Category Archives: Transhuman News

Miami-Dade College rose to the challenge of hosting this years Banned Books Week from September 18 to 24. Ostensibly, the purpose of the annual event, which began in 1982, is to celebrate our fundamental right to freedom of expression and draw attention to works of fiction and nonfiction that schools, bookstores, and libraries have decided not to carry because their content is unacceptable to the self-appointed upholders of morality and enforcers of correct opinion.

The crisis is real. Intellectual and creative freedom are under attack these days from both the right and the left, and few causes are as important as defending the right of authors and scholars to write and publish. We need many more events devoted to the preservation and advancement of our liberties.

A look at the works featured in this years Banned Books Week suggests that progressive causes du jourdominated the event. Meanwhile, politically incorrect works containing allegedly insensitive content that got banned, and, in some cases, unbanned in recent months have gotten short shrift.

Some people, very watchful when it comes to threats from the right, refuse to recognize the threat to freedom of expression posed by the left, or simply fail to care if a few dead white male authors and their works go down the memory hole.

The central role of the American Library Association in determining which books, and causes, will feature prominently in Banned Books Week is unmistakable. In an email exchange with Book and Film Globe, Sue Arrowsmith, Miami-Dade Colleges director of media relations, emphasized this point.

Banned Books Week is a national celebration sponsored by the American Library Association. During that week, academic, public, and school libraries across the nation put together activities highlighting challenged books with the purpose of educating everyone about censorship [and] the values of literature. Miami-Dade College, like so many schools in the region and beyond, has participated every year, Arrowsmith stated.

Arrowsmith went on to suggest that the festival goes about promoting banned books in a neutral manner, without favoritism to any message or theme.

We dont necessarily highlight specific books/authors or themes at MDC. We focus on creating activities and events to highlight the importance of reading and engage the student body in conversations, she wrote.

That may all sound well and good. But by the organizers own admission, the selection of books to feature in the event was heavily dependent on lists compiled by the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the ALA. And, for its part, that office admits that a high degree of subjectivity goes into the drawing up of the lists and that they are quite far from comprehensive. The offices website states, The lists are based on information from media stories and voluntary reports sent to OIF from communities across the U.S.

In case the point still is not clear, the website further states, The Top 10 lists are only a snapshot of book challenges. Surveys indicate that 82-97% of book challengesdocumented requests to remove materials from schools or librariesremain unreported and receive no media.

Given the methodology here, it is fair to characterize the lists of suppressed books, which determined what titles would feature prominently during Banned Books Week, as lists of those works that individual librarians, booksellers, and others who took it upon themselves to file reports to the OIF would like to see circulate more freely. They are far from neutral or thorough.

In fact, virtually of the titles listed on the OIFs list of Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2021 embrace racial and sexual identity politics, sexual explicitness, and/or an anti-police agenda.

The list for 2020 was slightly more neutral and included a couple of worksHarper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird and John Steinbecks Of Mice and Menthat have fallen afoul of politically correct sensibilities.

But it is clear that the OIF put forward a monochromatic list for 2021 based on subjective criteria. Hence it is no surprise the Banned Books Week Twitter feed, which links to a website run by the ALAs Office for Intellectual Freedom and the Banned Books Week Coalition, retweeted a high volume of content from such left-leaning sources as PEN America, the Authors Guild, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and author Jonathan Friedman.

The heavy preponderance of content from such bodies leaves little doubt that Banned Books Week chose to take an explicitly political stance going beyond a purely objective and neutral defense of intellectual and creative freedom wherever and whenever it may be under attack. A typical retweet is the one of an announcement for a PEN America event in Detroit on September 24, which reads: Join us for a #BannedBooksWeek in-person discussion that celebrates Black gay literature in all of its permutations& offers strategies to push back against escalating book bans driven by anti-Blackness & homophobia.

You will search hard to find tweets or retweets of notifications of events focused on the plight of the authors of politically incorrect content in the current environment. But that doesnt mean that the threat to writers associated, fairly or unfairly, with the values and speech of a less egalitarian past is not real. Brave New World, Of Mice and Men, and To Kill a Mockingbird have come under attack in Florida jurisdictions.

In April 2022, the Miami New Times published lists of books banned in schools in Florida counties since July 2021. The lists established that the school district of Indian River County, one of the wealthiest in the nation, had made Brave New World and Of Mice and Men unavailable, while Palm Beach County suppressed To Kill a Mockingbird. One might expect a banned books fair taking place in Miami to call attention to this travesty.

But opinion is not settled and bad decisions sometimes get reversed. Another resource, the Florida Censorship Action database maintained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, tells us that Brave New World is no longer suppressed in any way in Indian River County and that Of Mice and Men is not banned outright there at this time. Rather, they have restricted the status of the latter work.

According to the same database, To Kill a Mockingbird has since returned, and Bryan Griffin, press secretary for Governor Ron DeSantis, stated in a tweet that the book is not currently banned in Florida but did face censorship in California in 2020 along with other works of literature.

All venues and organizations taking part in Banned Books Week should do their utmost to protest the troubles that To Kill a Mockingbird has faced. That Harper Lees novel underwent even temporary suppression is an outrage exemplifying the solipsistic, illogical mentality of the social justice warriors.

The book may contain a few terms that we in 2022 consider dated and offensive. But the irony of this books suppression by the woke authorities is supreme, for To Kill a Mockingbird offers some of the most eloquent denunciations of racism in any American novel. In his famous courtroom speech in Chapter 20, lawyer Atticus Finch repeatedly decries the evil assumptions that racists in his community make about the character of black citizens. He goes on to argue passionately that people in general, not this or that race or ethnicity, are flawed: There is not a person in this community has not told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.

One wonders what those who ban To Kill a Mockingbird make of the fact that Aaron Sorkin, one of the most outspoken liberals in Hollywood, adapted the novel for the stage in 2018, and that, according to an account by theater critic Kyle Smith in The New Criterion, the plays critique of bigotry and intolerance, and its appeal to our shared humanity, were so powerful and eloquent that they brought members of the audience to tears.

