Category Archives: Ayn Rand

After the race was cancelled in 2020 and 2021, the 6th edition of the 750 mile Race to Alaska (R2AK) began June 13 with a 40-mile proving stage from Port Townsend, WA to Victoria, BC. For those that survived, they started the remaining 710 miles on June 16 to Ketchikan, AK. Heres the day six report:

The bookies over at the Ketchikan Chamber of Commerce are divvying up the cash stakes everyone laid on the off chance they would be the ones to precisely predict the arrival time of first place. The total winnings are undisclosed, but were betting its not paid in candy corn, and it will make at least 1.5 dreams come true.

Also, true to form, 10,000 dollars of highly suspect bills were nailed to the wall of the Alaska Fish House last night, with the simple dare to the crew of Team Pure and Wild. If you sailed here to get it, then get it.

This is also the exact moment Tracker Acolytes global-wide take a quick beat and proclaim another R2AK decided and done. However, if you spent more than a thumb-scrolling minute with us, youre reaching for the third bag of Jiffy Pop, checking the anchor or mood lighting or poorly fluffed pillow, and waiting for the stories to play out.

R2AK is like an Ayn Rand novel written by a lesser Bronte, and its not until page 300 of this 1400-page tome that youll even get to understand what the hell its about because maybe what is most noble about this activity isnt the play-by-play of who does what; its what lives in the heart, and its a long beat.

At time of writing, a crew of three have claimed $10,000; quickly subtracted the cost of removing a perfectly functioning engine from their boat, shipping said engine, and reinserting it two weeks later; donating a grand of the winnings to SeaShare; then calculated time taken off from work, food, supplies, costs of returning the boat, Ketchikan expenses (lets see carry the one, move the decimal left a couple times); and have seen prize money go from black to a deep crimson red.Heart wins over math every time.

Over 359 Canada-goose-flying miles, 24 teams remain in play, taking part in astounding and distinctly different activities. The race for runner-up remains on, and the monohulls are best positioned to sweep the podium. This happened only in 2018, so not without precedent but with a lot of past multihull winners shaking their collective heads.

Teams Elsewhere (Soverel 33) and Fashionably Late (Dash 34) find themselves in a drag race arguably more exciting than the Melges showdown and knockdown fest that happened in the very same waters in 2019. In fact, the thrum on tightly tuned Spectra and stainless steel is echoing throughout the whole of the Canadian North Coast.

The spoiler could be Vegemite Vigilantes (Corsair 760 Sport trimaran), particularly as Fashionably Late has opted for an inside route around Duke Island that is looking a bit dookie. Hold your nose and hold on.

On June 23, the steak knife winners could be declared (or not) along with a gash of Pacific weather strong enough to hunker down in or double your wager. Either way, 24 teams row, sail, pedal, or paddle to a challenge two years in the making and one day closer to achieving it.

Race details Tracker Facebook Instagram

Race to Alaska, now in its 6th year, follows the same general rules which launched this madness in 2015. No motor, no support, through wild frontier, navigating by sail or peddle/paddle (but at some point both) the 750 cold water miles from Port Townsend, Washington to Ketchikan, Alaska.

To save people from themselves, and possibly fulfill event insurance coverage requirements, the distance is divided into two stages. Anyone that completes the 40-mile crossing from Port Townsend to Victoria, BC can pass Go and proceed. Those that fail Stage 1 go to R2AK Jail. Their race is done. Here is the 2022 plan:

Stage 1 Race start: June 13 Port Townsend, WashingtonStage 2 Race start: June 16 Victoria, BC

There is $10,000 if you finish first, a set of steak knives if youre second. Cathartic elation if you can simply complete the course. R2AK is a self-supported race with no supply drops and no safety net. Any boat without an engine can enter.

In 2019, there were 48 starters for Stage 1 and 37 finishers. Of those finishers, 35 took on Stage 2 of which 10 were tagged as DNF. There were no races in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.

Source: R2AK

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R2AK: Will monohulls sweep the podium? - Scuttlebutt Sailing News

Fridays Real Time With Bill Maher was the last episode to air before the show takes a month-long break. (Itll return on July 29.) Given the weeks Supreme Court decisions, Maher and his guests had no shortage of topics to choose from but the overall effect was more understated than one might expect.

Maher addressed the way that the aforementioned legal rulings represented a break from the status quo many Americans had thought would never change. From there, he spoke about considering returning to his running I know why youre happy gag, but commented that it wasnt the week for it. If youre keeping score at home, its Guns 1, Women 0, he said. And from there, Maher talked about Trumps influence lingering after he left office. Hes like a fart with bad hair, said Maher.

Maher went on to discuss Clarence Thomass concurring opinion and the continuing revelations from the January 6 hearings. Perhaps the most charged moment happened when Maher alluded to the testimony Rusty Bowers gave in the hearings, and found that his name elicited little to no reaction. No one watches the news at my show? Maher asked in disbelief then quickly summarized the Trump presidency in a handful of words.

Christine Emba, author of Rethinking Sex: A Provocation, was Mahers first guest. Youre here on an interesting day, Maher said. Emba described herself as completely shocked at the ruling, and noted that the ruling in question was counter to public opinion. The countrys moving in two very different directions, Maher replied.

Maher then asked Emba about her book and, more broadly, about the role of technology in modern relationships. Emba spoke about the complexity inherent to using apps for relationships including the way that dating apps can reduce some of the confusion regarding interactions potentially leading to romance and/or sex.

Emba went on to speak about the legacy of the #MeToo movement; Maher, for his part, was more critical of the internets role in both dating and the spread of porn. (Maher was highly critical about the role of the internet in spreading porn.) Emba shared several of the conversations shed had while researching her book, and the conceptual grey areas that emerged. And from there, Maher spoke about evolving attitudes towards sex.

We cant both be sluts, Maher said. And before long, it was time to segue to the panel discussion, featuring Andrew Sullivan and Katie Herzog. Maher spoke of the Republican Party playing the long game when it came to Supreme Court appointments, while Sullivan was more skeptical, noting that a Clinton victory in 2016 would have dramatically changed the Court.

Maher brought up the subject of an increasingly divided United States and brought up a few comparisons, including to Israel and Palestine, Belgium and the former Czechoslovakia. Sullivan was more skeptical of this, arguing that things had been this way for a while, and that this made sense due to federalism.

Sullivan went on to talk about the case that had caused Roe to be overturned and that the 15-week limit for abortions was higher than what youll find in Germany. Though Herzog was quick to point out that due to the difference in healthcare systems between the two countries someone would likely find out about a pregnancy much sooner in Germany than they would in the United States.

Sullivan went on to argue that Republicans would likely face a po;itical price for the Supreme Courts recent ruling. He went on to make the case for more centrism and expressed his frustration at the Biden presidency. This, in turn, led to a discussion of trans kids, gender roles, and the governments position on both.

Were going to get killed just for having this discussion, Maher said at one point, addressing the fact that all three have been criticized in the past for their comments on trans people. While Mahers show at its best can bring together people with differing beliefs, there was a general sense of agreement among the three speakers. And, again there was also the frustrating element of a heated discussion of trans rights without any trans people taking part.

In the second half of the segment, Maher mentioned that hed been unaware of drag queen story hours before a few weeks earlier. The Right is all about parents rights until the parents do something they dont like, Sullivan said and went on to make a long and impassioned defense of drag queens. For his part, Maher offered a compromise between right and left: a drag queen story hour where the works of Ayn Rand were read.

Emba joined the panelists for Overtime, where the first question addressed the FDAs ban of Juul. Herzog spoke about her frustration with this position, and argued that Juul had helped smokers wean themselves from cigarettes. This segued into a larger description of smoking and the devices one could use to smoke, whether it be tobacco or weed.

Somehow, this ended up turning into a heated discussion of menthol cigarettes and whether younger generations are having fewer children and, in terms of the latter, whether thats a good thing from an environmental perspective.

And then came New Rules, where Maher expressed horror at the idea of ketchup-flavored popsicles. (Which, to be honest, is understandable.) Also up for discussion? Monkeypox and the goblin sharks Tinder photo. The bulk of the segment focused on Democrats losing demographic groups who have historically voted for them with Mahers argument being, essentially, an extended metaphor about good lawyers and bad lawyers.

At least, thats how it began with Maher returning to some of the subjects that irk him the most (such as the term Latinx), before making a grander point about policy stances that could potentially stand in the way of bipartisan actions. The Democrats need to be like the lawyers you see on billboards, Maher said. Though the conclusion he reached that Democrats should keep Trump from attempting to interfere in another election didnt necessarily seem to contradict any of the policy stances he had critiqued earlier in the segment. It was an odd note on which to close the episode; lets see where Maher and the nation are in a months time.

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Bill Maher Addressed an Eventful Political Week on Real Time - InsideHook

The clumsy cry of despair in the novel Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand (source: Wikimedia Commons)

Love her or hate her, Ayn Rand was a far greater intellectual than Donald Trump. She actually studied the works of philosphers Arisotole, Locke, Kant, and Nietsche and and although the ultimate value of her pop philosophy fell far short of her own claims about it, she deserves mention in the context of todays culture war.

Was Ayn Rand a necessary pre-cursor to the rise of Authoritarianism in twenty-first century America? I think the answer must be yes even though, as a champion of individual freedoms, she would vehemently disagree. (Hint #1: This is because her absolutist, laissez-faire philosophy contradicts itself.)

When we examine Trump, we are torn between naming him evil genius and utter fool. Yes, he has an uncanny ability to attract educated followers who succumb to his beguiling ways and bend their ethics to the fracturepoint in the furtherance of his illegal and immoral schemes. But we also see that his eagerness to commit crimes and his penchant to spew hatredoften overrule his desire to hide such antisocial tendencies behind a curtain, like Nixon more carefully attempted.

