So how does it end? It surely cannot go on. It is becoming increasingly absurd as their utopian ideas slam into reality and do not survive. The herd need to dig ever deeper to maintain their illusions about gender, diversity and the weather.
And we also know the wider world comprehensively rejects Western Liberalism. Not just the Muslims, but the Far East and India too. Only a tiny number believe these things.
I think the money is running out, as is the belief in the system generally. Everything that is done to revive the system will discredit it further.
How long? Probably not that long. One of a number of crises may end this. I think the end of the Ukraine war a likely pivot point. Hopefully not into full scale war, but possibly: the liberal global regime has effectively staked its life on it.
It seems an exceptionally odd hill to die on. Are they that short-sighted? Did they think Russia that easy to beat? Who is advising them?
Or are all our predictions accurate? Is this in fact a clapped-out, jaded, broken aristocracy suffering from the effects of limitless hedonism? People who are completely hopeless and inept.
There are factions. To some it’s just plunder - Russias limitless resources - to others, the refinancing of the west. Some want historical vengeance. Others have staked their political lives on Slava Ukrainus
There are also genuine fanatics - true believers in Putin is Hitler and so on.
If you are morally and spiritually empty the appeal of the role of wartime leader is magnified, and the more grave the crisis the more exquisite the drama. We are ruled by the sort of people whose imagination is confined to popular documentaries, and whose apotheosis is to appear in one, even if only in their own imagination.
Power to this sort of person is a psychodrama. What is real to them is themselves, their feelings and impulses and fantasies. Our lives, the dead, the wounded - just different shades of publicity. Mood lighting for a mic-drop or photo op.
There are serious people still (and, it is to be hoped, enough of them) to prevent catastrophe. I think this winter one which promises a great springtime if we can survive it.
The point about their references being television documentaries and not solid reading or contemplation of deeper issues. This parallels observations we can make in popular entertainment; Hollywood and its subsidiaries. People complain the quality of modern entertainment is poor. Teenagers are discovering the films of the 1970s, The French Connection. The Godfather etc. and are astounded at the quality, the slow pace etc.
What we are seeing are writers using other movies as their input, their reference point. They are not reading good literature. They are watching its derivative. Coppola explicitly used a Shakespearean lens to elevate Mario Puzo's book into something more epic and grand. What Hollywood production would do this today?
So perhaps you are right. Today's powerful are smaller and more limited. Their lives a little documentary with grasp of scale or greatness.
I think mass media informs identity - it’s not just a reference point for an independent self. What I mean is the meaning you take for the basis of your values and personality is informed by the products you consume. Good people’s lives are narrated internally by the same voices and values as those they hear over the films they watch, producing a heroic narrative in which they can take imaginative part.
Politics is always part performance and this is true in the audience as much as in the actors.
I agree. But I think we see a significant drop in quality in the input they are consuming. Garbage in, garbage out.
Those whose worldview is formed by television, a medium designed for entertainment, is quite different from that formed by reading serious books. A documentary on ancient Rome skims the surface with dramatic reenactments etc. A serious biography of Caesar is a different beast.
It is interesting to wonder how much of the elites worldview is formed by poor quality input and lack of education. An easy life inherited from others.
Many of these "factions" are nothing of the sort . Just different heads of the same hydra . Each head has duped its followers in by various ruses , money and power for the political faction , War for the MIC and militarists , various different flavors of liberal/social/democracy for the intelligencia , others for the bleeding heart do-gooders . The not oft repeated desire to make Ukraine into "Big Israel" should put lie to it all .
I feel, all feels here no logic, that when the lib-dems started off they had much mightier opponents than Putin and Russia. They had to dismantle the Romanovs and Hapsburgs, steal the cross out from under the Catholic Church, tame cowboy gun toting America and devour the dignity of the English crown. If I were some spiritual long lived being who did all that, Russia would seem small potatoes to me. Practically trivial - some KGB killer doesn't compare at all to the past great Czars, Kings and Popes.
So it's not that their opponent was underestimated - they've beaten mightier. I feel it's that they've run out of merciful opponents and thus been disarmed. The mercy of the long suffering employee has become the neet and lying flat, the Romanovs and Hapsburgs who may have exiled you or tolerated your presence have become tit-for-tat Russia or the inscrutable thief China. The rules based Church and open frontier America have become the empty propertyless pew and race-based-city-states of America.
A rabid dog is harder to defeat than a disciplined gladiator for a deceiver. A foaming mouth mania cannot be negotiated with. But a liar has to double down on the lies, having no physical strength to begin with, and they're running out of people who will accommodate them. A card shark with no one willing to play cards. That's my feel on the vibe, at least.
The audio-visual *symbol*, i.e. the word "liberal", was stolen by the Left (anti-liberals by *definition*) in the early 20th century at the same time it stole "progressive".
But *concepts* cannot be stolen. Or rather, the attempt will always lead to contradiction, which in turn must be hidden from the hoi polloi People by all the various methods we see today by the Democrats.
Thank you, Frank. You are an amazing thinker and writer. I would edit you, here and there, but that I decline to be specific I hope you take as the compliment I mean it to be. You are as substantive as anyone I have ever read.
Thank you Timothy, you are very kind. My work today is the result of decades of failure and I did once give up, believing I had wasted my life.
I could defo do with being edited. At least. I did chin myself live on camera the other day, for example. In my defence the kids are back at school and it is somewhat hectic. I almost forgot to post this lol
Isn't it just like those kids, to remind us of the *real*. They shame me: In my over-criticization, I never seem to allow for the author's non-literary life.
Speaking of "failure", when teaching chess, I am fond of telling my dis-believing (such beautiful skeptics they/we are) students that one of my wishes is to *lose* every game I ever play. That way, as I lay on my deathbed I would be content in knowing I was the best chess player I could possibly have been.
The flaw will bring them down in the end. In going further out into the marginalised each time to be inclusive they will eventually bring a group to the centre so ridiculous that society says no way,too far,no more.
An excellent, very clarifying essay, Frank, only enhanced by one of the best menes I've seen in ages (or at least since another of your recent mene-ingful pieces 😏). Of course I mean (not mene) the JFK one, which I showed to Hubby, who thinks it should be shared far and wide. (I'll drop it, and a link to this article, in his telegram channel.)
