Toward the end of Aaron Powell's discussion of 'post-liberalism' there was introduced the term 'intentional communities'. To me that expressed better the idea I labeled enclaves, where people more or less retreated from the broader society enough to set up their own institutions, like the 60s communes but not so isolated. That came out of my experience moving into a Black neighborhood when I got married and seeing up close how Black families lived in a segregated society. I also learned the LDS missionaries do not always go door knocking but set up housekeeping and allow neighbors to see how well they live and begin to inquire about their habits and values.
It is complicated but intriguing and bizarre people like Integralists muddy the waters.
“How the fuck did liberals convince ourselves that you can beat cancer by doing dumbbell curls? You cannot.” See Figure 3 of Sabel MS, Lee J, Cai S, Englesbe MJ, Holcombe S, Wang S. Sarcopenia as a prognostic factor among patients with stage III melanoma. Annals of Surgical Oncology 18(13): 3579, 2011. It shows dramatic effects of psoas muscle morphometry and survival in stage III melanoma patients. This research group at the University of Michigan has shown similar effects of psoas measures on other cancers as well. The psoas is a "core" muscle that would have benefitted from Justice Ginsberg's core exertice routine. Since you are such an oncologic genius and so dissmissively certain there is no association between musculoskeletal morphometry and cancer survival, please explain Figure 3 of that paper.
Don't lose sight of the real connections between conservative, Inc. and the truckers. Are conservatives doing anything to help the day-to-day lives of truckers? Of course not. They have continuously supported policies that favored trucking related companies at the expense of individual truckers. But Nixon was no better and yet he obtained the endorsement of the Teamsters. How? Well do not kid yourself that the "southern strategy" did not play a central part. Truckers are overwhelmingly red-neck white and almost universally male (never forget about the male part in today's conservative, Inc.).
I'd only add that I think talking about it as a quest for power misses a very specific nuance. There are people who want power because there are things they want to do, for good or ill. I think these people want power for the purpose of intimidation, to remind people who's boss.
JVL: This thought from your first item: Christian theocracy. Can you please write more about this? America is starting to resemble Gilead from Margaret Atwood....
“Nothing. Without power, there is nothing,” James Carville.
Republicans have taken that truth to heart.
The only guiding principle in Conservatism, Inc. is "Owning the Libs". It is also the unifying principle bringing together several constituencies to confront their common enemy. The only difference among them is the degree to which they wish to own the libs and how that ownership is manifested.
There is a through line of moral corruption and intellectual incoherence from Newt Gingrich, to Sarah Palin, to the TEAParty, to Trump, to Marjorie Taylor Greene, Boebert and Madison Cawthorn.
American conservatism needs to return to Burke and Disraeli and put away the Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman.
JVL, I can't catch all your newsletters, and may have missed a few newsletters of newsletters. I was already following The UnPopulist (clearly, you've got good taste). One with a similar name is Unpopular Front, by John Gantz. He seems to have a bead on a lot of the right's grift:
Loved this newsletter! I was so pissed when RGB didn’t retire and became a meme. Also, I’m a huge fan of the stoics. Seneca is another ancient badass of self control. If anyone wants a great read, I can’t recommend “The Consolations of Philosophy” by Alain De Botton enough. It’s one of my favorite books.
Okay, I have to defend RBG. If she HAD retired earlier during the Obama administration, why does anyone think Mitch McConnell would have done anything different than what he did when she died? I think she was hanging on because she knew good and well McConnell would find a way to scuttle any Obama replacement in his second term. I suppose a case could be made that she could have retired during Obama’s first term.
Definitely, as did almost everyone. RBG doesn’t deserve the wrath directed at her for delaying her resignation, IMO. How I wish it had turned out differently.
For several decades I patiently listened to libertarian arguments against civil rights laws on the grounds of "freedom of association." In certain cases, such as religious schools and small businesses, I was largely persuaded. But now, that's gone out the window, and only a tiny remnant of libertarians still have a consistent belief in freedom of association. I guess it is not so easy when the shoe is on the other foot. And I understand that many libertarian elites still hold to their values; but that is not where the "libertarian" masses are.
"There is no conservative philosophical attachment to freedom or liberty any more than there is an integralist or populist love of the common good.
There is only power."
