The knockdown effect of all this pretended bravery and outlawdom is that people who google stuff and get their news from Facebook think the rest of us are sheeple while they are brave, original thinkers, when in fact they parrot their self-styled victim-leaders’ stylings verbatim. The Weiss/Shapiro/Carlson/Sullivan types do a little sleight of mind where they plant ideas and messaging in their fans’ minds and mouths, then flatter the same people that they are exciting mavericks unbound by conventional morals or intellectual rigor, and their textbook racism and authoritarianism are original, new. What a cheap con.
I've been reading Anand Gopal's fantastic book No Good Men Among the Living about the early years of the war in Afghanistan and he points out that the Taliban resurgence was actually *faster* in those parts of the country that had the most US troops, because local elites realized that the Americans would believe basically anything you told them if it involved the magic word "terrorism." So they all started to claim that their local rivals were secretly in league with al Qaeda, at which point the Americans would obliging come and kill them.
And many of the people targeted in this way were actually pro-American! In one district there were two feuding political factions, both of whom supported the new government, and both of whom denounced the other as terrorists. So the Americans raided *both* groups' headquarters and slaughtered most of their leaders, leaving no pro-government forces left in the district, which then promptly became a Taliban stronghold.
This all left me thinking that, in a world where victory in Afghanistan was actually of paramount importance to American policymakers, just about the only way back from a fuckup on that scale would be to do something like turn over the American soldiers who carried out the raids to a local tribal court to be tried for murder, or to at least make a big show of court-martialing the officers in charge. Meanwhile, back in the real world, everyone involved was given a medal.
Well, why is it that killing in self defense is the only situation where it's considered acceptable for ordinary people to kill? It's because they benefit from living in a liberal democratic state, and a liberal world order. These things mean that we rarely have to kill for any other reason.
Indeed, when we didn't have a liberal democratic state, and we didn't have a liberal world order, people had to kill all the time for all kinds of reasons.
And there lies the philosophical justification for using state force. Our security, prosperity, and liberty ultimately depends on the fact that we live in a political order that guarantees that our society is run a certain way. The reason that we have the wonderful society that we do today - and not something that looks like it was 1000 years ago - is ultimately because of a social construct that describes how society ought to be run, enforced with state force.
Embarrassingly, I was subscribed to Weiss’s Substack until I realized, far too late, that she is a sanctimonious hack. I think my breaking point came when she said, apropos of her attempts to become pregnant (paraphrased), that part of her motivation in doing so was to contribute to raising the next generation of the righteous. Yes, really.
Anyway, I thought of an actual intellectual risk taken by someone vaguely in the center-right pundi-sphere, Bret Stephens. He’s someone about whom one’s mileage will obviously vary, but he strikes me as someone who, unlike Weiss et al., is usually willing to stake out claims on principle and not to move podcast subscriptions (at least, not yet).
The claim in particular I have in mind is his call - twice - to repeal the Second Amendment following two mass shooting incidents (I don’t recall which). Given the murderous zeal with which 2nd Amendment, um, “proponents” defend their monomaniacal cause, he is *actually* taking a risk to life and limb. Sure, he lives in Manhattan and with the trappings of upper-middle-class security and privilege, but I have to imagine that this put a target on his and/or his family’s backs (he’s mentioned that his son in particular has been threatened with violence in response to some of his other opinions).
One could debate Stephens’s good faith and sincerity on other issues, but I will say that if I had any kind of public profile I’m not sure I’d be willing to put myself on the map for a deranged gun nut to come and hunt me down (possibly availing him or herself of now-legal vehicular homicide, courtesy of Republican legislatures, to do so) and I don’t even live in the US.
Bari Weiss, coiner of the phrase “Intellectual Dark Web” is a highly educated, highly privileged, grifter. She is (along with the Weinstein bros., Shapiro, Sullivan, et al) selling the latest version of “intellectual” snake oil to an audience of fools, happily willing to buy in to “own the libs” without the ability to see through the schtick.