Rand was born in Czarist Russia and was a teen during most of the Russian Revolution. From her perspective, socialism and totalitarianism were irreversibly intertwined, even though she acknowledged that Nazi rule in Germany began with a free electionand that Great Britain was only a partly-socialist nation. While we must concur with Rand that povertys breadth and the Kremlins atrocities in Soviet Russia are brutal condemnations of both the Soviet economy and its governing structure, she obviously got it wrong about Democratic Socialism as practiced for more than 100 years now, in Western Europe, which has achieved a relatively high degree of both econonmic and political equality among citizens (without excessive truncation of freedoms for individuals and businesses).

Rand was an avowed atheist, whereas Trump keeps his atheistic tendencies under wrap for political gain. While we know that Trump worships power and notoriety, Rand worshipped individual freedom and something she called objectivism which is essentially objectivity blended with rationalism (as contrasted with subjectivity and irrationalism).

Rand characterized two of historys co-parasitic evil forces with the names Attila (the tyrant) and the Witch Doctor (the priest). Hitler embodied both and to a lesser degree, so does Trump. The Witch Doctors role is to propagandize the massess so they dont believe their own eyes or their own brains (anti-objectivism) and Attilas role is to selectively apply brutal, excessive force on perceived enemies to create an example so the masses will fear using their brains independently of the leaders edicts.

Because Rand was also a strong advocate for law and order, its difficult to ignore the likelihood that her psyche must have had a bit of Attila blended in with the other portions of Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith. (Hint #2: Rand believed governments primary role was to deter looting and rioting so that Producers could have more freedom to make unlimited profits.)

Therational side of Rand makes me think she would be in favor the work of the January 6 committee, however her blind love of absolute freedom, which issues pardons for all sins committed by Producers, makes me wonder if today, she might be a frequent guest on Tucker Carlsons show.

In the best light, we can think of Liz Cheney as a modern-day Ayn Rand a strong advocate for small government when it comes to regulating big business, yet a staunch defender of the American Constitution when totalitarian, fascist, and anti-rational forces attack it. However, there is a worst light scenario too.

A new articleby Tom Nichols in The Atlantic sheds some light additional light on why so many Trump supporters find it so difficult to abandon their irrational world-view even when the level of irrationality grows day-by-day, and the facts demonstrate so clearly that Trump is a both a tyrant and a witch doctor. From the Nichols article:

But living in an alternate reality is unhealthyand dangerous, as I realized yet again while watching the January 6 committee hearings and listening to the stories of Republicans, such as Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and others, describing the threats and harassment they have received for doing their duty to the Constitution.

I think the Trump superfans are terrified of being wrong. I suspect they know that for many years theyve made a terrible mistakethat Trump and his coterie took them to the cleaners and the cognitive dissonance is now rising to ear-splitting, chest-constricting levels. And so they will literally threaten to kill people like Kinzinger (among others) if thats what it takes to silence the last feeble voice of reason inside themselves.

So the MAGA base are scared to death of the consequences of their willful blindness and they lash out violently and pitifully in hopes they can postpone the day of reckoning.

Ayn Rand actuall spoke of this phenomenon, and it doesnt end well. There is scene toward the end of Atlas Shrugged where Dagny Taggart confronts a guard (an Attila) who is obstructing her access to John Galt (who is at that momentbeing tortured by James Taggart and others at the State Science Institute). Dagny sets up a philosphical dilemma for the guard to demonstrate his abandonment of his own reasoning faculties. The horns of this dilemma overhwhelm the guards undeveloped intellect. He tells Dagny its not fair for her to forcehim to make a decision, because hes not sure which action is right and which is wrong.

What follows is Dagnys penultimate conversion to authoritarianism, although Rand probably didnt view it that way.

Calmly and impersonally, she, who would have hesitated to fire at an animal, pulled the trigger and fired straight at the heart of a man who had wanted to exist without the responsibility of consciousness.

Come to think of it, perhaps Ayn Rand would prefer to be a talking head on Fox News.

Is it fair for us towonder what Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger would do if they were in Dagny Taggarts place? Im pretty sure I know what Elon Musk would do.

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Ayn Rand v Donald Trump? - Daily Kos

The following is a letter to the editor submitted by a reader. It does not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper. To submit a letter, email nbowe@dlnewspapers.com.

Too many Americans, especially laissez-faire Republicans but also neoliberal Democrats, are devoted to the selfish, authoritarian philosophy of Ayn Rand, a woman whose tragic early life experiences turned her into a woman so narcissistic and self-serving that she recommended we let others die on the streets if they dont have enough. That way, she said, we can have more than we need.

She never understood that many countries with robust capitalism, like Norway or Sweden, also have Medicare for all, subsidized childcare, sturdy maternal and paternal leave, and subsidized post-secondary education that doesnt require students to go into debt to earn a degree or learn a trade.

What matters in life is having enough, not too much. What matters is community, which translates into English as cooperation. Some Americans Ive met lately act as if the word comes from across the sea. It doesnt. The laws that are best are the ones that do the greatest good for the largest number of people.

Ayn Rand cult members claim to value freedom and individualism but, at one extreme, want to take away Social Security and Medicare, two programs that increase freedom and protect individuals. They also want to restrict a woman's right to choose how to live their own lives.

Some of us, despite inflation, have been lucky. We have enough. We take one day at a time, live each moment to the full, and give back as warranted by our means. Were civil even to those who curse us. We do our best to practice the Golden Rule do to others as you want done to yourself and the Serenity Prayer: Give me courage to change things I can, serenity to accept things I cant, and the wisdom to tell the difference.

None of us need more. We only need enough. Life is a series of adventures and misadventures. Theres great beauty around us. The earth zips around the sun at 67,000 mph. If you stand still, you can feel it move under your feet. Its fragile. All of us are stuck on it together.

The rules, therefore, are very simple:

Perhaps JFK, in his famous Peace Speech at American University in 1963, the year he was assassinated by a man with a murderous weapon, put it best: For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our childrens future. And we are all mortal.

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Letter: The rules of life are very simple - Detroit Lakes Tribune

We instinctually ascribe political and strategic genius to the authoritarians of the world. One American commentator described Putin as a "grandmaster of chess" when it comes to strategy. But anyone that acts as a tyrant over the people of their country, and causes the pain and suffering of a war, is no genius, writes Yaron Brook and Elan Journo.

No death toll can truly capture the devastation that Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and their ilk inflicted upon the world. The engineered Great Famine in Ukraine (Holodomor), the Holocaust, the Cultural Revolution, and the Killing Fields of the twentieth century should have taught us to evaluate dictators properly. But, depressingly, many politicians and intellectuals persist in misreading dictators.

How the West got Russia and China WrongRead more For example, when Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran was rising to power, he found admirers among Western intellectuals. In 1979 Richard Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton, dismissed concerns about Khomeinis political vision of Islamic totalitarianism. Falk suggested that Iran may yet provide us with a desperately-needed model of humane governance for a third world country. Thats not been the experience of Iranian women who are brutalized and jailed for failing to wear hijab; nor of gays executed by public hanging; nor of any Iranians who value their freedom; nor of any of the victims of Iranian-backed Islamist terrorism.

Remember when Bashar al-Assad of Syria was seen as a savvy reformer, invested in the welfare of his people? Except that he became notorious for inflicting chemical weapons on his subjects. Mohammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia was breathlessly hailed as a forward thinking, capable leader: yes, the selfsame MBS who ordered the hit and literal butchering of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist affiliated with the Washington Post.

But surely the most consequential examples today are Xi Jinping and especially Vladimir Putin.

In the words of one American commentator, Vladimir Putin is like a "grandmaster of chess" when it comes to strategy, whereas Barack Obama "stumbles with checkers." On the eve of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described the Russian dictator as "very shrewd, very capable," adding "I have enormous respect for him... [Putin] is an elegantly sophisticated counterpart who is not reckless but has always done the math."

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The notion of dictators as charismatic, capable strategists is an illusion

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While Donald Trump was in office, he was one of Putin's superfans and apologists. Trump has described the Ukraine invasion as "genius," later praising Putin for having "taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions."

This is a severe misreading, and the most obvious evidence can be seen in the battlefields of Ukraine. The reputedly formidable Russian military has struggled against courageous Ukrainians fighting in self-defense. It can also be seen in the extraordinary scale and extent of international sanctions imposed on Russia. But this misreading goes deeper than a strategy that backfired.

The notion of dictators as charismatic, capable strategists is an illusion. The illusion endures partly because they can appear successful, at least for a while. But the truth is that Putin and Xi, like their twentieth century predecessors, are fundamentally impotent.

Charismatic, inspiring loyalty? Oh, come on. They are at war against their own subjugated people.

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Putin and Xi are not simply politicians who get a few details wrong. Theyre wrong all the way down

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For individuals to live, think, produce, and thrive, the role of a proper government is to protect their freedom. It is freedom that fuels human progress and prosperity. No one who values human flourishing can look at Putin, Xi or any other dictator as anything but a lethal aberration.

Putin and Xi are not simply politicians who get a few details wrong. Theyre wrong all the way down. They dominate, brutalize and exploit those who think, teach, invent, produce, run businesses, create value at whatever scale. By violating the rights of their citizens, Putin, Xi and other dictatorial leaders defy the objective conditions necessary for individuals to live and prosper. They are destroyers. "To deal with men by force," observed philosopher Ayn Rand, "is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion."

Dictators are at war not only with their own people, but, ultimately, with reality. Putin and Xi are usurpers, and on some level they know it, but shut their eyes to that truth. The epic scale of censorship and repression under their reign is telling. Why intimidate, muzzle, and seek to control the thoughts of the population, if it truly found you inspiring and magnetic?