So well said. Thank you.
I want to draw attention to a really alarming discussion I listened to yesterday. After listening to JVL and Sarah on the Secret Show discussing the Ottawa Trucker situation, which Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are all cheering, along with their mouthpieces on Fox, I tuned into another Never Trump, former Republican podcast I like, "Politicology."
Now, I don't want to be the kind of person who spreads conspiracy theories on the Internet, but Mike Madrid, long-time Republican operative, has an interpretation that really made me sit up straight. "I don't believe this is a social movement at all. I believe this is a paid operation.... There is something far more nefarious behind this than just a handful of people misbehaving. There is a very serious conflict that is taking place in Ottawa right now that is heavily funded, extremely sophisticated, and I would suggest it is probably heavily armed...There's an operation happening here that could be potentially extremely explosive, and I don't believe it's just a handful of cranks and militia members... These movements are happening in different parts of Europe...because this stuff is orchestrated in a very sophisticated transnational political operation being run by countries that have a vested interest in the destabilization of these countries."
Here's a link, starting with his comments, but the earlier conversation is worth a listen, too.
Coupla' comments: 1. It could be both social movement and paid operation, like the Tea Party of the early Obama years. 2. As I read "a sophisticated transnational political operation" I was nearly expecting you to say "run by Jews." 3. JVL's quote was about how the integralist / common-good conservatives view the world, not how JVL views the world.
After I posted the above, I was reading The Guardian’s Long Reads. Their feature from the archive is a really stunning story from 2015 about the secret meeting between Thatcher and Murdoch in the early 80s, which smoothed the way for his purchase of TheTimes, apparently in exchange for political support for the Thatcher government. When the story of this time is told, Rupert Murdoch will be one of the most important people in the long attack on democracy around the English-speaking world.
I read something similar today in The Atlantic, making the case that the caution the Canadian government is exercising in dealing with this group is important and necessary to avoid something catastrophic. Scary times.
There is high libertarianism and low libertarianism. High libertarians live in a fantasy world in which the social space left unoccupied by strong government remains a vacuum which gangsters and thugs voluntarily refrain from filling --because, Liberty. Low libertarians know better but imagine themselves as filling that vacuum so as to prevent worse people from doing so. .
Libertarianism and conservatism are not really compatible.
"There is no philosophical attachment to freedom or liberty...or...love of the common good."
This is absolutely the single best distillation down to the very essence of "what's wrong with the Right" that I've seen anywhere, anytime. An Ah Ha Moment for me only in its succinctness, since my brain, which doesn't like complicated things, has been searching for such a simple, straightforward and understandable explanation for some time now for what the fuck has happened to such a large portion of this country that I have so loved for so long. It's been whispering similar stuff into the ear of my consciousness, but without such clarity or brevity.
I think of Charlie's book How the Right Lost Its Mind, and I realize that isn't what happened at all. That is only a symptom of what happened. What happened is the Right lost its soul. It's forsaken the American Spirit, the stalwart abhorrence and resistance of tyranny and the love and embrace of freedom and liberty born in Lexington and Concord all those years ago and manifested again and again in places like Normandy and Iwo Jima, Bastogne and Okinawa.
It relinquished any love for the common good and has fallen in love with only itself. Its vociferous pretense to patriotism is a sham, a deceit of the first order, deserving of condemnation and now requiring the resistance of those clear-eyed Americans who have not relinquished their love of those things in favor of feel-good self-serving self-delusion.
I am angry about this. And disheartened. And some days I don't know what to do about it other than let that anger spill out here and in similar places. Forgive me for that. But at least I know when I'm here, I'm among friends, fellow Americans whose beliefs in the values I spoke of above are much the same as my own. Otherwise, what reason is there for you to be here? And I am grateful for that.
How did the right lose their mind : they lost power and influence. How did Putin lose his mind : Russia lost power and influence. People don’t just walk away from power.
When I was a kid in the 80s and Reagan was incredibly popular, Democrats still controlled Congress. There were still some rural folks here in the South that voted Democrat. They are literally nonexistent now. But Democrats then weren’t the Democrats of today. They were mostly older, white traditionalists.