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Not All Banned Books - Book and Film Globe

This is an incredible story from The New York Times about Hollywood censorship. Meg Smaker made a documentary about four Islamic jihadists being de-programmed at a Saudi rehab center. Sundance accepted it. Some who had seen the movie said it was great, but that some right-wing voices might denounce it for humanizing the jihadists. But that's not what happened:

Arab and Muslim filmmakers and their white supporters accused Ms. Smaker of Islamophobia and American propaganda. Some suggested her race was disqualifying, a white woman who presumed to tell the story of Arab men.

Sundance leaders reversed themselves and apologized.

Abigail Disney, a grandniece of Walt Disney, had been the executive director of Jihad Rehab and called it freaking brilliant in an email to Ms. Smaker. Now she disavowed it.

The film landed like a truckload of hate, Ms. Disney wrote in anopen letter.

Ms. Smakers film has become near untouchable, unable to reach audiences. Prominent festivals rescinded invitations, and critics in the documentary world took to social media and pressured investors, advisers and even her friends to withdraw names from the credits. She is close to broke.

What a gutless crapweasel Abigail Disney is. She loved the movie until her cool lefty friends hated it. She is a huge figure in the documentary filmmaking world, so this about-face from her is very consequential.

One person who defends the film is Lorraine Ali, a Muslim who is also a Los Angeles Times critic:

Lorraine Ali, a television critic for The Los Angeles Times who is Muslim,wrotethat the film was a humanizing journey through a complex emotional process of self-reckoning and accountability, and a look at the devastating fallout of flawed U.S. and Saudi policy.

She is dismayed with Sundance.

In the independent film world there is a lot of weaponizing of identity politics, Ms. Ali said in an interview. The film took pains to understand the culture these men came from and molded them. It does a disservice to throw away a film that a lot of people should see.

According to the Times, the lefty Muslim critics and their white allies demand that the film tell a political story that blames Western oppression for turning them into jihadists. These people are against art, are against truth-telling. Read on:

When I, a practicing Muslim woman, say that this film is problematic,wroteJude Chehab, aLebanese American documentarian, my voice should be stronger than a white woman saying that it isnt. Point blank.

Ms. Disney, the former champion, wrote, I failed, failed and absolutely failed to understand just how exhausted by and disgusted with the perpetual representation of Muslim men and women as terrorists or former terrorists or potential terrorists the Muslim people are.

Her apology and that of Sundance shook the industry. The South by Southwest and San Francisco festivals rescinded invitations.

Jihad Turk, former imam of Los Angeless largest mosque, was baffled. In December, his friend Tim Disney brother of Abigail invited him to a screening.

My first instinct, he said, was Oh, not another film on jihad and Islam. Then I watched and it was introspective and intelligent. My hope is that there is a courageous outlet that is not intimidated by activists and their too narrow views.

This is infuriating. Who the hell do these people think they are to believe that their ethnic background gives them the right to tell artists what stories they can and cannot tell, and how they have to tell it? I know that's a naive question in 2022, but we can't stop asking it. Think of all the good films that will never get made because cowards like Abigail Disney yield to left-wing censors.

And think too about who these politically correct filmmakers are making movies for: the kind of narrow audiences who want to see Islamic terrorists as sympathetic figures, victims of Mighty Whitey. Think of the kind of narrow, rigid minds that only want to see movies that reinforce their point of view, and who not only don't want to see anything that challenges that point of view, but don't want anyone else to see that kind of movie either.

We're dealing with something similar, but far less consequential, in Baton Rouge. A black undergraduate at LSU is angry at some 1930s-era murals in one of the academic buildings on campus. "RACISSSSSSST!" she says. More from the Baton Rouge Advocate:

Her request that LSU remove murals from the walls of Allen Hall isn't new, but compared to those who have raised questions previously, Alexia Kimbleis reaching a much-wider audiencewhen she asks that the university take down paintings that show Black people laboring in agricultural fields while White people work in more comfortable settings.

She highlighted the muralson TikTok this month, drawing nearly a half-million views and more than 90,000 likes.

I wanted to draw emotion and capture the essence of what its like to be a Black student at a (predominantly White instituion)," she said. "Not every Black student can attend an HBCU school, nor do they want to, but they deserve a place here. They should be accepted here, they shouldnt be judged and have this constant reminder that they dont belong here.

Umm ... what? How does a historically accurate depiction of agricultural life in an earlier era of Louisiana history telegraph to a black student in 2022 that she "doesn't belong" at the university? And guess what: the murals don't depict slavery. They depict agricultural life in Louisiana in the 1930s. But that detail doesn't bother Miss Thin Skin:

Those showing obvious differences between Black and White people remain. For example, Blacks are depicted laboring over sugar cane and cotton; White people are shown in scientific settings.

"Walking on campus and having that be one of the first things I saw going into my classroom, it really took me aback," Kimble said.

She wants there to have been black scientists in Louisiana at the time? Well, that would have been a great thing, but they did not exist here. Does she think farm labor is somehow degrading? Who on earth would be offended by this, except someone who is bound and determined to be offended? It is a great thing that we have made so much social progress in the last century since the murals were painted that now there are black scientists in this state -- and black people doing every kind of work. But that's not how things were in the 1930s. Alexia Kimble wants to airbrush history.

What's so telling about the story is that nobody is willing to defend the murals on the record. They know how this goes in our culture: you speak up for this work of art, you'll be denounced as a racist, and who knows what doors might close to you? If the reporter challenged Kimble to defend her views, it doesn't really come across in the piece. It reads like a story written by a reporter who thinks the black student's criticism of this mural needs no defense. To be fair, if he tried but couldn't get anybody to defend the murals on the record, that's not his fault. But on evidence of what's presented, he doesn't seem to have challenged Kimble.

