Antifa™ showed up on Tucker Carlson’s doorstep this week. Matt Yglesias couldn’t manage to empathize. A Psychopath. Turns out Yglesias had a front door after all. Dennis Dale comments.
The midterms happened. Glad THAT’s Over. No Red Wave. Nor much of a blue one. Pretty standard mid-terms, to be honest. The GOP lost the House, but Trump’s grip on the GOP that remains in Washington seems to have strengthened. Did they matter. TUJ thinks they were good for Trump.
Over at American Greatness, VDH recounts CNN’s Existential War With Trump. And he remembers: The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month—100 Years Ago. Also there: Simple Acts of Anti-Sabotage: Rules for Counterrevolutionaries. They hardly qualify as “Rules”, but as “Acts of Anti-Sabotage” many great ideas.
And at the august American Mind, Thomas Klingenstein on Our House Divided: Multiculturalism vs. America.
Let’s see… what else was going on?
Navigate…
This week at GA Blog, Adam is simply superb as he contemplates: Crowding Out the Political:
So, when would a liberal order no longer be a liberal order? The ideal would be for the question not to be asked too widely until the answer was already “now.” After all, the assumption that all political intentions be widely telegraphed and explicitly stated is itself a liberal one that liberalism itself never abides by. No one is under any obligation to openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their aims, their views, their tendencies, and meet the fairy tale of authoritarianism with a manifesto of the party itself. It may be better to replace one plank at a time, and at the same time stockpile nicely prepared wood and devise some better names for various institutions, offices and practices, names perhaps to be used informally, satirically at first (memed into existence) but eventually to be “baptized” once the existing names are laughed out of existence. Where there is now liberal, let there be authority. If we itemize all the various elements of the existing order that are specifically liberal, approach them analytically, that is, break them down into their elements, we can identify where leverage lies. For example, does it make more sense to try and eliminate elections, or to render their results as irrelevant as possible (in which case they may continue but become vestigial)? How relevant are their results now? What gets decided by elections? What gets decided through the electoral process? What does the electoral process allow to be decided behind the scenes? How does the electoral process nevertheless shape what is behind the scenes so as to advantage some power centers over others? The point is to determine how the democratic system undermines authority, chains of command, competence, discipline and tradition, and to interfere with that process, to make it a less promising (more compromised) vehicle for those who benefit from, empower themselves through, higher levels of anarchy and chaos. The proper institutional “fix” will follow, more as a coup de grace than an apocalyptic triumph.Braids!
If there’s nothing that can’t be politicized, is there nothing that can’t be de-politicized? Isn’t the art of government akin to the art of flying a plane or discovering vaccines? Even if not very close, government should be about stealing someone’s shit and giving it to someone else. Doesn’t everyone agree with that? (At least if they’re being honest?) Less theoretical and more practical than most of Adam’s stuff: It’s a real treat and earned an 
“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Silver Circle Award. Please RTWT!
Alf keeps agitating for a new religion: Jimianity. Easier said than done. It took about 1000 years for Christianity to evolve (1800 if you’re Mormon). Gosh, I’m not sure we have time. Also there: a brief note on Aging gracefully.
Giovanni Dannato recounts The Changing of Power.
The magnitude of decisive policy changes these previous leaders regularly participated in dwarfs anything that has been possible for decades. As we bicker for years over the trivial funds needed for a border wall, keeping roads repaired, keeping consumerism chugging by keeping interest rates eternally low, or cooking up convoluted subsidies to health insurers as the next social safety net, we are but children playing among the ruins built by giants who came before us.
He recounts the increasing sclerosis of American Government, in both formal and informal modes. And earned an “Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention for his fine work here.
Dannato also has a rather fanciful Response to Ginsburg’s Fall.
Shylock Holmes introduces a thought experiment you may be able to get normies to play: The Button C Option. And maybe they won’t be normies anymore…
Sarah Perry goes Treasure Hunting, with guidance from Mark Twain, Joseph Smith, and serious Buddhists. A taste:
Mark Twain’s form of treasure hunting—prospecting during a gold rush—seems irrational to us now. For most individuals involved, it’s a losing proposition. Those four modern treasure hunters who have died in search of the Fenn Treasure, and those who still hunt for it despite the risks posed by the wilderness, seem irrational in the same way: the expected value of the benefit (the likelihood of finding the treasure, times the value of the treasure, times the likelihood that it exists, say) is almost certainly lower than the expected costs and risk. However, these forms of treasure hunting represents a distinct type of “irrational” from the magico-religious treasure seeking practice. After all, they are merely based on a poor calculation or an unusual utility function, not upon a magico-religious worldview. Mining is quite rational, but look how it connects to treasure hunting and gold rushes. Metallurgy is rational, but look at its history in the magical systems of alchemy.Girl smoking. (A reprint for those keeping track.)
