Good essay! You write:"The heterodox intellectual styled himself as the person who could see past tribal loyalties, who was not captured by either side, who could assess threats objectively. But objectivity requires looking at accurate data. It requires measuring the right things. "
Objectivity also requires being able to see what is outside the self. I would argue that any intellectual both (1) styling himself anything at all and (2) classifying loyalties as tribal...is incapable of objectivity. The hubris is clear from the self posturing, and the moral vacuity suggests incapacity for understanding personal loyalty. The self regard and its corollary, moral illiteracy, fatally combine to undermine the project of producing even-handed analysis.
A hidden issue for those of us thinking about these considerations is the reflexive search for "objectivity" and "rational intellect". Such priorities are the actually the source of our discontent: the head is the last to know what's going on. We are dissuaded from fulfilling our evolutionary holistic bodily intelligence. If you have emotional maturity, you are in tune with the vast intelligence gathered throughout your body (of which the cerebral cortex is the belated last stop), and the disregard for all that leaves the intellect bereft of its best information.
This is absolutely the case. Beautifully and so concisely stated; your point is made not just in the words you chose, but in the encapsulation after much thinking and gathering of life experience into a salient analysis.
Incredibly kind! I firmly believe that our distractibility hampers our response to the deep requirements of the moment. "Digging deep" really requires the whole bodily intelligence, not just the "thinking" mind.
Being able to see outside the self means fully inhabiting the full self as part of the surrounding environment, deeply embedded in a continuum of intelligence.
I think the movement to reject democratic constraints has been growing for a very long time. It can be traced back at least as far as Robert Bork's ahistorical reinterpretation of antitrust law and related fields (Matt Stoller has an account of this on his blog), and more recently can be seen with the rise of companies like Uber and Airbnb in defiance of laws governing taxi and hotel services.
Just in the past few years the decision in Trump v. Anderson represented this as well. At least some of the amicus briefs in favour of Trump said, more or less, "Even if he isn't eligible I want to vote for him, and it infringes my rights if I can't", never mind that active suffrage is not that broad.
In general, it seems to me that there's been a growing trend in democratic countries to reject as legitimate laws which adversely impact one's personal material interests, even if the considered judgment of society is that the rules in question are necessary for the health of the polity as a whole, and this is dangerous.
As for "the bitter exasperation of an ally being driven toward thoughts she never wanted to have", this is why I wrote that I think Canada has a better case to kidnap Trump than the US did to kidnap Maduro: https://substack.com/@dpareja/note/c-195790209 (Not that I think Canada has at this time a justifiable rationale to pursue such an insane course of action, just that the US's rationale for abducting Maduro was even weaker.)
"Leader of the free world" is something we need to quit saying, even in jest or hyperbole. It is monumentally distasteful, not to mention insanely absurd. It's really hard to accept as a joke -- any more than the knee-jerk defenses of a properly dressed-down autocrat caught in a failed proposition.
A hidden issue for those of us thinking about these considerations is the reflexive search for "objectivity" and "rational intellect". Such priorities are the actually the source of our discontent: the head is the last to know what's going on. We are dissuaded from fulfilling our evolutionary holistic bodily intelligence. If you have emotional maturity, you are in tune with the vast intelligence gathered throughout your body (of which the cerebral cortex is the belated last stop), and the disregard for all that leaves the intellect bereft of its best information.
Sorry to recommend something else on your substack, Mike, but people who want to know their enemy would be well served to listen to the Know Rogan Experience, two skeptics who cover Joe Rogan. The most recent episode goes over Joe's recent interview with Rand Paul that had all the media wondering breathlessly if Joe Rogan was breaking with Trump just because he used the word "gestapo" to describe ICE.
Well, no. He hasn't broken with Trump. Not even close. He made one comment that was rational, and I suppose he sounds normal some of the time. But he still thinks climate change is a hoax and that Democrats are "bringing in illegals" to create an unbeatable voting block and that trans people don't deserve human rights and that covid was no big deal, really, and that "wokeness" is the real threat. He is still the same brain-dead incurious right-wing idiot he's been for years and we should indeed be terrified at his influence and the way he spouts misinformation on subjects he knows nothing about. I could never listen to him straight so having an intermediary of two smart guys is a good way of keeping educated on these yahoos. As Mike pointed out, Joe, Tucker and other assorted bozos have legions of fans and an influence that is deeply disturbing.