Take a look at this video LSU produced nine years ago, featuring a Florence-based art restorer, talking about the history of these frescoes, and the care that went into creating them:

Yet Alexia Kimble seems to know none of this history. She simply gazes upon the murals, decides that they offend her, and is now leading a campaign to destroy them. This is barbarism: the idiotic destruction of things you can't understand, or refuse to understand, because you can.

If you look at her TikTok page, you see that Alexia Kimble has a Rich Inner Life. She's an obese pansexual who loves to film herself lip-synching. For example:

We are not dealing with Stokely Carmichael here.

In this screenshot from one of her TikTok videos about the murals, we learn that this Young Scholar hasn't bothered to discover that the triggering murals don't depict slaves. Seriously: she's trying to have the university destroy a work of art that she has not troubled to understand:

She told a Baton Rouge TV station:

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I just want to let every Black person know that goes to LSU or any PWI, you have every right to be here, you have every right to make this place comfortable for you, said Kimble.

Of course you have every right to be there, but you don't have every right to bully people into accommodating your every desire, and calling them racist if they don't. It doesn't look like there are plans by LSU to yield to this whiny child's demands, which is good. But whenever institutions do, they teach young people that the way to get what they want in the world is to complain endlessly about minor things, and to expect those in authority to give them what they want.

It frustrates me in part because I looked at those murals every day I went to class in Allen Hall in the 1980s. It never once occurred to me that they depicted anything degrading about black people, or made white people look especially good. I thought that they were what, in fact, they are: period murals in the WPA style illustrating what life looked like in Louisiana in that era. They are beautiful. But left-wing people won't let us have beautiful things. They demand that we airbrush history. Whether it's cloddish student activists like Alexia Kimble, or jelly-spined zillionaire film executives like Abigail Disney, these people hate history, they hate art, and they hate free thought. And, of course, the irresponsible local media -- the Advocate reporter, and the TV station -- simply parrot Kimble's claims as if they had merit.

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Attack Of The Left-Wing Philistines! - The American Conservative

To the Editor:

Abortion is healthcare. As an ob/gyn, I help usher women safely through the joys and sorrows of childbearing, including abortion care. Since the June Supreme Court decision, state legislators are free to dictate the medical care I and my colleagues across the nation provide, however misinformed or politically motivated they may be.

Women in conservative states are already feeling the impact, even when seeking care for miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. At this time, no state explicitly restricts care for these conditions. However, their treatment often includes the exact same procedures and medications used to provide elective abortion. There are already many reports of pharmacies withholding medications for the treatment of miscarriage.

In Texas, any layperson may sue if they even suspect an illegal abortion. Physicians in some states may face extensive legal fees, loss of their medical license and even prison time. When doctors and hospitals are forced to weigh factors other than the safety of their patients, like the appearance of impropriety or financial risk, the patients suffer.

Conservative legislatures across the country have repeatedly proposed and sometimes passed bills with problematic and incorrect medical statements. For example, right wing candidates are touting abortion bans from the moment of fertilization. This phrasing puts the legality of IVF, IUD contraceptive devices and Plan B type morning after pills in jeopardy. Many politicians profess their disdain for late term or partial birth abortions. Both terms are purely political and have no place or meaning in actual abortion care.

A 2020 Ohio bill even proposed physicians should have to reimplant ectopic pregnancies - a literal scientific impossibility that left every ob/gyn I know either laughing or shaking their head in horror because the lawmaker had clearly not bothered to discuss this sweeping and life altering proposal with any doctor.

Another favorite talking point is the exception for the life and health of the mother. In all my years of medical training and practice Ive never been taught about the mythical line that, when crossed, means there is an official threat to the patients life. How much bleeding is enough? How high the fever? How many seizures? What if they attempted suicide?

What about delayed cancer treatment? Im still early in my career, but Ive encountered every one of these tragic scenarios and many more.

A woman is 14 times more likely to die during childbirth than during an elective abortion. For many that number is much higher. How dying does she need to be? Which begs the question, who decides? Surely it shouldnt be the politician hoping to score points by casually spouting medical nonsense, ignorant of the devastating real world consequences.

He doesnt have to look into the eyes of the woman who narrowly survived her last delivery, the woman whose baby wont ever leave the NICU, the woman whose children already go to bed hungry, the woman whose partner beats her senseless and tells her she doesnt get a choice. Thats my job, apparently.

The science of medicine is far from exact. Thats especially true for the dynamic, wondrous, but sometimes perilous process of pregnancy and childbirth. While wed like things to be black and white, the reality is innumerable shades of grey. Decisions surrounding pregnancy, pregnancy complications and pregnancy loss are complicated and deeply personal.

I sincerely hope the people of Iowa and nationwide can recognize this and vote accordingly.

Emily Garrett, MDEverett, WA

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Letter to the Editor by Emily Garrett, MD | The Standard Newspaper - Waukon Standard

The Karnataka government has tabled the Kannada Language Comprehensive Development Bill in the legislature in the week gone by. The bill seeks to establish the primacy of Kannada in Karnatakain education, communication and its use through establishments such as the government and its many offices, banks and institutions of higher education.

The bill is comprehensive, even as segments of media pick up the more noisy issues to highlight. In many ways, the bill picks its direction from the Sarojini Mahishi Report (1984), which made as many as 58 recommendations to safeguard Kannada (and, in turn, Kannadigas) by and large. Finally, Kannada and its primacy seem to be a stated goal of the government.

Election-time conspiracy theories apart (whether true or imagined), the bill at hand looks robust. Its stated intent is solid. To an extent, it copies what other states in India already have in placeand in additionit adds a couple of dimensions that other states just might follow in the future, as each state goes on to establish the primacy of its own language.

The beauty of the bill to me is that Kannada gets primacy in Karnataka. And rightly so. Tamil must get primacy in Tamil Nadu, just as Marathi must get primacy in Maharashtra. Indian states were really divided on a linguistic basis for a start. Today, in many ways, our 28 States and 9 Union Territories are language homogenous structures which have become entities that exist and govern themselves.