Kennedys non-proliferation was largely driven by the standoff with Russia over nuclear missiles and the knowledge that nuclear annihilation was only very closely averted. Kennedy reasoned that with more nukes, in more countries, and more conflict, eventually one instance would lead to a major nuclear exchange. His logic and proposed solution may not have been accurate, but his concerns were quite valid.
I get that. No one wants nukes. But the idea after the Holocaust that Israel shouldn’t have them is absurdly naive. And in the end don’t want others to have nukes then be the first to give up your own. He was never going to do so because everyone knows they’re utterly fatal and so essential for survival. No one can give them up and now everyone needs and wants them. And so it goes on. His concerns are only valid in so far as everyone’s concerns about them are.
No one ? Not the group that sought them by hook and crook ? Not the group whose members were involved ftom the start in their initial construction for use in solving a grudge and then abandoned the project to help the nation they lived in (and was still at war ) when that alleged foe surrendered too early ? Not the ethnonational regime that denies , in the face of plain fact , even having them ? How about the cabal that has as a policy using nukes that of course they don't have against innocent cities of non belligerent nations as a matter of fact ? Surely you aren't talking about that "No One" ?
Hi I see you’re a Catholic like me and attend Traditional Mass like me so could you perhaps try and approach the subject with some light, less heat some honey less vinegar? I’m not attempting to outdo or outwit anyone here. Thanks!
To this Traditional Catholic, systems engineer, and CS Lewis fan, this article was like an early Christmas present. Every time a clever comment seeped into my consciousness, it got answered in the next paragraph. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
This is a great idea for a book! Liberalism is a wrong turn that the West has taken for the last 100 years. We were steered in this bad direction because it was sold to us as "progress" and because Whites love novelty. I don't consider liberalism or leftism to be "progress," but destruction.
Psychology of the masses will hopefully break at some stage and people will hopefully wake up, smell the coffee and see what the hell is actually going on!
I find this essay confusing. You seem to be arguing that liberalism of the Berlin type is a good thing, and that current problems are not caused by actual conspiracy, but then sort of saying the opposite to both statements shortly afterwards.
The memes don’t really help me understand what you are trying to say.
Can you elaborate a bit more please and connect all the dots, particularly in terms of the enlightenment and the fall of Catholic Europe.
Have you read nihilism by seraphim rose? It seems to make a similar argument, but is of course strongly anti Catholic.
I cannot go into this now because of time - my daughter is poorly, I have things to do. I am writing a book about the liberal idea and its century of "democracy", which should answer your questions I hope. I do not know about this seraphim rose person. It is my view that Western civilisation as we call it was founded by the Catholic Church between the 9th and 12th centuries, and that the motto of Pope St Pius X is the means by which it must be restored.
You should read his book as soon as you can. It is a perspective on some of the same topics you are aiming to cover from an Eastern Orthodox position, and while you will take issue with his views on the Catholic Church, I think you will find his thought process applicable and useful to your own.
I am Catholic by the way- not trying to convert you to EO.
That’s what I think about your essay. You’ve correctly recognised some of the problems in the world, but then rather than thinking, have just ran it all through a meat-grinder of bigotry and come out with nonsense.
Which word? Racism? Wait you’re telling me I’m being a bully because I’m mentioning racism? You don’t think there’s any bullying aspect to the use/presence of racism?
I’m just pointing out why the article disintegrates as soon as you start paying attention to it in detail.
That does somewhat undermine their relevance in this essay, if it’s true; and the fact that you like racist memes tells us that all your writing will be distorted by prejudice.
If you think that calling people names means they cannot think, and do not therefore deserve to be heard, then I cannot help you. Berlin was a liberal who listened to people with different ideas from his, because he thought that there were different ways of seeing the world. I argue in the post that liberalism like this has vanished, and the progressives of today have no time for any ideas but their own - this being a sort of chauvinism.
I think the argument looks to me like white supremacy trying to write an essay. I also had trouble making sense of the argument but I think this is because it’s quite unhinged.
"The reason the mass media is gaslighting us all is not because it is ruled by a secret cabal of cackling villains who conspire in ritual gatherings to do evil." -- You might want to read Antony Sutton's book, America's Secret Establishment 👀
One thing that I see: when taking the bus and spectating 90% of people nose in the cellphone, I contemplate something that already bypassed the following strong very wrong "frameworks"
-political appartenance
-gangsta rap scarface al pacino models
-rich girls
etc
this hints at some uniformization - some more years and that's it.
could be that the progressiveness was just a step
that cellphone stuff got prime hand over everybody's insufficient world views
what i see is that what they were relying on was false, insufficient - it does not hold.
I can of course observe some schwab-like AI-artificial crap slowly popping up
I feel the concept of "promises emancipation but delivers annihilation" uses the attractive idea of "progressive" as a vehicle and that in the 80's or else there were other vehicles; this makes me think of a basic will of "lie+annihilation" that changes and uses a pretext
Your book seems very cool! I encourage you about it! It's simplicity, the chapters laid down here - short chapters - positively triggered me. There is a guy on substack teaching Latin lessons!
What a load of nonsense. Racist, homophobic, sexist nonsense - but you probably take those words as compliments.
Look the whole thing falls apart because you have misunderstood the fact that Liberalism is not socialism. Liberalism is a form of conservatism that was imposed on the American left to prevent America from electing genuine socialists, which would have happened otherwise. In exactly the same way Kamala Harris, a conservative, has been imposed without election on the left butt cheek, so that there is no option in the coming “election” to oppose conservatism. I honestly don’t understand what American conservatives are worried about. You can’t lose this election.
The Whig Party, the ancestor of liberal politics, represented the factory owners, the wealthiest industrialists and merchants, lawyers, bankers - because they were the only people other than aristocrats who had the vote. The Whigs campaigned for the vote to be extended because they believed they would soak up more of the votes; but still took about 100 years for universal suffrage to happen: because they liberals wanted to extend the vote just far enough that it would benefit them without genuinely empowering the poor. This has been the strategy of liberalism ever since: to lie to the poor, claiming to represent them, whilst in reality serving their bosses and owners.
If you perceive liberalism as disingenuous, you’re correct. Liberalism is a massive lie, as you understand; but the biggest lie of them all is the conflation of liberalism with left. Conservatism (as sold to the working class) is also a massive lie. Conservatism is designed to benefit the super-rich, so if you’re not one of them, conservative politics will harm you.