Orwell's fearsome "Big Brother" pales in comparison to China's vast surveillance of its population, social credit scores, and legions of censors. The regime crushes dissent, and it imposes thought control. When Dr. Li Wenliang spoke out about the novel Corona virus at the pandemic's outbreak, he was silenced, punished, humiliated; after his death from Covid 19, tragically vindicating his warning, censors scrubbed Chinese social media to erase public demands for freedom of speech. Or recall what happened to Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis champion who accused a Party official of sexual assault: she was disappeared. (Only after an international furor about her vanishing, did she reappear for a stage managed interview.)

Putin's railroading and "disappearing" of critics, the poisoning of opponents, the eradication of every last vestige of an independent media, the marinating of the population in endless propaganda: these are a confession of weakness, a fear of facing the facts. Thought control puts the regime's wishes above facts, on the premise that wishing makes it so. There's no "war" in Ukraine, only a "special military operation" -- and any Russian who denies this or objects to it can face up to 15 years in prison.

What Putin, Xi and their cronies have achieved are regimes geared toward exploitation. Putin-aligned oligarchs have ransacked the country. China's caste of party-aligned operatives have raked in billions, amid the countrys impressive economic rise. That rise, now seemingly slowing, occurred despite not because of Chinas dictatorial leadership. It was a consequence of the slight degree of economic freedom the Party condescended to permit -- and which it is now undoing.

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To put it bluntly, many Western intellectuals and policy makers have an irrational prejudice against freedom, especially as manifested in markets

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There's nothing charismatic, nor "shrewd" nor "sophisticated" here. Such dictators and their hangers-on are thugs, gangsters and murderers who operate under the state's (ostensible) moral authority. Human parasitism is an expression of not of efficacy, but of impotence.

Why then do some people view Putin and Xi as impressively capable, strategic leaders? Here are two factors.

First, to put it bluntly, many Western intellectuals and policy makers have an irrational prejudice against freedom, especially as manifested in markets. You can see it in the bias against markets, deemed messily inefficient, and in favor of central planning. While we both reject this common perspective, our point here is not to persuade you that we're right about markets. Rather, it's that many in the West are afflicted by what you might call Central-Planner Envy, and this leads them into warped thinking. It picks out supposed accomplishments -- "Behold the highspeed trains in Xi's China!" -- while evading the full reality of the uncountable individuals whose rights are trashed in the course of maintaining the regimes systems pervasive repression.

A second, more significant explanatory factor is Western appeasement of Russia and China. Instead of frankly recognizing the evil character of these regimes, Russia and China are afforded the undeserved moral status of civilized countries. By agreeing to sit down with them at summits and multilateral meetings, our heads of state perpetuate the fiction that Putin and Xi as efficacious and benevolent leaders that belong in the company of rights-respecting nations.

The United Nations is a major culprit in whitewashing these regimes. Both have permanent seats on the UN's powerful Security Council(!), despite violating the organizations stated principles -- flagrantly, repeatedly, and on a vast scale. What about the massacring of pro-democracy student protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989? Dousing the last embers of intellectual freedom? Interning thousands of Uighurs in concentration camps? Wiping out the last vestiges of freedom in Hong Kong? Ongoing piracy of foreign-owned intellectual property? The dishonest handling of the COVID pandemic? No, China has learned that it is effectively untouchable.

This official whitewashing encourages, and is reinforced by, the willingness of American and European companies to invest in China and Russia as if they were basically free, civilized, moral regimes. The consequences are pernicious. Putins regime, for example, has benefited handsomely from the inflow of foreign capital and joint-ventures with BP, Shell and Exxon. But, since the war in Ukraine, all three of these companies are frantically departing the Russian market, suffering losses in the tens of billions of dollars.

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The notion that Putin and Xi (and their ilk) are charismatic, efficacious leaders is false. They have pit themselves against the facts and against human life

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When you reflect on how the U.S. and European nations dealt with Putins past aggression, his initiation of war against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, is exposed as foreseeable, rather than strategically shrewd let alone genius. Passive appeasement by the U.S. and Europe emboldened Putin. Consider the incisive observation of Evgeny Kissin, an expatriate Russian pianist and composer, who on this issue exhibits greater clarity of vision than political leaders in Washington, London, and the capitals of Europe:

if the West had applied the same sanctions against Putins regime as it is applying now 8 years ago, after the annexation of the Crimea, there would have been no war in the Ukraine now. Ill tell you even more: had the West applied such sanctions in 2008, in response to Putins invasion of Georgia and the de facto annexation of South Ossetia, Putin would not have annexed the Crimea five and a half years later and maybe, by that time he would even no longer be in power. And more: if the West had applied such sanctions back in 1999-2000, in response to the genocide in Chechnya, there would definitely have been no invasions of Georgia and the Ukraine.

The notion that Putin and Xi (and their ilk) are charismatic, efficacious leaders is false. They have pit themselves against the facts and against human life. To the extent such dictators advance toward their stated goals, they wreak havoc. Zoom out from Ukraine, where Putin's forces are floundering, and recall that Stalin's reign brought nothing but death to his own people. Hitler lost a world war, laid waste a continent, and put to death tens of millions.

Reflecting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a key figure in the final solution, Hannah Arendt coined the phrase the "banality of evil." Its an idea that remains controversial. If you take it to mean that evil is in fact small, unglamorous and commonplace, there's some truth in the observation. And it certainly applies to Putin, Xi, and other dictators; picture Saddam Hussein upon being dragged out of hiding from an underground rathole.

But this idea is at best incomplete. Theres a deeper truth about the character of evil, which Ayn Rand discussed in her writings. Rand observed that evil was impotent that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it."

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The Banality of Putin and Xi | Yaron Brook and Elan Journo - IAI

WASHINGTON Back when green was merely a color as opposed to a movement, Bill McKibben was on the frontlines of the environmental wars. After graduating from Harvard in 1982, he worked at the New Yorker but eventually left to publish The End of Nature in 1989, a book that established him as a leading thinker on the damage human activity is causing to the planet and future generations of humans.

Since 2001, he has been teaching at Middlebury College in Vermont and publishing books, including most recently The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon. A memoir of sorts, the book is best explained by its own subtitle: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.

Bill McKibben was one of the speakers for an Earth Day event organized by the Center for Earth Ethics in April. (Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Though hardly romantic about the past, McKibben is especially dismayed by the American present, wondering how we became a society strained by bleak racial and economic inequality, where life expectancy was falling even before a pandemic deepened our divisions, on a heating planet whose physical future is dangerously in question.

McKibben spoke to Yahoo News from his home in Vermont on what he said was a lovely day. It was humid in Washington, D.C., where climate change will soon enough render weather conditions akin to what Mississippi experiences today.

Yahoo News: You write about neighborliness. What is that, and why is it important?

Bill McKibben: I use a number of different words to talk about the same thing, which is the sense that we belong to communities as large as our species and as small as our neighborhood. Over the course of my life, we encountered the extremely radical idea that our only duty was really to ourselves, perhaps our family.

That was the key switch. Jimmy Carter represented one world, and Ronald Reagan the other. We made a decisive choice.

To you, the neoliberal turn is the disastrous one that has brought us to this point?

It goes deeper than just neoliberal economics. When Im discussing Christianity, I think thats what happened there too, from community to evangelicals single-minded focus on my personal Lord and savior. Weve ended up in a very transactional and hyper-individual world in so many ways.

Story continues

I might be misreading, but I dont think you see this solely as the project of philosophical conservatives.

There were certainly seeds of it that came out of the 60s as well. Do your own thing had Ayn Rand (an influential novelist and philosopher) on some level too.

If, in a sense, our entire society is complicit in this arrangement, could it be that simply most people want to live this way?

Its possible. Its a very interesting question. Clearly human nature contains both things, right? Theres a draw to a kind of selfishness, and that, evolutionary biologists can explain. But theres also a draw to a kind of sense of community and connectedness that again, even evolutionary biologists can explain. Good working societies hold these things in balance right down to the idea that you might need a gun because you had to have a well-regulated militia. But thats a very different world than the world where everyone decides they want their own AR-15 because thats what freedom means.

Theres a lot in your book about debts that need to be paid. Can you explain that concept?

Weve come to this extraordinary period of just unimaginable wealth creation. But we now understand some of the cost, the expense of others. Whether there were people in our own society shut out from the economic escalator ride or people who are having their lives turned upside down by the carbon that we poured into the atmosphere in the course of becoming that prosperous.

Im old-fashioned enough to think that debts owed should be repaid.

Often debts are only repaid if theres some compulsion to do so, right?

Thats true. In this case one lacks any method of forcing it. Thats why one writes books and organizes and so on and so forth. And appeals to the conscience of people, which is not a completely fruitless appeal.

But should government be more muscular in these areas?

Of course. But government is just another way of saying all of us working together. So unless we build a consensus within our society that we should do these things, then the government is not going to do them.

What I am trying to get at is that some progressives have shown frustration with democracy. They cant compel these changes that you write about, but they recognize their necessity.

Yes, and if one perhaps had an alternative to recommend to democracy, maybe it would be worth thinking about it, but probably not for me. Because, as the book points out, I grew up in Lexington, Mass., and I had the notion that democracy is important imprinted on me at an early age.

You start out the book with a very poignant image of what it was like to grow up there. Im guessing home prices have increased, well, not literally exponentially but considerably.

Id say literally. The house my parents bought for 30 grand, which was roughly 200 grand in todays dollars, it sold last year, and the last person who bought it paid a million dollars for it and immediately tore it down, and on this narrow footprint of land has built something that looks like a cross between a junior high and a medium security prison.

Exponential is the only word to describe how fast home price values have gone up. And thats the definition in a sense of unearned income. People just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

And what does that mean? What does the proliferation of wealth as represented by real estate and stocks, what does that do to society?

It makes permanent whatever divisions and inequalities were present when you got on the escalator. It makes sure that people who werent able to get on the escalator at the bottom, never catch up. The numbers are really quite remarkable about what happened to, say, the wealth gap between white and Black Americans over this period of time.

Are racial reparations necessary?

Yeah. I mean who knows what were going to call them? And Im well aware that to say that is a great gift to right-wing politicians. Do you talk about them? But in terms of justice, theres no question.