Federalism is the bed on which the states and the Indian Union sleep. Language, to that extent, is the one big binding force. A force that knits the state together, just as it separates one state from another. In many ways, it is not the political border of the various states that divides one from the other; it is the language that is spoken, the language that is lived, and indeed the language that is experienced by its peoples.

Every state is more homogenous than the country at large. This is seen in the food, culture, custom, dressing style and more. This homogeneity of a state is finally wrapped together by language. The language that is spoken, written, read and assimilated in all else as a culture. Language is, therefore, important. Very important.

This bill in Karnataka comes at an opportune time when there is plenty of social and political angst in the South of the country on the subject of Hindi imposition. Tamil Nadu leads vociferously in this debate, and all South Indian states follow. West Bengal and Maharashtra are not too far away in order of protest decibel levels. There is a very passionate call that asks for the primacy of the local language to be maintained at completely high levels.

I do believe the BJP Basavaraj Bommai government in Karnataka has read the pulse of the people of Karnataka right, and here comes the billall dressed up and ready to run.

The proposed legislation is a positive one for me if it establishes Kannada in its rightful place in Karnataka. A lot of us have forgotten to speak the language when we must. Many of us do not read enough of it, even if we know how. A lot of us pass qualitative and elitist value judgments on people who speak different languages. Many imagine the English-speaking to be at the top of the pyramid of language hierarchy, followed by the Hindi-speaking ones, and those that speak the local language occupy a different peg altogether. We need to think differently now. This is a completely politically incorrect thing to write, but write it, I must.

By default, English is considered today to be the language that gets you corporate jobs. Hindi is the language that gets you Central government jobs. And Kannada is the language that gets you local state government jobs. Its time to churn this pot up a bit now. The local language of the state should be able to get you the best corporate jobs, just as it should be able to get you the best government jobs.

We need to establish in every Indian state pride in the local language that is spoken, written, and read. We can have one tax. We can have one market. But we need to have many languages. The many languages of India. This is indeed the strength of the real India. Unity in its diversity. We need to get closer to the local language than we are now. And that makes us local. And that makes us belong.

Even as the media focuses on the proposed noisy diktat in Karnataka that no incentives will be given to firms not giving first preference to Kannadigas in jobs, I do believe this is not the way to do it. I divide sops into two. A first-mile sop and a last-mile sop. Merit must always take first place at the last mile when it comes to jobs. I am okay with the state government giving me a first-mile sop. Give me the best facilities free of cost in educational establishments of every kind and in vocational and tech training centres operated for the purpose of helping the Kannadiga with competence building. Give me incentives as a Kannadiga to run as good as the rest, if not better. This is a first-mile sop. But do not insist on reservations of jobs at the last mile. It will kill my animal instinct to perform, compete and out-beat everyone else out there. As a Kannadiga, I do believe I can. Instill in me the pride of achievement through competency building, not through a process of reservation by diktat. It will kill my animal instinct. I am big on this. I am good as anyone else is.

At the end of the day, an act is only as good as its implementation is. We just may get a great act in place after due discussion by our lawmakers, but God is in the implementation. As is the Devil. Therefore lets wait and watch, as even this bill shall pass!

Brand Guru & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc

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The primacy of Kannada has finally arrived - The New Indian Express

Is Donald Trump charismatic? Surely not. And yet

Charismas a bit like that old line about obscenity: I cant define it, but I know it when I see it. Or perhaps better, when I feel it.

US historian David Bell remarks of the enthusiasms driving the Trump movement: Trumps base [is] tied to him by one of the most remarkable charismatic relationships in American history. But what does this mean? Probably most people reading this will be nodding without quite being able to explain what theyre assenting to.

Some say charisma emanates from everything thats most sacred. Others say its revolutionary, that it breaks with everything. Some say certain people or things just have it; that in some sense it is in them. Others insist that charisma is completely situational: you just had to be there. Is charisma a power or is it a relation? Is it a substance or is it an experience? Is it a force for good or does it lead us straight to hell? Is charisma compatible with democracy or does it undermine it?

Lets hold back on the urge to define, as if a definition would make the moving parts line up properly. Lets sit a bit, instead, with the movement, paying attention to what comes up. What kinds of desires, what kinds of anxieties.

Cornel West, in a talk given to a church congregation on the South Side of Chicago that I wont hesitate to call a sermon, once remarked, Donald Trump isnt charismatic; hes cathartic. It makes sense that West should have drawn that distinction in a sacred space. After all, the term charisma comes down to us from early Christianity. Its one of the disciple Pauls ways of talking about the power of Gods grace. So what the devil am I doing invoking Trumpian charisma? Even if we use charisma in a secular way, shouldnt we still be careful to separate the revolutionary leader from the sinister demagogue, the shepherd of souls from the maleficent mesmerizer? Maybe we cant have one without the other.

The concept charisma is itself charismatic, and in just this ambivalent way. It attracts and repels. It seems to point beyond normative questions to an energetic zone. A reminder that our political life depends on infra-political energies and attachments. Maybe charisma is the liveliness of those energies and attachments? It certainly seems to hover close to phenomena and experiences that feel at once quite familiar and quite extraordinary. A proposition, then: thinking charisma means considering the activation of the latent dimensions of social and political life.

Max Weber (18641920) is the canonical social theorist of charisma. There is a great deal that could be said and has been said about Webers thinking on charisma. There is also a tendency to imagine that every discussion of charisma in social theory either has to affirm or refute Weber. Lets not get caught up in that. Instead, lets consider two aspects of Webers theory of charisma that seem particularly useful in these Trumpish times. (No, Trump is no longer president of the US as I write this in July 2022. But he could be again. In any case, Trumpishness will outlive him. Those energies and attachments will findare already findingother forms.)

