In "Personal Responsibility under Authoritarianism," Arendt says "adults consent where children obey." The cult-crit literature you're talking about is a form of consent masquerading as analysis.
This is painfully spot-on. I have a friend who is a former university professor (at a small regional university) who has taken the pro-Putin line, that it's somehow not "realistic" for Ukraine to exist, and that Ukrainians' desire for democracy and existence somehow is criminal because it might cause a nuclear war. This same person also justified the terrorist attack on Israel as somehow necessary. He is a Democrat, but everything Biden did was bad, because Biden was a neo-liberal or something. I quit talking to him about these things. I don't reply to his emails where he sends me yet another article about poor Putin.
My other cynical friend grew up in Croatia, so maybe she has an excuse. She is also pro-Putin because it's the fault of NATO that Putin got "scared." She is one of the most cynical people I've ever met, while claiming to be a progressive Democrat. This started to become obvious during the pandemic when she resented any restrictions at all on her travel or movements. She's also just personally a bully in everyday life and has to be in charge and in control at all times.
She said she had to get a handgun "because everybody else has one," but she is not trained about how to own a gun safely.
Once I told her a story about a divorcing man who had been cheated out of his half of the couple's joint assets by his wife and her lawyer, and left with only $5 thousand dollars at age sixty, after a lifetime of hard work. She said, "Well, if he was stupid enough to allow that to happen, he deserved it." I have never trusted her since really.
To the extent Dimes Square and the "vibe shift" are sincere, rather than a product of Thielbucks, their cynicism seems like a product of the defeat of Sanders and the possibility of U.S. politics moving to the left. Red Scare were never convincing when they claimed to be socialists, and they were always pretty toxic, but among their fans, hopes denied a political solution can lead to nihilism. There's also a chronically attitude that being cringe is a horrible moral failure, much worse than being actively hateful.
"Cringe" being treated as some moral failure comparable to hate is more than a little tedious. If anyone cares that much about "cringe", maybe they deserve permanent facial twitches.
Agreed that the blast radius of Sanders not winning has been absolutely toxic to a certain kind of extremely online former leftist (encapsulated well by the red scare fan base). It does make one wonder about the depth and sincerity of their original convictions, given that there are plenty of leftists (including Sanders himself) who work through lifetimes of disappointment without turning into callow reactionaries.
I think the most noxious of ideas that’s broken out along the dimes square types is this awful idea that caring about anyone you don’t literally know is phony/manipulative. Impossible foundation for any left politics.
Some Dimes Square types say these kinds of things, and yet for them it is everyone else that is "cringe" and/or a "retard". It seems those definitions have shifted a bit as those descriptors seem to me to be most applicable to that crowd.
It's not as Ganz-ian of a topic, but I think in many ways the sense of velocity and drama around the "vibe shift" is not so much MAGA, which has been with us for a long time now and remains fractious and unpopular, but the collapse in credibility and self-confidence of the opposing coalition.
The teleology of Obamaist liberalism which reigned unchallenged over metropolitan America for over a decade has just been found lying dead in a ditch. That's destabilizing.
I’ve always kinda thought of Arendt as the great chronicler of cowardice, in its many forms - cynicism disguised as realism, conformism disguised as Völkische Bewegung, power worship disguised as self-affirmation…all bullshit retrofitted onto a foundation of cowardice. None of it - including the anti-woke-agitator-to-fascist pipeline - actually costs anybody anything, involves sacrificing anything, carries a price or a risk.
Maybe my perspective is limited by the blinders of my age, but it seems to me that American "cynicism" in the Sloterdijkian sense really came into its own in the 1990s. At least in the popular imagination, this was the age of disaffected, jaded youth, and they produced famously disaffected, jaded art (see, e.g., the first wave of "grunge" bands, or generation-defining films like "Reality Bites").
I've often wondered if there is some connection there between a) the turn from the frankly delusional optimism of the 80s into the jaded 90s and b) the fall of the USSR: did the sudden absence of an Enemy result in a corresponding absence of purpose?