These two lies depend on each other. The only reason either gets anywhere near winning an election is that Liberalism has comprehensively sabotaged the left.
I know that Bolshevism and Liberalism are not the same. I argue that they are both animated in the same way: permanent revolution or progress, towards a utopia.
The liberalism of today is not that of Mill, nor of Isaiah Berlin in the 1950s. Practically, what Americans call "liberal" politics is no longer that of 30 years ago. Trump is a 1990s liberal, for example, but the liberals of today have moved so far beyond this position that 1990s liberal views are now seen as extreme.
The conservatives aren't making bank. They have lost every battle in the culture war.
The people making money are those who have monetised the industries of civilisational vandalism. The death industries of war, abortion, the capture of politics by their sponsors, the obscene machinery of the trans cult dressed up to impersonate a civil rights movement - these are examples of the commodification of the narrative of liberation. The wars will free the unfree, the pill will free women from womanhood, the hormones and surgery and costume permits humanity to be free of its own limitations.
Well, I as I said, I think you’re looking at a lot of the right issues but you’ve got them upside down. For instance, I agree that Liberalism and the Democratic Party/movement has moved massively over the last half century, but I assume you think they’ve moved to the left? This is because you’ve been bamboozled by the show. If you look at all the things that actually matter - tax policy and the gap between rich and poor, the attitude towards privatisation of state assets, what proportion of money is spent on blowing up hospitals and schools overseas versus building them at home - the Democrats of today are considerably to the right of Reagan.
The culture war is a ridiculous piece of nonsense created by both sides to make them appear different when in fact they are both straightforward hard right conservative parties. Both, like all conservative parties, have the death-dealing war industries as their primary donors and constituents.
Even if we look at your statement that “conservatives are not making bank” literally, we can see that it’s false. Rich people, who are predominantly conservative, have continuously become richer under both democrat and Republican governments. Poor conservatives have not done well, but is this a surprise? Conservative politics (including liberalism) exists to benefit the rich, poor people who vote for it are patsies.
I can understand poor voters losing faith in the democrats, since they have primarily served the rich too over the last 40 years. Hillary calling them “deplorable” probably didn’t help either.
All the fake protest movements exist primarily to persuade leftists that the democrats are on their side whilst fragmenting and distracting from genuine protest movements. I think people should be free to wear whatever clothes they like and use whatever names, and if someone wants me to address them as a particular gender it doesn’t hurt me at all. But the trans medical companies and processes are not as developed as their advocates claim, their scientific papers are sometimes not very solid at all, it does all need proper research and caution, and the emotional blackmail about suicide is very wrong on several levels; and once we note the money going from trans medical companies to liberal politicians we can cleanly identify this as a case of (conservative) private medical companies bribing conservative politicians to do dangerous things. Not many leftists have reached this point; many leftists see it as a continuation of the gay rights movement. I think the involvement of private medical companies is a key tell.
The general population in both the UK and US are firmly behind gay marriage and contraception, because why does it matter to me if someone else gets married or avoids pregnancy? If they want to, they can go ahead. It’s logically inconsistent for people who make a big song and dance about freedom to deny people these basic freedoms. (Incidentally why did you think it was relevant to mention isaiah Berlin’s sexuality? It looked to me like you were implying his opinions are invalidated by his sexual orientation). as long as the right anchors itself against these points, it will ultimately lose any culture war it engages. But that’s fine, because the culture war is for show and you’ve won on the real issue, which is the division of wealth and power between rich and poor. Yeah fine, how annoying, we don’t get plastic straws in McDonald’s any more, so you think liberalism has gone crazy; on the other hand a handful of cartels control all the food production in America and this has been enabled by liberals.
It’s the same throughout the world, look at how in his two months in office Keir Starmer has moved considerably to the right of Sunak, especially on domestic economic issues. Macron spent years claiming to be a bastion against fascism but in the end jumped right rather than left. Neoliberal liberalism caused the rise of fascism in Brazil and India, two previously leftist countries. When push comes to shove, Liberals always ally with conservatives rather than socialists.
It’s hilarious that the American right believes Kamala is a communist when she has spent her career falling over herself to show you how conservative she is.
In closing, it is important to note that while Bolshevism is not Liberalism, it’s also not socialism. It’s kind of like saying that mainstream conservatism is the same as literal nazism. Yes, conservatism has lurched heavily to the right over the last five decades, but they’re still not quite actually constructing gas chambers or invading Poland. Similarly, trying to connect the contemporary left with Stalin is nonsense. That’s a whole different conversation though.
I do not think they have moved to the left, but moved more on the lines of Marcuse's "repressive desublimation" towards a model of commodified desire. This means that the individual extremism of today, and some of its identity politics, is the marketing of a manufactured product of identity to displace political activism in any broader sphere, leaving power intact. it is a consolidation move in my view.
I think the Occupy movement was destroyed by the progressive stack, for an example of how rights-based factionalism dissolves social cohesion and neutralises political counterforce to hegemonic power.
I do not see conservatives as having profited in any way. They have conserved nothing, and their movement is a mouthpiece for various lobbies. All the mainstream conservative pundits should display their sponsors, like on Nascar, for example, and this would become clear.
Gay "marriage" is a product sold by the same means, towards different ends. It is my view that the US state took the "only global power" option in 1990 to continue and expand the war industry, and the "deep state", which had been constructed to destabilise the Soviet Union.
With the market turn of Russia and China, and the Russian resurgence of Christianity, the Rainbow Flag and women's rights became the moral imperative for war and regime change. These are now "our values". At home, regime change methods delivered them, shifting public opinion through propaganda and the simple presentation of state backed polls as fact. Social attitudes are hard to canvass when legal and career penalties apply.
In brief, liberal democracy is the rule by media towards the ends of a permanent elite. I believe the liberal idea is sold as an explanatory rival to that of the foundational Christianity of the West, is a religion of man in the same sense that Bolshevism is a cult of new humanity and relations.
The political elite is not liberal, nor democratic, presents its programme as aspirational novelty, as a programme of continuous reform towards some forever undefined better world. It is utopian in this sense.
I am aware of the various internecine disputes of the left and I think it as a system of ideas completely exhausted. For example, the left has abandoned the white working class for decades. It has new favourites and new causes now, being like the liberal idea concerned with the assimilation of downstream effects of the mass technological society into its agenda, such as transgenderism, mass migration, the borderless chaos monetised in the wake of permanent wars to spread democracy.