The first Weberian thought that seems relevant here is that charisma is economically alien. It exceeds and disrupts everything that has to do with ordinary economies, with householding from day to day, with expected ratios of effort, reward, and virtue. Charisma interrupts a world that is all about keeping things ticking over. Weber says that there is an ausseralltglich quality to charismasomething extraordinary in the sense of disrupting, or being external to, the everyday. The Biblical messiah who simultaneously evokes and rejects the given law says: It is written, but I say unto you

From the sublime to the banal: management and leadership theory, which has tried to domesticate charisma for its own ends (Top Strategies for Leveraging Your Inner Charismatic!), preserves something of this extra-economic dimension even at the heart of the business world. Its there in the distinction between transactional and transformational leadership; between the leader I might follow because theres something in it for me, and the one who makes me feel that my work is more than a job.

The second Weberian observation that is useful here is that charisma is always in statu nascendi: it is always in a state of being born. Psychoanalytic theorists of charisma have seized on this thought, since it implies that charisma has something to do with the force of what is latent. The force of some version of the Freudian unconscious. This means that charisma cant just be explained as the strategic or cynical performance of positions or identities that are already fully manifest and known. Rather, theres always something emergent and unpredictable about charismatic activation. Something that hovers at the very edge of what we can say at any given time. Here lies an important reason not just for the force of charisma but also for its deep moral ambiguity.

What Im after here is not really an argument about American politics. I am suggesting that thinking charisma helps us to understand Trump and Trumpism, and vice versa. But also, more broadly, that thinking Trumpian charisma gets us to the heart of something fundamental and yet persistently ambiguous about social and political life as such. What? I want to say that Trumpism manifests, with unusual openness, something that is always true. Namely, that social life everywhere and at all times rests on energies that are in themselves amoral, beyond good and evil. Energies in which anxiety is riveted to enjoyment, fear to fascination. Trumpism may be pathological. But thats not the same as saying that its a symptom of something pathological.

So what about this supposedly disruptive, anti-economic quality of Trumpian charisma? Sure, Trumps behavior, both as a presidential candidate and as president, broke with every expectation regarding the suitable comportment of someone aspiring to any elected office in the US, let alone the highest elected office in the land. But surely this was just a symptomatic expression of long-standing underlying tensions, not least the yawning gap between all the solemn, pious talk about the dignity of the republic and the reality of extreme poverty and racialized violence? Surely Trump was just a more extreme version of the cult of narcissism that has long inflected American public life? Wasnt this just the raging peak of a long arc of faltering white privilege? And what sense could it make to say that Trumpian charisma is economically alien, given that Trump built his profile around his splashy career as an entrepreneur? Wasnt Trump actually the first US president who was already a consumer brand?

The first thing to remember here is that Trumps record as a businessman has always been exceedingly bumpy. Its always been more about visibility than about economic reason. Trump brought to his political career what he had learned as a celebrity: a curious capacity to redeem incompetence as a kind of immediacy and authenticity. In any case, it was ratings gold. Still, decades before Trump ran for office some insisted that this kind of hyper-mediated, branded charisma should at most be called pseudo-charisma. Its not the real thing, the argument goes, because its been pre-engineered by spin doctors and marketing mavens. There are two problems with this position. First, is it not on those occasions when Trump has to read from a teleprompter, when he has to stay on script, that his charisma most palpably wilts? Second, calling hyper-mediated charisma inauthentic implies that whatever it is in us that responds to it is also inauthentic, or regressive to the point of being politically invalid. It may of course be that the whole complex turns out, looking back, to have been evil. But thats a different matter.

I often think of David Aberbachs formula for the false prophet: Though the man was a fake, the longing was real.

Is charisma intentional? Isnt charisma all about manipulation? Does Trump know what hes doing, moment to moment, at the level of strategy? Isnt he perhaps more of a political idiot savant, uncannily skilled at reading his crowds and actualizing their latencies? And isnt this apparent lack actually what it is all about: the fascination of a leader who, for a change, seems completely to lack interiority. All those features of the normative liberal subject: self-reflection, considered intention, conscience and so onnone of that matters, none of that is there.

Instead, there isfully, hotlythe external drama of untrammeled action, even as the Trump administration routinely struggled to push through its marquee initiatives. (Consider the difference between an administration [Trump] that thrives, energetically, on being thwarted, and one [Biden] that dwindles ever further into nothingness for the same reason.) The storming of the US Capitol by a crowd of Trump supporters on January 6, 2021 was the logical culmination of this fixation on untrammeled action. The aimlessness of the insurrectionists, once inside the sanctum sanctorum, was consistent with a drive to visible presence above all else. To those with eyes to see, the storming of the Capitol was a version of the kind of super-efficacious result that, when it comes to prophets, is sometimes called a miraclethe kind of exception that is a standard feature of charismatic authority.

Speaking of prophets, a good third of Trump voters were in fact Evangelical Christians. On the face of it, as David Bell observes, this seem unlikely: Has there ever been a more perfect walking embodiment of the seven deadly sins? But sin is closer to grace than it is to reason. The moral drama of the dialectic of sin and redemption has a charismatic potential that reasonable career politicians like Joe Biden cannot hope to match.

Isnt the prophet who fails his followers quickly rejectedor worse? How is Trump able to sustain his popularity? How was he able to thrive amid the countless scandals and non-achievements of his presidency? The intensity of fact-checking and lie-detecting during his television appearances would routinely threaten to break the internet. But it did nothing to crumple Trumps mojo. How come? As Ive argued in detail elsewhere, its not so much that Trumps followers believed Trump as that they enjoyed him. The currency of Trumpian charisma is elation rather than facts. Trump inciting chants of lock her up! or boasting that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it have everything to do with the fascination of a life beyond the law. (It is written, but I say unto you ) Such a primal master, even in buffoonish guise, is by definition both exciting and appalling.

