Based on current events, I am going to offer a prediction: that before there is any revolution or renewal there will be a revolt sparked by a drastic spike in the cost and decline in the quality of.....
I feel like I'd been waiting for someone to put this into words, and yet, I am still uncertain what to do with the words. I am glad you started this conversation though.
But that was maybe before your time, though worth watching.
More generally, Mike has some good points, though methinks he's often living in something of an epistemic bubble:
Helen Dale & Lorenzo Warby: My essays are not an attempt to persuade Post-Enlightenment Progressives (the “woke”). As many have pointed out, they’re usually unpersuadable, having built systems with almost perfect epistemic closure. That is, patterns of belief shielded against even the possibility of contrary evidence. Dissent from key claims is taken to be inherently illegitimate: a sign of bigotry or complicity in bigotry. Modern academe has developed into an environment primed for evolving systems of epistemic closure.
is “democratic renewal” the “FDR-as-president type of leader in a Constitutional Republic who can marshal the intellectual precariat to work for said leader and within said leader’s vision as a federal employee” path? A “New Deal 2.0”?
Mike - this is an excellent post. Where do you think the current center of mass is for democratic renewal? Or is there one even?
BTW - as written, this part below is an undeserved complement. Authoritarians ultimately value loyalty over competence. We would certainly get a loyalty system, but no guarantee of competence.
"If the answer is fascism—if they decide democracy failed and hierarchy is the answer—we get not chaos, but competence..."
Yeah. I hear what you're saying. But I actually do think a lot of the fascists waiting to step up after Trump *are* competent at running organizations, and at engineering and technology. And that makes them particularly dangerous and scary. I'm not talking about Trump and MAGA, here.
Competence is not a generic trait. One can be a competent engineer and a complete failure as a team manager, etc. Fascism flourishes in chaos, and while it offers a presence of competence in all areas of social life, it creates in illusion of stability by causing chaos—“things are are going wrong, but we are on the job.”
Is democratic renewal the Bernie/AOC path or similar or did you have something else in mind? And who is the revolutionary left? Mostly DSA? or are they keeping low profile right now?
Your section about the left uses just the example of DSA. Meanwhile Mamdani, DSA member, is running decidedly within the democratic system in NYC. After all, they're the _Democratic_ Socialists, which places them in roughly the same place as Sen. Sanders, whose version of "socialism" is the Scandinavian ideal of a mixed economy.
The Weather Underground disbanded long ago. The anti-WTO protests years back had some anarchist kids at the core of it, as I know from sitting in on one of their meetings in the East Village back when; in the current Indivisible meetings I've attended that cohort isn't represented at all. I think you'll find worker-owned businesses, B Corporations, grocery co-ops, universal health care, coupled with commitment to green energy, are enough "revolution" for what's left of the "radical" left -- that and ending Trumpist fascism with a return to democracy. I really don't see what you're scared of on this wing of your ideological mapping.
I don't think the DSA is inherently dangerous. I really meant to use it as a bellwether indicator. I am a liberal, after all. I can agree we need more social democracy. But I have my own critiques of socialist theory.
Looks to me like the socialism-or-capitalism and democracy-or-fascism axes are at 90% to each other. There are socialist-fascists, but also socialist-democrats; as there are capitalist-fascists (IG Farben, Elon's X) and capitalist-democrats (FDR, Ben & Jerry). That there will be tension between socialists and capitalists is healthy in a democratic society. Both sets of theories support some useful social and economic structures. Diversity in theory makes for better social and economic ecology.
Tension between socialism and capitalism is indeed natural, and the center must be held; well-regulated markets with abundant social services for things where capitalism is actively harmful (e.g. health care). There should be no “tension” between democracy and fascism; such tension is inherently harmful.
MANY thanks for this piece. It is, as you say, rare as yet to see my own economic experience framed as the structural/demographic issue it is. (Altho I was annoyed when it first posted to see that it was subscriber-only ~ you .are. speaking to a PRECARIAT audience after all lol Happy now to be able to read it in full, tho.)