Hi. I’m continuing this conversation not out of desire for endless argument but because what you’re saying is very interesting to me: it does feel, like I’ve said before, like you are in a lot of the same areas as me but there is a fundamental difference in - something - starting point maybe.
Agree with your first paragraph more or less completely. My only hesitation about your second paragraph is that I don’t know enough about the history of Occupy to agree or disagree, but I do think that social issues have been used to dislodge economic issues from the Liberal agenda.
I agree that all politicians should be obliged to publicly display their sponsors. Seeing all those arms companies, oil companies, and other mega corporations displayed on the lapels of Democratic politicians would make it impossible to confuse them with the left.
I think there used to be a fundamental split between social issues and economic ones. In terms of economic issues (which I consider to be the real ones) the conservative parties have been having it all their own way for decades. Surely you can’t dispute this? On core conservative economic issues like low taxation, tax breaks for the rich, small public services, privatisation, social mobility, income inequality? The centrist fake-left is a long way to the right of where conservatives were even ten years ago. Even immigration. The Democrats and the Labour Party are further to the right than conservatives were ten years ago.
Centrists have used social issues like race, gender, sexuality to pretend to still be leftist without going anywhere near redistributing wealth. They have further done this in confrontational ways almost designed to create antagonism. I can’t understand how anyone who believes in democracy could disagree with the idea that people of all ethnicities ought to be treated equally by the law; but by framing it as “Black Lives [only] Matter,” when addressing people who have been told repeatedly that their lives don’t matter, it could only create antagonism.
Gay marriage is a product - erm - no more or less than other marriage. Personally I think the whole charade and tens of thousands of dollars cost is a great big nonsense, but the opinion of the vast majority of the population is (however you sample it) that if people want to, why should they not? The proliferation of these ideas is a consequence partly of the growth of democracy over the last 150, but also of the emphasis on personal freedom over the last 50 (which has been a conservative project, to dissolve social cohesion, essentially to prevent the growth of socialism). So if the right makes gay rights, women’s rights and racial equality it’s battlegrounds it will unavoidably lose. But I think this is a sham defeat, on issues that don’t really harm anyone, to obscure the fact that on economic issues, the ones that actually matter, conservatives have literally been making bank uninterrupted for 50 years.
The left has not abandoned working class white people. Genuine leftists still talk about taxing the rich and spending it on the poor, about increasing social mobility, about trade unionism etc. This was the huge majority of Corbyn’s manifesto. Liberal politics hasn’t exactly abandoned the working class either, because they never intended to represent them in the first place. All the corporatism you imply I completely agree with. Liberalism is not liberal or democratic, or in any sense leftist. The program of continual social reform will remain utopian because without economic reform also it will achieve nothing.
The current palette of mainstream parties is a total scam - I get the feeling you might agree with me in that!
Take care, best wishes, hope you are feeling better today than you were recently.
Oh I don’t mean to be vexatious either. I don’t have a lot of time right now and am still poorly. Sorry it is incomplete, I think what we inhabit is broadly the manufacture of a completely counterfeit culture.
If I get some time to do so I will talk to you if you like. Skype or wire or some such. I am behind with interviews etc but things may improve if I get better.
I am poorly today so cannot be doing with this, but your reply is interesting and I will try to respond when I can. I don’t think we disagree as much you think, which is fair as I did not explain in this post what I am on about.
Frank, that was broadly the conclusion I was coming to. I’m sorry you’re unwell, best wishes; and I’m also sorry for the overly aggressive tone in some of my comments.
I’m intrigued by what you’re saying because it tells like you’ve looked at the same problems I have, from what I’m guessing is a different starting point, and come to conclusions which are comparable but also different. I also apologise if I’ve made wrong assumptions. Best wishes, reply if/when you feel like it.
It’s not secret knowledge dude, it’s called history, you can find it books if you read them.
You wouldn’t know truth if it slapped you in the face. Your mind is in the jaws of fascism.
I know that elections are neither fair nor honest. You can’t lose because they have been rigged by conservatives. Both the parties are conservative parties.
I mean you will thereafter lose, when the conservatives steal all your money - but they will do this whichever party wins.
Your “secret knowledge” of “muh conservatism also bad” is the most basic bitch shit imaginable.
You are correct that the current “popular” political dichotomy is rotten, but I doubt you can find any further truth such as you are now. Your soul is in the jaws of critical theory.
“You can’t lose this election”
Oh brother do you actually believe that elections are still fair and honest?
The word "liberal" means different things I think depending on whether you are American or British. Whatever, labels can be use to divide and confuse us. The bottom line is, there is a push all over the world towards a digital type of life and we are not being asked if we want to go there. Who by and why are the billion dollar questions.
"When God is subtracted from the meaning of life what remains is the will to power". It sure has left a gap that the oligarchs are filling. I don't know what they believe but I presume they are not Christian! But God is sometimes used as a reason to take life, looking at history.
Is the lust for power unique to humans? I see some animals dominate their area and "tribe". Not to the extent of humans and their algorithms and drones though, I'll grant you that!
So how does it end? It surely cannot go on. It is becoming increasingly absurd as their utopian ideas slam into reality and do not survive. The herd need to dig ever deeper to maintain their illusions about gender, diversity and the weather.
And we also know the wider world comprehensively rejects Western Liberalism. Not just the Muslims, but the Far East and India too. Only a tiny number believe these things.
I think the money is running out, as is the belief in the system generally. Everything that is done to revive the system will discredit it further.
How long? Probably not that long. One of a number of crises may end this. I think the end of the Ukraine war a likely pivot point. Hopefully not into full scale war, but possibly: the liberal global regime has effectively staked its life on it.
It seems an exceptionally odd hill to die on. Are they that short-sighted? Did they think Russia that easy to beat? Who is advising them?
Or are all our predictions accurate? Is this in fact a clapped-out, jaded, broken aristocracy suffering from the effects of limitless hedonism? People who are completely hopeless and inept.
There are factions. To some it’s just plunder - Russias limitless resources - to others, the refinancing of the west. Some want historical vengeance. Others have staked their political lives on Slava Ukrainus
There are also genuine fanatics - true believers in Putin is Hitler and so on.