I think thats the underlying reason people are so crazy about having anyone teach about racism in the public schools. Its not because I think people are worried that their children are going to be burdened with guilt. Children are smart. Children have studied history for a long time and done just fine. Its because people are feeling guilty themselves and dont want to have to think about it. Because why would you want to think about it?

What would it tell you about this country if Trump or someone like him were elected in 2024?

The body rallied to fight off the virus once. But clearly it weakened us yet more to do it, and it doesnt feel right now like the body politic is especially strong or in a place to fight off those fevers again. We shall see. But, I mean, it would be a sign, I think that that fever had not broken.

Can you explain the relationship between cultural issues, the political issues you write about in this book and the climate work that youve been doing for many years now?

The ideological framework that weve been living in since Reagan was absolutely perfect for constantly expanding our demands on the environment and absolutely poisonous for figuring out a way to rein in the climate crisis.

These decades have been a period when the U.S. has uniquely possessed extraordinary leverage because of its wealth and superpower status. And all that leverage was used in the wrong direction when it came to climate change.

Are you pessimistic about the future?

Well, look, the title of the very first book that I wrote about all this back when I was 27 or something, it was The End of Nature. So Im not a Pollyanna. But Im also, you know, I spend all day as a volunteer and organizer, and I wouldnt do that if I had decided there was no use. Im not an idiot either. Ill keep it up as long as I can make a plausible argument to myself that its worthwhile, and if I cant, then I will retire to the back porch to drink bourbon.

What kind of bourbon do you like?

What do you got?

See the article here:

American culture is destroying itself, and the planet, says leading activist Bill McKibben - Yahoo Philippines News

[Editors note: Dr. Gorski is on vacation this week, and Dr. Howard has agreed to cover. Dr. Gorski will return to his usual slot next week.]

A core theme of my writing is that people who spread disinformation about COVID are protected from the consequences of their words. I previously noted this distance allows them to pontificate on the virus as if were a game, a brand-building opportunity. In contrast, someone who works in an ICU will have more patients if they successfully discourage vaccination in young people. Of course, an ICU doctor may be wrong, and a random internet commentator may be right. Evidence matters, not credentials. But healthcare workers have skin-in-the game, and that counts for something.

With this in mind, lets revisit my article about Objectivists and COVID. Ive since discovered that some Objectivists have said some wise things. For example, Ben Bayer, a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, wrote a staunch pro-vaccine article in which he said:

The biggest sign that many vaccine refusers care too little about their own interests isnt their attitude toward their health or the well-being of others. Its their attitude toward the truth. Its actually pretty dubious that many vaccine refusers think that Covid is dangerous but simply dont care enough to protect their or their loved ones health against it. Many dont want to get vaccinated because they really believe that Covid is not a serious threat compared to the risks of the vaccine in the first place. This is actually the deepest root of the moral problem.

Because of their beliefs, vaccine refusers dont see that theyre recklessly letting their guard down against a serious threat. Because of their belief, they even mount crusades to convince others to join them.

Exactly. Disinformation has significant real-world consequences for our patients.

He also penned an homage to healthcare workers titled If Youre a Doctor or Nurse, Dont Feel Guilty for Quitting in which he sympathized with burnt-out healers for the abuse theyve suffered at the hands of belligerent unvaccinated patients. He said to such workers:

If you cant find a way to make the joy of solving medical problems overcome the pain of being treated with disrespect, you shouldnt blame yourself if you want to quit. I, for one, wont blame you if you do quit out of righteous indignation for being treated like chattel. I still hope you dont quit: many others and I may need your help. But you dont owe it to us.

Exactly. Disinformation has significant real-world consequences for us.

Mr. Bayer gets it. This is not a game.

Not everyone gets it.

In retrospect, my prior article understated the degree to which other Objectivists advanced the myth that Covid is not a serious threat compared to the risks of the vaccine. I previously discussed the symbiosis between the Atlas Society, which claims to value rationality, and the Brownstone Institute, which has spread copious amounts of anti-vaxx rubbish, sanctified natural immunity, and issued oblique threats to behead people they disagree with. This article, which was also posted at the Atlas Society sans guillotine, lamented that

Pfizer and people like Anthony Fauci are demanding 3rd and now 4th shots. Shots without end, always with the promise that the next one will achieve the goal.

Its no surprise its author is favorably featured on the website of anti-vaccine supercrank RFK Jr.

Beyond this, the Atlas Society also amplified radiologist Dr. Scott Atlas (read this), writer Dr. Naomi Wolf (read this), and who knows which other superspreaders of anti-vaccine disinformation. These are the people the Atlas Society legitimizes and amplifies during a pandemic.

Clinging to my teenage hope that leaders of the Atlas Society might actually care about rationality, I shared my previous article with Dr. Stephen Hicks a philosophy professor and Senior Scholar there. Maybe hes unaware of who his organization is promoting? Maybe hell want to learn more. Maybe hell care and even try do something about it.

Reader, I actually believed that about him and a few other people there for some stupid reason. Thats how nave I can be.

Dr. Hicks did disappoint, and though he did so in eminently predictable ways, his responses contain an important lesson: denying reality never ends well. Indeed, Dr. Hicks first attempted to deny reality by saying that I (and pretty much everyone I associate with) am pro-vaccines and anti-mandates. Even if they rushed to get vaccinated themselves, no one who is pro-vaccine would provide a friendly, warm forum for influential and outspoken anti-vaxxers to disseminate their disinformation.

After being presented with evidence the Atlas Society has done exactly this, Dr. Hicks rapidly pivoted to a new position that can be summarized as: Yes, we provide a friendly, warm forum for these people and thats good. He claimed that though he is pro-vaccine, Any intellectually honest organization *debates* complex issues.

Apparently Dr. Hicks believes its a complex issue whether or not young people should left vulnerable to a virus that has killed thousands of them when a safe and effective vaccine exists. After all, several honored Atlas Society interviewees believe that unvaccinated young people should be exposed to the virus, and theyve been very successful in their mission with inevitable results. Like I said, denying reality never ends well, even though its often not the denialists who pays the price.

Moreover, Dr. Hicks feels this complex issue should be decided via a debate. He thinks that anti-vaxxers and doctors who treat COVID patients should duke it out in a performance of sorts, where who is right and who is wrong is determined by who puts on the best show. Did the flu really kill more children than COVID, as scholars at the Brownstone Institute often claim? Only a debate can settle which number is really higher, 25 or 1,500. May the most polished speaker win.

Of course, Dr. Hicks completely misrepresented what the Atlas Society actually does. They dont sponsor *debates* with anti-vaxxers. That would require them to provide a friendly, warm forum to a knowledgeable vaccine-advocate, something theyve not done as best as I can tell. I doubt they even know any. Instead, they hand dishonest anti-vaxxers a microphone to answer softball questions from a sycophantic interviewer who selects her guests because theyll say exactly what she wants to hear: COVIDs threat is overblown and those who try to limit it are stupid and corrupt.

Thats why she doesnt push back when her guests say wild and wacky things.

For example, what happened when Dr. Wolf said that thanks to Bill Gates and pharma, we were no longer free to say the pandemic is over? Nothing. What happened when she likened current anti-vaccination discrimination to the historical evils of racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism? Nothing. What happened when Dr. Atlas falsely claimed the Delta variant was less lethal and that high-risk people are the ones who die from the Delta variant, not anybody else? Nothing. What happened when he said that children die from the flu at a higher rate than from COVID? Nothing. What happened when he fear-mongered about boosters and opposed vaccinating children by saying, when people have a low-risk for an illness, I dont understand the case for giving them a vaccine? Nothing.

In the interviewers defense, she likely didnt know that Dr. Atlas was both making stuff up and plagiarizing Dr. Andrew Wakefields cult, merely substituting COVID for measles. She may not have known that his brand of COVID denialism is exactly why healthcare workers have been attacked and why many are quitting. However, she should have known that Dr. Atlas would spread disinformation to further his goal of infecting unvaccinated young people.

Like, what else would he do?

He doesnt hide his intentions. Early in the pandemic, he said, Those who are not at risk to die or have a serious hospital-requiring illness, we should be fine with letting them get infected. Even though effective vaccines are now available, he continues to worship at the altar of so-called natural immunity. To pick one example, he said:

To me, its unconscionable that a society uses its children as shields for adults. Children do not have a significant risk from this illness Are we [as] a society, a civilization going to inject our children with an experimental drug that they dont have a significant benefit from, to shield ourselves?

Dr. Atlas believes that if he says children do not have a significant risk from this illness enough times that means its true. He cant grasp the simple fact that some children do have a significant risk from this illness, and so we vaccinate children to protect children. Again, this is who the Atlas Society legitimizes and amplifies in the middle of a pandemic. Doctors who treat sick kids and provide accurate information are excluded from this echo chamber.

Thanks to the Atlas Society, some people now believe that more dangerous variants are less lethal, that 25 is more than 1,500, and that its a good when unvaccinated young people contract COVID. This is information pollution, and like someone blowing an air horn during a concert, it destroys our ability to debate complex issues. While debates in medicine are important and healthy, a precondition for any meaningful discussion is a shared commitment to honesty and reality. One cant debate the optimal interval for vaccine doses with a prevaricator who denies the virus impacts young people at all.

And lets be clear about a few obvious things regarding vaccines for young people. It doesnt matter whether the flu or COVID is worse. It doesnt matter that most kids will be fine, that other things kill more kids, or that old people have a much higher risk. None of these factoids is an argument against vaccinating children, though that hasnt stopped writers at the Brownstone Institute from using them. Normal people dont want any young person to suffer or die from a vaccine-preventable disease. Of course, young people should be vaccinated against COVID. This is not a complex issue. It is a very simple issue, and doctors with skin in the game should not debate very simple issues with sheltered fabulists whose deceptions have ensured their ICUs were stuffed with low-risk patients.