Unfortunately at least part of this precariat risks being overwhelmed by the same economic desperation as the working-class folks, if we're poor enough for long enough. Speaking as someone recently laid off from my part-time culture-sector nonprofit job, which seems to be the best anyone with only two master's degrees in demanding academic disciplines can expect from my anti-intellectual purple Midwestern state. But as you say, its better at least to have the skills to understand the systems oppressing you. Now for the "knowledge = power" part, right? Please keep up the focus on this!
So who is the organization/person/idea that you feel should be initiating the call to action for these people and the concept of renewal. I also find it interesting that you feel the liberal policies have to be torn down. Do you mean health care, women’s rights ????
Peter Turchin’s End Times (2023) has much to add to this discussion. This may not be about protecting democracy, rather it may be a regular cycle, ever present, and not specific political system dependent, observed over thousands of years.
Elite over production, mass immiseration, and predictable collapse are the norm, not the exception.
Pity the fellow who invested a fortune in setting up shop as a farrier at the tail-end of the horse-and-buggy age, pity the archeologist whose career lay in ruins ... 😉🙂
Dominant technologies change all the time, nature of the beast. Reminds me of a cogent set of observations at the Tablet on the sad state of Academia -- which the Left, the Democrats bear some responsibility for:
"Time for the Academy To Put Its Pencils Down; Don’t dismiss the petulant students at Yale and elsewhere —they’re here to tell us what we should’ve known a long time ago: American academia is beyond salvation"
Your sad "PhD candidates in humanities discovering there are five tenure-track positions" being something of a case in point. What makes you think that society or the government owes them any sort of a career in the face of such changes? Particularly when so many should be destined for the Ark B -- "never alone with a rubber duck".
"gender studies", anyone? DEI enforcement officers? Y'all will lucky if various university departments aren't decimated by Trump's policies. A rather illuminating review of "Professing Feminism" by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge which is probably typical of much of Academia, this bit in particular:
"The authors, however, demonstrate that these problems have existed since their ideology’s inception, and were particularly common within Women Studies programs. The authors wrote of the isolationist attitude that dominates many of the programs, along with a virulent anti-science, anti-intellectual sentiment driving many of the professors, staff and students."
Entirely possible, though it seemed rather long-winded at best -- getting paid a nickel a word? Getting bent out of shape about no more "tenure-track" positions for advanced basket weavers seems to characterize much of it. Along with some outright Ludditism:
Can't say that I've more than skimmed your "epistle", though I'll concede that you probably have a point or two about past revolutions. But one might argue, as I more or less did, that you're comparing apples and oranges, are inferring, on thin "evidence", that your "precariat" are in the same state, have the same justified beefs, as did the populace in previous revolutions.
Cases-in-point being your hard-done-by advanced basket weavers with no tenure tracks, and junior lawyers out of a job because one such with an AI program can do the work of ten.
You may wish to consider another revolution exemplified by the ballad of John Henry -- drove 12 feet and the steam-drill only drove 9.
Great that you're "critical of the left", though somewhat "problematic" that you seem reluctant to consider how the left have contributed to if not have been the creators of the problems that you've based your arguments on.
I'm happy with my frame of reference. I tend to frame things around the agency of people who are making decisions and doing things. Excusing what's happening now, because of what happened in the past, what leftists said or did, is blame-shifting.
“Dominant technologies change all the time, nature of the beast,” you say, and then you go off on a wild tangent about transgender people and DEI that reveals your true agenda; that some people are, in your view, less equal than others.
“What makes you think that society or the government owes them any sort of a career in the face of such changes? Particularly when so many should be destined for the Ark B” is pretty revealing as well; that pursuing one’s passion and advancing human knowledge and understanding makes one unworthy of being on this planet.
May you die of a disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
> "... reveals your true agenda; that some people are, in your view, less equal than others. ...."
