paradoxically, the policies which are designed to help Americans, will hurt them more than the competition these policies are designed to punish.
14. Michael Jordan sucked at baseball
America is the greatest economic power of all time. We’ve got the most talented people in the world and we have a multi-century legacy of achieving what so many other countries could not.
Michael Jordan is arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, perhaps even the greatest athlete of all time.
He played baseball in his youth. What happened when he switched from basketball to baseball? He went from being an MVP champion to being a middling player in the minor leagues. 2 years later, he was back to playing basketball.
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Businesses can be not that, quickly
Another post that takes a fine detail out of this whole vague narrative and hammers home the point.
This can get bad for people quickly.