I think the youth (teens, 20 somethings) in the 90s were very jaded and dismissive of 'culture' at large (I was one of them), but we also witnessed the cynical capture and subversion by the "culture industry" as it turned it into what we have today. Reality Bites and the popular music of that decade reflect that capture. Indie bands signed with major labels and The Pixies morphed into Nirvana which morphed into all the absolute shit played on "alternative radio". Kurt Cobain perfectly understood how inescapable the capture is once it happens.
I am reading ‘The Kindness of Strangers’ Salka Vietel’s memoir about her life in Europe and Hollywood. In it she quotes from a letter from her husband Bertold, that must have been written in (I think) July 1932, since earlier he describes the events of the Prussian Coup d’etat. In it he describes a conversion with the artist George Grosz that made my hairs stand on end because of how clearly it mirrors the attitude John describes in this piece:
“ Salka, you cannot imagine anything more hideous than the metamorphosis of George Grosz. With beastly doggedness he was telling me for hours that he only believes in the most brutal personal self-interest and ruthless egoism; everything else is a fraud, a swindle invented by Jews and foreigners. Millions of poor always existed and nothing else. “Hitler is greater than Lenin because he openly says that the masses have to take orders." And so he ranted. I am sure he has gone through lousy times, terrible disappointments, and in his bitterness he snarled and growled. But the hideousness of his fury, the babbittry, this subservient heel-clicking before those who have power! He wants to immigrate to America with wife and child, and no Jews and idealists will influence him any longer. He is making a clean break with all that, and for good.
I know that he is a hunted man, worn out ... He kept me for hours, forcing me to listen to him until I could not stand it any longer and spat all my painful disgust, like a hemorrhage, into his face. I couldn't help it. I am not a politician, not a Leninist, not a Bolshevist, but this ultimatum of betrayal, this determination to recant, this jump from a "Left-wing European" to Ku Klux Klan was too horrifying. Perhaps it was a necessary prelude to my return. He warned me: "Wait, only wait... you will see what you find. About turn! Away from Europe-run-this is all I can advise you to do."
I’d be interested in your thoughts on “Hanzi Freinacht’s” (it’s a pseudonym of two authors) thoughts on the ideological grounding of “Metamodernism.” Where Trumpianism may be an attempt to use cynicism to culturally backslide and defang the rule of law when society can’t resolve the tensions of post modern life, Metamodernism is genuine Post-Post Modernism where sincere utopic ideation is retained, but balanced with a Taoistic detached absurdism.
For some people "Orange Man Bad" was simplistic and gauche, and it was easier and more superficially novel to say, "Orange Man Good, Actually" or, easier still, "'Orange Man Bad' Bad" than to consider "The Orange Man is Bad Because..."
"There was the widespread belief that anything that sounded like a “do gooder” slogan had a hidden agenda behind it…that any politics that even vaguely tried to help people was a scam"
That's a great encapsulation of the popular sentiment driving the surge in support for American/Canadian right parties, imo. Also helps explain why they're so weird about pro-social "easy money" (e.g., vaccines). Of course, the same "savvy" folks love falling for true blue scams.
> perhaps people are getting shaken out of now when they can see what the everyday reality looks like
Not sure about that. Even as recently as this January I was still of the opinion that yeah, sure, an everyday American will choose the most evil option all things considered, but if the evil option does not deliver cash, then it's time for the good option. Now, when it's becoming apparent that cash is not going to be delivered, I see the new vibe shift to "greatness requires sacrifices, liberals care only about money and can't understand". And it might be resonating.
That perhaps is the ultimate test — are Americans committed to evil, even when there is a personal price to pay? We will find out soon.
Good point. At this point it's hard to deny that *some* portion of the American electorate will knowingly choose some privation as long as it comes with punishment for those they hate––i.e. they aren't being duped when they give up unionization or better healthcare in return for "wins" in the culture wars. The MAGA hardcore thinks it's worth it. But what about the more disengaged folks who supposedly just wanted more affordable groceries? We'll find out if that was more or less a mirage.
