I can't speak for everyone but from the outside looking in, I feel like your eagerness for this kind of one-on-one rhetorical brawling is the reason you're attracting a large audience. People like it. It's cathartic because we all, on some level, want to argue with Our Enemies but don't actually want to take the trouble to do it.
As I was outraged by the J6 trashing of the Capitol (my ancestors who fought in PA regiments at Gettysburg and a gg-grandfather who was present at Lee’s surrender would be rolling in their graves), the Nazification of the Right enrages more. My wife and I have been attending local protests in our small NorCal coastal city. At the latest I constructed a sign that pictured our fathers who were in the military in WWII as well as two cousins of my maternal grandparents. Both were KIA’s, one in an armored division, two weeks after D-Day and the other a B-17 top turret gunner/crew chief with 32 missions, shot down and then executed by a civilian militia. Both were first or second generation American sons of Volga German immigrants. So I understand the rage. I seethe every fucking day.
Dear John: This is a Dear John letter. I am unsubbing, not because I dislike you or disagree in any momentous way, but because Social Security is my only income and I'm finding it necessary to get rid of a few subscriptions. I'm keeping the Clear and Present Danger Patreon, but this one has to go. Sorry. Love and cookies. Barbara
To John--I just want to add my voice, along with those of many other posters here, that I deeply appreciate all the very intelligent and informative analyses you offer on this site, including those that some may frame as "score-settling". Because your responses are always thoughtfully analytical, I consider such responses part of normative life in what is supposed to be a liberal democracy--where intelligent disagreement, and even intelligent anger, is perfectly acceptable, part of politics, and part of learning. The problem is we scarcely have normative liberal democratic life anymore, nor do we have a normally functioning Congress. I am despondent--but grateful for the commentary here which provides some light in the darkness. (By the way, I too, lost relatives in the Holocaust and growing up in New York City in the immediate Post-World War II years, there was a sense of "relief" of sorts because we all thought then that the toxicity was vanquished and that now we could go on with life. The turn that is now being taken in the US and other places is therefore doubly depressing--not only because it is what it is, but because we had such hopes that it was gone for good).
My $.02; your critics' sense of objectivity is more accurately, self-delusion. Borrowing from Ta-Nehisi Coats, they attempt to elevate factual complexity over self-evident morality. It is infuriating because, among other things, the elevation of complexity over justice in this country prevents us from owning our own history.
Yeah. If you don't know that racism is morally disgusting, then you probably aren't going to see how your analyses in defense of it are incoherent, self-deluding, and often full of dumbassery.
The moral consequences matter the most, but racism can also make you stupid. People like H have no idea that Frederick Douglass, who started life enslaved and had zero formal education, had H's number almost 200 years ago. Or DuBois. Or Fanon.
For 30 years I've had to listen to US conservatives get indignant and pissy about being called racist and sexist, and try to stigmatize any form of anti-racism (CRT, DEI, cancel culture), no matter how empirical or obvious the critique. But now that a social movement teeming with Nazis, eugenicists, convicted rapists, and know-nothings has seized state power, this victory is supposed to be proof that those leftists were hysterical and wrong all along.
"How dare you say we're racist!" "How terrible that your students shouted down Charles Murray!"––said the people who are now elated at the election of a true ignoramus who is canceling history, building mass camps for brown migrants, begging white South Africans to migrate, and declaring an end to the 14th Amendment by fiat.
Re the first part, that readers may not like your score settling: I can't speak for everyone, but I personally really enjoy that you manage to juggle being thoughtful/chill/friendly guy with being a massive hater who bears a grudge. You also manage to find good beefs lol, whether they're execrable (Hanania) or just really fucking annoying (Moyn, the left anti-fascism-thesis posters)
“I try, imperfectly, to follow Adorno’s categorical imperative, that we must “arrange [our] thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen.” To me, racist ideology, especially when it’s sanitized and scientized, is the first whiff of poison gas.”
I’m comforted that Adorno has taken up residence in your brain. Kindred spirits. Without moral clarity and the will to live it, we are all doomed to hell.
A good writer is known by the enemies they collect. Unfortunately, nowadays it's impossible to find a good opponent among the inbred dweebs and moral dildos employed by Conservatism Inc. It's kind of embarrassing to have take anything these schnooks say seriously.
If one man’s opinion counts, I’m here for the score settling. Given everything that’s happening in this country, a little well placed pettiness and verbal venom can be afforded to the nitwits, scolds, and scoundrels alike.
To be clear, I think many of us really enjoy the score-settling, particularly with people as odious as Hanania.
If you were just hurling insults back it’d be boring, but we get extra analysis. No complaints. It’s what sets you apart from the current standard.
Agreed.
Cosign
ditto.