The knockdown effect of all this pretended bravery and outlawdom is that people who google stuff and get their news from Facebook think the rest of us are sheeple while they are brave, original thinkers, when in fact they parrot their self-styled victim-leaders’ stylings verbatim. The Weiss/Shapiro/Carlson/Sullivan types do a little sleight of mind where they plant ideas and messaging in their fans’ minds and mouths, then flatter the same people that they are exciting mavericks unbound by conventional morals or intellectual rigor, and their textbook racism and authoritarianism are original, new. What a cheap con.
yusss
I've been reading Anand Gopal's fantastic book No Good Men Among the Living about the early years of the war in Afghanistan and he points out that the Taliban resurgence was actually *faster* in those parts of the country that had the most US troops, because local elites realized that the Americans would believe basically anything you told them if it involved the magic word "terrorism." So they all started to claim that their local rivals were secretly in league with al Qaeda, at which point the Americans would obliging come and kill them.
And many of the people targeted in this way were actually pro-American! In one district there were two feuding political factions, both of whom supported the new government, and both of whom denounced the other as terrorists. So the Americans raided *both* groups' headquarters and slaughtered most of their leaders, leaving no pro-government forces left in the district, which then promptly became a Taliban stronghold.
This all left me thinking that, in a world where victory in Afghanistan was actually of paramount importance to American policymakers, just about the only way back from a fuckup on that scale would be to do something like turn over the American soldiers who carried out the raids to a local tribal court to be tried for murder, or to at least make a big show of court-martialing the officers in charge. Meanwhile, back in the real world, everyone involved was given a medal.
Well, why is it that killing in self defense is the only situation where it's considered acceptable for ordinary people to kill? It's because they benefit from living in a liberal democratic state, and a liberal world order. These things mean that we rarely have to kill for any other reason.
Indeed, when we didn't have a liberal democratic state, and we didn't have a liberal world order, people had to kill all the time for all kinds of reasons.
And there lies the philosophical justification for using state force. Our security, prosperity, and liberty ultimately depends on the fact that we live in a political order that guarantees that our society is run a certain way. The reason that we have the wonderful society that we do today - and not something that looks like it was 1000 years ago - is ultimately because of a social construct that describes how society ought to be run, enforced with state force.
Embarrassingly, I was subscribed to Weiss’s Substack until I realized, far too late, that she is a sanctimonious hack. I think my breaking point came when she said, apropos of her attempts to become pregnant (paraphrased), that part of her motivation in doing so was to contribute to raising the next generation of the righteous. Yes, really.
Anyway, I thought of an actual intellectual risk taken by someone vaguely in the center-right pundi-sphere, Bret Stephens. He’s someone about whom one’s mileage will obviously vary, but he strikes me as someone who, unlike Weiss et al., is usually willing to stake out claims on principle and not to move podcast subscriptions (at least, not yet).
The claim in particular I have in mind is his call - twice - to repeal the Second Amendment following two mass shooting incidents (I don’t recall which). Given the murderous zeal with which 2nd Amendment, um, “proponents” defend their monomaniacal cause, he is *actually* taking a risk to life and limb. Sure, he lives in Manhattan and with the trappings of upper-middle-class security and privilege, but I have to imagine that this put a target on his and/or his family’s backs (he’s mentioned that his son in particular has been threatened with violence in response to some of his other opinions).
One could debate Stephens’s good faith and sincerity on other issues, but I will say that if I had any kind of public profile I’m not sure I’d be willing to put myself on the map for a deranged gun nut to come and hunt me down (possibly availing him or herself of now-legal vehicular homicide, courtesy of Republican legislatures, to do so) and I don’t even live in the US.
Bari Weiss, coiner of the phrase “Intellectual Dark Web” is a highly educated, highly privileged, grifter. She is (along with the Weinstein bros., Shapiro, Sullivan, et al) selling the latest version of “intellectual” snake oil to an audience of fools, happily willing to buy in to “own the libs” without the ability to see through the schtick.
"I know this isn't PC, but..." this long, twilight struggle by brave truth-tellers has been on for a while.
I loved this piece. (Also unusually short which isn’t a bad thing! 😆🤷♂️)