🙄 Transwomen -- particularly those with their dicks and balls swinging in the breeze -- are clearly "less equal than" -- not the same as -- people with vaginas and ovaries, AKA actual females. In case you've never got into the detailed differences between the sexes ...
> "... May you die of a disease contracted from a dirty telephone. ..."
Big LoL. That's what you and Mike should do with both those poor souls with PhDs in advanced basket-weaving and no "tenure tracks, and with those junior lawyers with no computer skills: retrain them as telephone sanitizers. Win-win! 😉🙂
So it’s not that Lia competes, it’s that there is a barbaric, backward segment of society that is so stuck in puritanical Old Testament thinking that it can’t handle the thought of seeing our bodies as the wonderful, varied, often baffling biological machines that they are. The thought that they might see another person’s genitalia freaks them out, and seeing something unexpected absolutely terrifies them.
And it is NOT "that Lia competes" but that you and most of the Democrats are insisting that "trans women are women", that "gender affirmation surgery" turns males into females, that Mike is too gutless to deny that transactivist mantra, or even to consider the problems that causes.
A more egregious, quite toxic, and highly "problematic" case of insisting that "2+2=5" is scarcely imaginable.
Your use of “transactivist” is another giveaway; you treat this as a new thing when trans individuals have been around throughout history (just as homosexuals have). It’s just that now we have the knowledge and skill to change the body to match the identity, and that scares the crap out of you.
> ' It’s just that now we have the knowledge and skill to change the body to match the identity, and that scares the crap out of you."
🙄 But you CAN NOT change the body from one sex to another. That's the fact which you lot -- most of the Democrats -- rather pigheadedly refuse to face.
That a transwoman gets his dick and balls cut off and replaced with a neovagina does not at all change his sex. He may LOOK more "feminine" -- if one was desperate, half-blind, or dead-drunk -- but he has NOT changed his sex. In fact, with that operation he has turned himself into a sexless eunuch.
From deep personal experience, it is never as simple as genetic determinists would have you believe, that X+X=F and X+Y=M. It’s not about “transactivism”, it’s about treating people who have found that their identity does not conform to your preconceived notions no differently than anyone else.
What unmitigated, quite pretentious, and flagrantly unscientific horse shit. Being charitable.
It's not the chromosomes that define the sex categories, but the gonads, the TWO -- count 'em, TWO -- quite distinct types of biological processes that are fundamental to the whole process of sexual reproduction:
You really might want to try getting your head out of your arse, or those of your buddies, and do some reading and thinking with it:
"Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes" by Jussi Lehtonen, & Geoff A. Parker in the Oxford Academic Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction (Volume 20, Issue 12, December 2014):
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
That some transwoman has some sort of "feminine gender identity" -- even with a vaginoplasty -- in no way means that he has changed sex. Barking mad the lot of you to give any credence, even the time of day, to such outright insanity:
"Is it really true that “no one's denying the reality of biological sex”?
There seems to be a lot of people doing that thing that "no one" is doing."
Based on current events, I am going to offer a prediction: that before there is any revolution or renewal there will be a revolt sparked by a drastic spike in the cost and decline in the quality of.....
cocaine.
Okay. You made me laugh. 😆
I'm glad. I felt you needed it.
I feel like I'd been waiting for someone to put this into words, and yet, I am still uncertain what to do with the words. I am glad you started this conversation though.
Maybe go out on your balcony and yell, at the top of your lungs, "I'm as mad as hell! And I'm not going to take it any more!"? 😉🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Beale_(Network)
But that was maybe before your time, though worth watching.
More generally, Mike has some good points, though methinks he's often living in something of an epistemic bubble:
Helen Dale & Lorenzo Warby: My essays are not an attempt to persuade Post-Enlightenment Progressives (the “woke”). As many have pointed out, they’re usually unpersuadable, having built systems with almost perfect epistemic closure. That is, patterns of belief shielded against even the possibility of contrary evidence. Dissent from key claims is taken to be inherently illegitimate: a sign of bigotry or complicity in bigotry. Modern academe has developed into an environment primed for evolving systems of epistemic closure.
https://www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/self-deceptive-rationalising-moralisers
is “democratic renewal” the “FDR-as-president type of leader in a Constitutional Republic who can marshal the intellectual precariat to work for said leader and within said leader’s vision as a federal employee” path? A “New Deal 2.0”?