Trying to have it both ways, Dr. Hicks said it was immoral to lie about vaccines but also that We need to celebrate our generations gadflies. Youll recognize that bit of sophistry as the Galileo gambit. Naturally, Dr. Hicks wasnt saying we need to celebrate gadflies who are brilliant vaccine-scientists. The Atlas Society undermines these people.

Dr. Hicks was also much more concerned about decorum towards anti-vaccine gadflies than the immoral lies they spread. He was very worried that anti-vaxxers were denied civility, a predictable deflection technique used by those who seek to shutdown debate by focusing on manners, not substance. Its just not nice to call someone a liar, I suppose, even when they claim 25 is larger than 1,500. In fact, we should celebrate such people, even when their disinformation leads to doctors getting punched in the face.

Using a meme of himself, Dr. Hicks implied that those who refute anti-vaxxers are akin to Nazi and Soviet disinformation boards and that not amplifying anti-vaxxers was akin to censorship, another predictable deflection technique. If someone feels Im the next Goebbels because I think its a bad idea to debate the premise that 25 is larger than 1,500, then thats a criticism Ill have to learn to live with.

At least Ive never called scientists I disagree with evil, corrupt, and criminal. I never said they were backpedaling and confessing to get ahead of the indictments. Dr. Wolf said all that and more that during her interview with the Atlas Society. Elsewhere, she claimed Dr. Fauci works for Israel, not Americans, something that could be straight out of a Nazi disinformation board actually. More recently, in an article at the Brownstone Institute of course, she revealed her fantasy to shave peoples heads and march them through the town square. She spoke about the need for Nuremberg Trials for Americas quislings and collaborators, noting that There is a reason treason is a capital offense.

Again, this is who the Atlas Society legitimizes and amplifies in the middle of a pandemic.

Unfortunately, Dr. Wolfs message resonates with a lot of angry, armed people. As a result, terrified public health officials have censored themselves by quitting en masse. Dr. Fauci has needed personal security from law enforcement at all times, including at his home. So have his daughters. If youre wondering about a source for such hatred towards Dr. Fauci, I suggest reading the article Who Will Be Held Responsible for this Devastation? on the Atlas Society webpage. It said that The carnage of lockdowns and vaccine mandates is unspeakable and will last a generation or two or more and asked Who is left to blame?

The most likely candidate here is Fauci himself. But I can already tell you his excuse. He never signed a single order. His fingerprints are on no legislation.

Anyone who actually cares about civility and opposes censorship knows that cranks who incite credible threats against scientists need to be exposed and marginalized, not amplified and celebrated.

Dr. Hicks further engaged in bothsideism by asking, How do we tally the costs/benefits of mistakes and lying on both sides? Apparently he sees little difference between Dr. Peter Hotez, who has received countless, vile threats for his vaccine-advocacy, and the anti-vaxxers who make and occasionally act on such threats. According to Dr. Hotez, the hate mail he received was filled with all sorts of Nazi imagery, Nuremberg hangings and terrible, terrible stuff. It was pretty upsetting. I wonder if any of the people who messaged Dr. Hotez heard Dr. Wolf call him a conflicted pharma shill during her interview with the Atlas Society.

Both sides, you see.

As a last resort, Dr. Hicks nursed grievances, saying he was a victim of a guilt-by-association. To paraphrase an assertion he made on multiple occasions: I never said anything about time-traveling via vaccine nanopatticles. So why should I be held accountable as a senior leader of an organization that legitimizes people who say such things?

Is this how Howard Roark would react if lazy workers with poor craftsmanship used the shoddiest materials to construct one of his buildings? As it crumpled to the ground, would he say, Hey, dont look at me, bro. I just made the drawings?

I dont think so.

These deflection techniques are very familiar to regular readers of SBM. However, it was what Dr. Hicks said at the end of the conversation that inspired this essay. Reflecting on the discussion, he said the whole thing was just a mostly fun Twitter thread on Covid and that he mostly enjoyed the wide-ranging discussion today.

And there is it. It was just a game the whole time.

Indeed, the pandemic has been little more than a game and brand-building opportunity for amoral disinformation groups and the grifters they promote. Having been informed that over 300,000 Americans died due to the type of anti-vaccine disinformation his organization legitimizes, Dr. Hicks could only reflect on how entertaining the whole spectacle was. The greatest mass death event in American history is just an intellectual puzzle, discussed in a state of purposeful ignorance regarding the real damage caused by some of its players.

Multiple people tried to impress upon Dr. Hicks that this wasnt just a conversation about which superpower is best. Despite our efforts, like all the people I write about, Dr. Hicks never showed any recognition that flesh-and-blood people, including children, have suffered as a consequences of anti-vaccine disinformation. I discussed previously how some contrarian doctors even shame those who dare to acknowledge any individual child lost to COVID.

In contrast, I believe that individuals matter, and so Ive made a point of recognizing them, including doctors who were friends and teachers of mine. I make an effort not treat people as mere numbers on a government website. Speakers at the Atlas Society do that.

Though the experience was mostly fun for Dr. Hicks, I dont think anyone else felt that way, especially the healthcare workers. They are burnt-out and checking-out as they are fed up with having to mop up the mess created by disinformation superspreaders. They are tired of sheltered talkers treating their lives and the lives of their patients as mere pawns on a chessboard, whose value must be weighed against the harms of offending delicate anti-vaxxers. I previously noted the irony of competent people quitting their jobs not despite Objectivists, but because of them. (Not you, Mr. Bayer).

At least I learned something valuable: Its a waste of time to engage with someone who treats healthcare workers like game pieces for their intellectual entertainment. I wont do it again. I certainly didnt have fun talking with Dr. Hicks. Not only did I grasp the stakes involved, but I was also frustrated that he was willing to debate anything except the only thing that mattered: Is it ethical to legitimize and amplify only dishonest anti-vaccine voices in a pandemic where over 1 million Americans have died?

I dont think it is.

Though I wont interact with Dr. Hicks on social media, Im always open to different perspectives. So, I really hope he pens a rebuttal to my piece titled: Those Who Believe in Time-Traveling via Vaccines With Nanopatticles and Other Essential Pandemic Voices. You see, I dont believe in time-traveling via vaccines with nanopatticles, my essays dont have pictures of guillotines, and Ive treated many COVID patients. If these character flaws arent disqualifying, Id be thrilled to give a talk at the Atlas Society titled This is What Ayn Rand Warned About.

And while its unlikely theyll platform someone whos willing to stand alone against a group, Im glad that Dr. Hicks and one of his critics found some common ground.

Dr. Jonathan Howard is a neurologist and psychiatrist based in New York City who has been interested in vaccines since long before COVID-19.

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Read the original here:

Is Discussing the Consequences of Anti-Vaccine Disinformation Fun? - Science Based Medicine

THE NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION has somehow found its own answer to those graft-ridden red-light cameras that plague the streets of select municipalities.

For lack of a formal phrase, call it a "remote, electronic, delayed overturn" ("REDO").

Sunday night, all a REDO did was non-mirthfully wipe out a 3-point basket by Miami's Max Strus long after the points were registered.

That delayed third-quarter camera consciousness ultimately enabled the Boston Celtics to hang on for a 100-96 win in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals. It also made winners of BOS backers, who laid either 2 or 3 points.

The Celtics will open the NBA Finals vs. cuddly Golden State Thursday (ABC, ESPN2; 8 p.m., Mike Breen or Mark Jones, Jeff Van Gundy, Mark Jackson and a cast with far too many mediocrities).

THERE WAS NOTHING CUDDLY about the call that victimized Strus -- or everyone even minutely siding with the Heat and the bed-panning organic integrity of the NBA.

Miami played a flat first half. Strus appeared to have helped flip the energy level less than a minute into the third period with his bomber.

Close to three full playing minutes later -- later! -- play-by-play man Jones informed that a replay decision by NBA HQ (monitoring from Secaucus, N.J.) wiped out the basket because Strus's left heel had touched a sideline.

The call wasn't big. It was HUGE!!!

Competitive and Vegas Huge.

THE PICTURES FLYING THROUGH the weird air proved decisive late when the phenomenal Jimmy Butler made the empty-hero decision to try a trey over Al Horford on the fly with 16.6 remaining and the Heat behind, 98-96.

He had clear sailing to the basket but his flare missed.

Boston rebounded. Two free throws later, the Celtics were Golden Gate-bound and the Heat were toastado.

THE NBA'S INTENT WITH the full-game monitoring out of Secaucus is sincere.

Besides providing a deep-safety net for challenged calls and late-game reviews, it also in concept attempts to assure more universal management of periodically subjective statistics including assists, rebounds, blocks and all.

But to arbitrarily wipe out a mood-swinging, midgame call minutes after it's in the books and on the scoreboard?

And -- gasp -- alter payouts to gamblers?

What do they think this is?

The Kentucky Derby?

STREET-BEATIN': On the subject of the current NBA, James Worthy's words to a Detroit sports talker continue to resonate: "Guys are coming into the league who are not fundamentally sound. All they do is practice '3s,' lift weights, get tattoos, tweet and go on social media. That's it." (Michael Jordan always hated when he was interrupted while reading Camus or Ayn Rand.) ...

Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflus will make a public debut of sorts during the Bears Care Gala at Soldier Field Saturday night. Jeff Joniak hosts and Tom Thayer will call the charity auction. Ryan Pace is not expected to be bid on. Tickets remain available with full info at ChicagoBears.com/BearsCareGala. ...

The elevation of Kaitlin Sharkey and Chris Boden to replace Dan Roan at WGN-Channel 9 underscores the fact that there are no longer any stars in nightly TV sports on Chicago stations. Sharkey should continue making her bones and move on to bigger things; The landscape is now festooned with low-budget, low-impact types. ...