Mrs. Perry’s piece defies simple summary. (As usual.) It’s about treasure hunting… and things like it. And how things like it tend to be the sort of high-risk/high-reward things that a civilization needs to be doing over long, low-time-preference horizons. So go and read the whole of this “Official” #NRx Best of the Week Silver Circle Award winner.
Anti-Gnostic encapsulates the midterms down south: Demography is democracy.
Social Pathologist has some solid notes on Z-Man, Whittaker Chambers, Principles—Chambers in particular.
Jacobite welcomes input from Reason‘s Christian Britschgi concerning what he calls The New Liberum Veto. Britschgi applies this old concept from the Polish-Lithuanian Sejm to the ability of anyone and everyone to disrupt development projects in California.
While Poland-Lithuania vanished long ago, its liberum veto has found new life in the urban centers of California. There, an endless array of boards, commissions, associations, agencies, non-profits, unions, individuals, and activists can at little cost stall, shrink, sue, or stop an unfavored development. The results from granting this veto to so many parties is well-known and oft-discussed. Witness the national headlines about the Golden State’s housing shortage and the many absurdities it has produced, from a burned down shack in San Jose selling for nearly $1 million to a man in San Francisco prevented from redeveloping his own laundromat because of its supposed historic significance.
Britschgi goes on to describe various examples and the legal environment enabling them. While the ability of local communities to defend themselves from unwanted developments is not to be wholly despised, California seems to have taken it to an absurd extreme. This article impressed The Committee and earn an “Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention.
Malcolm Pollack wonders What Was Oumuamua?
By way of Isegoria… Energy drinks are associated with mental health problems, anger-related behaviors, and fatigue—My aren’t you surprised? The problem with allowing students to decide for themselves how they study and learn best. Gwern’s proposal for an archive revisiter. And on the 100th Anniversary of the end of The Great War, Isegoria links his own substantial archive on the subject.
Finally, this week at CWNY… No Longer Under Their Dominion.
This Week in Social Matter
Xiang Yu returns to Social Matter with an analysis of The Sinking Ship Of Liberalism. One large hole in the hull is the contradiction inherent to “liberal democracy” itself. If you want “liberal”, literal democracy is not going to preserve it. And if you want “democracy”, then it’s pretty much going to have to be imposed. But if you want to sink liberalism, leftism is a sort of superweapon:
For the leftist, liberal buzzwords about civility, merit, moderation, and limited government are just constructs created by an immoral class seeking to preserve its privilege in the face of the leveling that is the only just way to order the world. The liberty the liberal so cherishes cannot be allowed by the leftist to persist in any form because it might be used to perpetuate that most odious of sins, inequality. Freudo-Marxist professor Herbert Marcuse admitted as much when he laid out his vision for the ideal society in his lesser known work Repressive Tolerance…Picture of little girl drawn with black ballpoint pen.
Xiang snags an “Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention for his fine bit of analysis here.
And on Friday, Daniel Miller returns with what appears to have originally been a lecture (delivered, helpfully, outside the US) on Trump And The Sacred. Must have been one whale of lecture! He really goes meta on Trump, and there’s so many good points, I scarcely know where to begin. Maybe here:
Not mainly because of what he does, but because of what he is, Trump is himself taboo. He comes from the wrong caste; he’s déclassé. If the main part of the miscellaneous charges thrown against him, on the thinnest of pretexts; his sexism, racism, fascisms, Hitlerism etc, are in general explicable due to this error of birth, one also sees, beyond Trump, a glimpse of the comprehensive religious system which he negatively illuminates.
A prole who made good. But unlike Andrew Carnegie before him, Trump refuses to kiss the Astoreths of the Clerical Caste.
In the first place, he threatens the global elite, because he comes from outside it, and has an independent base of support, not least through his personal wealth. Thus, he cannot be controlled by it, and what’s more, he’s knows where the bodies are buried.
