Nobody Cares About Philosophy

[Innula Zenovka]

The Veep, the Mogul and the Antichrist

The strange intellectual origins of the new Trumpism

davidaaronovitch.substack.com

Evernote Link because paywall

An extremely long article on St Irenaeus of Lyons, Peter Thiel, Nazi lawyer Carl Schmitt, Renee Girard, JD Vance and many many more ...

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

The heroine of Atlas Shrugged is an example of success through the effort of extraordinary people. She inherited a railroad.

That is a massive contradiction. Not only did she not build her business, but there is no industry more reliant on government subsidies and brute force than American railroads. They were granted land and cash to finance construction. The government used eminent domain to clear land, and the US Army to remove Native Americans living along rail routes. They used a combination of police, military, and Pinkerton agents to prevent workers from organizing. No railroad exists because of the effort of an extraordinary individual. The exist because of state corruption, coercion, and murder on a massive scale.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I think there must be some connection between this privileging of the "ideas guy" and the fact so many libertarian manifestos take the form of novels, often science-fiction, which take place in a simplified alternative universe where the author's ideas can be explored without reality's inconvenient restraints.

And even then, of course, the author's (the ideas guy's) ideas would remain unread without the efforts of publishers, printers, manufacturers of paper, ink and printing presses, distributors and booksellers and their staff, and without the whole social apparatus that provides people with both the ability to read and the leisure to read fiction.

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

It may seem strange to some man, that has not well weighed these things; that Nature should thus dissociate, and render men apt to invade, and destroy one another: and he may therefore, not trusting to this Inference, made from the Passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by Experience. Let him therefore consider with himselfe, when taking a journey, he armes himselfe, and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep, he locks his dores; when even in his house he locks his chests; and this when he knows there bee Lawes, and publike Officers, armed, to revenge all injuries shall bee done him; what opinion he has of his fellow subjects, when he rides armed; of his fellow Citizens, when he locks his dores; and of his children, and servants, when he locks his chests. Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions, as I do by my words?

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm#link2H_4_0115

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Spoiler

 

[Free]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The Outliers

Torn between two unattractive models of human civilization

josephheath.substack.com

Interesting analysis of the differences between the US and the PRC, which he suggests is best seen not as a communist society but, rather, as a ruthlessly utilitarian one:

More than any other country, the Chinese state ruthlessly promotes the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and is willing to sacrifice the interests of any particular individual to achieve it. One could see this clearly in their Covid policy, which also brought to the fore the greatest flaw in utilitarianism – that it fails to recognize the distinctness of persons, treating the hopes and dreams of individuals as essentially interchangeable, looking only at the aggregate outcome.

The response to Covid in the United States, by contrast, was completely anarchic. As someone who went back and forth between Canada and the U.S. several times during the pandemic, the difference between the two countries was shocking. Even the simplest collective accomplishment, such as standing in line to enter a store, in order to maintain social distancing, proved beyond the level of cooperativeness that most Americans were willing to exhibit. Vaccination, when it became available, was promoted as a way of protecting oneself from disease, not as a contribution to any sort of collective project. Years later, a substantial fraction of Americans seem to be still traumatized by the extremely minor demands that were made of them.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I watched the covid differences between British Columbia and Alberta when I moved to Alberta in 2023.

In BC even though the masks were largely gone, people still would moderately distance and otherwise mind their business.

In Alberta, I was notified by my sister that she had been exposed so I masked up and went to the pharmacy for some tests. I was challenged by an old bat, I hesitate to say lady, who was full of talking points which had nothing to do with what I actually said, and she also pointedly anti-distanced.

I was indeed infected with covid. I wonder if she’s still alive. I did my part.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

I really think the way people like that work (and we got plenty of them in the US) is that their ultimate value is their own convenience. They will judge truth solely based on that. Global climate change is VERY inconvenient to deal with, and therefore can't be real, or at least not human caused. Having to wear a mask is at least slightly inconvenient, and therefore also stupid and useless.

the Dead Kennedy's Album title "Give me Convenience or Give me Death" was a perfect parody of this.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Yeh, I got harassed for masking in a store by someone who was totally running through the whole sea-lion checklist, including "what if your doctor told you that masks were dangerous" and the rest of the troll script.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

The Outliers

Torn between two unattractive models of human civilization

josephheath.substack.com

Interesting analysis of the differences between the US and the PRC, which he suggests is best seen not as a communist society but, rather, as a ruthlessly utilitarian one:

To understand what's driving Chinese society you've got to learn and understand the teachings of Confucius.