I think Naomi Klein's 2014 book This Changes Everything figures into this recent spasm of cynicism. This, or climate change, changes everything; meaning it undermines the case for unfettered markets and neoliberalism in a way grotesque inequality and exploitation of labor hasn't been able to for the last two hundred years. Trump and Doge are a ferociously cynical denial of climate change and the threat it poses to the existing order. Tesla is a cynical move. And Musk and Trump are bigots as well, a cynicism that enables them to demagog effectively Maga bigots. It's a clusterfuck alliance of billionaires and bigots; a revenge of the neoliberal order.
Fortunately I think the "vibe shift" is on its way out. Felt like November-January phenomenon. Can track this in the FT where they ran some anti-woke columns during that time and enjoyed the market performance, but are now horrified.
New status quo seems to be the ascendant right wing using their power to put pressure on institutions and their official policies. But at the human level, I think the slight shift towards "unwoke" attitudes is reversing fast.
God I hope you are right. All I know if that I felt deeply gratified when I read the ruling of Judge Alsup in the CA District Court when he slapped down the lawyer for the Office of Personnel for their "sham" arguments for the mass firings of federal workers.
While so many pundits spin theories that finally amount to a kind of accommodation, it was elating to hear someone speak angry, plain truth to that administration, and demand a reversal of the lawless actions (for now).
Fantastic piece, thanks. Clarifying about how irony and cynicism are inverted to become tools of those in charge. It also made me think how the phrase "virtue signaling" (which could be / has been a critique of hypocrisy) has mostly become a sneering insult to undermine attempts to take action or show solidarity with disfavored groups.
In "Personal Responsibility under Authoritarianism," Arendt says "adults consent where children obey." The cult-crit literature you're talking about is a form of consent masquerading as analysis.
Yeah I wish I had used that exact phrase!
This is painfully spot-on. I have a friend who is a former university professor (at a small regional university) who has taken the pro-Putin line, that it's somehow not "realistic" for Ukraine to exist, and that Ukrainians' desire for democracy and existence somehow is criminal because it might cause a nuclear war. This same person also justified the terrorist attack on Israel as somehow necessary. He is a Democrat, but everything Biden did was bad, because Biden was a neo-liberal or something. I quit talking to him about these things. I don't reply to his emails where he sends me yet another article about poor Putin.
My other cynical friend grew up in Croatia, so maybe she has an excuse. She is also pro-Putin because it's the fault of NATO that Putin got "scared." She is one of the most cynical people I've ever met, while claiming to be a progressive Democrat. This started to become obvious during the pandemic when she resented any restrictions at all on her travel or movements. She's also just personally a bully in everyday life and has to be in charge and in control at all times.
She said she had to get a handgun "because everybody else has one," but she is not trained about how to own a gun safely.
Once I told her a story about a divorcing man who had been cheated out of his half of the couple's joint assets by his wife and her lawyer, and left with only $5 thousand dollars at age sixty, after a lifetime of hard work. She said, "Well, if he was stupid enough to allow that to happen, he deserved it." I have never trusted her since really.
> it's somehow not "realistic" for Ukraine to exist
that's a popular line of thinking about Canada these days
[She said, "Well, if he was stupid enough to allow that to happen, he deserved it." I have never trusted her since really.]
This really reminds me of the discourse over the hacked emails in 2016. All these tech bros saying if Podesta got phished it was his own fault.
To the extent Dimes Square and the "vibe shift" are sincere, rather than a product of Thielbucks, their cynicism seems like a product of the defeat of Sanders and the possibility of U.S. politics moving to the left. Red Scare were never convincing when they claimed to be socialists, and they were always pretty toxic, but among their fans, hopes denied a political solution can lead to nihilism. There's also a chronically attitude that being cringe is a horrible moral failure, much worse than being actively hateful.
"Cringe" being treated as some moral failure comparable to hate is more than a little tedious. If anyone cares that much about "cringe", maybe they deserve permanent facial twitches.