It may have been a repeat for those who attended the lecture, but it was new to us and earned the “Official” #NRx Best of the Week Award this week.
This Week in Human Biodiversity
Evolutionist X kicks off the week with A Quick Civil War Calculation. Yes, the cost was too high. I seem to recall there being some Abolitionist idea of doing something like this. But that wouldn’t have permitted Massachusetts to wage war on Virginia. And Massachusetts has always been at war with Virginia.
Two more EvX’s Greatest Hits: Do Black Babies Have Blue Eyes? and Other Baby Matters. And on Saturday: How Turkic is Turkey? Genetically not very, but culturally… that’s a different story.
Preparations are under way for the next EvX Book Club book Cochran and Harpending’s The 10,000 Year Explosion.
By way of Audacious Epigone… Predictions for 2018 midterms on Monday, which turned out to be pretty accurate. And some analysis after the fact, including the remarkable polling number 93% of Democrats think it’s important that fewer whites be elected.
This Week Around The Orthosphere
J. M. Smith contemplates his passage into old age, and the cyclical nature of time, with The Way of Decay on a Dull November Day. As go lives, so go empires. Is America turning 61 as well? He’s got some great feature art to go along with it. Definitely worth checking out.
Then Smith delves into the history of The Doctrine of “the Body”: a Note on the New Gnosticism.
This article states that theories of “the body” originated in feminism. This is true if we limit our attention to the past fifty years. The basic doctrine obviously goes back at least two thousand years to the Gnostics, a Christian heresy that argued dualism of body and spirit.
And it remains just as much a foundational error today. You’d think the ostensible decline in superstitious thinking would have spelled the death of gnosticism. But humans will always find ways to be superstitious.
Richard Cocks writes at length on AI and the Dehumanization of Man.
According to Kristor, The Acid Eating at Tradition is Not Capitalism, But Cheap Information.
Thomas F. Bertonneau compares Two Theories of the Renaissance==-Berdyaev’s and Spengler’s.
Bonald asks some important Jewish questions.
What is the proper Christian attitude toward our Elder Brothers? Neither hatred nor pity, but admiration and a determination to emulate those who have proven to be our superiors. For in our competition and cultural clashes with them, they have proven overwhelmingly our superiors in determination, courage, intelligence, and initiative. How else could they have triumphed so thoroughly? What’s more, while we Christians talk about the Benedict Option, the Orthodox Jews have made it work.
Also there: A conundrum: capitalism is the void.
Matt Briggs, using An Illustration Of Type I Scientism, mocks those who need a scientific study to tell them what everybody already knows through common sense. Then he explains why Science Is Magic & Miracles Aren’t. And in academia, the new rule is Swear Fealty To Diversity, Or You’re Out. Last but not least, its necrophilia and other oddities in this week’s edition of the Insanity & Doom Update LXVI—Necrophiliac Edition
Mark Richardson wonders, Are conservatives just trimmers? In other words, do conservatives simply serve to keep the progressive ship from capsizing? That’s certainly what neoconservatives do, like A trimmer Frum the second Bush administration leftover who debated Bannon last week.
At Albion Awakening, Bruce Charlton tells the story of the real-ife Doctor Who.
And William Wildblood, quoting the Dalai Lama, discourages Westerners from converting to an Eastern religion. It might cause you to become Homeless Inside Yourself.
Dalrock examines the economy’s effect on the family and determines that Incentives matter.
We’ve removed the incentives and prestige that once motivated men to work hard to support their families as husbands and fathers. We’ve spent decades teaching men that husbands and fathers are despicable at worst, and at best jokes. All of our entertainment, even product commercials, continuously hammers this message. It isn’t just secular culture either. Christian movies are even worse than secular entertainment in this regard, and Father’s Day is now a day to disparage married fathers in churches across the land. It isn’t just our culture that sends this message. We send the same message with even greater potency with our family courts.Nice interior!
The message is: Men who marry and have children are despicable and deserve the harshest punishments we can mete out.
Cologero has a really captivating piece: The Stages of the Fall, in which the first 19 chapters of Genesis are united in an anagogical interpretation of the complete descent of man. This too: Members of the Crew—a sort of primer on esotericism. Helpful for congenital exoterics like meself.