I can't speak for everyone but from the outside looking in, I feel like your eagerness for this kind of one-on-one rhetorical brawling is the reason you're attracting a large audience. People like it. It's cathartic because we all, on some level, want to argue with Our Enemies but don't actually want to take the trouble to do it.
As I was outraged by the J6 trashing of the Capitol (my ancestors who fought in PA regiments at Gettysburg and a gg-grandfather who was present at Lee’s surrender would be rolling in their graves), the Nazification of the Right enrages more. My wife and I have been attending local protests in our small NorCal coastal city. At the latest I constructed a sign that pictured our fathers who were in the military in WWII as well as two cousins of my maternal grandparents. Both were KIA’s, one in an armored division, two weeks after D-Day and the other a B-17 top turret gunner/crew chief with 32 missions, shot down and then executed by a civilian militia. Both were first or second generation American sons of Volga German immigrants. So I understand the rage. I seethe every fucking day.
Righteous anger can sometimes lead to eloquence. As it does here.
Dear John: This is a Dear John letter. I am unsubbing, not because I dislike you or disagree in any momentous way, but because Social Security is my only income and I'm finding it necessary to get rid of a few subscriptions. I'm keeping the Clear and Present Danger Patreon, but this one has to go. Sorry. Love and cookies. Barbara
To John--I just want to add my voice, along with those of many other posters here, that I deeply appreciate all the very intelligent and informative analyses you offer on this site, including those that some may frame as "score-settling". Because your responses are always thoughtfully analytical, I consider such responses part of normative life in what is supposed to be a liberal democracy--where intelligent disagreement, and even intelligent anger, is perfectly acceptable, part of politics, and part of learning. The problem is we scarcely have normative liberal democratic life anymore, nor do we have a normally functioning Congress. I am despondent--but grateful for the commentary here which provides some light in the darkness. (By the way, I too, lost relatives in the Holocaust and growing up in New York City in the immediate Post-World War II years, there was a sense of "relief" of sorts because we all thought then that the toxicity was vanquished and that now we could go on with life. The turn that is now being taken in the US and other places is therefore doubly depressing--not only because it is what it is, but because we had such hopes that it was gone for good).
My $.02; your critics' sense of objectivity is more accurately, self-delusion. Borrowing from Ta-Nehisi Coats, they attempt to elevate factual complexity over self-evident morality. It is infuriating because, among other things, the elevation of complexity over justice in this country prevents us from owning our own history.
Yeah. If you don't know that racism is morally disgusting, then you probably aren't going to see how your analyses in defense of it are incoherent, self-deluding, and often full of dumbassery.
The moral consequences matter the most, but racism can also make you stupid. People like H have no idea that Frederick Douglass, who started life enslaved and had zero formal education, had H's number almost 200 years ago. Or DuBois. Or Fanon.
For 30 years I've had to listen to US conservatives get indignant and pissy about being called racist and sexist, and try to stigmatize any form of anti-racism (CRT, DEI, cancel culture), no matter how empirical or obvious the critique. But now that a social movement teeming with Nazis, eugenicists, convicted rapists, and know-nothings has seized state power, this victory is supposed to be proof that those leftists were hysterical and wrong all along.
"How dare you say we're racist!" "How terrible that your students shouted down Charles Murray!"––said the people who are now elated at the election of a true ignoramus who is canceling history, building mass camps for brown migrants, begging white South Africans to migrate, and declaring an end to the 14th Amendment by fiat.
Re the first part, that readers may not like your score settling: I can't speak for everyone, but I personally really enjoy that you manage to juggle being thoughtful/chill/friendly guy with being a massive hater who bears a grudge. You also manage to find good beefs lol, whether they're execrable (Hanania) or just really fucking annoying (Moyn, the left anti-fascism-thesis posters)
“I try, imperfectly, to follow Adorno’s categorical imperative, that we must “arrange [our] thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen.” To me, racist ideology, especially when it’s sanitized and scientized, is the first whiff of poison gas.”
——
Get his ass, John!
I’m comforted that Adorno has taken up residence in your brain. Kindred spirits. Without moral clarity and the will to live it, we are all doomed to hell.
“For good or ill,” in the last paragraph, i presume
Don't let the bastards get you down. You're smart and right, and you've made my life better.
A good writer is known by the enemies they collect. Unfortunately, nowadays it's impossible to find a good opponent among the inbred dweebs and moral dildos employed by Conservatism Inc. It's kind of embarrassing to have take anything these schnooks say seriously.
“Some readers” clearly don’t know you lol
It's the same readers that don't like the typos.
Yes this is a feature not a bug 😂
If one man’s opinion counts, I’m here for the score settling. Given everything that’s happening in this country, a little well placed pettiness and verbal venom can be afforded to the nitwits, scolds, and scoundrels alike.