Fast forward to today and those people are quickly getting outnumbered. Because of the Senate, the electoral college and is not having expanded the number of seats in Congress for the last 100 years the rural voters of America punch WAY above their weight class. 50 Dem senators represent 42 million more people than the other 50!
Even with that imbalance they’re losing the narrative of the country because of modernity. Things inevitably change, but I know a lot of people who are resistant to even minor change. They’re not going to just walk away from that power, especially since they see how effective violence and propaganda can be.
Thanks for the tip. Hope I can find the time to check that out. I know folks like this have been around an awfully long time, and there are surely some cut from the same bolt of wholesale cloth at the other end of the political divide. They just don't have the upper hand in the attention market, and are a less homogenous group I believe, which thwarts - at least for now - their ability to coalesce into an effective power structure.
I suppose part of what I was trying to say is that although I'm aware that a lot of folks, myself among them, have been to some extent hoodwinked as to what conservatism was or had the potential to become, at least when the Bushes or Regan or Ford or even Nixon held power, I didn't go to bed at night wondering if I would awaken the next day to discover that the country that I love was no longer the country that I love because the "conservative values" they, and the party they led, held at the time had authored its destruction. And I doubt if many rank-and-file Republicans of those days would have taken kindly to any of these men or their contemporary party luminaries singing the praises of the likes of any of the Victor Orbans around at that time.
When I said what I did about the Right, I said it meaning that at least for most of my lifetime, that distinct entity in the body politic, despite any of its sundry shortcomings on other issues, had at least seemed to believe in what I called the American Spirit and the terms I used to define that. That they have now cast even that into the sewer in the pursuit of power is the rankest of betrayals. And if they become successful in this enterprise, the only comfort I will take is that for many of my countrymen with whom I used to feel a common bond based on that spirit, I have no doubt that they will awaken one day to discover that, to paraphrase a line JFK once spoke, the fruits of their victory will be ashes in their mouths.
I'm not disparaging the article you linked to, which is more than the passage you quoted, but isn't Adorno's psychologizing a bit out of date?
Subsequent scholars like Karen Stenner have taken Hofstadter's insights and ditched some of its 20th-century psychological baggage. I highly recommend her "The Authoritarian Dynamic". These scholars focus more on measuring traits that can be measured, rather than speculating on the unconscious (which, how would you measure it?). For example,
"Authoritarian submission, authoritarian conventionalism, and rejection of egalitarianism significantly predicted support for Trump when comparisons included Democrats, but they did not distinguish Trump support from that for other Republican candidates. Instead, individuals who backed Donald Trump during the Republican primaries and the general election in 2016 were significantly more likely to exhibit group-based dominance and authoritarian aggression than backers of other Republican candidates. That is, compared to other Republicans, they were especially likely to believe that: 'Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups'; 'What our country needs instead of more "civil rights" is a good stiff dose of law and order'; 'Some groups of people must be kept in their place'; and 'What our country really needs is a strong, determined President which will crush the evil and set us in our right way again.'"
Right, I'm not disparaging Adorno or his experience. He had good insights using the tools of his time. The Freudian elements present in the tools of his time are mercifully dying out, though.
Ironically, he reminds me of the late Fred Rodell, except that Rodell was a flaming progressive ("Fred the Red") whereas Vermeule is (not to put too fine a point on it) a Vichyite.
Rodell thought the courts were irredeemably political, hence better to abolish the entire legal profession and replace judges and lawyers with trained scientific experts.
Vermeule thinks arguing over legal process is a waste of time, hence better to minimize judicial review and let a (Romanized?) Congress do the legislating while the SCOTUS stands in the corner wearing dunce caps.
I must confess I sympathize with both, inasmuch as Marbury v. Madison was if nothing else a power grab too.
But once you jettison the courts, woe betide you. And you'll have few excuses when your time comes.
Toward the end of Aaron Powell's discussion of 'post-liberalism' there was introduced the term 'intentional communities'. To me that expressed better the idea I labeled enclaves, where people more or less retreated from the broader society enough to set up their own institutions, like the 60s communes but not so isolated. That came out of my experience moving into a Black neighborhood when I got married and seeing up close how Black families lived in a segregated society. I also learned the LDS missionaries do not always go door knocking but set up housekeeping and allow neighbors to see how well they live and begin to inquire about their habits and values.