If you are morally and spiritually empty the appeal of the role of wartime leader is magnified, and the more grave the crisis the more exquisite the drama. We are ruled by the sort of people whose imagination is confined to popular documentaries, and whose apotheosis is to appear in one, even if only in their own imagination.
Power to this sort of person is a psychodrama. What is real to them is themselves, their feelings and impulses and fantasies. Our lives, the dead, the wounded - just different shades of publicity. Mood lighting for a mic-drop or photo op.
There are serious people still (and, it is to be hoped, enough of them) to prevent catastrophe. I think this winter one which promises a great springtime if we can survive it.
The point about their references being television documentaries and not solid reading or contemplation of deeper issues. This parallels observations we can make in popular entertainment; Hollywood and its subsidiaries. People complain the quality of modern entertainment is poor. Teenagers are discovering the films of the 1970s, The French Connection. The Godfather etc. and are astounded at the quality, the slow pace etc.
What we are seeing are writers using other movies as their input, their reference point. They are not reading good literature. They are watching its derivative. Coppola explicitly used a Shakespearean lens to elevate Mario Puzo's book into something more epic and grand. What Hollywood production would do this today?
So perhaps you are right. Today's powerful are smaller and more limited. Their lives a little documentary with grasp of scale or greatness.
I think mass media informs identity - it’s not just a reference point for an independent self. What I mean is the meaning you take for the basis of your values and personality is informed by the products you consume. Good people’s lives are narrated internally by the same voices and values as those they hear over the films they watch, producing a heroic narrative in which they can take imaginative part.
Politics is always part performance and this is true in the audience as much as in the actors.
I agree. But I think we see a significant drop in quality in the input they are consuming. Garbage in, garbage out.
Those whose worldview is formed by television, a medium designed for entertainment, is quite different from that formed by reading serious books. A documentary on ancient Rome skims the surface with dramatic reenactments etc. A serious biography of Caesar is a different beast.
It is interesting to wonder how much of the elites worldview is formed by poor quality input and lack of education. An easy life inherited from others.
Many of these "factions" are nothing of the sort . Just different heads of the same hydra . Each head has duped its followers in by various ruses , money and power for the political faction , War for the MIC and militarists , various different flavors of liberal/social/democracy for the intelligencia , others for the bleeding heart do-gooders . The not oft repeated desire to make Ukraine into "Big Israel" should put lie to it all .
All pantomime to convince different groups.
I feel, all feels here no logic, that when the lib-dems started off they had much mightier opponents than Putin and Russia. They had to dismantle the Romanovs and Hapsburgs, steal the cross out from under the Catholic Church, tame cowboy gun toting America and devour the dignity of the English crown. If I were some spiritual long lived being who did all that, Russia would seem small potatoes to me. Practically trivial - some KGB killer doesn't compare at all to the past great Czars, Kings and Popes.
So it's not that their opponent was underestimated - they've beaten mightier. I feel it's that they've run out of merciful opponents and thus been disarmed. The mercy of the long suffering employee has become the neet and lying flat, the Romanovs and Hapsburgs who may have exiled you or tolerated your presence have become tit-for-tat Russia or the inscrutable thief China. The rules based Church and open frontier America have become the empty propertyless pew and race-based-city-states of America.
A rabid dog is harder to defeat than a disciplined gladiator for a deceiver. A foaming mouth mania cannot be negotiated with. But a liar has to double down on the lies, having no physical strength to begin with, and they're running out of people who will accommodate them. A card shark with no one willing to play cards. That's my feel on the vibe, at least.
It does feel like it is running out of stream, whatever the reason. Plus the mania for control. That must be exhausting. And they do seem exhausted.
All the available fuel has burnt up now.
Exactly right.
The audio-visual *symbol*, i.e. the word "liberal", was stolen by the Left (anti-liberals by *definition*) in the early 20th century at the same time it stole "progressive".
But *concepts* cannot be stolen. Or rather, the attempt will always lead to contradiction, which in turn must be hidden from the hoi polloi People by all the various methods we see today by the Democrats.
Thank you, Frank. You are an amazing thinker and writer. I would edit you, here and there, but that I decline to be specific I hope you take as the compliment I mean it to be. You are as substantive as anyone I have ever read.
Thank you Timothy, you are very kind. My work today is the result of decades of failure and I did once give up, believing I had wasted my life.
I could defo do with being edited. At least. I did chin myself live on camera the other day, for example. In my defence the kids are back at school and it is somewhat hectic. I almost forgot to post this lol
Ha!
Isn't it just like those kids, to remind us of the *real*. They shame me: In my over-criticization, I never seem to allow for the author's non-literary life.
Speaking of "failure", when teaching chess, I am fond of telling my dis-believing (such beautiful skeptics they/we are) students that one of my wishes is to *lose* every game I ever play. That way, as I lay on my deathbed I would be content in knowing I was the best chess player I could possibly have been.
Fantastic writing.
The flaw will bring them down in the end. In going further out into the marginalised each time to be inclusive they will eventually bring a group to the centre so ridiculous that society says no way,too far,no more.
An excellent, very clarifying essay, Frank, only enhanced by one of the best menes I've seen in ages (or at least since another of your recent mene-ingful pieces 😏). Of course I mean (not mene) the JFK one, which I showed to Hubby, who thinks it should be shared far and wide. (I'll drop it, and a link to this article, in his telegram channel.)
Thank you and God bless, Frank. 🙏🪷
Also: FREE PALESTINE!!! 🇵🇸✊🇵🇸
Excellent
Never gave much thought to Kennedy and his idiotic non proliferation sentiment. Fine for me but not for thee leftie until the end.
Great stack.
Kennedys non-proliferation was largely driven by the standoff with Russia over nuclear missiles and the knowledge that nuclear annihilation was only very closely averted. Kennedy reasoned that with more nukes, in more countries, and more conflict, eventually one instance would lead to a major nuclear exchange. His logic and proposed solution may not have been accurate, but his concerns were quite valid.
I get that. No one wants nukes. But the idea after the Holocaust that Israel shouldn’t have them is absurdly naive. And in the end don’t want others to have nukes then be the first to give up your own. He was never going to do so because everyone knows they’re utterly fatal and so essential for survival. No one can give them up and now everyone needs and wants them. And so it goes on. His concerns are only valid in so far as everyone’s concerns about them are.
