We must begin to stubbornly hold our places when both the powerful old, and the insouciant young, spring the “agree-with-my-sound-bite-version-of-the-truth-or-be- banished” gambit on us. Yes, they will amp up the volume to try and get us to cower and fold. We need to be stubborn and conflictive with them in ways that many of us never wanted, or believed we could be.
The Appropriation and Corruption of Testimonialism Read More
Schwab’s main allies are in the managerial class, indeed, they are at the pinnacle of that class being the CEOs of massive corporations. But an organization–a business–is fundamentally different than an economic and social system, and the methods that work for an organization don’t work for a complex system in which formal organizations are just a part. This is why, for instance, avatars of high modernist management and engineering, like Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter, failed miserably as presidents.
One significant gift of Judaism and Christianity is the concept that an individual is responsible and valuable apart from the group. As Larry Siedentop explains in his book Inventing the Individual, Western civilization’s moral and legal foundations owe a great deal to that legacy. Before that, the ancient Romans and Greeks considered loyalty to the family-clan to be an absolute religious duty.
When almost the whole world loses sight of the common goal of human society, and the elimination of a single problem, in the end a rather unimportant one, takes precedence over everything else, thus becoming the goal – a distorted and absurd one, a disastrous and ruinous one for sure – this is an indication of a fundamental loss of common sense.
We keep doing this, gathering the raw material, going back to the lab, hooking up the idea to the power source, throwing the switch, and experiencing shock and regret at the results. Our modern monsters aren’t isolated threats; they are killing freedom the world over.
Let us remember that Carl Schmitt despised America and everything it stood for, especially the idea of individual liberty and limits on government. It’s one thing to study his writings in graduate school as a warning to what it means to turn against enlightenment values. It’s another thing entirely to deploy his theories as a viable path to keeping power when it appears unstable, not only in Beijing but also Washington, DC. That should truly terrify all of us.
The Return of Carl Schmitt and His Scheme for Regime Longevity Read More
Giorgio Agamben had, for a few decades before 2020, been known as one of the most judicious thinkers in the world. Since the genesis of what has been called a pandemic, his public image has undergone a radical change. In lieu of praise, he has courted the savage hatred of very many people. Even derogatory labels like “crackpot,” “lunatic,” “coronavirus denier,” and “crazy anti-vaxxer” have been accorded to him.
A new totalitarianism is emerging in our society. Not a communist or fascist totalitarianism but a technocratic totalitarianism. A kind of totalitarianism that is not led by “a gang leader” such as Stalin or Hitler but by dull bureaucrats and technocrats. As always, a certain part of the population will resist and won’t fall prey to the mass formation.
In these times, when calls for crisis government and more emergency powers for the administrative state seem to grow louder by the day, the legislators in Congress — the people’s representatives and trustees — ought to pause, look around the Capitol, and consider the long tradition of freedom and dignity that is our inheritance and could still be their legacy.
I don’t care, I don’t know,
I don’t care to know.
I don’t know, I don’t care,
I don’t know how to care.
Social distancing was not really about preserving hospital capacity and it was not just about two weeks. It was really about the complete reconstruction of social life itself, critiqued as pathogenetic starting 12,000 years ago, with Covid as only the latest example of the costs of free association.
Religious persons today are a threat, but not to public safety as the narrative instructs us. They are a threat to the idea that the state is to be worshipped above all else, to the religion that’s trying to take their place, to the idea that it’s possible to find a compelling and complete sense of meaning outside of the state.