It is complicated but intriguing and bizarre people like Integralists muddy the waters.
“How the fuck did liberals convince ourselves that you can beat cancer by doing dumbbell curls? You cannot.” See Figure 3 of Sabel MS, Lee J, Cai S, Englesbe MJ, Holcombe S, Wang S. Sarcopenia as a prognostic factor among patients with stage III melanoma. Annals of Surgical Oncology 18(13): 3579, 2011. It shows dramatic effects of psoas muscle morphometry and survival in stage III melanoma patients. This research group at the University of Michigan has shown similar effects of psoas measures on other cancers as well. The psoas is a "core" muscle that would have benefitted from Justice Ginsberg's core exertice routine. Since you are such an oncologic genius and so dissmissively certain there is no association between musculoskeletal morphometry and cancer survival, please explain Figure 3 of that paper.
Wow… all I can say is that YOU are freaking AWESOME.
Don't lose sight of the real connections between conservative, Inc. and the truckers. Are conservatives doing anything to help the day-to-day lives of truckers? Of course not. They have continuously supported policies that favored trucking related companies at the expense of individual truckers. But Nixon was no better and yet he obtained the endorsement of the Teamsters. How? Well do not kid yourself that the "southern strategy" did not play a central part. Truckers are overwhelmingly red-neck white and almost universally male (never forget about the male part in today's conservative, Inc.).
I'd only add that I think talking about it as a quest for power misses a very specific nuance. There are people who want power because there are things they want to do, for good or ill. I think these people want power for the purpose of intimidation, to remind people who's boss.
JVL: This thought from your first item: Christian theocracy. Can you please write more about this? America is starting to resemble Gilead from Margaret Atwood....
“Nothing. Without power, there is nothing,” James Carville.
Republicans have taken that truth to heart.
The only guiding principle in Conservatism, Inc. is "Owning the Libs". It is also the unifying principle bringing together several constituencies to confront their common enemy. The only difference among them is the degree to which they wish to own the libs and how that ownership is manifested.
There is a through line of moral corruption and intellectual incoherence from Newt Gingrich, to Sarah Palin, to the TEAParty, to Trump, to Marjorie Taylor Greene, Boebert and Madison Cawthorn.
American conservatism needs to return to Burke and Disraeli and put away the Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman.
Year of the Tiger. Burrow down deep for the win.
JVL, I can't catch all your newsletters, and may have missed a few newsletters of newsletters. I was already following The UnPopulist (clearly, you've got good taste). One with a similar name is Unpopular Front, by John Gantz. He seems to have a bead on a lot of the right's grift:
https://johnganz.substack.com/p/the-week-in-fascism
https://johnganz.substack.com/p/were-all-postmodern-neo-marxists
https://johnganz.substack.com/p/what-is-trumpism
You might have mentioned Unpopular Front already, but if you haven't, I thought I'd put a good word in.
I think you may have found him through me ; )
Loved this newsletter! I was so pissed when RGB didn’t retire and became a meme. Also, I’m a huge fan of the stoics. Seneca is another ancient badass of self control. If anyone wants a great read, I can’t recommend “The Consolations of Philosophy” by Alain De Botton enough. It’s one of my favorite books.
Okay, I have to defend RBG. If she HAD retired earlier during the Obama administration, why does anyone think Mitch McConnell would have done anything different than what he did when she died? I think she was hanging on because she knew good and well McConnell would find a way to scuttle any Obama replacement in his second term. I suppose a case could be made that she could have retired during Obama’s first term.
she thought Hillary would win.
Definitely, as did almost everyone. RBG doesn’t deserve the wrath directed at her for delaying her resignation, IMO. How I wish it had turned out differently.
For several decades I patiently listened to libertarian arguments against civil rights laws on the grounds of "freedom of association." In certain cases, such as religious schools and small businesses, I was largely persuaded. But now, that's gone out the window, and only a tiny remnant of libertarians still have a consistent belief in freedom of association. I guess it is not so easy when the shoe is on the other foot. And I understand that many libertarian elites still hold to their values; but that is not where the "libertarian" masses are.
"There is no conservative philosophical attachment to freedom or liberty any more than there is an integralist or populist love of the common good.
There is only power."
So well said. Thank you.