SS: I am open to criticism. I embrace my vulnerability. OK if you dislike or hate anything I write.
I grew up in NY, was born in Jamaica, minutes away from the Trump family. I am almost positive my father went to the same high school as Frederick Christ Trump (kind of oxymoron) at Richmond Hill High School or Jamaica High. This is Queens, NY, not far, perhaps a 10-minute drive, to Brooklyn, where the Brooklyn Dodgers (aka Brooklyn Bums) played at Ebert's Field. My grandmothers both lived across the street from each other in Richmond Hill, very close to the van Wyck Expressway, and minutes from Shea Stadium (of course the stadium came years later).
Anyone growing up in NY and adult in the 80s was familiar with the Trumps. Fraud was their middle name. Bums both of them. The acorn does not fall far from the tree. Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice wrote many articles about the graft involving the Trumps (and Giuliani too). Barrett also wrote books on Trump disclosing his rotten to the core character. We just did not vet him. Our investigative reporters did a crappy job.
Mike talks about sources of information. I try to engage diversity in my reading. Listen to tolerance to assholes on Fox News, spouting what is clear to me as Russian narrative. Why the US population finds tiktok, or Facebook etc a valuable source of info is, in my opinion, an expression of their superficiality. They do not have the work ethic of "when you do something, do it right or don't do it at all." Instead, they are inured to the "Quick and Dirty" approach of what has pervaded America. McMedicine, McAccounting, McVetting, McCommunication. We are living in a country of glitz and gloss but little substance. You have to search for substance.
I watch MS Now, CNN, BBC, and read and then cancel periodicals like the WSJ, WP, Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, etc. What I have found in "news" reporting is what I have found in medicine. Go by the reporter, not the "institution." When a patient tells me "I went to Mass General" for my cancer care, I reply, "who treated you?, what was the name of the physician(s). I explain - Beware of an Edifice Complex. The person treating you makes or breaks your healthcare- not the building or institution.
On MS Now, I found Lawrence O'Donnell to have balls and tell it the way a la Jimmy Kimmel. What a shit show when a comedian is a better presenter of reality than the news stations. Only recently, have commentators joined O'Donnell in being outspoken. Finally, but not all of them.
Many of my "fellow" Americans are morons when it comes to listening, observing, knowing history, not confusing religion as it is practiced with the original philosophy of that religion.
As for the low life and 5-star BUM we have as POTUS, that's a reflection on the stupidity of this country. People who feel owning a monster truck plus a car or two is more important than the lives of people in Ukraine or the deaths of civilians in Gaza, facilitated by Trump bestowing a traitor to Israel (Netanyahu) facilitating massive military might that was used without discretion, and murdered many children, women, and elderly.
My older sister and all of her children would not talk to me for years because of my being outspoken about the flagrant EVIL of Trump. A tyrant without question. Tyrant-osaurus Rex, is perfectly fitting. Small brain, kills because he enjoys it. Goes extinct (hopefully).
Peace prize, my ass. Trump joins Putin as Murderer of the Year. Withdrawing support for Ukraine is a horrendous shame on this country and especially the Congress. That's our Putin idolizing POTUS. I am not sure if Putin is Trump's #1 idol or if Hitler is. But Americans, wake the fuck up. ICE is GESTAPO. What Trump did and is doing in the Caribbean, in Venezuela, in threats about Greenland and Canada is a reflection of his fucked up mind. I would not be surprised if an autopsy on Trump shows tertiary syphilis because Trump manifests all the symptoms of this disease. Googles' Gemini Pro provided the pros and cons of Trump having Neurosyphilis. Here is a Dropbox link to its reply. You might be astonished.
We need to let those we know around the world that we are not happy Americans under Trump. All the bullshit lies that Trump has said about our economy, our health as a nation, about ICE and Minneapolis is fantasy. We are in deep guacamole and it's not green. SCOTUS, and the GOP Congress are two festering sores that must be debrided if we are able to have elections in Nov '26.