Large parts of the modern society are still based on his teaching, but there also some major differences.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

"what if your doctor told you that masks were dangerous"

That's one way to win a debate, just say something so incredibly stupid that explaining WHY it's stupid takes too much effort. "what if all of medicine and biology was different than it actually is??? Would you still wear a mask then?, Hmmmm?"

 

[Noodles]

I really think the way people like that work (and we got plenty of them in the US) is that their ultimate value is their own convenience. They will judge truth solely based on that. Global climate change is VERY inconvenient to deal with, and therefore can't be real, or at least not human caused. Having to wear a mask is at least slightly inconvenient, and therefore also stupid and useless.

The US also has an absolutely staggering number of people who absolutely cannot handle any change from "the standard"/"normal".

Even if that change could BE the "new normal."

This seems into basically every policy and its why the entire country is hellbent on stagnation.

Masks are greaky and weird, wind turbines and solar farms are an "eyesore" and ruin those fields that have been there since childbood.

Etc etc.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

The US also has an absolutely staggering number of people who absolutely cannot handle any change from "the standard"/"normal".

Even if that change could BE the "new normal."

This seems into basically every policy and its why the entire country is hellbent on stagnation.

Masks are greaky and weird, wind turbines and solar farms are an "eyesore" and ruin those fields that have been there since childbood.

Etc etc.

True. They often remark about changes as if it was self evident that the change was bad.

"In my day we just had cow's milk!"

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Yeh, I got harassed for masking in a store by someone who was totally running through the whole sea-lion checklist, including "what if your doctor told you that masks were dangerous" and the rest of the troll script.

My reply to that kind of thing is "My niece is a very intelligent and responsible woman who spent several years earning her medical degree. I can't think of any reason why she'd knowingly give any of her patients, let alone any member of her family, bad medical advice. Can you?"

 

[Free]

"My doctors weren't licensed in MAGA Wonderland, so they would never say such a thing."

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Trump as Alexander the Great: A Theory That Explains Iran (And Everything Else)

Hegel figured it all out 200 years ago.

www.notus.org

“Time will show the Trump era to be less turning point, more freakish aberration,” Simon Tisdall, a foreign affairs columnist for The Guardian, wrote in December. “In history’s bigger picture, Trump is a blotch, an unsightly smear on the canvas.”

This could not be more wrong. And the ill-conceived but also era-defining war in Iran — the seventh country that Trump has attacked in his second term — is just the latest manifestation of how Trump is irrevocably changing our world.

My confidence in this prediction derives from an unlikely source. To try to make sense of Trump’s presidency, I recently returned to G.W.F. Hegel’s “Lectures on the Philosophy of History,” which I had read many years ago when I was trying to understand his influence on Marxism. This may seem to be an unnecessary diversion — like studying quantum mechanics in order to repair a car — but Hegel’s theory of history maps remarkably well onto our current situation.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Trump as Alexander the Great: A Theory That Explains Iran (And Everything Else)

Hegel figured it all out 200 years ago.

www.notus.org

Thanks for the very interesting read!

I've encountered pieces of this theory before and I think there is a lot of truth to it. I do not believe history has predictable, repeating "cycles" as some do, but I do agree we'll never go back to "normal." The previous order was decaying and Trump just did too much damage to a lot of old institutions and alliances that we won't recover from. I think we also know now that propaganda can knock out education and truth cold. Democrats now have to figure out how to win the meme style propaganda war without alienating voters who want more substance. Trump has certainly shot himself in the foot enough to help out....

But as the article says, I do not believe even sweeping democrat victories will get us back to normal. Our international alliances are blown to smithereens and now we have a large share of our population who has likely permanently turned away from education and snooty experts on things like climate change or modern medicine....