To say that Trump-fans enjoy Trump is also to say that they enjoy themselves in him. Charisma involves an elated experience of shared bodily substancein that, too, there is an uncanny line that runs from the early Christians to Trumpism. For the disciple Paul, the holy charism (Gods grace) stood against nomos (lawboth Roman and Jewish). It marked and animated the Christian community as a shared body, at once physical, spiritual, and political. Every time Trump voters are dismissed as a basket of deplorables, the attack isnt just symbolic. Its substantialfelt as an assault on a shared body. And on the world in which that body wants to live. The more liberals enjoy calling out Trumpian lies, the more they in turn escalate the charismatic enjoyment of his followers. Peter Hessler, writing in the New Yorker, quoted a Trump voter in Colorado: Ive never been this invested in a political leader in my life The more they hate him, the more I want him to succeed. Because what they hate about him is what they hate about me.

This kind of participatory elation, this kind of enjoyment, involves a double dynamic: identification and activation. This is where things get more psychoanalyticwhere we grapple with what it means to say that charisma involves the activation of latencies, that charisma appears in statu nascendi. Psychoanalytic takes on charisma after Freud, starting with Heinz Kohut, have argued that charisma is a bond in which narcissistic injuries come alive on both sides of the encounter, in a kind of mutually amplifying feedback loop between leader and followers. The charismatic leader tries to repair their own wounded self-regard by seeking attention and adulation through outsized public gestures. Witness Trumps addiction to mega-rallies even after he has long since gained (and later lost) the Oval Office. The follower, in turn, finds in the superhuman scale of the leaders gestures an ego-ideal that overcompensates for their own humiliations. This helps to explain the extraordinarily powerful seduction of Trumps seeming invulnerability to scandal and his refusal of politesse. For his followers, it is an opportunity to participate in omnipotence.

One of the great advantages of grounding charisma in unconscious latencies is that we dont get stuck in the kind of tautological culturalism that is too often used to explain the charismatic effect. This kind of argument says that a leaders message resonates with its audience because it overlaps with their already existing beliefs: their culture, their values. If we assume, conversely, that charisma only works by activating latent resonances, then it cannot, by definition, be (only) a question of strategically appealing to something already known. Instead, in psychoanalytic terms, we could say that charisma works by transferentially animating needs and conflicts which, until that moment of animation, havent been articulated. This helps to explain the intensity of charismatic experience, the way its described as a life-changing break with how things have been: Ive never been this emotionally invested in a political leader in my life.

It also helps to explain how charismatic experience often feels like telepathy, precognition. Like the charismatic person knows what you need before you do. In that sense, charisma is the active externalizationand by the same token, the external activationof the unconscious: the place where we dont know that we know. Charisma, writes Donald McIntosh, designates the force of the externalized unconscious tendencies which slip into awareness in the guise of an external force. And: The aura of magic springs from the resonance between what is perceived to be the external reality and the unconscious thought which is the real source of the experience.

Actually, I dont think we should be too quick to say that the unconscious thought is the real source of the experience. Because without the external force of the charismatic being, there would be no slip[ping] into awareness, at least not in this intensely evental form. And to speak of the charismatic being only in terms of force downplays, I think, the concrete specificity of their magic. That its this word, this gesture, not that. As much as its critics might want to dismiss it that way, charisma is never generic. As Weber knew, charisma can be routinized. It can be ritualized. But in that case, it becomes citational rather than evental.

What about the puzzling fact that deeply flawed, even repulsive people are routinely experienced as charismatic? Charismatic attraction has little to do, at root, with moral approval. Freud taught us that attraction and attachment are fundamentally ambivalent. And it may be that the most charismatic person is the one who activates the deepest ambivalences. Ambivalences that go way beyond good and evil. This is the mark of jouissance, the intensity of an enjoyment that goes beyond pleasure and pain. The flame that burns where vitalization and self-destruction are indistinguishable. A Trump voter told Tom McCarthy: If I have to lose it all, I need for him to win.

Can the charismatic effect be predicted? After Trump won in 2016, pundits, psephologists, and social scientists fell over each other to ask forgiveness for their failure. How could this have happened? quickly turned into If we had only asked the right people, looked in the right places But perhaps the lesson of charisma is that its eventality precludes adequate prediction. If the grounds of the charismatic effect are latent or even repressed, then its quite possible that the decisive factors that lead to a particular electoral outcome arent actualized before that decisive moment in which they make all the difference. Which also means that they cant be documented in advance. At least not in the guise that they will assume in the emergence of the event.

This is also why Trump isnt simply politically incorrect. Its not just that he says what others are thinking but are afraid to say. Its also that he ismiraculouslyable to say what others didnt even know they wanted to sayand often, I suspect, what even he didnt know he wanted to say until he says it.

Mainstream political analysis of charisma heaves with melodrama. The stench of appalling atavisms and totalitarian teloi. But its too easy to lunge for the f-word every time Trumpish charisma comes up for discussion, even if the Trump movement often evinces clearly fascistoid tendencies. For good reasons, liberal critics are alarmed by charisma, seeing in it only unreason and in unreason only falsehood. For good reasons: charisma requires that we think politics in terms of psychosocial factors that cant simply be dismissed as regressive or as unworthy of a mature public sphere. But thats exactly how charisma is too often treated. That stern, arms-folded line-holding against charisma, like a secularized version of the priest praying ever more fervently in the presence of the demon: Get thee behind me, post-truth! Down, down, myth and spectacle! The same flicker of panic, of terrified recognition behind the staunch stance.

In fact, Trumpism is a liberal wet dream. It makes it all too easy to reduce the power and potential of charisma to an obscene cartoon. This is a massive lost opportunity to suspend our normative anxiety long enough to understand something more fundamental. McIntosh put it admirably half a century ago:

The ability to tap these forces lies behind everything that is creative and constructive in human action, but also behind the terrible destructiveness of which humans are capable. White and black magic have the same source. In the social and political realm, there is no power to match that of the leader who is able to evoke and harness the unconscious resources of his followers.

Is Donald Trump charismatic? Hell yes.

This essay is a distillation and reworking of a longer piece, Populist Leadership and Charisma, in Elgar Research Handbook on Populism, ed. Yannis Stavrakakis and Giorgos Katsambekis (Edward Elgar Publishing, forthcoming).