I want to draw attention to a really alarming discussion I listened to yesterday. After listening to JVL and Sarah on the Secret Show discussing the Ottawa Trucker situation, which Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are all cheering, along with their mouthpieces on Fox, I tuned into another Never Trump, former Republican podcast I like, "Politicology."
Now, I don't want to be the kind of person who spreads conspiracy theories on the Internet, but Mike Madrid, long-time Republican operative, has an interpretation that really made me sit up straight. "I don't believe this is a social movement at all. I believe this is a paid operation.... There is something far more nefarious behind this than just a handful of people misbehaving. There is a very serious conflict that is taking place in Ottawa right now that is heavily funded, extremely sophisticated, and I would suggest it is probably heavily armed...There's an operation happening here that could be potentially extremely explosive, and I don't believe it's just a handful of cranks and militia members... These movements are happening in different parts of Europe...because this stuff is orchestrated in a very sophisticated transnational political operation being run by countries that have a vested interest in the destabilization of these countries."
Here's a link, starting with his comments, but the earlier conversation is worth a listen, too.
https://overcast.fm/+kdRKiqmtA/34:04
I really hope there's nothing to this, but, to requote JVL, "There is only power."
Coupla' comments: 1. It could be both social movement and paid operation, like the Tea Party of the early Obama years. 2. As I read "a sophisticated transnational political operation" I was nearly expecting you to say "run by Jews." 3. JVL's quote was about how the integralist / common-good conservatives view the world, not how JVL views the world.
Your reaction to #2–the problem is my excerpting. He is talking about authoritarian governments, specifically Putin.
Got it.
After I posted the above, I was reading The Guardian’s Long Reads. Their feature from the archive is a really stunning story from 2015 about the secret meeting between Thatcher and Murdoch in the early 80s, which smoothed the way for his purchase of TheTimes, apparently in exchange for political support for the Thatcher government. When the story of this time is told, Rupert Murdoch will be one of the most important people in the long attack on democracy around the English-speaking world.
I read something similar today in The Atlantic, making the case that the caution the Canadian government is exercising in dealing with this group is important and necessary to avoid something catastrophic. Scary times.
Cool
There is high libertarianism and low libertarianism. High libertarians live in a fantasy world in which the social space left unoccupied by strong government remains a vacuum which gangsters and thugs voluntarily refrain from filling --because, Liberty. Low libertarians know better but imagine themselves as filling that vacuum so as to prevent worse people from doing so. .
Libertarianism and conservatism are not really compatible.
"There is no philosophical attachment to freedom or liberty...or...love of the common good."
This is absolutely the single best distillation down to the very essence of "what's wrong with the Right" that I've seen anywhere, anytime. An Ah Ha Moment for me only in its succinctness, since my brain, which doesn't like complicated things, has been searching for such a simple, straightforward and understandable explanation for some time now for what the fuck has happened to such a large portion of this country that I have so loved for so long. It's been whispering similar stuff into the ear of my consciousness, but without such clarity or brevity.
I think of Charlie's book How the Right Lost Its Mind, and I realize that isn't what happened at all. That is only a symptom of what happened. What happened is the Right lost its soul. It's forsaken the American Spirit, the stalwart abhorrence and resistance of tyranny and the love and embrace of freedom and liberty born in Lexington and Concord all those years ago and manifested again and again in places like Normandy and Iwo Jima, Bastogne and Okinawa.
It relinquished any love for the common good and has fallen in love with only itself. Its vociferous pretense to patriotism is a sham, a deceit of the first order, deserving of condemnation and now requiring the resistance of those clear-eyed Americans who have not relinquished their love of those things in favor of feel-good self-serving self-delusion.
I am angry about this. And disheartened. And some days I don't know what to do about it other than let that anger spill out here and in similar places. Forgive me for that. But at least I know when I'm here, I'm among friends, fellow Americans whose beliefs in the values I spoke of above are much the same as my own. Otherwise, what reason is there for you to be here? And I am grateful for that.
How did the right lose their mind : they lost power and influence. How did Putin lose his mind : Russia lost power and influence. People don’t just walk away from power.
When I was a kid in the 80s and Reagan was incredibly popular, Democrats still controlled Congress. There were still some rural folks here in the South that voted Democrat. They are literally nonexistent now. But Democrats then weren’t the Democrats of today. They were mostly older, white traditionalists.