Over at One Peter Five: Helpful (and timely) Words of Consolation: Chesterton, Tolkien, and the Crisis in the Church. Leading off with Chesteron’s profound Ballad of the White Horse.
This Week in Arts & Letters
Chris Gale begins the week with Sydney’s epicly long sonnet cycle on Saturday. And in rememberance of the Great War, C.S. Lewis on Sunday.
Good looking older guy.
At the Imaginative Conservative, Michael De Sapio asks Can We Stop the Decline of the West?. In memory of Armistice Day, Gustav Holst’s Ode to Death. And Micheal Vlahos, channeling the forces of reaction, if Americans Were Made for Civil War. At least, the low-level civil war that is democracy. Talk of a hot civil war has picked up of late among the Right.
At City Journal, Heather MacDonald doesn’t much like Trump’s firing of Jeff Sessions, calling it Casting Out A Man of Honor and Achievement. And Joel Kotkin tries to look on the bright side for Signs of Hope in California. At least the wildest reactionaries tend cluster on the dark blue coasts.
Theodore Dalrymple shines a light on mental health experts who believe themselves duty bound to diagnose Donald Trump Psychiatrist, Heal Thyself. And here I thought that The Authoritarian Personality was influential everywhere except psychiatry.
Richard Carroll first introduces the poetry of Sappho, and then shifts his attention to A. E. Housman.
At the Logos Club, Kaiter Enless takes a brief look at technological decline: Globally, 183 Nuclear Reactors Set To Be Decommissioned By 2020.
Chris Morgan pens a long but penetrating analysis of the American (vis-à-vis English) psyche: Intensity, with First Man, or rather the reviews of it, as backdrop.
This Week in Liberalism Besieged
Jordan Peterson sits down with his patrons for his October Q&A session.
Arnold Kling addresses some issues in education policy, particularly arguing that parents are better judges of school quality than are standardized tests. Kling also asks, “should taxation be regressive?” and ponders selection effects. Finally, he highlights comments from Razib Khan on Harvard’s admissions strategy.
This Week… Elsewhere
Z Man has a really skillful piece on The Art of Life.
[I]f a reasonably aware and smart person in the 1970’s had fallen asleep, like Rip Van Winkle, and woke up in our age, he would assume the Soviets had won the Cold War. After all, we have adopted the aesthetic of the Soviets. Our cars all look the same and come in black, white or shades of gray. Our buildings are sterile, utilitarian structures. Our high and low art is purely ornamentation, rather than imitation.
Well, the Soviets did win the Cold War. In a manner of speaking.
Courtesy of Baron Zach.
This week’s Myth of the 20th Century podcast: The European Union—Nick Griffin.
Really excellent thoughts over at Heartiste (his and his commentariat): Trump’s America: Dying, But Not Dead. Reminiscent of Driving Through Dying Blue Towns. Also there: Heartiste connects the dots on Thucydides Foreseeing America’s Decline.
Al Fin has Jordan B. Peterson coverage: If Not for Miscomprehension There’d be No Comprehension at All. Also there The Universe is Infinite: Economic Growth is Forever* (note asterisk). I agree with the general tenor of the piece but find fault with any exponential graph not drawn on a logarithmic scale. Additional quibble: per capita GDP is the more relevant metric.
And then Al Fin posts this: Genetic Drift vs. Memetic Drift. “Genetic drift can doom a space colony,” but… “Memetic drift can doom a civilization”. Really solid explainer piece and an “Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention.
PA and a commentator offer an astute observation: The AltRight Offers Nothing New—“Nor should it”. Also there: coverage of Poland’s Independence March 2018.
Ace checks in with a parable about putting first things first… even if that happens to be grape jelly: “The way that you treated me… I know I’m not to blame”
At Zeroth Position Nullus Maximus proposes A Holistic Approach to Ending Corporate Censorship. Maximus considers several options, including “Alt-Tech”, various avenues for government regulation, and his own personal favorite: implementation of his own ideas regarding corporations and the state.
That’s all we had time for this week. A lighter week than usual, but with some very bright gems in the mix. As always, many thanks to the excellent and faithful TWiR staff for their top notch contributions: David Grant, Hans der Fiedler, and Aidan MacLear. I couldn’t do it without ye. Keep on reactin! Til next week: NBS… Over and out!!
The post This Week In Reaction (2018/11/11) appeared first on Social Matter.