Not that many noticed, but Jason Benetti had to ditch an assignment on Peacock's "MLB Sunday Leadoff" last weekend because his South Side bosses wanted him to work the Sox-Cubs game. Endurable Jon Miller filled in on the Reds-Giants tilt and Benetti got to call a fluky 5-4 Tony La Russa Machine Shop win. ...

Allstate Arena will be the scene as Stefan Noesen and the Chicago Wolves open the Western Conference Finals vs. the visiting Stockton Heat Friday at 7 p.m. (AHLTV.com). Word on Mannheim Road is that if the Wolves don't win the Calder Cup, their practices next season will be moved to The Donald E. Stephens Museum of Hummels in Rosemont. ...

Sports maestro Rick Sorci and his Cave Dwellers perform at Dunkley's Tavern in Addison Saturday night. (The longtime hustler was once one of the most formidable Big Game tabletop hockey players in the Midwest; Mike Adamle was a level or two below.) ...

And Bob Brooker, on news that John Madden will grace the cover of Madden NFL 23: "Wasn't Cody Whitehair available?"

Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.

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O'Donnell: Will the NBA's new red-light camera calls ruin The Finals for ABC/ESPN? - Daily Herald

Elizabeth Sandifer is the author of Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays On and Around the Alt-Right. She has taken a deep dive into the thoughts and writings of the so-called neoreactionary movement, or the new right, a tendency highlighted in a recent Vanity Fair article by James Pogue, who reported from the National Conservative Conference. Pogue argues that there is a new tendency in right-wing thought that is influencing some prominent Republican candidates for office, including J.D. Vance of Ohio and Blake Masters of Arizona, both of whom have close ties to Peter Thiel, the PayPal billionaire, and also to a rather mysterious and lesser-known public intellectual by the name of Curtis Yarvin, a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug. Is this a fringe intellectual tendency that can be ignored, or a budding movement? Sandifer spoke with editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson on the Current Affairs podcast to sort things out. This interview has been edited and condensed for grammar and clarity.

Elizabeth Sandifer, I need you to help us understand this neoreactionary tendency. Can you discuss what it is?

Neoreaction is one attempt of modern far right philosophywe can just go ahead and call it fascismto create an intellectual basis. It was formulated by Curtis Yarvin, who writes under the pen name Mencius Moldbug, or formerly wrote.

The artist formerly known as Moldbug?

These days he uses his real name Curtis Yarvin, but I still think of him as Moldbug because thats what he was going by when I wrote about him. Yarvin has been quite influential on a number of key people. He has a demonstrably huge influence on Peter Thiel. We know hes got influence on Blake Masters and J.D. Vance, as that Vanity Fair articlee makes clear. We have very strong evidence that hes had influence on Steve Bannon. Hes just a guy a lot of these people look to as kind of an intellectual light. Hes been on the Tucker Carlson show, which did a fair bit to mainstream him. So a lot of people look up to him as something of an intellectual light, which is interesting if you actually read any of his work, because, well I call him outright stupid in my book, and Im gonna largely stand by that.

I think that there is a long tradition of right-wing philosophy thats really popular among right-wing nutters and as soon as it gets outside that little bubble, it gets absolutely shot to hell by other philosophers. And I think to describe Yarvin in terms he would probably take as a complimentand I very much mean as an insulthes kind of a modern day Ayn Rand.

So his broad philosophical idea is hes just really obsessed with order. He thinks that order is the absolute best thing that can happen. Chaos, unruliness, rebelliousnessall these things are inherently very, very bad.

And so his belief, as he expressed back in his Moldbug daysand hes not really backed down off of it in any substantive wayis that basically, California should secede, become its own nation, and simply impose a CEO with monarchic, godlike powers. At the time, he suggested Steve Jobs would be a particularly good pick for the absolute monarch of California and that the purpose of owning California and running it as a corporate monarchy is explicitly for profit. That was also a part of Yarvins philosophical vision for what the world should do.

I dont want to pin him too much with the slightly satirical and deliberately over-the-top clickbait-y idea of making Steve Jobs king of Californiathat is him using a rhetorical device to get attention. But he does very, very much believe that rich elites should be in absolute control of everything, and people who are not landowners and do not have a ton of money should basically be thought of as the equivalent of slaves.

The philosophy here is explicitly monarchist, right? He openly believes that one person should have almost absolute power.

The person should be accountable to a board of directors, perhaps. But no more than that, and the board of directors should just be able to fire him and replace him with a new absolute monarchy if they feel the need. Hes very clear on that. Again, back in his more satirical Moldbug days, he actually advocated for Stuart restoration in the UK, the rolling back of the Glorious Revolution, and undoing William of Oranges takeover and the reign of William and Mary to put it back in the hands of the Stuart kings. He thought that the Whiggish democratic turn was a fundamental mistake of history that should be undone. Again, this is him in his older satirical mode.

Was he being satirical when he endorsed or appeared to endorse human slavery?

This is the problem with his semi-satirical, clickbait-y mode of writing. He doesnt seem to make a huge distinction between employees and slaves in his philosophical system. He certainly seems to believe that outright indentured servitude and ownership is an acceptable arrangement. And he sure did overtly say that Black people are genetically predisposed to make good slaves. These are all things he definitely, literally says. Was he perhaps being satirical? I guess my response to that is: do you really care if hes being satirical when he says Black people are genetically predisposed to making good slaves? Personally, I dont.

I am torn as to how valuable it is to go into the philosophy because, as you say, it is, in many ways, extremely stupid. I was reading it. This guy has a Substack and it is, to me, unreadable.

He is frighteningly verbose. Ive heard people say hes a good writer. I dont see it at all.

Oh, my God. Ive never read anything worse.

Right. As someone who has written a number of books and at least has a modest amount of popular acclaim, inasmuch as I am an expert on prose writing, his prose is absolutely unreadable. Its shit. Im allowed to swear here, right?

Yes.

Its complete festering dogshit. Its horrible. It is verbose. It makes a painful lack of effort to get to the point on the occasion when it actually makes a point. His argumentation aspires to shoddiness, because that would at least imply that theres a degree of construction there. Its absolutely awful. I take it apart in some meticulous detail in Neoreaction a Basilisk because in that book, I thought it was important to pay it as much intellectual respect as I could before I took it out back and shot it. But it was not hard to argue against and to find the flaws. Youre really playing on easy mode there.

Your book does a public service. People dont have to comb through thousands of pages to try to understand the things youve read. Youve laid it out.

Ill make this fully explicit. I cannot encourage you enough not to bother reading this. You have something better to do with your lifeclipping your toenails, perhaps. Staring at a wall. Many small crimes that only do a little bit of harm. Avoid reading him. Literally almost anything you can think of to do right now is a better idea than reading Curtis Yarvin.

I felt a certain kinship with you. One of the things I do for Current Affairs is read right-wing books and review them.

Some of us, because of what can only be described as poor life choices, find ourselves in careers where it is necessary to read these things and describe them for other people in hopefully more entertaining and efficient ways. And, you know, as a fellow member of this profession, you have my sympathy. But for listeners who are not writers and do not imminently intend to publish a book and get paid for it, do not read this unless someone is paying you good money.

It was kind of shocking to me when I started a dive into the collected works of Moldbug. It doesnt really make many attempts to be convincing in a very logical way. I mean, lets say you were to try to persuade me that its a good idea to have a dictator, which is what he believes. He believes that we should have a dictator. He believes in a hierarchy. He believes in abolishing democracy and elections and the participation of the governed in governance. If you were to try to convince me of those incredibly radical propositions that instinctively horrify me, you would have a pretty high burden. And he doesnt even really seem to make much of an attempt to show why this wouldnt be horrifying and dystopian.

It reads hellishly dystopian. You could write a really good cyberpunk dystopia off of the ideas espoused by Curtis Yarvin. I may or may not be working on that. Theres a passage in his Mencius Moldbug days when he very ardently and passionately describes basically the entire Whiggish movementa lot of old British radical groups like the Levellers and more broadly the entire kind of romantic, rebellious artistic tradition of British literature, people like William Blakeas a bunch of freaks who he despises and thinks the world is worse off for existing. I am someone who is very passionate about William Blake in particular. A lot of these people that he dismisses as evil freaks, I look to as outright role models.

I have a very, very strong and basic disagreement with Yarvin/Moldbug Im going to be doing this [with his name] the whole podcast. I apologize.

If he attached the name Moldbug to himself once, he has to live with that for life. Im not going to participate in this project to mainstream him by calling him Curtis Yarvin.

I have some very basic strong philosophical differences with him on very fundamental aesthetic, almost primal levels. I look at his work and am viscerally repulsed. I read his ideal society and see what sounds to me like a description of Hell.

Whats interesting about reading far right philosophy is that theyre very open about their attempt to make a world that would not be worth living in. I have read Mein Kampf, and everything Hitler lays out is a program for killing everyone I love and everything that I love.

I suppose in defense of their logical consistency and intellectual honesty, I wouldnt want to be alive in their world, but they dont want me to be alive in their world, either.

Its true. Theyre pretty clear about it. The word fascism is tossed about a lot. But I think one of the things that is valuable about the works of Yarvin is that hes very open about it. He really does say: We need a dictatorship, and it needs to be pretty absolute. And I hate all of the freaks. And I believe in a world of order, and Im not going to try to justify why that order is good. But I think that I, and people like me, should be at the top of the social hierarchy, and everyone else should be brutally oppressed.

Hes not a venture capitalist billionaire or anything. But I think he really thinks people like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk should be running the world. There is something of a cult around these people, and Yarvin believes in it wholeheartedly. Yarvin absolutely believes that people who are good at making money are probably good at everything else.

So the way that weve talked about it so far makes it seem like it could appeal to almost nobody who wasnt extremely rich themselves. Musk obviously has his cult. But theres something that you discuss in the book that seems to be part of the source of the appeal of these ideas. Anti-semitism is often called the socialism of fools, right? Because it uses some of the opposition to capitalists and bankers, but it misplaces the villain. Yarvins diagnosis of societythe things that he points out, that hes trying to rectify, he actually matches about 30 percent of things that I hear Noam Chomsky say about the dysfunctions of liberalism. That gives a certain truth to some of what he says in terms of his diagnosis, even though his prescription is fascism.