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Charisma in the Age of Trumpism - Notes - E-Flux

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Social media has again targeted Maroon 5 frontman and former coach of The Voice, Adam Levine, by turning his alleged DMs into sarcastic memes. This happened last Monday, September 19 when the 43-year-old pop star was accused of cheating on his wife Behati Prinsloo with Instagram model Sumner Stroh.

Stroh released a series of chats from their conversation last week that proves the duo probably shared a bond beyond friendship. Stroh took to TikTok on Monday and clarified that both she and Levine were texting each other for over a year before they lost contact.

One of the messages that was circulated by Stroh showed Levines comment where he called her body absurd. The message by Levine read: You are 50 times hotter in person. And so am I hahahah. Another screenshot shared by Stroh read: That body of yours is absurd. Levine, who has been married to former Victorias Secret Angel for the past eight years and went on to become the father of her children, vehemently denied the cheating allegations made against him but took full responsibility for crossing a line.

Speaking with TMZ, Levine said: I used poor judgment in speaking with anyone other than my wife in ANY kind of flirtatious manner. I did not have an affair, nevertheless, I crossed the line during a regrettable period of my life. In certain instances, it became inappropriate. I have addressed that and taken proactive steps to remedy this with my family. I have addressed that and taken proactive steps to remedy this with my family.

Twitter, however, isnt ready to let go of this leakage and turned Levines private messages into outrageous memes, some of which can be identified as politically incorrect. The specific message that ignited this uproar is that body is absurd. As expected, the tweets are going viral with this phrase. Most of the tweets showed images of bodies that are not particularly appealing by conventional standards.

It doesnt seem like the allegations had any major impact on the couples marriage as the day after the great reveal, Levine and Prinsloo were seen picking up their children Gio and Dusty from their school in Montecito, California. On Wednesday, both were spotted happily holding hands and running errands. It seems like everything is fine and sorted with the couple and they are ready to welcome their third child despite the deluge of sarcastic attacks.

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Twitter having a little fun with 'that body of yours is absurd' viral tweet. - We Got This Covered

Bill Maher says indicting Donald Trump would likely turn him into a martyr, but that the former president has to be held accountable for what he did.

Theres always a risk of everything with anything controversial and anything important, the Real Time host told ITK in an exclusive Thursday interview, when asked if an indictment against Trump could ignite a civil war.

Its a valid argument, Maher said, Youre going to gin up the other side to an unbelievable degree. And there is going to be violence.

Trump has repeatedly said in interviews that he doesnt believe the American public would accept him being indicted, and has warned there would be big problems if he were.

But the alternative is worse. You cant allow someone to try a coup! Maher, 66, exclaimed of Trumps role in the deadly Jan. 6 riot last year at the Capitol.

I mean, this country cant even do a coup right, the HBO personality cracked. In other countries, when theres a coup and it fails, there are repercussions: jail or, in many places, worse.

Im not suggesting worse for Donald Trump, but I am suggesting that if you try a coup I mean, for fs sake, he still hasnt conceded the last election, Maher said of the 45th presidents unsubstantiated claims of election fraud in his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.

And hes plotting to do it again, as Ive been saying for years, Maher added.

The DOJs probe into Trumps handling of classified and top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago, the ex-presidents Florida resort home, should also lead to criminal charges, according to Maher.

You cant steal nuclear secrets and put them in the shed with the croquet equipment. What the f are we talking about here? Maher said in an incredulous tone.

This guy cannot run again. And he has to be held accountable for what he did the last time. This cannot go on, Maher said. Enough of this nonsense of we only count elections when we win them.

But someone who Maher doesnt necessarily want out of the political picture is Biden.

If you asked me six months ago, I would have said no, but now Im not so sure, the comedian said when ITK questioned whether Biden should run again in 2024. While the commander in chief said in an interview last week that he intends to run for reelection, he told 60 Minutes that he hadnt made a firm decision.

Critics have cited Bidens age as an issue, noting that he would be 81 in 2024. But Maher defended the 79-year-old president.

I do think age is the last acceptable prejudice we have in this country, ageism, Maher said.

I think its ironic would be the most charitable word I could think of for people who cant stand any kind of bigotry, but have no problem with that kind of bigotry, he said.

Im not saying you should necessarily be president when youre 100, but Ive seen people on television who are 100 who were interviewed and they seem to have all their marbles. What this country seems to forget is that experience does matter, Maher contended.

Ticking off a string of legislative victories for Democrats, including Biden signing the CHIPS and Science Act, as well as putting his signature on a sweeping bill to lower health care costs and address climate change, Maher said, I think the reason why Joe Biden has had a really great last six months, is because hes 80 years old, or whatever he is, because hes seen it all before. Thats what age does, you see the patterns come up over and over again.

But Maher says despite recent political wins, Democrats desperately need some new blood.

I think they need 100 new faces, Maher said with a laugh.

The Democratic Party I think does look at the moment like they have a weak bench, but maybe that will change in primary season.

Famously liberal Maher who described himself earlier this year on Real Time as an unmarried, pot-smoking libertine has made headlines and won glowing coverage on the right in recent months for speaking out against Democrats. He said in an interview this week with Variety that the biggest problem for Democrats ahead of 2024 was their woke baggage.

I am happy that everybody else is too cowardly on the left to call out their own people when theyre plainly crazy about stuff. And it leaves more comedy for me because I go where the comedy is. If youre going to be ridiculous, Im going to call you out, Maher told ITK.

I do get a lot of coverage on Fox News now, but they will only talk about like the 10 percent of the show where I say something rotten about the left always deserved, I think and theyll leave out the 90 percent where Im criticizing Trump and the Republicans, Maher said.

The people who watch my show understand.

But does criticism from the left sting at all?

No. Its a badge of honor. Everybody should be doing it.I mean, people on the left understand how nutty a lot of the stuff is thats coming out from the left, Maher said, bringing up a piece published earlier this month in The Atlantic that detailed efforts to stop separating school sports teams strictly by sex.

