Jay Hoffmann

I don’t know what to call this yet

Tag: politics

  • #37: A Historical Turn

    I can’t help but think of history.

    Is it the mid-60’s, when violence in this country erupted and eventually led to change at some unimaginable costs?

    Is it the comparison that people like to jump to almost immediately at any opportunity? Is it the 1930’s in Germany, when a virtually unknown party found power amidst growing uncertainty in the future and discontent with the state of things, which they wielded into fascism and atrocity?

    Is 1789 France, when our modern definitions of left and right where first created, and radical elements on both sides used fervor and panic to exert control (and when one person was so motivated by doomsday invective in the press that she attempted an assassination on a populist totalitarian)?

    Or are we at the end? As Gibbon said of Rome, that “all that is human must retrograde if it does not advance,” and we have simply lost the ability to advance?

    Joseph Brodsky on the importance of boredom

    Boredom is your window on time, on those properties of it one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one’s mental equilibrium. In short, it is your window on time’s infinity, which is to say, on your insignificance in it.

    […]

    Boredom is an invasion of time into your set of values. It puts your existence into its perspective, the net result of which is precision and humility. The former, it must be noted, breeds the latter. The more you learn about your own size, the more humble and compassionate you become to your likes, to that dust aswirl in a sunbeam or already immobile atop your table. Ah, how much life went into those flecks! Not from your point of view but from theirs. You are to them what time is to you; that’s why they look so small.

    Notes Block – hello from the saved content!

    Notes

    Check Asana
    Clear out Reeder
    Check Inbox Note
    Read through emails
    Go through “To Sort” In Raindrop
    Film List
    Comics List
    Add to Books
    Review projects in Obsidian
    Add to collections in Obsidian
    Set a weekly focus
    Read Brainpickings
    Publish Weeknote

  • Paranoia ahead of revolution

    I find the French Revolution particularly fascinating (it’s my Roman Empire, I suppose). Recently, I’ve been listening to the Revolutions podcast—which I seriously cannot recommend enough—and the host, Mike Duncan, spends a lot of time in the years and month leading up to the armed uprisings and tyrannical hold that would cast France into its brutal revolutionary era. During that time, the leaders of the revolution on every which side devised some rather crazy conspirancy theories.

    If anything went wrong—if a battle was lost, or a revolt broke out or a mob of people stormed the convention (and this type of thing happened quite a lot)—it was always the fault of some dark, shadowy movement lurking just beneath the surface.

    If you were a Jacobin or a radical, then it was the royalists behind everything. If you were a royalist or moderate, then those crazy radicals were brainwashing the masses against you. No one acknowledged the intricate and subtle dynamics or the shifting opinions that were truly driving events. Instead, everyone held their ideology as sacred and infallible, unable to fathom that opposition could exist without some hidden manipulation at play.

    Anyway, recently Nancy Pelosi told a bunch of pro-Palestinian protestors to “go back to China” where their “headquarters are.” . And Vivek Ramaswamy has openly suggested (or at the very least, strongly implied) that he believes Taylor Swif and Travis Kelce may be at the enter of some sort of Biden led psyop.

    Now I believe that they believe that at least part of what they’re saying is actually true. Their own beliefs are far too sacred and beloved to be subject to any real scrutiny, of course. As political discourse becomes more entrenched, this will be true more often than not. And though it will surely lack the fervor and terror of late 18th century France, we may be on the verge of revolution ourselves.

  • A New Conservatism | Foreign Affairs

    In the wake of Trump’s defeat, analysts have pondered whether his brand of populism might represent the conservative future. But this misunderstands his role. There is no discernible Trumpism independent of Trump himself.

    Writing in Foreign Affairs, former Romney advisor Oren Cass offers an alternative view on the future of conservatism, one that I don’t think other conservatives will be quick to embrace, but one that I think could have a future as the GOP moves from a majority party to a minority party fighting to exert control.

    Crass draws heavily on the most traditional of conservative thinkers, Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, throughout the piece. What’s interesting to me is that he seems to think that conservatives have a place in the modern labor movement. Citing Adam Smith’s notion that “the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension, of the society, on the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin,” Crass believes that the labor movement’s embrace of the worker against the unregulated capitalist is, in fact, not incompatible with what conservatism could look like.

    I’m not saying I could ever find myself among the conservative movement, I doubt I could. But one that stands lockstep with the labor movement would be… hard to avoid.