Hello,
Obligatory shilling. This month I wrote on THE ZONE about Israel and the right, Richard Dawkins and religion, the nature of “tropes”, evangelical Christianity and abuse, bad online journalism, writing well about bad deeds, Becca Rothfeld’s All Things Are Too Small and the mainstream nature of wokeness.
I wrote for The Critic about non-Christian defenders of Christian traditions, “noticing” and censorship, immoral Conservative MPs, jumping to conclusions about atrocities, the dishonest campaign to ban National Conservatism, the dishonest campaign to ban pro-Palestine marches and terrible politics podcasts.
Finally, I wrote for the Washington Examiner about pro wrestling and “toxic masculinity”.
Giggling in the sea. Niall Gooch criticises the exhausted nature of contemporary British satire:
The problem for Count Binface and others is that Monty Python and Private Eye and the alternative comedians won. The old Britain they mocked so enthusiastically has indeed vanished under the rubble, and the new breed of comics do not really know what to do next, except bomb the rubble. They are basically happy with the contemporary cultural settlement, so their material has no bite.
I checked out Count Binface’s book and the second paragraph of the preface contained a Justin Bieber joke. This might seem like a silly thing to complain about, but Justin Bieber was 28 when the book was released — yet it was painfully clear that in the author’s mind he was still an adolescent teen idol. It’s key to the “cockwomble” phenomenon that 30 to 50-year-old men had their perception of pop culture frozen before 2010. In his latest campaign video, Count Binface mentions “[banning] speakerphones on public transport with offenders forced to watch a box set of The One Show”. Who under the age of 25 even knows what the hell a box set is?
Israelpolitik. One of my favourite young commentators is Sam Bidwell and this is an excellent piece for our print edition on foreign policy and Israel:
The Foreign Office should position itself as a critical partner of Israel, whilst leveraging our relationships in the Gulf to promote peace, and our own interests, in the region. Britain should stand up for Britain because, like it or not, nobody else is going to.
Journalism contra thought. A quick rant. Nick Bostrom’s Future of Humanity Institute has shut down and Andrew Anthony of the Observer wants to write about it. There are lots of interesting criticisms you could make about the ideological network that surrounds such themes as longtermism, consequentialism and AI risk. Anthony, on the other hand, vaguely references un-PC remarks Bostrom made about race in a 1996 email and the crimes of Sam Bankman-Fried (who, as far as I know, was not connected to the Future of Humanity Institute — though he did fund some of its ideological polyamorous partners).
At the end of the piece you’re left with no real insight into what Nick Bostrom and his colleagues think or do. You’re just left with a vague sense that they are disreputable. The piece doesn’t encourage longer, deeper thought — it assures you that you don’t have to think.
Perhaps I’ve written such pieces as well. Complex subject? Short on time? Shit — we’ve all been there. But it makes intellectual life actively worse — offering knowledge only to foreclose curiosity.
Schlock jock. Joe Biden joining Howard Stern for a sycophantic interview offers me a chance to re-plug one of my favourite pieces from this platform:
Howard Stern has become a striking representative of elite baby boomers, whose iconoclastic and cynical attitudes have been mutating into moralism and hysteria as the thunk thunk thunk of the bottom of a scythe approaches. They spent decades mocking the dinosaurs who came before them — but now they are the dinosaurs.
Suddenly, life means something! Values have to be defended! Let’s get serious, dammit! The world needs us. The problem is that the sincerity has as little fundamental substance as the nastiness once did. It’s an emotional shift more than a moral, philosophical or artistic one.
A dominant presence. Sarah Ditum writes on Baby Reindeer and stalking:
This is hard advice to take, because to the stalked, the stalker can become the dominant presence in their life. When Martha falls quiet, Donny is anxious. If he doesn’t know what she’s thinking, how can he know what to expect? But there’s more to it, of course. When he doesn’t know what she’s thinking, he’s overtaken with the fear that she’s not thinking about him.
This is a very interesting perspective, though I should be clear that if you’re not my dad, my friends, my commissioning editors or a flame-haired beauty with an inexplicable attraction to opinion columnists I couldn’t care less who you think about.
Right-wing progressivism. Mary Harrington considers an up-and-coming concept:
Among its adherents, high-tech authoritarianism is a feature, not a bug, and egalitarianism is for fools. Thinkers such as Curtis Yarvin propose an explicitly neo-monarchical model for governance; Thiel has declared that: “I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible.” And it’s not hard to see the appeal of Bukele as a poster-boy for such movements …
I remember telling an anon, years ago, that the right could never reclaim the term “progressivism”, and I should declare myself mistaken. That said, the most successful cases of dramatic economic growth — Britain after the industrial revolution, or the US in the 1900s, or even China after Mao — relied on some foundation of moral stability. I’m not sure how right-wing progressivism accounts for that — except for all the massive prisons.
Human quantitative easing. Tom Jones addresses British industrial strategy:
So long as politicians prefer the short to the long term, HQE will remain Britain’s industrial strategy, and a move towards a more productive, prosperous economy capable of delivering the growth we need to sustain public services will remain no more than a dream.
Beheading a book. I wrote about hatchet jobs a couple of months ago, and Ann Manov’s review of Lauren Oyler’s book No Judgment is one of the most devastating I’ve ever seen:
Oyler is contemptuous of disagreement, quickly bores of research, and rigidly attempts to control the reader’s responses. As a result, the writing is cramped, brittle. Oyler clearly wishes to be a person who says brilliant things—the Renata Adler of looking at your phone a lot—but she lacks the curiosity that would permit her to do so.
Or is it? I haven’t read No Judgment. Perhaps it is unfair to treat a hatchet job like a jury’s verdict and judge’s sentence. But the quotes do seem quite damning. And if we are honest we largely read hatchet jobs for entertainment rather than information.
Have a lovely month,
Ben