There’s a story we tell about social media. Once upon a time politics wasn’t so divided and polarized. But then, social media came along–it let people retreat into bubbles, where they only talked to people who thought as they did. This caused them to get all extreme and nasty. And then the alt-right and the Russians figured out that they could inject fake stories into these bubbles and turn social media users into Trump supporters! Our beautiful liberal society was torn apart, and it’s all because people stopped trusting traditional news sources, like the big newspapers and TV networks. Companies like Facebook have a responsibility to do something about this–to call out the fake stories, or stop them from showing up in people’s feeds. Sounds familiar, right? I want to tell a different story about social media.
Category: Politics
Concerning the nature of man and the state, and how best the latter can be structured to augment the former.
Trump’s First Year Was Really Quite Pedestrian
I’m no great fan of state of the union addresses (as long-time readers are sure to know). They are platitudinous affairs in which presidents tell a long series of anecdotes about particular people they claim their policies have helped. The responses from the opposition are no better, full of vague rhetoric that sounds as if it were recycled from old 90s stump speeches. I won’t review all this nonsense–it’s a waste of your time and mine. But I will offer you my review of Donald Trump’s first year. It’s a review focused on what the president has done, not on what he’s said. My interest is in large-scale policy that affects real people–not in scandals and tweets. If that still sounds interesting to you, come along for the ride.
Continue reading “Trump’s First Year Was Really Quite Pedestrian”
Jordan Peterson is a Garden Variety Christian Existentialist
A few people have asked me lately–what do I think of Jordan Peterson? Peterson is a Canadian psychologist who has written a book called 12 Rules for Life. He’s become very popular on YouTube and generated something of a following. I can see why–the particular kind of philosophy he’s advocating is unfamiliar to many people and feels transgressive in a modern context. But it’s an old kind of philosophy which dates back to the 19th century and takes its inspiration from Soren Kierkegaard. It’s called “Christian Existentialism”. Here’s how it works.
Continue reading “Jordan Peterson is a Garden Variety Christian Existentialist”
Don’t Fear Trump–Fear the Next Republican President
I’ve long argued that the Democratic Party needs to use its time in the wilderness to remake itself so it can pursue and deliver real benefits for poor and working class voters and be seen to do so in its campaigns. This remaking necessarily requires a period of disunity and chaos within the Democratic Party–central questions about what being a Democrat is for need to be asked, and different people will and should give different answers. Those differences should be resolved in blood-soaked primaries. But I’m increasingly concerned it’s not going to happen–too many Democrats seem to believe that the party needs to unify at all costs to present the strongest possible electoral challenge to Trump in 2018 and 2020. This is a dangerous misreading of the historical situation. The biggest threat to the United States is not the Trump presidency–it is the next Republican presidency, or perhaps the one after that. Let me explain…
Continue reading “Don’t Fear Trump–Fear the Next Republican President”
An American Class Divide: The Aristocrats v. The Professionals
In the United States we usually don’t like to think about ourselves as members of economic classes. Most of us, when asked, identify as middle or upper-middle class. But of course there are class differences, and in recent years we’ve started to talk about them a little more. People like Thomas Frank have drawn attention to “the professional class” as distinct from “the working class”. The professionals go to college and get degrees in things like engineering, medicine, law, finance, business, or computer science. They get access to those prized STEM and management careers, to the jobs in the court rooms, on Wall Street, and in Silicon Valley. In contrast, members of the working class often don’t go to college. In recent years they sometimes get uneconomical degrees and end up underemployed with lots of debt. But while the professional/working distinction is important and needs to be drawn more often, I’d like to take some time today to draw another distinction, between the professional class and what I’d like to call the “aristocrats”.
Continue reading “An American Class Divide: The Aristocrats v. The Professionals”