“Meatspace” sounds kind of gross, I prefer the “dirt world” but I’m old.
Nobody is perfect ... 😉🙂
Mike - this is an excellent post. Where do you think the current center of mass is for democratic renewal? Or is there one even?
BTW - as written, this part below is an undeserved complement. Authoritarians ultimately value loyalty over competence. We would certainly get a loyalty system, but no guarantee of competence.
"If the answer is fascism—if they decide democracy failed and hierarchy is the answer—we get not chaos, but competence..."
Yeah. I hear what you're saying. But I actually do think a lot of the fascists waiting to step up after Trump *are* competent at running organizations, and at engineering and technology. And that makes them particularly dangerous and scary. I'm not talking about Trump and MAGA, here.
Competence is not a generic trait. One can be a competent engineer and a complete failure as a team manager, etc. Fascism flourishes in chaos, and while it offers a presence of competence in all areas of social life, it creates in illusion of stability by causing chaos—“things are are going wrong, but we are on the job.”
Is democratic renewal the Bernie/AOC path or similar or did you have something else in mind? And who is the revolutionary left? Mostly DSA? or are they keeping low profile right now?
I don't think Bernie or AOC are revolutionary left, no. But the RevLeft is mixed in there. And I worry about them.
Your section about the left uses just the example of DSA. Meanwhile Mamdani, DSA member, is running decidedly within the democratic system in NYC. After all, they're the _Democratic_ Socialists, which places them in roughly the same place as Sen. Sanders, whose version of "socialism" is the Scandinavian ideal of a mixed economy.
The Weather Underground disbanded long ago. The anti-WTO protests years back had some anarchist kids at the core of it, as I know from sitting in on one of their meetings in the East Village back when; in the current Indivisible meetings I've attended that cohort isn't represented at all. I think you'll find worker-owned businesses, B Corporations, grocery co-ops, universal health care, coupled with commitment to green energy, are enough "revolution" for what's left of the "radical" left -- that and ending Trumpist fascism with a return to democracy. I really don't see what you're scared of on this wing of your ideological mapping.
I don't think the DSA is inherently dangerous. I really meant to use it as a bellwether indicator. I am a liberal, after all. I can agree we need more social democracy. But I have my own critiques of socialist theory.
Looks to me like the socialism-or-capitalism and democracy-or-fascism axes are at 90% to each other. There are socialist-fascists, but also socialist-democrats; as there are capitalist-fascists (IG Farben, Elon's X) and capitalist-democrats (FDR, Ben & Jerry). That there will be tension between socialists and capitalists is healthy in a democratic society. Both sets of theories support some useful social and economic structures. Diversity in theory makes for better social and economic ecology.
Tension between socialism and capitalism is indeed natural, and the center must be held; well-regulated markets with abundant social services for things where capitalism is actively harmful (e.g. health care). There should be no “tension” between democracy and fascism; such tension is inherently harmful.
MANY thanks for this piece. It is, as you say, rare as yet to see my own economic experience framed as the structural/demographic issue it is. (Altho I was annoyed when it first posted to see that it was subscriber-only ~ you .are. speaking to a PRECARIAT audience after all lol Happy now to be able to read it in full, tho.)
Unfortunately at least part of this precariat risks being overwhelmed by the same economic desperation as the working-class folks, if we're poor enough for long enough. Speaking as someone recently laid off from my part-time culture-sector nonprofit job, which seems to be the best anyone with only two master's degrees in demanding academic disciplines can expect from my anti-intellectual purple Midwestern state. But as you say, its better at least to have the skills to understand the systems oppressing you. Now for the "knowledge = power" part, right? Please keep up the focus on this!