No one ? Not the group that sought them by hook and crook ? Not the group whose members were involved ftom the start in their initial construction for use in solving a grudge and then abandoned the project to help the nation they lived in (and was still at war ) when that alleged foe surrendered too early ? Not the ethnonational regime that denies , in the face of plain fact , even having them ? How about the cabal that has as a policy using nukes that of course they don't have against innocent cities of non belligerent nations as a matter of fact ? Surely you aren't talking about that "No One" ?
Hi I see you’re a Catholic like me and attend Traditional Mass like me so could you perhaps try and approach the subject with some light, less heat some honey less vinegar? I’m not attempting to outdo or outwit anyone here. Thanks!
To this Traditional Catholic, systems engineer, and CS Lewis fan, this article was like an early Christmas present. Every time a clever comment seeped into my consciousness, it got answered in the next paragraph. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Oh thank you PBHD - from one trad Catholic to another.
This is a great idea for a book! Liberalism is a wrong turn that the West has taken for the last 100 years. We were steered in this bad direction because it was sold to us as "progress" and because Whites love novelty. I don't consider liberalism or leftism to be "progress," but destruction.
The final form of normative collectivism is to put what we could be over what we individually are.
Psychology of the masses will hopefully break at some stage and people will hopefully wake up, smell the coffee and see what the hell is actually going on!
People will wake up, get angry for a few days, believe a few new lies, and go back to sleep.
The sad thing about that is that you are probably correct!
I’m old enough to have seen it happen a few times.
I find this essay confusing. You seem to be arguing that liberalism of the Berlin type is a good thing, and that current problems are not caused by actual conspiracy, but then sort of saying the opposite to both statements shortly afterwards.
The memes don’t really help me understand what you are trying to say.
Can you elaborate a bit more please and connect all the dots, particularly in terms of the enlightenment and the fall of Catholic Europe.
Have you read nihilism by seraphim rose? It seems to make a similar argument, but is of course strongly anti Catholic.
I am not a liberal, but I think Berlin was the best of them and presented the best case for it.
Thanks for the response, me neither.
Can you expand on the other points I mentioned please?
Happy to do it via private message to avoid this troll.
I cannot go into this now because of time - my daughter is poorly, I have things to do. I am writing a book about the liberal idea and its century of "democracy", which should answer your questions I hope. I do not know about this seraphim rose person. It is my view that Western civilisation as we call it was founded by the Catholic Church between the 9th and 12th centuries, and that the motto of Pope St Pius X is the means by which it must be restored.
Ok, thanks, I hope she gets better soon.
You should read his book as soon as you can. It is a perspective on some of the same topics you are aiming to cover from an Eastern Orthodox position, and while you will take issue with his views on the Catholic Church, I think you will find his thought process applicable and useful to your own.
I am Catholic by the way- not trying to convert you to EO.
That’s what I think about your essay. You’ve correctly recognised some of the problems in the world, but then rather than thinking, have just ran it all through a meat-grinder of bigotry and come out with nonsense.
The memes are solidly racist.
Stop weaponizIng that word! Don’t be a bully! People are not gonna tolerate it anymore!! I guess you didn’t get anything from the article!
Which word? Racism? Wait you’re telling me I’m being a bully because I’m mentioning racism? You don’t think there’s any bullying aspect to the use/presence of racism?
I’m just pointing out why the article disintegrates as soon as you start paying attention to it in detail.
They seem to be a random selection of Twitter fare. I would like a bit more elucidation if the argument if you can help. I find it hard to follow.
The memes are not included to illustrate the essay, but because I like memes..
Ok thanks
That does somewhat undermine their relevance in this essay, if it’s true; and the fact that you like racist memes tells us that all your writing will be distorted by prejudice.
If you think that calling people names means they cannot think, and do not therefore deserve to be heard, then I cannot help you. Berlin was a liberal who listened to people with different ideas from his, because he thought that there were different ways of seeing the world. I argue in the post that liberalism like this has vanished, and the progressives of today have no time for any ideas but their own - this being a sort of chauvinism.
I think the argument looks to me like white supremacy trying to write an essay. I also had trouble making sense of the argument but I think this is because it’s quite unhinged.
I think this is a silly way to refuse to think.
“You are bad person, me no listen to you.”
Well seeth and cope I guess
"The reason the mass media is gaslighting us all is not because it is ruled by a secret cabal of cackling villains who conspire in ritual gatherings to do evil." -- You might want to read Antony Sutton's book, America's Secret Establishment 👀
hey some fellas once hinted that overall goal of the negative people was to make us "destroy ourselves"
i guess it implies of course "by ourselves", "like an old chap"
much to ponder for myself
can become a good compass than to watch out for behaviors, teachings, suggestions, advices, frameworks, models in that light
was thinking of red flags "corruption"/"degradation" but the "destroy yourself" end goal seems more precise
One generalisation I like to make is the progressive movement promises emancipation but delivers annihilation.
Thats all utopian ideologies, really
sorry. what i mean overall is that we may biff the words "progressive movement" in your quote:
One generalisation I like to make is the [progressive movement] promises emancipation but delivers annihilation
and replace it with something even more generic
but i totally agree with you; i am intellectually mecanism-oriented and it helps me to label things to their very core :)
This seems very true
One thing that I see: when taking the bus and spectating 90% of people nose in the cellphone, I contemplate something that already bypassed the following strong very wrong "frameworks"
-political appartenance
-gangsta rap scarface al pacino models
-rich girls
etc
this hints at some uniformization - some more years and that's it.
could be that the progressiveness was just a step
that cellphone stuff got prime hand over everybody's insufficient world views
what i see is that what they were relying on was false, insufficient - it does not hold.
I can of course observe some schwab-like AI-artificial crap slowly popping up
I feel the concept of "promises emancipation but delivers annihilation" uses the attractive idea of "progressive" as a vehicle and that in the 80's or else there were other vehicles; this makes me think of a basic will of "lie+annihilation" that changes and uses a pretext
Your book seems very cool! I encourage you about it! It's simplicity, the chapters laid down here - short chapters - positively triggered me. There is a guy on substack teaching Latin lessons!
All the best!
What a load of nonsense. Racist, homophobic, sexist nonsense - but you probably take those words as compliments.