Good essay! You write:"The heterodox intellectual styled himself as the person who could see past tribal loyalties, who was not captured by either side, who could assess threats objectively. But objectivity requires looking at accurate data. It requires measuring the right things. "
Objectivity also requires being able to see what is outside the self. I would argue that any intellectual both (1) styling himself anything at all and (2) classifying loyalties as tribal...is incapable of objectivity. The hubris is clear from the self posturing, and the moral vacuity suggests incapacity for understanding personal loyalty. The self regard and its corollary, moral illiteracy, fatally combine to undermine the project of producing even-handed analysis.
A hidden issue for those of us thinking about these considerations is the reflexive search for "objectivity" and "rational intellect". Such priorities are the actually the source of our discontent: the head is the last to know what's going on. We are dissuaded from fulfilling our evolutionary holistic bodily intelligence. If you have emotional maturity, you are in tune with the vast intelligence gathered throughout your body (of which the cerebral cortex is the belated last stop), and the disregard for all that leaves the intellect bereft of its best information.
This is absolutely the case. Beautifully and so concisely stated; your point is made not just in the words you chose, but in the encapsulation after much thinking and gathering of life experience into a salient analysis.
Incredibly kind! I firmly believe that our distractibility hampers our response to the deep requirements of the moment. "Digging deep" really requires the whole bodily intelligence, not just the "thinking" mind.
Being able to see outside the self means fully inhabiting the full self as part of the surrounding environment, deeply embedded in a continuum of intelligence.
I think the movement to reject democratic constraints has been growing for a very long time. It can be traced back at least as far as Robert Bork's ahistorical reinterpretation of antitrust law and related fields (Matt Stoller has an account of this on his blog), and more recently can be seen with the rise of companies like Uber and Airbnb in defiance of laws governing taxi and hotel services.
Just in the past few years the decision in Trump v. Anderson represented this as well. At least some of the amicus briefs in favour of Trump said, more or less, "Even if he isn't eligible I want to vote for him, and it infringes my rights if I can't", never mind that active suffrage is not that broad.
In general, it seems to me that there's been a growing trend in democratic countries to reject as legitimate laws which adversely impact one's personal material interests, even if the considered judgment of society is that the rules in question are necessary for the health of the polity as a whole, and this is dangerous.
As for "the bitter exasperation of an ally being driven toward thoughts she never wanted to have", this is why I wrote that I think Canada has a better case to kidnap Trump than the US did to kidnap Maduro: https://substack.com/@dpareja/note/c-195790209 (Not that I think Canada has at this time a justifiable rationale to pursue such an insane course of action, just that the US's rationale for abducting Maduro was even weaker.)
"Leader of the free world" is something we need to quit saying, even in jest or hyperbole. It is monumentally distasteful, not to mention insanely absurd. It's really hard to accept as a joke -- any more than the knee-jerk defenses of a properly dressed-down autocrat caught in a failed proposition.
A hidden issue for those of us thinking about these considerations is the reflexive search for "objectivity" and "rational intellect". Such priorities are the actually the source of our discontent: the head is the last to know what's going on. We are dissuaded from fulfilling our evolutionary holistic bodily intelligence. If you have emotional maturity, you are in tune with the vast intelligence gathered throughout your body (of which the cerebral cortex is the belated last stop), and the disregard for all that leaves the intellect bereft of its best information.
Sorry to recommend something else on your substack, Mike, but people who want to know their enemy would be well served to listen to the Know Rogan Experience, two skeptics who cover Joe Rogan. The most recent episode goes over Joe's recent interview with Rand Paul that had all the media wondering breathlessly if Joe Rogan was breaking with Trump just because he used the word "gestapo" to describe ICE.
Well, no. He hasn't broken with Trump. Not even close. He made one comment that was rational, and I suppose he sounds normal some of the time. But he still thinks climate change is a hoax and that Democrats are "bringing in illegals" to create an unbeatable voting block and that trans people don't deserve human rights and that covid was no big deal, really, and that "wokeness" is the real threat. He is still the same brain-dead incurious right-wing idiot he's been for years and we should indeed be terrified at his influence and the way he spouts misinformation on subjects he knows nothing about. I could never listen to him straight so having an intermediary of two smart guys is a good way of keeping educated on these yahoos. As Mike pointed out, Joe, Tucker and other assorted bozos have legions of fans and an influence that is deeply disturbing.
