Bottom Line Up Front
Substack, whatever its limitations, offers solid data on reader engagement, so I can see pretty clearly that my last post went over like a lead balloon. I get why, and I see that I was too cute and backed into the point I was trying to make. So let’s BLUF:
A rising cultural tide lifts all boats. A bourgeois culture of strong families and clear social norms nourished everyone, even people who hated it and tried to subvert it. The destruction of bourgeois culture harmed everyone, even the people who yearned for its destruction. A world with fewer families and less social connection is harmful all around, even to the anti-capitalist, anti-family edgelords of the 1980s art scene, who attacked capitalism and heteronormativity with their brave and confrontational art and then found that they’d made a….family-friendly fun zone. The disgusting conservative 1980s were awesome, and the dorks who Robert Smithed around in their emo bullshit enjoyed it too, even if they’d rather not acknowledge it.
Similarly, this…
…is yet another sign that we’re living through an era of tearing down rather than an era of building and strengthening, as people who rise to the social “top” militate against the foundation that they’re standing on top of. More details on insane and destructive Ivy League social views here.
We’re advancing into more and more aggressive elite-class destructive wishcasting, a moment in which the most comfortably placed people scream louder and louder that everything sucks and we should destroy it all. (I can’t embed Twitter video, so click on the link to watch, if you must.)
We’re gonna SMASH AND DESTROY THE EXISTING ORDER, says…a rich and famous person who benefits from the existing order. “The old world will shatter.” But hopefully not during brunch in Brentwood.
A receding tide drags all boats out to sea, unless your boat is firmly tied to something. I was recently accused, in the comment thread to this post, of peddling hopium by suggesting that everything isn’t horrible and we’re not descending into ruin and the oh no here comes the civil war thing.
The point isn’t fake hope. The point is the decision. My view is that the strongest strategy, the best choice in the face of a constant drumbeat of manufactured crisis…
…is to not live in a state of crisis. YOU’RE LIVING IN A STATE OF PROFOUND THREAT, Kamala Harris warns. Just decline that offer. It doesn’t mean nothing is wrong; it means you turn your back on willful destruction and the deliberate promulgation of despair.
If you have a memory and you can read, you know what works. A good life is within reach. A sewer of despair-manufacturing and ruin-inducing rhetoric runs through your life every day, especially through the sewer box you’re currently using to read this. Turn your back on it.
And writers, don’t ever start a post with this picture.
I really enjoyed the last post; I liked and thought I'd restacked it (I'd forgotten and corrected that). People 'do' dissident political commentary for a lot of reasons. I suspect that for many it's a kind of game- how can I be 'righter' than the next guy, how can I mess with the evil system, how can I own the libs, etc. The left is the greengrocer who hangs up the "workers of the world" sign; many on the right think it's enough to countersignal, to mock the sign, create a parody. But it isn't. Politics isn't 'for' philosophers; it's not about scoring points or posturing. Its for those who live in the polity. The only legitimate ideas, the only ones worth pursuing, are the ones that guide normal people into fulfilling lives through organic, transcendent, mediating social and spiritual institutions- Church, family, community, collegial networks, and only then local and national political structures. What you wrote gets to the heart of that, that fun but beautiful art at Coney Island holds things together more than a seminar in Heidegger or a Twitter ratio-ing ever could. We need more stuff like that, and if people don't appreciate it it just means they aren't ready for it yet.
"And writers, don’t ever start a post with this picture."
---
We're gonna find out if you should end a post with it, either ;)