"The Jury Will Now Retire, As Indeed Should I" Edition

Hello,

I hope my followers had a happy Christmas.

Obligatory shilling. This week I wrote an article for Unherd about the right's tedious and self-defeating reliance on accusations of personal hypocrisy.

I also sent two articles to my paying subscribers, one an old piece I wanted to resurrect - about the influential British poet, critic and street brawler T.E. Hulme - and one a new piece - about “Stop Funding Hate” and increasingly frequent attempts to deny one's political opponents income.

I am all too aware that some the pieces I have written for my paying subscribers have been failures, but I hope the majority are interesting and entertaining - and at least that they are never dull. Do consider subscribing if you are interested.

Anyway, having drawn you into a sales pitch I feel compelled to offer up a real hotel breakfast of a buffet of links and comments.

This photo was taken near my hometown, where I walked with my best friend. We used to walk round bars on a Saturday night and now we are at least as liable to walk round forests on a Saturday morning. Some might call this maturity but I feel like true enlightenment comes when the best of these experiences are combined…

Key performance indicators. Mysterious pseudonymous satirist Zero HP Lovecraft takes on techno-reductionism.

90s things. Some commentators - like, well, me, in an article this year - have used Francis Fukuyama's book The End of History to illustrate comical post-Cold War complacence. Aris Roussinos, in a typically incisive piece, argues that this does Fukuyama an injustice. He might have thought liberal democracy would bring freedom and prosperity but he also wrote that it would consign people to a deep civilisational malaise that could lead to rebellion against what had made them comfortable.

Still, while I accept that it is wrong to class Fukuyama among cheerfully purblind prognosticators, I think boredom as being symptomatic of societal success is less descriptive of our time than insecurity and alienation as a product of the dangerous material logic that brought us here - one that has opened the door to very modern dictatorial technocracy in China.

Yet while that may be a disagreement I have to admit that it is not an especially hilarious one.

The politics of time. Ahmed from “Post Apathy” offers respectful disagreement with Fukuyama, and much else besides, in another incisive and elegant essay, this time about different conceptions of history and how they have informed challenges to the liberal order. This almost offhand sentence made me wince, not because it is rude but because it is true: It seems that the Eurocrats imagine themselves on a long holiday away from reality, paid for by the American taxpayer. Oof.

Starting at home. Micah Meadowcroft writes well about how responses to China should begin with civic piety (he writes about the US but it applies to other countries too): I worry the opportunity to build a prudent national industrial policy may be lost in a righteous fervor.

Not always Greener. Nicholas Shakespeare, author of a fine biography of Bruce Chatwin, writes about a new biography of Graham Greene. My Lord, imagining dedicating years of your life to the life of Graham Greene. It is like choosing to spend your life in a slag heap. But then again, Stephen Kotkin is writing the third of his three volumes about the life of Joseph Stalin.

Faked up. I remember being called hysterical by Quillette commenters for worrying about deepfakes in 2019 because no one could possibly gather enough photographs of someone to make a convincing deepfake. Now, in 2020, people are making semi-realistic deepfakes out of a couple of selfies. Among Native Americans, there was a belief that photographs steal part of the soul. There was at least an element of prescience to that.

Stalkers and suicides. An interesting essay by Tim Ferris on the perils of online fame.

Competition? My friend Paul Brian - author of interesting articles about everything from Israel to incels - has a new Substack blog about his travel experiences.

Oh, I do love to be beside the… James Bloodworth writes about the mixed fortunes of British seaside towns. My grandparents live in Devon, and we always used to visit Exmouth and Sidmouth. Exmouth has become a bit trendier, from what I know, with swanky restaurants and boutiques. Sidmouth is a time capsule - a little England of cafés and charity shops, lovely and peaceful, lying before the march of time.

Thanks for reading, and have a lovely week,

Ben