So who is the organization/person/idea that you feel should be initiating the call to action for these people and the concept of renewal. I also find it interesting that you feel the liberal policies have to be torn down. Do you mean health care, women’s rights ????
Peter Turchin’s End Times (2023) has much to add to this discussion. This may not be about protecting democracy, rather it may be a regular cycle, ever present, and not specific political system dependent, observed over thousands of years.
Elite over production, mass immiseration, and predictable collapse are the norm, not the exception.
Franco Berardi stirs suicide into this semio-inflationary stew of time, money, and language
where irony or cynicism are no longer effective
The Soul at Work
Precarious Rhapsodies
The Uprising
thanks for this excellent post
How does the Khmer Rouge fit in to your analysis?
Pity the fellow who invested a fortune in setting up shop as a farrier at the tail-end of the horse-and-buggy age, pity the archeologist whose career lay in ruins ... 😉🙂
Dominant technologies change all the time, nature of the beast. Reminds me of a cogent set of observations at the Tablet on the sad state of Academia -- which the Left, the Democrats bear some responsibility for:
"Time for the Academy To Put Its Pencils Down; Don’t dismiss the petulant students at Yale and elsewhere —they’re here to tell us what we should’ve known a long time ago: American academia is beyond salvation"
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/academia-beyond-salvation
Your sad "PhD candidates in humanities discovering there are five tenure-track positions" being something of a case in point. What makes you think that society or the government owes them any sort of a career in the face of such changes? Particularly when so many should be destined for the Ark B -- "never alone with a rubber duck".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/2gHNc8pLB70dCKlF72qmT1x/golgafrinchans
"gender studies", anyone? DEI enforcement officers? Y'all will lucky if various university departments aren't decimated by Trump's policies. A rather illuminating review of "Professing Feminism" by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge which is probably typical of much of Academia, this bit in particular:
"The authors, however, demonstrate that these problems have existed since their ideology’s inception, and were particularly common within Women Studies programs. The authors wrote of the isolationist attitude that dominates many of the programs, along with a virulent anti-science, anti-intellectual sentiment driving many of the professors, staff and students."
https://web.archive.org/web/20090807234859/http://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2009/07/27/professing-feminism-noh/
I think you might have missed my point.
Entirely possible, though it seemed rather long-winded at best -- getting paid a nickel a word? Getting bent out of shape about no more "tenure-track" positions for advanced basket weavers seems to characterize much of it. Along with some outright Ludditism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
"I tell you Julie, we have to go back to ink and quill pens!"
Plus ignoring the "systemic flaws" -- many due to Democrat/Leftists -- that led to that state of affairs.
I've been PRETTY critical of the left in my recent writing. I have no idea what you're talking about.
Maybe because you are looking at things from a frame of reference that doesn't hold much water?
https://imgur.com/gallery/there-are-three-sides-to-every-story-7eF4H
Can't say that I've more than skimmed your "epistle", though I'll concede that you probably have a point or two about past revolutions. But one might argue, as I more or less did, that you're comparing apples and oranges, are inferring, on thin "evidence", that your "precariat" are in the same state, have the same justified beefs, as did the populace in previous revolutions.
Cases-in-point being your hard-done-by advanced basket weavers with no tenure tracks, and junior lawyers out of a job because one such with an AI program can do the work of ten.
You may wish to consider another revolution exemplified by the ballad of John Henry -- drove 12 feet and the steam-drill only drove 9.
Great that you're "critical of the left", though somewhat "problematic" that you seem reluctant to consider how the left have contributed to if not have been the creators of the problems that you've based your arguments on.
I'm happy with my frame of reference. I tend to frame things around the agency of people who are making decisions and doing things. Excusing what's happening now, because of what happened in the past, what leftists said or did, is blame-shifting.
Seems a bit rich as you're apparently shifting the blame from the Left to the Right. That's your "frame of reference".