My dear friend, Jack Graham, who co-wrote one of the chapters of Neoreaction a Basilisk with me, gave me a phrase that I happily stole within the book, where he says that Yarvin is a failed Marxist in the same way that Jupiter is a failed star. Yarvin starts down this analysis, and if you follow it reasonably rigorously, you get to a fairly accurate and useful diagnosis of everything that is wrong with the world. And then somewhere on the way, before he gets to any of those actual good points, he makes just an apocalyptic wrong turn, and concludes that Steve Jobs should become king of California.

So perhaps you could describe the starting point of his analysis of what is wrong with society.

His starting point is the extremely self-evident assertion that there is an overall consensus. He reinvents the Overton window from scratch. He reinvents the idea that there is a dictated set of opinions which are acceptable and possible to discuss and to take seriously. There is this political center around which nothing can orbit too far away from without freezing to death. Its fundamentally dictated by a number of elite and powerful institutions. So the New York Times does a whole lot to dictate what the political center is. There are many other examples. The ones that Yarvin is most obsessed with are basically the media, academia, and the civil service end of government. He views those as the big three institutions that are imposing a kind of absolute consensus that he says is drifting in an ever leftward liberal direction. He points to the progress of civil rights, takes Martin Luther King, Jr.s observation about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice over the long run and renders it a horror story, actually referring to this centrist consensus as Cthulhu and saying that Cthulhu always swims left.

The sensible thing to do is probably to look at the role of money in this.

Yes. I was going to point out that theres a notable absence from that list, which is big business.

Nowhere on Yarvins list of things that are controlling the world and setting up a political center is finance. Whereas, in reality, finance turns out to do an awful lot, as evidenced by the fact that, for instance, if you happen to be one of the richest people in the world, you can meet your girlfriend on a web site, have a bit of a falling out with her, get made fun of, and decide youre going to suddenly now own one of the largest social media platforms in the world. Thats a thing that can happen if you are a billionaire. It is not a thing that can happen to most people. And so suddenly, Twitterone of these huge social media sites, something that is quite central to media discourseis getting taken over by someone who is spouting a lot of far-right ideas, who initially made his money working with Peter Thiel, who is the person whose is bankrolling Curtis Yarvins bullshit, who is very clearly influenced by this orbit. I know that the Wall Street Journal reported that Thiel was advising Musk on his Twitter takeover. And suddenly they own this massive media platform, and the only reason thats happening is money. There is no academic, no civil service, no mainstream media component to why Twitter is about to take a right-wing plunge. It is entirely because money has a shitload of power. To give a very, very basic analysis that probably, you know, is downright obvious to a number of your listeners, but its something that never occurs to Yarvin.

Moldbug talks about a small class of elites controlling the discourse, and he talks about, as you say, the boundaries of acceptable opinionand when he says that, hes almost 100 percent overlapping with Chomsky. But as you point out, theres this absence of Marx in his work, where Moldbug doesnt seem to have read or understood the left analysis of these things.

In his last big essay under the Moldbug pen name, he creates this acronym/mantra, America is a communist country, and claims that it is true in all sorts of different ways that you can interpret it. And one thing that literally never comes up anywhere in that essay is whether America is actually run on communist principles similar to those explained by Karl Marx. That literally never occurs to Moldbugin the course of literally thousands of words about how America is supposedly a communist countrywhich is something of an intellectual oversight, I think. I feel like there is a failure of due diligence that went on in this essay.

We have dwelled on the work of a somewhat obscure and stupid person whos a bad writer. But when I read that Vanity Fair article, I got chills. J.D. Vance is explicitly saying that Yarvin has a bunch of great ideas. J.D. Vance could be in the Senate.

Look at the U.S. Senate. You dont necessarily see that a U.S. senator is a lot better than a billionaire as evidence of intelligence.

Its true.

There are, in fact, a lot of stupid people in the United States Senate. And Im willing to say that as a bipartisan critique.

But there are not necessarily that many people who explicitly espouse a desire for a dictatorship. And there are some quotes from J.D. Vance in that article, where the writer says Vance sounds like hes talking about a coup. Vance says that the next president should fire everyone in the government, replace them with ideologues, and ignore the courts if they try to stop him.

Right. The flip side of that is we shouldnt delude ourselves about the fact that there are multiple fascistsin the U.S. government right nowwho want to overthrow the U.S. government. Vance is coming in. Look at Joshua Hawley out of Missouri. Hes just as fucking bad. Hes espousing the same level of fascist takeover shit. And those are the more intellectual ones. Go into the House and suddenly you get Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene and that clan of nut jobs. (I do mean clan.) There are people who are in the U.S. Congress who are fully endorsing these fascist monarchic ideas. The Vance idea is interesting to me because the specific fascist ideas hes espousing are ones I wrote a book on six years ago. But at the end of the day, we shouldnt treat Vance as an outlier at this point. The really scary thing is, hes not.

Yes. Even if there arent that many who are tied to this weird specific neoreaction thing, this neoreactionary ideology is kind of, as you say, a more explicit and upfront statement of the basic right-wing worldview, which is in favor of really strict social hierarchies enforced by violence and keeping down anyone who would dare to challenge those hierarchies.

Along with strong populist and, inevitably, in practice, white dude dictators who run this jackboot and pony show.

We should talk about a couple of the other figures in your book besides Yarvin. But the book is called Neoreaction a Basilisk. Explain what the Basilisk in the title is.

Oh, God. Okay. So, Curtis Yarvin came to present prominencegot his initial readership before he spun off to his own blogon a website called Overcoming Bias, a website loosely organized around a community that called themselves the rationalists. The main figure in that is a guy named Eliezer Yudkowsky, who would describe himself as an AI researcher. Its important to note that he has literally no computer science qualifications; cannotto the best of my knowledgecode; has never built an AI; and does not actually understand anything about how AI works on a technical level. But he is an AI researcher, which really means he writes science fiction. He writes science fiction novels that he passes off as philosophy and scholarship. He is horribly obsessed with the idea that someday an artificial intelligence is going to wake up, achieve sentience, take over the world, and destroy humanity because it sees no point in humanity. He writes great science fiction phrases. Hes got a phrase: The AI does not love you. The AI does not hate you. But you are made out of atoms which the AI can use for something else. Thats charming and chilling, and throw that into a science fiction horror book about an evil AI and youre going to get a Hugo nomination for that stuff. As an analysis of computer science and the state of play of current technology, it has nothing to do with anything that is actually happening in AI research, nanotechnology, or anything else. Its purely science fiction. But its pretty good science fiction.

And so a lot of tech bro people are really, really into him because he makes them feel good. He says that theyre all super logical, rational people, and they can learn to make no mistakes if they just use his one weird trick for thinking rationally. Hes just had a lot of influence despite being frankly a kind of weirdo cult leader.

But the Basilisk. What you actually asked about. The Basilisk comes from an incident that arose in Yudkowskys community where this guy named Roko, who went on to be a fascist, came up with a thought experiment imagining a futuristic, godlike AI. As I said, theyre terrified of an evil AI. They also want to create a god AI that will reincarnate them on a hard drive so they can live forever. And so this guy Roko imagined the god AI and said: Wait a minute, what if when the god AI exists, he looks back at everyone who failed to help bring him about and declares theyre evil, and should be reincarnated on a computer and tortured for all eternity? He made this argument that was entirely consistent with the many weird cult-like premises of Yudkowsky and his rationalists and created this idea of this godlike AI that would torture them all if they didnt give all their money to AI research to try to bring him aboutwhich, if you look at it from a perspective of not being a weirdo AI cult member, is basically just reinventing Pascals Wager.

Pascals wager being that it pays to believe in God because if you dont, God will punish youif he exists.

Yes, good explanation. And so all of these AI cultists, broadly speaking, absolutely lost their shit. They had an epic meltdown-panic attack. Yudkowsky was, at one point, screaming in all caps about how the worst thing you can possibly do is talk about the evil godlike AI in the future that does this, because talking about it brings it into existence. Everyone is having a complete emotional meltdown over having accidentally invented Pascals Wager. And the whole incident eventually becomes a bit of popular lore that people who are the right kind of nerd know about. Jokes about Rokos Basilisk, which is what this whole affair became known as, were actually what got Elon Musk and Grimes together. They both made the same pun about Rokos Basilisk independently and found each other through it.

Wow. I never knew that.

My friend, David Gerard, who was the initial reader and editor of Neoreaction a Basilisk, was the one who preserved all the transcripts of the meltdown and put them on RationalWiki. Thats why anyone knows about this. So he is ultimately single-handedly responsible for Elon Musk taking over Twitter just by popularizing Rokos Basilisk. Its horrible. He feels terrible about it.

I fear that some of our listeners, hearing your explanation, may have thought to themselves at some point during

What the fuck is going on here?

I dont understand this. Its bizarre.

I should have prefaced this with: What I am about to say is going to sound completely insane, and thats because it is.

Im glad you explained it because I think that its important to understand that even if you dont grasp this whole thing about a godlike artificial intelligence in the future and whatever

And you should feel better about yourself if you dont. If it did make any sense, you should really be worried.

First, the people who believe in this very bizarre thing consider themselves to be extremely logicalmore logical than anyone else, right?

Yes. Functionally, they believe themselves to be, if not infallible on an individual level, at least infallible on a collective level.

Secondly, this rationalist community that youre talking about that drifts into extremely bizarre and sometimes fascist beliefs is quite influential in Silicon Valley.

Hugely so. If you talk not just to management, but even many of the frontline software engineer/coder nerds, they all know who Eliezer Yudkowsky is. This is absolutely a household name within the specific bubble and enclave of Silicon Valley tech.

