Jon Haidt and Ravi Iyer in the WSJ
How to Get Beyond Our Tribal Politics
Jon Haidt and Ravi Iyer in the WSJ
Two super interesting brews
Being a chili head (and brew head) it was a no-brainer for me when I had to try the Jalapeño Ale at the lovingly repurposed Steam Plant (see photo). My initial scepticism was assuaged by the nose which really had the smell of the pepper and on drinking, it wasn’t at all the bland half-heartedness of some beer infusions. Even got some to go. Another super but more complex brew was Punk Kid Pumpkin Ale at the also lovingly (albeit on a much smaller scale) restored Iron Goat building. This brew had a fabulous finish which I think comes from the bourbon casks they use. Contrary to their website, the ABV was 8.2. Bravo Spokane on all fronts (plus the food and booze at the Ruins) — Vancouver BC and Calgary have so much to learn from you guys.
Walker Percy Wednesday 108
What’s going on? What do they have in common? Are they better or worse? Well, better in the sense that they do not have the old symptoms, as we shrinks called them, the ancient anxiety, guilt, obsessions, rage repressed, sex suppressed. Happy is better than unhappy, right? But—But what? They’re somehow—diminished. Diminished how?
*****
Then there’s the loss of something. What? A certain sort of self-awareness? the old ache of self? Ella doesn’t even bother to look at her own photograph, doesn’t care.
Bad or good?
For another thing, a certain curious disinterest. Example: Take the current news item: Soviets invited to occupy Baluchistan, their client state in southern Iran to restore order, reported advancing on Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. What to do? Let them have it? Confront them? Ultimatum? Two years ago people would be huddled around the tube listening to Rather and Brokaw. My patients? My acquaintances? No arguments, no fright, no rage, no cursing the Communists, no blaming the networks, no interest. Enrique doesn’t mention liberals anymore. Debbie does not revile Jerry Falwell anymore.
*****
There’s a sameness here, a flatness of affect. There was more excitement in prison, more argument, more clash of ideology. In Alabama we were polarized every which way, into pro-nukes and anti-nukes, liberals and conservatives, atheists and believers, anti-Communists and anti-anti-Communists, born-again Christians, old-style relaxed Catholics, lapsed Catholics, Barbara Walters haters, Barbara Walters lovers.
Nothing like Alabama!
The warfare in that quonset hut at Fort Pelham!
We inmates, or rather detainees—assorted con men, politicians, ex-Presidential aides, white-collar crooks, impaired physicians pushing pills, mercy killers, EPA inspectors on the take from lumber and oil barons—criminals all, but on the whole engaging and nonmurderous. And next door, Hope Haven, a community of impaired priests, burned-out ministers and rabbis, none criminal, none detained, but all depressed, nutty, or alcoholic, generally all three, who had not run afoul of the law as we had but had just conked out, and so had great sympathy for us and made themselves available. One of them, my old pal and exparish priest, Rinaldo, Father Simon Rinaldo Smith, sojourned next door to me on the Alabama Gulf Coast for a year to recover from his solitary drinking. (I must call him. Has he gone nuts again?)
At Fort Pelham we had discussion groups, seminars, screaming political arguments over meals, fistfights. In prison, ideas are worth fighting for. One also gets paranoid. There is a tendency to suspect that So-and-so has it in for you, to read hostile meanings into the most casual glance.
Identity Politics or Marx vs. Mill
Here are two of the more sober, clear and nuanced analyses of the current socio-cultural-political shit-storm. The first from one of the few on the Left still retaining some semblance of neuronal activity — Jonathan Rutherford (Ben Cobley is also a very thoughtful and honest commentator). The only thing I take issue with is that progressive politics is NOT liberal — on the contrary, the sine qua non of progressivism is akin to a glacier relentlessly and ever trivially flattening the social landscape or the “crooked timber of humanity”. The second supporting piece (again referencing Haidt) summarizes the duality of the current university — activism or truth. It is quite amazing that so many who spout reheated marxism have never read Marx nor indeed marxist commentators such as Jerry Cohen or De St. Croix. I have always said, Marx was a profound diagnostician but things go dreadfully wrong in its application. On the practical side I’m with Mill because equality of outcomes notion is surely the most incoherent, impracticable and toxic of outlooks.
To reconnect with the country Labour has to recognise the limitations of its liberal progressive politics. It lacks the range of virtues to represent the depth and breadth of human experience. Progressive politics has become over-reliant on its abstract values that exist prior to people’s everyday experience and which it superimposes on their lives.
The political right has been making the running with its language of “our people” and its valuing of cultural inheritance. The liberal progressive left, with its deracination of culture and its rationalistic policy solutions for meaning of life issues, is shrinking into an electoral conclave.
Blue Dog for President
Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Bowmore 12
Though very partial to the peatier Islays (Lagavulin, Ardbeg, Laphroaig) I retain a soft spot for Bowmore. The Scotch Noob articulates Bowmore 12’s character well, a drink I like to think as analogous to winter comfort food. Cheers!
Bayou Maharajah: James Booker Story
I’ve been anticipating seeing this for quite some time now and today was the day. The DVD packaging is superb and of course features a “who’s who” of the NOLA music scene. Two of my favorite clips include the 1973 Don Kirshner Rock Concert with Mac, the Harry Connick Sr. (and 12 y.o. Jr.) segments, and the Scott Billington segment featuring the teeth story. And Booker in City Hall!!: how improbable was that? What actually was under Booker’s afro was what was in Louis Armstrong’s briefcase, at least according to the famous apocryphal story. The extras on the DVD are not filler either — fascinating hearing pianists talking about Booker’s “technique”. As Harry says, it must have been really tough for Booker in Angola back in 1970: even now it’s pretty grim (I had to inform the museum there that Booker is conspicuous by his absence from the list of musicians that had been imprisoned there).
God lives in music — Hugh Laurie
The Regressives in Action
Maajid Nawaz, Sam Harris and for different reasons, Nicholas Taleb, calling out the unabashed fuckwittery of the perverse regressive mind set.
Sam Harris in conversation with Andrew Sullivan
The Lesser Evil podcast. Well-worth listening to the whole podcast. (Oakeshott is briefly mentioned by Andrew at 17 minutes in). Classic Sam — “Balkanized epistemology!”