Look the whole thing falls apart because you have misunderstood the fact that Liberalism is not socialism. Liberalism is a form of conservatism that was imposed on the American left to prevent America from electing genuine socialists, which would have happened otherwise. In exactly the same way Kamala Harris, a conservative, has been imposed without election on the left butt cheek, so that there is no option in the coming “election” to oppose conservatism. I honestly don’t understand what American conservatives are worried about. You can’t lose this election.
The Whig Party, the ancestor of liberal politics, represented the factory owners, the wealthiest industrialists and merchants, lawyers, bankers - because they were the only people other than aristocrats who had the vote. The Whigs campaigned for the vote to be extended because they believed they would soak up more of the votes; but still took about 100 years for universal suffrage to happen: because they liberals wanted to extend the vote just far enough that it would benefit them without genuinely empowering the poor. This has been the strategy of liberalism ever since: to lie to the poor, claiming to represent them, whilst in reality serving their bosses and owners.
If you perceive liberalism as disingenuous, you’re correct. Liberalism is a massive lie, as you understand; but the biggest lie of them all is the conflation of liberalism with left. Conservatism (as sold to the working class) is also a massive lie. Conservatism is designed to benefit the super-rich, so if you’re not one of them, conservative politics will harm you.
These two lies depend on each other. The only reason either gets anywhere near winning an election is that Liberalism has comprehensively sabotaged the left.
I know that Bolshevism and Liberalism are not the same. I argue that they are both animated in the same way: permanent revolution or progress, towards a utopia.
The liberalism of today is not that of Mill, nor of Isaiah Berlin in the 1950s. Practically, what Americans call "liberal" politics is no longer that of 30 years ago. Trump is a 1990s liberal, for example, but the liberals of today have moved so far beyond this position that 1990s liberal views are now seen as extreme.
The conservatives aren't making bank. They have lost every battle in the culture war.
The people making money are those who have monetised the industries of civilisational vandalism. The death industries of war, abortion, the capture of politics by their sponsors, the obscene machinery of the trans cult dressed up to impersonate a civil rights movement - these are examples of the commodification of the narrative of liberation. The wars will free the unfree, the pill will free women from womanhood, the hormones and surgery and costume permits humanity to be free of its own limitations.
Well, I as I said, I think you’re looking at a lot of the right issues but you’ve got them upside down. For instance, I agree that Liberalism and the Democratic Party/movement has moved massively over the last half century, but I assume you think they’ve moved to the left? This is because you’ve been bamboozled by the show. If you look at all the things that actually matter - tax policy and the gap between rich and poor, the attitude towards privatisation of state assets, what proportion of money is spent on blowing up hospitals and schools overseas versus building them at home - the Democrats of today are considerably to the right of Reagan.
The culture war is a ridiculous piece of nonsense created by both sides to make them appear different when in fact they are both straightforward hard right conservative parties. Both, like all conservative parties, have the death-dealing war industries as their primary donors and constituents.
Even if we look at your statement that “conservatives are not making bank” literally, we can see that it’s false. Rich people, who are predominantly conservative, have continuously become richer under both democrat and Republican governments. Poor conservatives have not done well, but is this a surprise? Conservative politics (including liberalism) exists to benefit the rich, poor people who vote for it are patsies.
I can understand poor voters losing faith in the democrats, since they have primarily served the rich too over the last 40 years. Hillary calling them “deplorable” probably didn’t help either.
All the fake protest movements exist primarily to persuade leftists that the democrats are on their side whilst fragmenting and distracting from genuine protest movements. I think people should be free to wear whatever clothes they like and use whatever names, and if someone wants me to address them as a particular gender it doesn’t hurt me at all. But the trans medical companies and processes are not as developed as their advocates claim, their scientific papers are sometimes not very solid at all, it does all need proper research and caution, and the emotional blackmail about suicide is very wrong on several levels; and once we note the money going from trans medical companies to liberal politicians we can cleanly identify this as a case of (conservative) private medical companies bribing conservative politicians to do dangerous things. Not many leftists have reached this point; many leftists see it as a continuation of the gay rights movement. I think the involvement of private medical companies is a key tell.
The general population in both the UK and US are firmly behind gay marriage and contraception, because why does it matter to me if someone else gets married or avoids pregnancy? If they want to, they can go ahead. It’s logically inconsistent for people who make a big song and dance about freedom to deny people these basic freedoms. (Incidentally why did you think it was relevant to mention isaiah Berlin’s sexuality? It looked to me like you were implying his opinions are invalidated by his sexual orientation). as long as the right anchors itself against these points, it will ultimately lose any culture war it engages. But that’s fine, because the culture war is for show and you’ve won on the real issue, which is the division of wealth and power between rich and poor. Yeah fine, how annoying, we don’t get plastic straws in McDonald’s any more, so you think liberalism has gone crazy; on the other hand a handful of cartels control all the food production in America and this has been enabled by liberals.
It’s the same throughout the world, look at how in his two months in office Keir Starmer has moved considerably to the right of Sunak, especially on domestic economic issues. Macron spent years claiming to be a bastion against fascism but in the end jumped right rather than left. Neoliberal liberalism caused the rise of fascism in Brazil and India, two previously leftist countries. When push comes to shove, Liberals always ally with conservatives rather than socialists.
It’s hilarious that the American right believes Kamala is a communist when she has spent her career falling over herself to show you how conservative she is.
In closing, it is important to note that while Bolshevism is not Liberalism, it’s also not socialism. It’s kind of like saying that mainstream conservatism is the same as literal nazism. Yes, conservatism has lurched heavily to the right over the last five decades, but they’re still not quite actually constructing gas chambers or invading Poland. Similarly, trying to connect the contemporary left with Stalin is nonsense. That’s a whole different conversation though.
I do not think they have moved to the left, but moved more on the lines of Marcuse's "repressive desublimation" towards a model of commodified desire. This means that the individual extremism of today, and some of its identity politics, is the marketing of a manufactured product of identity to displace political activism in any broader sphere, leaving power intact. it is a consolidation move in my view.
I think the Occupy movement was destroyed by the progressive stack, for an example of how rights-based factionalism dissolves social cohesion and neutralises political counterforce to hegemonic power.
I do not see conservatives as having profited in any way. They have conserved nothing, and their movement is a mouthpiece for various lobbies. All the mainstream conservative pundits should display their sponsors, like on Nascar, for example, and this would become clear.