And theres an entire intellectual ecosystem here. Youve written about the Slate Star Codex blog.

Ah, yes, Mr. Siskind.

Hes this rationalist whos very opposed to social justice politics and is, perhaps, a little too open-minded about Charles Murray and

Hes a gateway to outright fascist ideas. He has openly said that he is a race eugenicist who believes that IQ is heritable. He definitely believes this to be true. He has said as much. He plays a little coy in public, but in his personal beliefs, he is a racist authoritarian. I absolutely believe this.

And he is extremely popular among some people. He has a big following among a lot of these Silicon Valley types.

Absolutely. His blog was widely considered essential reading among the Silicon Valley types. And then you go to the subreddit for his blog, and people are literally posting the 14 words, which are a huge white nationalist slogan and just not even a dog whistle, just a whistle.

One of the reasons I wanted to speak to you is that it does seem as if the things that youve been writing about for years were curiosities when you started writing about them, or had a cult following. It seems to be inching closer and closer to the mainstream, both through J.D. Vance and through Elon Musk. Musk talks about the AI thats going to destroy us all, and Im sure is inspired by a lot of these people.

The important takeaway here is that all of the people Ive been describing are very, very stupid. Their ideas make no sense if you look at them under any scrutiny whatsoever. And they are actively taking over the world right now. And they are going to kill millions of people. Its funny on the one hand, but on the other hand, they are actively taking over the world, and they are literally going to kill people like me. I want to be deadly serious here. These people are very, very evil, and they are actively gaining power.

I think thats incredibly important. Its so easyespecially if you look at the writings of Moldbugto just look at it and go, this is a bunch of garbage. Who could be persuaded by this?

And the answer is: literally the top adviser [Steve Bannon] of our last president. That is who can be persuaded.

To hear the story of this weird Basilisk and that all these people think the Basilisk from the future is coming and then to realize that these are people who are in positions of quite high status and who have the dangerous fallacious belief that they are as close to perfectly logical as one can be.

I dont want to suggest that Elon Musk literally believes in Rokos Basilisk, but the new owner of one of the largest social media sites in the world definitely takes Rokos Basilisk a lot more seriously than it deserves to be taken. And that should definitely raise some red flags, especially when you get into the fact that he made his money with Peter Thiel and Thiel bankrolled Yarvin and bankrolled Yudkowsky. Theres a network of people here who are increasingly powerful, and they are very, very scary.

We talked about the dictatorial tendencies, but we havent discussed the extent to which a lot of this is founded on anti-wokeness and the hatred of Black Lives Matter and other movements for liberation.

When you describe this stuff, it doesnt sound very appealing. And so, to most of the people upon whose electoral support this movement relies, these arent the bits they describe. What they describe is: Black people are all getting free crack pipes from Obama. What they describe is, trans people are grooming your kids and are going to take them away from you. What they describe is the entire pro-life argument: pro life, anti-abortion, anti-choice, what is about to win in the U.S. Supreme Court and outlaw abortion for more than half of the country. These are the arguments they use to win electoral power. But behind the scenes, when you trace the intellectual roots of the arguments of the people who are in practice running a site like Breitbart, these are the things you find.

Yarvin openly talked about how political alliances with white nationalist are sometimes odious because theyre stupid, nasty people but probably useful for achieving the political goals he wants. Most of them are racist, transphobic, misogynistic assholes themselves. I dont want to suggest that these aspects of their arguments are purely ironic affectation. Fundamentally, if you give even the remotest shit about Black people, you dont ally with white nationalists. The very fact that you ally with white nationalists speaks volumes about your racism. The active spear tip of this movement is anti-wokeism and fears about cancel culture and critical race theory and all that.

When you look at what actually happensyou look at the way in which the education system is of paramount importance in Yarvins conspiracy theory, there is a direct line from that to using groomer panic and critical race theory to stage a fascist takeover of the entire Florida educational system, which just happened. It just happened. Floridas education system has literally banned most of the stuff that Curtis Yarvin thinks is secretly running the world. So these ideas are having a huge impact. There were many, many steps between Curtis Yarvin and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. But those steps existed and can be linearly traced.

I watched the full Yarvin interview with Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson was totally fascinated.

Of course he was.

Carlson presented Yarvin as this fascinating intellectual who is silenced by the mainstream but who has really, really valuable and interesting ideas. The whole hour they spent was Yarvin expounding this theory that there is this kind of conspiracy of elites that he calls the cathedral that consists of Harvard and the New York Times and the government and all that. And he was explaining to Tucker how people who put Black Lives Matter signs in their yard, that the sign really says, I love power and conformity.

He talked about the red pill. He said, youre going to take the red pill, youre gonna see things for how they really are. And Tucker Carlson has his mind blown by Curtis. But, importantly, all of it is about the big woke conspiracy that rules the country. None of it is about the solution being fascism, even though thats what Yarvin believes.

Right. You dont say the fascism on primetime on Fox News. You say that at your little conservative conference where youve got the true believers. There is very much the propaganda front. And if you look at the overt political goals of these peoplewhich is absolutely monarchic, or, at least oligarchic dictatorship of the very, very richyou can absolutely see why Fox News is making the political moves in this.

I want to just read a little passage from the end of your book that made me laugh. You write: To engage in Alt-Right thinking is to turn oneself into a vacuous skinsuit animated by raw stupidity. There is literally not a single shred of non-stupidity in the entire thing. Mencius Moldbug, stupid. Milo Yiannopoulos, stupid. Donald Trump, Vox Day, stupid, stupid, stupid. MAGA and The Daily Stormer are stupid. Every single detail of every single aspect of this entire cratering shitstorm in which the human race seems hell bent on going extinct is absolutely fucking stupid.

I stand by every word of that.

I like it when people on the left are aggressive in confronting this stuff. Your writing is a manifesto for intelligence and thinking about things carefully. The alternative to this horrible apocalyptic stupidity is something that we have to offer. And your writing is very beautiful, and its fun. You not only dissect in this book some of these horrific stupidities, but you do so with a kind of wit and beautiful prose that makes me want to be on your side rather than with these stupid neoeactionaries.

You talk about my being aggressive. I want to point out that I was sitting on a laptop in a comfortable roomsmoking what, I will not saywhile I wrote most of that book. I was in a very safe place. There are activists who are on the frontlines who are having these people screaming in their faces. There are activists who will go to jail and will get themselves killed in the long run continuing to stand up to these people, to do whatever it takes to make sure that these people do not take power and do not kill the people that they want to kill. And those are the people who were being aggressive. Those are the people who deserve praise. If my book has value it is that it will make people realize how bad the situation is, look up those activists, and get in that protest line and get their faces screamed at, too. Fundamentally, thats what bravery and confrontation looks like, not writing a book about it.

Originally posted here:

The Strange and Terrifying Ideas of Neoreactionaries Current Affairs - Current Affairs

Who gets to decide what everything means?

Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. So it's only natural that when people analyze his work, they dig deep. Scorsese is known for injecting spirituality, violence, and moralism into every frame. When The Irishman came out, I watched every video essay on the subject. I rememberThomas Flighttalking about how the opening scene of the movie was a self-homage back to Goodfellas, how Scorsese was talking about whether or not his own work would hold up as he aged, as we watched his movie about a gangster aging. I thought that was such a poignant take. One rife with interesting beats.

Until Scorsese got on camera and debunked it himself.

To his credit, Thomas Flight made another video talking about the objectivism and relativism of moviemaking and direction. It really intrigued me, and also I think it's a good debate for our website.

Check out this video fromThomas Flight, and let's talk after.

I am one of those movie watchers who likes to assign meaning to everything. Meaning makes films fulfilling to me. It broadens how we see things and also adds a mythos to directors and writers who are trying to imbue a sort of depth and wonder into their projects.

I also love a good debate on what movies mean. But the real debate actually seems to be... who gets to decide what movies actually mean?

Is it the audience, watching and debating? Or is it the director, pontificating in interviews and videos, telling us what they wanted us to take away?

Does the director's intent matter? Or do only we matter?

It's complicated. And it takes us to two big words in the discussion: objectivism and relativism.

Objectivism isthe film theory that the main objective of the human experience is to define things via personal experience. It came from thephilosophy of author Ayn Rand. In our situation, it means that the meaning of a film comes from the personal experience of the director. They dictate what the movie is about, and we do not matter.

Let's look at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Relativism isthe belief that there's no absolute truth, only the truths that an individual believes. If you believe in relativism within film theory, you think different people can have different views on what things mean within cinema. Sure, the director can say one thing, but the audience can read it in an entirely different way.

Obviously, both these words mean a lot (pun intended) when it comes to this argument. Like it or not, when you argue a movie, you're taking a stance on what you believe.

If I had to choose, I think I come down on the side of relativism. The reason is that I think we see a lot of art get perverted or misinterpreted or repurposed for the people's senses, and not necessarily the director's. Think about Fight Club, which was about toxic masculinity, only to get adopted by toxic male viewers.

On the funnier side, I have always loved the filmic reading of A Star is Born having to do with 9-11.

Sometimes viewers actively choose to ignore a director's intent and adopt their own readings in order to fully enjoy a work, like in horror where misogyny and racism can be rampantor in cases of queerbaiting when directors insist characters aren't LGBTQ, despite whatever subtext performers and storytellers choose to bring to a film (see The Batman).

Still, I deeply respect every director who comes out and explains their metaphor and deep dives. And I tend to take them at their word and try to read the film the way it was intended.

Maybe there is a balance here. You can disagree with the intent. And for directors, maybe they didn't get the story perfectly enough or clearly enough to achieve their goals. Then a middle can be found between the people and the creators.

There's a lot to debate here, and it's such a wonderful topic to pick apart. So where do you land in the argument? Let me know in the comments!

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Martin Scorsese, Objectivism, Relativism, and How We Read Cinema - No Film School