This is where I save interesting links.
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WWEconomics: Kayfabe and the Trade War
Another Kyle Scanlon piece that doesn’t miss. She seems to have endless ability to create new terms out of pop culture and political slop that is excellent.
It’s all designed to keep the crowd (the global public) engaged with a performance. Flood the zone, etc.
https://kyla.substack.com/p/wweconomics-kayfabe-and-the-trade
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The Other COVID Reckoning
In the end people average out the whole subject to “Wait, you support charities? But didn’t you hear about that one that turned out to be corrupt? Can’t believe you’d be into something like that.”
Short post from Scott Alexander on the most consequential thing about the virus itself being the least talked about thing: it killed a lot of people.
The quote above is memorable because it struck me as one of the real downsides to memetics where you boil down and poison complex things with quick assumptions.
Narrative poison.
It reminds me of growing up in a fundamentalist Christian tradition. I don’t mean that negatively. I’m only saying that often things largely got boiled down to, This is good. The world is against it. And for some reason that never felt true.
But countering it in any meaningful way is next to impossible.
There are a staggering amount of comments on this post too. Interesting.
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AI Will Change What It Is to Be Human. Are We Ready?
Humans are remarkably adaptable. We foraged and farmed, we built factories and spaceships, we wrote prayers, plays, poems, novels, and code. And now? Now we created this.
As always, Tyler Cowen:
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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.”