Which means: they are petulant children
Agreed that the blast radius of Sanders not winning has been absolutely toxic to a certain kind of extremely online former leftist (encapsulated well by the red scare fan base). It does make one wonder about the depth and sincerity of their original convictions, given that there are plenty of leftists (including Sanders himself) who work through lifetimes of disappointment without turning into callow reactionaries.
I think the most noxious of ideas that’s broken out along the dimes square types is this awful idea that caring about anyone you don’t literally know is phony/manipulative. Impossible foundation for any left politics.
Some Dimes Square types say these kinds of things, and yet for them it is everyone else that is "cringe" and/or a "retard". It seems those definitions have shifted a bit as those descriptors seem to me to be most applicable to that crowd.
It's not as Ganz-ian of a topic, but I think in many ways the sense of velocity and drama around the "vibe shift" is not so much MAGA, which has been with us for a long time now and remains fractious and unpopular, but the collapse in credibility and self-confidence of the opposing coalition.
The teleology of Obamaist liberalism which reigned unchallenged over metropolitan America for over a decade has just been found lying dead in a ditch. That's destabilizing.
I’ve always kinda thought of Arendt as the great chronicler of cowardice, in its many forms - cynicism disguised as realism, conformism disguised as Völkische Bewegung, power worship disguised as self-affirmation…all bullshit retrofitted onto a foundation of cowardice. None of it - including the anti-woke-agitator-to-fascist pipeline - actually costs anybody anything, involves sacrificing anything, carries a price or a risk.
Maybe my perspective is limited by the blinders of my age, but it seems to me that American "cynicism" in the Sloterdijkian sense really came into its own in the 1990s. At least in the popular imagination, this was the age of disaffected, jaded youth, and they produced famously disaffected, jaded art (see, e.g., the first wave of "grunge" bands, or generation-defining films like "Reality Bites").
I've often wondered if there is some connection there between a) the turn from the frankly delusional optimism of the 80s into the jaded 90s and b) the fall of the USSR: did the sudden absence of an Enemy result in a corresponding absence of purpose?
Who knows. Maybe it was just a cocaine hangover.
I think the youth (teens, 20 somethings) in the 90s were very jaded and dismissive of 'culture' at large (I was one of them), but we also witnessed the cynical capture and subversion by the "culture industry" as it turned it into what we have today. Reality Bites and the popular music of that decade reflect that capture. Indie bands signed with major labels and The Pixies morphed into Nirvana which morphed into all the absolute shit played on "alternative radio". Kurt Cobain perfectly understood how inescapable the capture is once it happens.
Yet it had happened before: the Sixties.
I am reading ‘The Kindness of Strangers’ Salka Vietel’s memoir about her life in Europe and Hollywood. In it she quotes from a letter from her husband Bertold, that must have been written in (I think) July 1932, since earlier he describes the events of the Prussian Coup d’etat. In it he describes a conversion with the artist George Grosz that made my hairs stand on end because of how clearly it mirrors the attitude John describes in this piece:
“ Salka, you cannot imagine anything more hideous than the metamorphosis of George Grosz. With beastly doggedness he was telling me for hours that he only believes in the most brutal personal self-interest and ruthless egoism; everything else is a fraud, a swindle invented by Jews and foreigners. Millions of poor always existed and nothing else. “Hitler is greater than Lenin because he openly says that the masses have to take orders." And so he ranted. I am sure he has gone through lousy times, terrible disappointments, and in his bitterness he snarled and growled. But the hideousness of his fury, the babbittry, this subservient heel-clicking before those who have power! He wants to immigrate to America with wife and child, and no Jews and idealists will influence him any longer. He is making a clean break with all that, and for good.
I know that he is a hunted man, worn out ... He kept me for hours, forcing me to listen to him until I could not stand it any longer and spat all my painful disgust, like a hemorrhage, into his face. I couldn't help it. I am not a politician, not a Leninist, not a Bolshevist, but this ultimatum of betrayal, this determination to recant, this jump from a "Left-wing European" to Ku Klux Klan was too horrifying. Perhaps it was a necessary prelude to my return. He warned me: "Wait, only wait... you will see what you find. About turn! Away from Europe-run-this is all I can advise you to do."