“Dominant technologies change all the time, nature of the beast,” you say, and then you go off on a wild tangent about transgender people and DEI that reveals your true agenda; that some people are, in your view, less equal than others.
“What makes you think that society or the government owes them any sort of a career in the face of such changes? Particularly when so many should be destined for the Ark B” is pretty revealing as well; that pursuing one’s passion and advancing human knowledge and understanding makes one unworthy of being on this planet.
May you die of a disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
> "... reveals your true agenda; that some people are, in your view, less equal than others. ...."
🙄 Transwomen -- particularly those with their dicks and balls swinging in the breeze -- are clearly "less equal than" -- not the same as -- people with vaginas and ovaries, AKA actual females. In case you've never got into the detailed differences between the sexes ...
https://nypost.com/2022/01/27/teammates-are-uneasy-changing-in-locker-room-with-trans-upenn-swimmer-lia-thomas/
> "... May you die of a disease contracted from a dirty telephone. ..."
Big LoL. That's what you and Mike should do with both those poor souls with PhDs in advanced basket-weaving and no "tenure tracks, and with those junior lawyers with no computer skills: retrain them as telephone sanitizers. Win-win! 😉🙂
To quote my other response:
So it’s not that Lia competes, it’s that there is a barbaric, backward segment of society that is so stuck in puritanical Old Testament thinking that it can’t handle the thought of seeing our bodies as the wonderful, varied, often baffling biological machines that they are. The thought that they might see another person’s genitalia freaks them out, and seeing something unexpected absolutely terrifies them.
To switch franchises: IDIC.
🙄 To quote my other response: https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-elite-precariat-the-betrayed/comment/170534301
And it is NOT "that Lia competes" but that you and most of the Democrats are insisting that "trans women are women", that "gender affirmation surgery" turns males into females, that Mike is too gutless to deny that transactivist mantra, or even to consider the problems that causes.
A more egregious, quite toxic, and highly "problematic" case of insisting that "2+2=5" is scarcely imaginable.
Your use of “transactivist” is another giveaway; you treat this as a new thing when trans individuals have been around throughout history (just as homosexuals have). It’s just that now we have the knowledge and skill to change the body to match the identity, and that scares the crap out of you.
> ' It’s just that now we have the knowledge and skill to change the body to match the identity, and that scares the crap out of you."
🙄 But you CAN NOT change the body from one sex to another. That's the fact which you lot -- most of the Democrats -- rather pigheadedly refuse to face.
That a transwoman gets his dick and balls cut off and replaced with a neovagina does not at all change his sex. He may LOOK more "feminine" -- if one was desperate, half-blind, or dead-drunk -- but he has NOT changed his sex. In fact, with that operation he has turned himself into a sexless eunuch.
From deep personal experience, it is never as simple as genetic determinists would have you believe, that X+X=F and X+Y=M. It’s not about “transactivism”, it’s about treating people who have found that their identity does not conform to your preconceived notions no differently than anyone else.
“The people…the things…”
“The things are also people.”
“The people…the…other people…”
What unmitigated, quite pretentious, and flagrantly unscientific horse shit. Being charitable.
It's not the chromosomes that define the sex categories, but the gonads, the TWO -- count 'em, TWO -- quite distinct types of biological processes that are fundamental to the whole process of sexual reproduction:
You really might want to try getting your head out of your arse, or those of your buddies, and do some reading and thinking with it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermatogenesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oogenesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex
"Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes" by Jussi Lehtonen, & Geoff A. Parker in the Oxford Academic Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction (Volume 20, Issue 12, December 2014):
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
https://web.archive.org/web/20221214064356/https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990?login=false
That some transwoman has some sort of "feminine gender identity" -- even with a vaginoplasty -- in no way means that he has changed sex. Barking mad the lot of you to give any credence, even the time of day, to such outright insanity:
"Is it really true that “no one's denying the reality of biological sex”?
There seems to be a lot of people doing that thing that "no one" is doing."
https://speakingplainly.substack.com/p/is-it-really-true-that-no-ones-denying