Its not that Democratic lawmakers believe that the perfect people to read to five-year-olds are drag queens, said Maher, naming a number of hot-button, cablenews topics du jour. Its just that they wont they wont say anything about it, so it looks to the whole country like the entire Democratic Party is thinking that its equally possible for men to get pregnant, or abolishing the police, or whatever nonsense theyre on to these days.

Maher said the current polarized political climate with some Americans fearing about the future of the nations democracy doesnt make doing his job as a comedian any harder. The former Politically Incorrect host is certainly staying busy. In addition to his weekly HBO show, he launched a podcast this year, Club Random, in which he delves into hourlong conversations with celebrities including Woody Harrelson, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and Saturday Night Live alum Leslie Jones on everything except politics. And hes touring the country doing stand-up, including a Nov. 12 appearance at Madison Square Garden as part of the New York Comedy Festival.

Comedys always gonna be there, said Maher. After every president leaves, they always ask the same question in the press: What are you going to do [now that President] Bush is gone? Youre right. Im just gonna give up and go home. Nothing will be ever be funny again, he quipped.

Especially on the Republican side, they constantly come up with crazier, and nuttier, and more ridiculous candidates. I mean, I thought Bush was bad. And then, you know, [2008 GOP vice presidential candidate] Sarah Palin stepped up.And now we have [Republican Reps.] Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (Fla.).

They never know any bounds, the Republican Party. Ill give them that. There is no bottom. You think youre at the bottom, then they will come up with somebody worse. And theyre also masters of nominating the are you fing kidding me? candidate.You know, Donald Trump, Maher said.

Comedy is fine. And my comedy, especially, is great because I get more of a mixed crowd. I wouldnt say Trump people exactly, butI get so much love when I go into the critique of the left, he continued.

And I think a lot of them are Democrats who want to hear that message. They want their party to get back to a sane, center-left position, and they dont see anybody voicing that for them.

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Maher wants Trump indicted, says former president has to be held accountable - The Hill

Some books of regional interest for September:

Treasure State by C.J. Box (Minotaur Books)

In C.J. Boxs latest Cassie Dewell novel, the PI agrees to take on the case of a wealthy Florida widow bilked out of her fortune by a smooth conman named Marc Daly. A previous investigator traced the mam to Anaconda, then disappeared. Funny thing is, Anacondas founder was named Mark Daly. Cassie discovers Marc has bilked other women, using the names of different Montana copper kings.

Marc turns out to be so friendly and charming that Cassie falls for him. His friend, the deputy sheriff, however, is a vicious killer, and hes on to Cassie.

Meanwhile, folks in Montana, including a friend of Cassies, are hunting for a treasure chest with more than $3 million in gold, hidden somewhere in the West. Clues to the location are on a poem posted in a restaurant. Its all a bit like the Forrest Finn treasure hunt of a few years ago, except that the perpetrator is unknown. When a man calls Cassie claiming he hid the treasure and offering her $25,000 to identify him, she wonders if hes a nut job. Then an envelope with $2,000 is left for her. Cassie takes on the challenge.

Wanna bet Cassie solves both cases?

The Paradise That Lurks in Female Smiles, by Gary Reilly (Running Meter Press)

So what do you do if youre a fortyish creative writing teacher at night school and the sexiest, most beautiful woman in the world walks into your classroom and says she wants to be a writer? And all you can think about is bedding her? You tell her shes a brilliant writer and lie about sending her manuscript off to a nonexistent editor friend at the New Yorker. Mission accomplished.

Well, beware of what you wish for. Linda Hathaway quickly moves in with Charley Quinn, bringing with her a case filled with more pills than you can dream of. Its enough to make him think hes gone to heaven. But not quite. Linda has too many secrets and an unsavory past. And bad things keep happening to Charley.

Drew, Charleys perennial student, shows Charley an acceptance letter he received from the New Yorker. Charley realizes its not only a fake but was written on his own Smith Corona. Then Charley loses his part-time janitorial job. He cant help but wonder if Lindas involved.

The story is written in stream-of-conscientiousness style, with Charleys jaded view of both men and women. Women are crazy. They think that men are weak and can be defeated, Charley thinks. And men know it. They play women for chumps and take everything they can get.

The Paradise That Lurks in Female Smiles (the title comes from Confessions of an English Opium-Eater) is No. 16 of 25 novels written by Gary Reilly, a Denver cab driver who died in 2011. When Reillys friends writer Mark Stevens and former Denver Post cartoonist Mike Keefe read the manuscripts, they were so impressed that they established Running Meter Press to publish them. The works show enormous variety and originality, and you wonder why no publisher picked them up during Reillys lifetime. The Paradise That Lurks is sometimes crude and sometimes politically incorrect, but it is also a stunning work.

Hell and Back, by Craig Johnson (Viking)

Walt Longmire has never faced a challenge like this one. He wakes up lying in the middle of a street in a snowstorm and cant remember who he is or why hes there. Then, things get worse. Time periods change, and its Groundhog Day all over again. And its always 8:17. Whats a cowboy to do?

Right off, Walt discovers his name in a tag on his hat. Then he realizes hes a sheriff from Wyoming, but this is Montana, and whats he doing there? He finds a missing person poster in his pocket for an Indian girl named One Moon (who disappeared in a previous Walt Longmire book), but Walt has no idea why he has it.

Walt learns hes in the town of Fort Pratt, in a time period a few years back. But hes also at the towns namesake, the Fort Pratt Industrial Indian Boarding School, more than 100 years ago. The school burned down back then with all the students inside at least thats what hes told. But when he sees the school, the boys are there, along with their greedy superintendent. It dawns on Walt that maybe he died and this is hell.

Meanwhile, Walts buddies, Vic Moretti and Henry Standing Bear, are out looking for him, and they run into some pretty strange situations, too.

Walt Longmire fans will most likely enjoy the book, although its one weird Western.

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The latest novel from C.J. Box, and more books of regional interest for September - The Denver Post