Time Off
And Things to Tide You Over
Starting later today and until May 7th, Unpopular Front will be on vacation!
I often make these announcements and then end up writing newsletters anyway, but this time I’d really like to not work — at all. I’ve taken basically no time off since the release of my book last year. Although this vacation was planned for a while, it’s also timely since I’m not exactly enjoying my job at the moment. As I wrote a few weeks ago on Twitter, it’s both too awful and too easy. The people in charge are evil, stupid, or both, and, frankly, those who support them are either evil, stupid, or both. That sometimes feels like all there is to say anymore, over and over. Anything else strains the truth.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I’m not nearly the only person saying this now: many people, including mainstream voices at major publications, have come around to this way of viewing things. When the Financial Times editorial page sounds more Jacobin than Jacobin and David Brooks is quoting the Communist Manifesto in the Times, what’s left for me to do? Even people whom I’d considered to be enemies are attacking this regime non-stop, which partly shows how bad this has all become, but also that even the opportunists are jumping ship. The “vibe” has shifted again: people are shorting the Trump trade.
But there’s also something deeper going on that’s sometimes framed as an attack on the whole professional-managerial class or the scholar-bureaucrats of the old regime, but I’m coming to believe that’s not quite an adequate way of viewing things. If you can read, you will read every day how this regime is barbaric. It represents an assault on reason itself. This regime can give no actual account of itself that stands up to the merest scrutiny: It’s all nonsense and lies. This is a government of crackpots and charlatans, for crackpots and charlatans, by crackpots and charlatans. Anyone who believes any of its justifications and apologies is allowing himself to be deliberately confused or, even more pathetically, is indulging in absurd fantasies of racial or national rejuvenation amid the ruin of a great civilization. The people in charge want to replace thinking human beings with AI and an underclass of serfs they keep docile with digital slop. Ultimately, that is its only logic and its only rationale: domination, subjugation, repression.
I’d like to continue to provide analysis that gives historical and theoretical context, but this requires a decent amount of reading and thinking, which covering the onslaught of the news can make difficult. I want to make sure this newsletter stays informative for you and meaningful for me, so I’ll have a little time to think about that. I also want to begin a new book soon. So maybe this will not be a pure vacation after all, but, at least, some time to slow down and reflect.
In the meantime, you can hear me on Know Your Enemy chatting with my friends Sam Adler-Bell and Matt Sitman. And I appeared on the podcast Spaßbremse with Ted Knudsen to talk about the aftermath of the fascism debate.
I also spoke with my editor at The Nation, D.D. Guttenplan, about my recent piece on Trump’s books. One thing I got to talk about that I could not deal with in the piece was Trump and architecture, namely, how he is a bit of a throwback, but his buildings were always contemporary, and in fact, how he often destroyed the old and venerable to pursue his projects. In particular, I brought up the spoliation of the gorgeous art deco Bonwit Teller building and its limestone friezes. Sort of a metaphor there, I think.
This afternoon, at 1 PM, I’ll be streaming on Substack Live with
of Read Max, where, as usual, we’ll be talking about the convergence of tech and politics, so stay tuned for that. If you want to watch, I think you’ll receive a notification as a subscriber in the Substack app when we begin, and possibly a chat or email update, as well.And if you really can’t get enough of me and you’re into the movies, please listen to my podcast with Jamelle Bouie, Unclear and Present Danger.
There is a perspective from psychoanalysis regarding the attack in thinking that comes from Wilfred Bion who conceived of “attacks on linking” and minus K (K standing for Knowledge). Also Melanie Klein’s idea of “manic defense” against anxiety fear of annihilation death. This supports the idea that domination and “staying for the fascism” ie the thrill of it all is a great motivator. Or you could find similar themes in Zizek. Thrill and enjoyment in being able to offload (project) the pain and fear into the other and thus out of self (the cruelty is the point) is a more specific way of understanding the stupidity you speak of —the inability to process any painful aspects of our mortal existence through reason or human connection. This is why those who have this capability (despite their other views—like Brooks) are becoming our unusual bedfellows.
John, I always enjoy (and learn something) from your pieces that contextualize current events in terms of 19th and 20th century thinkers (Arendt, Gramsci, even Hegel) that many of us don’t have time to read. I hope you’ll continue to write your unique takes on our moment. And I also hope you have a great vacation.