Gay "marriage" is a product sold by the same means, towards different ends. It is my view that the US state took the "only global power" option in 1990 to continue and expand the war industry, and the "deep state", which had been constructed to destabilise the Soviet Union.
With the market turn of Russia and China, and the Russian resurgence of Christianity, the Rainbow Flag and women's rights became the moral imperative for war and regime change. These are now "our values". At home, regime change methods delivered them, shifting public opinion through propaganda and the simple presentation of state backed polls as fact. Social attitudes are hard to canvass when legal and career penalties apply.
In brief, liberal democracy is the rule by media towards the ends of a permanent elite. I believe the liberal idea is sold as an explanatory rival to that of the foundational Christianity of the West, is a religion of man in the same sense that Bolshevism is a cult of new humanity and relations.
The political elite is not liberal, nor democratic, presents its programme as aspirational novelty, as a programme of continuous reform towards some forever undefined better world. It is utopian in this sense.
I am aware of the various internecine disputes of the left and I think it as a system of ideas completely exhausted. For example, the left has abandoned the white working class for decades. It has new favourites and new causes now, being like the liberal idea concerned with the assimilation of downstream effects of the mass technological society into its agenda, such as transgenderism, mass migration, the borderless chaos monetised in the wake of permanent wars to spread democracy.
Hi. I’m continuing this conversation not out of desire for endless argument but because what you’re saying is very interesting to me: it does feel, like I’ve said before, like you are in a lot of the same areas as me but there is a fundamental difference in - something - starting point maybe.
Agree with your first paragraph more or less completely. My only hesitation about your second paragraph is that I don’t know enough about the history of Occupy to agree or disagree, but I do think that social issues have been used to dislodge economic issues from the Liberal agenda.
I agree that all politicians should be obliged to publicly display their sponsors. Seeing all those arms companies, oil companies, and other mega corporations displayed on the lapels of Democratic politicians would make it impossible to confuse them with the left.
I think there used to be a fundamental split between social issues and economic ones. In terms of economic issues (which I consider to be the real ones) the conservative parties have been having it all their own way for decades. Surely you can’t dispute this? On core conservative economic issues like low taxation, tax breaks for the rich, small public services, privatisation, social mobility, income inequality? The centrist fake-left is a long way to the right of where conservatives were even ten years ago. Even immigration. The Democrats and the Labour Party are further to the right than conservatives were ten years ago.
Centrists have used social issues like race, gender, sexuality to pretend to still be leftist without going anywhere near redistributing wealth. They have further done this in confrontational ways almost designed to create antagonism. I can’t understand how anyone who believes in democracy could disagree with the idea that people of all ethnicities ought to be treated equally by the law; but by framing it as “Black Lives [only] Matter,” when addressing people who have been told repeatedly that their lives don’t matter, it could only create antagonism.
Gay marriage is a product - erm - no more or less than other marriage. Personally I think the whole charade and tens of thousands of dollars cost is a great big nonsense, but the opinion of the vast majority of the population is (however you sample it) that if people want to, why should they not? The proliferation of these ideas is a consequence partly of the growth of democracy over the last 150, but also of the emphasis on personal freedom over the last 50 (which has been a conservative project, to dissolve social cohesion, essentially to prevent the growth of socialism). So if the right makes gay rights, women’s rights and racial equality it’s battlegrounds it will unavoidably lose. But I think this is a sham defeat, on issues that don’t really harm anyone, to obscure the fact that on economic issues, the ones that actually matter, conservatives have literally been making bank uninterrupted for 50 years.
The left has not abandoned working class white people. Genuine leftists still talk about taxing the rich and spending it on the poor, about increasing social mobility, about trade unionism etc. This was the huge majority of Corbyn’s manifesto. Liberal politics hasn’t exactly abandoned the working class either, because they never intended to represent them in the first place. All the corporatism you imply I completely agree with. Liberalism is not liberal or democratic, or in any sense leftist. The program of continual social reform will remain utopian because without economic reform also it will achieve nothing.
The current palette of mainstream parties is a total scam - I get the feeling you might agree with me in that!
Take care, best wishes, hope you are feeling better today than you were recently.
Oh I don’t mean to be vexatious either. I don’t have a lot of time right now and am still poorly. Sorry it is incomplete, I think what we inhabit is broadly the manufacture of a completely counterfeit culture.
If I get some time to do so I will talk to you if you like. Skype or wire or some such. I am behind with interviews etc but things may improve if I get better.
I am poorly today so cannot be doing with this, but your reply is interesting and I will try to respond when I can. I don’t think we disagree as much you think, which is fair as I did not explain in this post what I am on about.
Frank, that was broadly the conclusion I was coming to. I’m sorry you’re unwell, best wishes; and I’m also sorry for the overly aggressive tone in some of my comments.
I’m intrigued by what you’re saying because it tells like you’ve looked at the same problems I have, from what I’m guessing is a different starting point, and come to conclusions which are comparable but also different. I also apologise if I’ve made wrong assumptions. Best wishes, reply if/when you feel like it.
Tells like = looks like
It’s not secret knowledge dude, it’s called history, you can find it books if you read them.
You wouldn’t know truth if it slapped you in the face. Your mind is in the jaws of fascism.
I know that elections are neither fair nor honest. You can’t lose because they have been rigged by conservatives. Both the parties are conservative parties.
I mean you will thereafter lose, when the conservatives steal all your money - but they will do this whichever party wins.
Your “secret knowledge” of “muh conservatism also bad” is the most basic bitch shit imaginable.
You are correct that the current “popular” political dichotomy is rotten, but I doubt you can find any further truth such as you are now. Your soul is in the jaws of critical theory.
“You can’t lose this election”
Oh brother do you actually believe that elections are still fair and honest?
The word "liberal" means different things I think depending on whether you are American or British. Whatever, labels can be use to divide and confuse us. The bottom line is, there is a push all over the world towards a digital type of life and we are not being asked if we want to go there. Who by and why are the billion dollar questions.
"When God is subtracted from the meaning of life what remains is the will to power". It sure has left a gap that the oligarchs are filling. I don't know what they believe but I presume they are not Christian! But God is sometimes used as a reason to take life, looking at history.
Is the lust for power unique to humans? I see some animals dominate their area and "tribe". Not to the extent of humans and their algorithms and drones though, I'll grant you that!