Thanks for the shout and the gentle antagonism about rights! I think ironically the first half of the post-left syllogism, the cynicism about the left, I’m basically fine with. (There’s a ridiculous Elliotic self description I’ve been toying with, something like “East coast Straussian inflected Progressive conservatism.”) It’s the consequent alignment with circa 2010s-20s movement conservatism (less on your part than others) [which I tend to see as more in continuum with the historical American right and IE; the confederacy than many do] which I find tragic and tending to repeat the mistakes of earlier generations of disaffected radical.
You're welcome! Yes, I agree with you, thus my relentless disavow of the Sailer stuff, though I'm a little more open to other aspects of the potential re-alignment. For a ridiculous self-description, I like the one longtime reader Targidrade Sonata once proposed for both me and the entire American literary canon: "crypto-conservative apolitical left-libertarian." We'll see what happens!
At least from an artistic perspective, I see what you mean. That Wildean synthesis does rhyme in certain ways with what I’ve always taken to be part of the esoteric politics of movement conservatism, namely, the feeling amongst conservative intellectuals that the broad middle class of the postwar period was in some sense illegitimate because so dependent in its genesis on government regulation and largesse. Thus part of what’s happening under the hood is what views itself as the meritous middle trying to disenfranchise its (in this view) undeserving rivals (the center left eventually develops its own version of this thesis around the Clinton years.) That’s all right as far as Wildean aesthetics go, where it leaves us as politics I’m less sure, but I don’t have an answer either!
Right, I remember reading some anecdote about Hilton Kramer where he was complaining about what he saw as the low-brow nature of the canonical American dramatists (a drunken Irishman, a socialist Jew, and a Southern queer...), which I thought was really a bit much. But, on the other hand, we can't run high culture as a charity either—I believe some standards must remain in place, however open to revision—so it's a genuine dilemma in that sense.
It really is! (I think it's the eye.) I don't remember where I found it, but I've had it in an open tab for months waiting for a winter-season post to attach it to.
I was moved too by 'dolphin religious arc;' as ever, the footnote writer of our time. And a passing comment: no one is going to go offline until there is something there to go to. In the major population centres there is largely speaking nothing (that is, no culture, threadbare family, and certainly no nature). I hope one day someone, preferably Walter Benjamin, writes a very long book (consisting only of an assortment of facts, reports, documents) which somehow demonstrates that the internet is a symptom, not a cause.
Thanks! Yes, our latter-day WB's Network Project can at the very least say the rise of the internet accompanied the fall of public space, whether as cause, effect, or reverberation. I do suspect the richer will be able to rebuild their public spaces and thus be able to get offline more easily than the poorer, just as there are only upscale malls left while the more middling or downscale malls have gone out of business. And people who already got their internet clout and cashed it in literally or figuratively may go offline and leave the internet to plebs who can no longer rise so easily in a decaying online space. But even the privileged will still lack the cultural/natural infrastructure to support an offline life, as you observe: ironically, returns to religion and to the rural (neo-Catholicism, cottagecore, various flavors of trad, etc.) currently appear to be running their courses like the internet trends they always were.
Thanks for the shout and the gentle antagonism about rights! I think ironically the first half of the post-left syllogism, the cynicism about the left, I’m basically fine with. (There’s a ridiculous Elliotic self description I’ve been toying with, something like “East coast Straussian inflected Progressive conservatism.”) It’s the consequent alignment with circa 2010s-20s movement conservatism (less on your part than others) [which I tend to see as more in continuum with the historical American right and IE; the confederacy than many do] which I find tragic and tending to repeat the mistakes of earlier generations of disaffected radical.
You're welcome! Yes, I agree with you, thus my relentless disavow of the Sailer stuff, though I'm a little more open to other aspects of the potential re-alignment. For a ridiculous self-description, I like the one longtime reader Targidrade Sonata once proposed for both me and the entire American literary canon: "crypto-conservative apolitical left-libertarian." We'll see what happens!
At least from an artistic perspective, I see what you mean. That Wildean synthesis does rhyme in certain ways with what I’ve always taken to be part of the esoteric politics of movement conservatism, namely, the feeling amongst conservative intellectuals that the broad middle class of the postwar period was in some sense illegitimate because so dependent in its genesis on government regulation and largesse. Thus part of what’s happening under the hood is what views itself as the meritous middle trying to disenfranchise its (in this view) undeserving rivals (the center left eventually develops its own version of this thesis around the Clinton years.) That’s all right as far as Wildean aesthetics go, where it leaves us as politics I’m less sure, but I don’t have an answer either!
Right, I remember reading some anecdote about Hilton Kramer where he was complaining about what he saw as the low-brow nature of the canonical American dramatists (a drunken Irishman, a socialist Jew, and a Southern queer...), which I thought was really a bit much. But, on the other hand, we can't run high culture as a charity either—I believe some standards must remain in place, however open to revision—so it's a genuine dilemma in that sense.
That Andrew Wyeth picture is mesmerizing.
It really is! (I think it's the eye.) I don't remember where I found it, but I've had it in an open tab for months waiting for a winter-season post to attach it to.
We still need to get you to Chicago to celebrate your wonderful book, which I recommend everyone reading this comment to buy
I support that concept, preferably when the weather is a little nicer around here (might have to wait a while)
Thank you—and yes, I'm still totally game for an event!
I was moved too by 'dolphin religious arc;' as ever, the footnote writer of our time. And a passing comment: no one is going to go offline until there is something there to go to. In the major population centres there is largely speaking nothing (that is, no culture, threadbare family, and certainly no nature). I hope one day someone, preferably Walter Benjamin, writes a very long book (consisting only of an assortment of facts, reports, documents) which somehow demonstrates that the internet is a symptom, not a cause.
Thanks! Yes, our latter-day WB's Network Project can at the very least say the rise of the internet accompanied the fall of public space, whether as cause, effect, or reverberation. I do suspect the richer will be able to rebuild their public spaces and thus be able to get offline more easily than the poorer, just as there are only upscale malls left while the more middling or downscale malls have gone out of business. And people who already got their internet clout and cashed it in literally or figuratively may go offline and leave the internet to plebs who can no longer rise so easily in a decaying online space. But even the privileged will still lack the cultural/natural infrastructure to support an offline life, as you observe: ironically, returns to religion and to the rural (neo-Catholicism, cottagecore, various flavors of trad, etc.) currently appear to be running their courses like the internet trends they always were.