bruce caldwellColleges and Universitiesfree speechFriedrich HayekJohn Stuart MillJonathan HaidtLiberal educationMarxismMoral psychologyregressive leftTruth
CFP: Governance and the Authority of the State
Dangerous idiots: how the liberal media elite failed working-class Americans
Journalism/opinion at its best and surprisingly not in an organ one would expect — at least lately. Sarah Smarsh’s incisive article (sans the standard academic virtue-signaling) illustrates why the electoral choices on offer are symptomatic of a long-standing boil that needs to be lanced — however messy it may become for a while. Using class spectacles, it is clear that both the Right and most especially the Left have used their respective blue collar consistencies merely as entitled election-cycle cannon fodder. The irony is that arguably one of the most powerful sociological diagnostic tools — class and its account of exploitation, alienation and estrangement — has been forsaken by a bankrupt Left for the relentless and, as a consequence, pointless overreach of language and thought policing. Now they are severely pissed off that the proletariat “a class in itself” is becoming a class “for itself” — except that this revolutionary consciousness is unacceptable (i.e. Brexit) because its comprised by the wrong people — i.e. those not part and parcel of the bicoastal “lifestyle enclaves” and arbiters of the taste industrial complex (universities/media). And the traditional Right has been complicit in this — hence the scathing swipe at David Brooks.
The two-fold myth about the white working class – that they are to blame for Trump’s rise, and that those among them who support him for the worst reasons exemplify the rest – takes flight on the wings of moral superiority affluent Americans often pin upon themselves.
I’m hard-pressed to think of a worse slight than the media figures who have disregarded the embattled white working class for decades now beseeching the country to have sympathy for them. We don’t need their analysis, and we sure don’t need their tears. What we need is to have our stories told, preferably by someone who can walk into a factory without his own guilt fogging his glasses.
That problem is rooted in the notion that higher class means higher integrity.
A journalism that embodies the plutocracy it’s supposed to critique has failed its watchdog duty and lost the respect of people who call bullshit when they see it.
Michael Oakeshott’s Political Philosophy of International Relations
‘Confederacy of Dunces’ author’s papers online
Very good news. I thoroughly enjoyed poking around the archives in person.
There is also some Tooleana in the Percy holdings across the road at Loyola for those in the area.
True Dat BoJack
Even the NYT and Slate get BoJack as do AV Club, Vulture and TIFF. Let’s hope the writing doesn’t go soft, PC or didactic (sadly it did go PC and didactic in a big way thereby cheapening the artistry). Peter Singer might well have approved except for the fact that the animals with higher cognitive ability (i.e. the fully anthropomorphized) treat the lower ones (such as battery chickens) well as . . . food. The opening and closing music is very well-chosen. In effect, BoJack is a descendant of Gary Larson as is Shaun the Sheep.
My favorite episode — season 1:11 — written by Kate Purdy and directed by Amy Winfrey.
Walker Percy Wednesday 105
“Yes.” What I’m thinking is that Louisiana fishermen would not dream of speaking of such things, of my own people, of a way of life. If there is such a thing as a Southern way of life, part of it has to do with not speaking of it.
“Tom, I’m what you call a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I do all right, but I’m not really first-rate. I’ve been a pretty good physiologist, computer hacker, soccer bum, bridge bum, realtor, you name it. I went to Harvard and M.I.T. and did all right—I was a real hacker at M.I.T. and not bad at Harvard, but they were not for me, too many nerds at one, too many wimps at the other. So I cut out and headed for the territory like Huck. I chucked it all—except the kids.”
“Don’t you run the computer division at Mitsy?”
“Yeah, but it’s routine, checking out systems and trying to keep the local yokels from messing up—we don’t need another T.M.I. No, if I’d been first-rate I’d have gone from hacking to A.I.”
“A.I.?”
“Artificial intelligence, Tom. That’s where it’s at. As you well know—don’t think I don’t know your work on localizing cortical function.
*****
I had some success with them. Though I admired and respected Dr. Freud more than Dr. Jung, I thought Dr. Jung was right in encouraging his patients to believe that their anxiety and depression might be trying to tell them something of value. They are not just symptoms. It helps enormously when a patient can make friends with her terror, plumb the depths of her depression. “There’s gold down there in the darkness,” said Dr. Jung. True, in the end Dr. Jung turned out to be something of a nut, the source of all manner of occult nonsense. Dr. Freud was not. He was a scientist, wrong at times, but a scientist nonetheless.
*****
“I don’t have to plumb the depths of “modern man” as I used to think I had to. Nor worry about “the human condition” and suchlike. My scale is smaller.
In prison I learned a certain detachment and cultivated a mild, low-grade curiosity. At one time I thought the world was going mad and that it was up to me to diagnose the madness and treat it. I became grandiose, even Faustian.
*****
Living a small life gave me leave to notice small things—like certain off-color spots in the St. Augustine grass which I correctly diagnosed as an early sign of chinch-bug infestation. Instead of saving the world, I saved the eighteen holes at Fort Pelham and felt surprisingly good about it.
Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
The great American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, said that the most amazing thing about the universe is that apparently disconnected events are in fact not, that one can connect them. Amazing!
The Show Must Go On
Undoing Insularity: A Small Study of Gender Sociology’s Big Problem
Ah yes, a priesthood that is not at all interested in science and the pursuit of TRUTH. While it’s just tiresome to hear parents gushing about their novitiate children building an “academic” career (i.e. reheated cultural Marxism, activism dressed as inquiry, deploying the usual buzz words of identity and power), what is most disconcerting are their philosophical enablers, not just the radical social constructivists, but most especially those that proudly wear the naturalistic badge of honor. Essentially they are what Gad Saad terms the “ostrich-castrati” and this includes the most vacuous head of state in the Western world! The article in question by Charlotta Stern can be downloaded here. (H/T to Jerry Coyne).
manwithoutqualities 