Fast forward to today and those people are quickly getting outnumbered. Because of the Senate, the electoral college and is not having expanded the number of seats in Congress for the last 100 years the rural voters of America punch WAY above their weight class. 50 Dem senators represent 42 million more people than the other 50!
Even with that imbalance they’re losing the narrative of the country because of modernity. Things inevitably change, but I know a lot of people who are resistant to even minor change. They’re not going to just walk away from that power, especially since they see how effective violence and propaganda can be.
Well we do know that the “conservative” brain is wired differently than the liberal brain.
Thanks for the tip. Hope I can find the time to check that out. I know folks like this have been around an awfully long time, and there are surely some cut from the same bolt of wholesale cloth at the other end of the political divide. They just don't have the upper hand in the attention market, and are a less homogenous group I believe, which thwarts - at least for now - their ability to coalesce into an effective power structure.
I suppose part of what I was trying to say is that although I'm aware that a lot of folks, myself among them, have been to some extent hoodwinked as to what conservatism was or had the potential to become, at least when the Bushes or Regan or Ford or even Nixon held power, I didn't go to bed at night wondering if I would awaken the next day to discover that the country that I love was no longer the country that I love because the "conservative values" they, and the party they led, held at the time had authored its destruction. And I doubt if many rank-and-file Republicans of those days would have taken kindly to any of these men or their contemporary party luminaries singing the praises of the likes of any of the Victor Orbans around at that time.
When I said what I did about the Right, I said it meaning that at least for most of my lifetime, that distinct entity in the body politic, despite any of its sundry shortcomings on other issues, had at least seemed to believe in what I called the American Spirit and the terms I used to define that. That they have now cast even that into the sewer in the pursuit of power is the rankest of betrayals. And if they become successful in this enterprise, the only comfort I will take is that for many of my countrymen with whom I used to feel a common bond based on that spirit, I have no doubt that they will awaken one day to discover that, to paraphrase a line JFK once spoke, the fruits of their victory will be ashes in their mouths.
Always good to be on the same page about existing, eh?
100%!
I'm not disparaging the article you linked to, which is more than the passage you quoted, but isn't Adorno's psychologizing a bit out of date?
Subsequent scholars like Karen Stenner have taken Hofstadter's insights and ditched some of its 20th-century psychological baggage. I highly recommend her "The Authoritarian Dynamic". These scholars focus more on measuring traits that can be measured, rather than speculating on the unconscious (which, how would you measure it?). For example,
"Authoritarian submission, authoritarian conventionalism, and rejection of egalitarianism significantly predicted support for Trump when comparisons included Democrats, but they did not distinguish Trump support from that for other Republican candidates. Instead, individuals who backed Donald Trump during the Republican primaries and the general election in 2016 were significantly more likely to exhibit group-based dominance and authoritarian aggression than backers of other Republican candidates. That is, compared to other Republicans, they were especially likely to believe that: 'Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups'; 'What our country needs instead of more "civil rights" is a good stiff dose of law and order'; 'Some groups of people must be kept in their place'; and 'What our country really needs is a strong, determined President which will crush the evil and set us in our right way again.'"
https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/psychology/documents/facultypublications/johnjost/Group-Based%20Dominance%20&%20Authoritarian%20Aggression%20Predict%20Support%20for%20Trump.pdf
Right, I'm not disparaging Adorno or his experience. He had good insights using the tools of his time. The Freudian elements present in the tools of his time are mercifully dying out, though.
I wonder what Vermeule thinks of French Village.
Ironically, he reminds me of the late Fred Rodell, except that Rodell was a flaming progressive ("Fred the Red") whereas Vermeule is (not to put too fine a point on it) a Vichyite.
Rodell thought the courts were irredeemably political, hence better to abolish the entire legal profession and replace judges and lawyers with trained scientific experts.
Vermeule thinks arguing over legal process is a waste of time, hence better to minimize judicial review and let a (Romanized?) Congress do the legislating while the SCOTUS stands in the corner wearing dunce caps.
I must confess I sympathize with both, inasmuch as Marbury v. Madison was if nothing else a power grab too.
But once you jettison the courts, woe betide you. And you'll have few excuses when your time comes.