SS: I am open to criticism. I embrace my vulnerability. OK if you dislike or hate anything I write.
I grew up in NY, was born in Jamaica, minutes away from the Trump family. I am almost positive my father went to the same high school as Frederick Christ Trump (kind of oxymoron) at Richmond Hill High School or Jamaica High. This is Queens, NY, not far, perhaps a 10-minute drive, to Brooklyn, where the Brooklyn Dodgers (aka Brooklyn Bums) played at Ebert's Field. My grandmothers both lived across the street from each other in Richmond Hill, very close to the van Wyck Expressway, and minutes from Shea Stadium (of course the stadium came years later).
Anyone growing up in NY and adult in the 80s was familiar with the Trumps. Fraud was their middle name. Bums both of them. The acorn does not fall far from the tree. Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice wrote many articles about the graft involving the Trumps (and Giuliani too). Barrett also wrote books on Trump disclosing his rotten to the core character. We just did not vet him. Our investigative reporters did a crappy job.
Mike talks about sources of information. I try to engage diversity in my reading. Listen to tolerance to assholes on Fox News, spouting what is clear to me as Russian narrative. Why the US population finds tiktok, or Facebook etc a valuable source of info is, in my opinion, an expression of their superficiality. They do not have the work ethic of "when you do something, do it right or don't do it at all." Instead, they are inured to the "Quick and Dirty" approach of what has pervaded America. McMedicine, McAccounting, McVetting, McCommunication. We are living in a country of glitz and gloss but little substance. You have to search for substance.
I watch MS Now, CNN, BBC, and read and then cancel periodicals like the WSJ, WP, Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, etc. What I have found in "news" reporting is what I have found in medicine. Go by the reporter, not the "institution." When a patient tells me "I went to Mass General" for my cancer care, I reply, "who treated you?, what was the name of the physician(s). I explain - Beware of an Edifice Complex. The person treating you makes or breaks your healthcare- not the building or institution.
On MS Now, I found Lawrence O'Donnell to have balls and tell it the way a la Jimmy Kimmel. What a shit show when a comedian is a better presenter of reality than the news stations. Only recently, have commentators joined O'Donnell in being outspoken. Finally, but not all of them.
Many of my "fellow" Americans are morons when it comes to listening, observing, knowing history, not confusing religion as it is practiced with the original philosophy of that religion.
As for the low life and 5-star BUM we have as POTUS, that's a reflection on the stupidity of this country. People who feel owning a monster truck plus a car or two is more important than the lives of people in Ukraine or the deaths of civilians in Gaza, facilitated by Trump bestowing a traitor to Israel (Netanyahu) facilitating massive military might that was used without discretion, and murdered many children, women, and elderly.
My older sister and all of her children would not talk to me for years because of my being outspoken about the flagrant EVIL of Trump. A tyrant without question. Tyrant-osaurus Rex, is perfectly fitting. Small brain, kills because he enjoys it. Goes extinct (hopefully).
Peace prize, my ass. Trump joins Putin as Murderer of the Year. Withdrawing support for Ukraine is a horrendous shame on this country and especially the Congress. That's our Putin idolizing POTUS. I am not sure if Putin is Trump's #1 idol or if Hitler is. But Americans, wake the fuck up. ICE is GESTAPO. What Trump did and is doing in the Caribbean, in Venezuela, in threats about Greenland and Canada is a reflection of his fucked up mind. I would not be surprised if an autopsy on Trump shows tertiary syphilis because Trump manifests all the symptoms of this disease. Googles' Gemini Pro provided the pros and cons of Trump having Neurosyphilis. Here is a Dropbox link to its reply. You might be astonished.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l0ntatx4fwgy6k84v0y97/2026_01_21-11-40-AM-Trump-s-Health_-Syphilis-Debate-Explored.pdf?rlkey=3dkhjb5xu2ii7apdzmm20zamd&dl=0
We need to let those we know around the world that we are not happy Americans under Trump. All the bullshit lies that Trump has said about our economy, our health as a nation, about ICE and Minneapolis is fantasy. We are in deep guacamole and it's not green. SCOTUS, and the GOP Congress are two festering sores that must be debrided if we are able to have elections in Nov '26.