I’d be interested in your thoughts on “Hanzi Freinacht’s” (it’s a pseudonym of two authors) thoughts on the ideological grounding of “Metamodernism.” Where Trumpianism may be an attempt to use cynicism to culturally backslide and defang the rule of law when society can’t resolve the tensions of post modern life, Metamodernism is genuine Post-Post Modernism where sincere utopic ideation is retained, but balanced with a Taoistic detached absurdism.
https://metamoderna.org/when-irony-saves-the-faithful/
I stumbled onto this a few years ago and my very uneducated opinion is that it's a grift at best by a couple of dudes high on their own supply.
I've met them actually -- very interesting people. At the end of the day they are ideas, take them or leave them.
For some people "Orange Man Bad" was simplistic and gauche, and it was easier and more superficially novel to say, "Orange Man Good, Actually" or, easier still, "'Orange Man Bad' Bad" than to consider "The Orange Man is Bad Because..."
"There was the widespread belief that anything that sounded like a “do gooder” slogan had a hidden agenda behind it…that any politics that even vaguely tried to help people was a scam"
That's a great encapsulation of the popular sentiment driving the surge in support for American/Canadian right parties, imo. Also helps explain why they're so weird about pro-social "easy money" (e.g., vaccines). Of course, the same "savvy" folks love falling for true blue scams.
> perhaps people are getting shaken out of now when they can see what the everyday reality looks like
Not sure about that. Even as recently as this January I was still of the opinion that yeah, sure, an everyday American will choose the most evil option all things considered, but if the evil option does not deliver cash, then it's time for the good option. Now, when it's becoming apparent that cash is not going to be delivered, I see the new vibe shift to "greatness requires sacrifices, liberals care only about money and can't understand". And it might be resonating.
That perhaps is the ultimate test — are Americans committed to evil, even when there is a personal price to pay? We will find out soon.
Good point. At this point it's hard to deny that *some* portion of the American electorate will knowingly choose some privation as long as it comes with punishment for those they hate––i.e. they aren't being duped when they give up unionization or better healthcare in return for "wins" in the culture wars. The MAGA hardcore thinks it's worth it. But what about the more disengaged folks who supposedly just wanted more affordable groceries? We'll find out if that was more or less a mirage.
It only requires sacrifice when a republican demagogue causes it. God forbid a democrat make an argument for pain now to make a better future.
I think Naomi Klein's 2014 book This Changes Everything figures into this recent spasm of cynicism. This, or climate change, changes everything; meaning it undermines the case for unfettered markets and neoliberalism in a way grotesque inequality and exploitation of labor hasn't been able to for the last two hundred years. Trump and Doge are a ferociously cynical denial of climate change and the threat it poses to the existing order. Tesla is a cynical move. And Musk and Trump are bigots as well, a cynicism that enables them to demagog effectively Maga bigots. It's a clusterfuck alliance of billionaires and bigots; a revenge of the neoliberal order.
Hating Nazis is clarifying.
Fortunately I think the "vibe shift" is on its way out. Felt like November-January phenomenon. Can track this in the FT where they ran some anti-woke columns during that time and enjoyed the market performance, but are now horrified.
New status quo seems to be the ascendant right wing using their power to put pressure on institutions and their official policies. But at the human level, I think the slight shift towards "unwoke" attitudes is reversing fast.
God I hope you are right. All I know if that I felt deeply gratified when I read the ruling of Judge Alsup in the CA District Court when he slapped down the lawyer for the Office of Personnel for their "sham" arguments for the mass firings of federal workers.
While so many pundits spin theories that finally amount to a kind of accommodation, it was elating to hear someone speak angry, plain truth to that administration, and demand a reversal of the lawless actions (for now).
Fantastic piece, thanks. Clarifying about how irony and cynicism are inverted to become tools of those in charge. It also made me think how the phrase "virtue signaling" (which could be / has been a critique of hypocrisy) has mostly become a sneering insult to undermine attempts to take action or show solidarity with disfavored groups.
If it honks like a goose and steps like a goose and enjoys these things with other geese…