The collapse of democracy?

[barney]

This piece by the conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan, who has seen from the very start what Donald Trump is ("I said long ago I thought the election of Donald Trump was an extinction-level event for liberal democracy) crystallises my own thoughts and fears absolutely. The Democrats' refusal to criticise the rioters and looters who have destroyed the huge momentum BLM had just weeks ago is going to condemn them to four more years in the wilderness. Crass, suicidal political stupidity.


The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into
If law and order are what this election is about, they will lose it.



Andrew Sullivan
Aug 29
It finally happened. We have lethal battles in the streets between the two tribes of our polarized politics. This week, a 17-year-old man, Kyle Rittenhouse, brought a rifle to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in order, it appears, to protect the businesses that were being burned down or ransacked by rioters after the police shooting of alleged rapist, Jacob Blake. In a series of skirmishes between Rittenhouse and BLM and Antifa activists on the streets of Kenosha, three men pursuing Rittenhouse were shot and two killed by the vigilante in what appears to be some kind of self-defense.
I’m doing my best to convey the gist of what happened — and there’s an excellent, detailed report of the incident from the NYT — without justifying any of it. No excuse for vigilantism; no excuse for looting, rioting and arson. The truth is: even a few minutes of chaos and violence can contain a universe of confusing events, motives and dynamics that are extremely hard to parse immediately. And yet it is the imperative of our current culture that we defend one side as blameless and the other as the source of all evil.
In the current chaos, I’ve come to appreciate Marcus Aurelius’s maxim that “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” And I have to say I’m horribly conflicted on some issues. I’m supportive of attempts to interrogate the sins of the past, in particular the gruesome legacy of slavery and segregation, and their persistent impact on the present. And in that sense, I’m a supporter of the motives of the good folks involved with the Black Lives Matter movement. But I’m equally repelled by the insistent attempt by BLM and its ideological founders to malign and dismiss the huge progress we’ve made, to re-describe the American experiment in freedom as one utterly defined by racism, and to call the most tolerant country on the planet, with unprecedented demographic diversity, a form of “white supremacy”. I’m tired of hearing Kamala Harris say, as she did yesterday: “The reality is that the life of a black person in America has never been treated as fully human.” This is what Trump has long defended as “truthful hyperbole” — which is a euphemism for a lie.
But here’s one thing I have absolutely no conflict about. Rioting and lawlessness is evil. And any civil authority that permits, condones or dismisses violence, looting and mayhem in the streets disqualifies itself from any legitimacy. This comes first. If one party supports everything I believe in but doesn’t believe in maintaining law and order all the time and everywhere, I’ll back a party that does. In that sense, I’m a one-issue voter, because without order, there is no room for any other issue. Disorder always and everywhere begets more disorder; the minute the authorities appear to permit such violence, it is destined to grow. And if liberals do not defend order, fascists will.
Here is a quote from Yoom Nguyen, owner of the Lotus Restaurant in Minneapolis, who just witnessed a second assault on his business: “Watching looters bust down our family restaurant is so heartbreaking. Senseless, they’re doing it while laughing and smirking. Not gonna lie, I damn near shot a man tonight. He threw that fucking rock at my family photo and looked right at me. I said ‘you mother lover …’ tears immediately rolled down my face. I just can’t no more. I’m thankful I walked away but frig y’all.” This is how violence metastasizes. And as I’ve watched protests devolve over the summer into a series of riots, arson expeditions, and lawless occupations of city blocks, along with disgusting and often racist profanity, I’ve begun to feel similarly. And when I watched the Democratic Convention and heard close to nothing about ending this lawlessness, I noted the silence.
I don’t think I’m the only one, as even the Democrats seem now to realize. And this massive blindspot is not hard to understand. When a political party finds itself so wedded to a new and potent ideology it cannot call out violence when it sees it, then it is walking straight into a trap. When the discourse on the left has become one in which scholars and editors and Tweeters vie with one another to up the ante on how inherently evil America has always been, redescribe it as a slaveocracy, and endorse racist books that foment the most egregious stereotypes about “whiteness”, most ordinary people, who love their country and are mostly proud of its past, will rightly balk. One of the most devastating lines in president Trump’s convention speech last night was this: “Tonight, I ask you a very simple question: How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?” A cheap shot, yes. But in the current context, a political bullseye.
The key theme of the RNC was reminding people of the American narrative that once was. Yes, it was unbelievably vulgar. Yes, it looked like a cross between a sophisticated CGI video-game and a crude car dealer ad with a dollop of Leni Riefenstahl. But it was extremely effective. To see that, you have to remove your frontal cortex and put it in a jar, accept that it’s all going to be a series of lies so massive they stupefy us into stutters, and then cop the feels. Pence gave us a vision of America that was a souped up Disney special from the early 1960s — from Fort McHenry no less. And look at the icons Trump invoked: Wyatt Earp, Annie Oakley, Davy Crockett, and Buffalo Bill. You can mock. But in the midst of a culture being redescribed by the left as a form of foul and relentless “white supremacy”, and in a moment of arson and rioting, it felt like a kind of balm.
All this reassurance played out against a backdrop of Kenosha, which was burning, and Minneapolis, where a suicide led to a bout of opportunistic looting, and Washington DC, where mobs of wokesters went through the city chanting obscenities, invading others’ spaces, demanding bystanders raise fists in solidarity, with occasional spasms of violence. These despicable fanatics, like it or not, are now in part the face of the Democrats: a snarling bunch of self-righteous, entitled bigots, chanting slogans rooted in pseudo-Marxist claptrap, erecting guillotines — guillotines! — in the streets as emblems of their agenda. They are not arguing; they are attempting to coerce. And liberals, from the Biden campaign to the New York Times, are too cowardly and intimidated to call out these bullies and expel them from the ranks.
Remember the pivotal moment earlier this summer when the New York Times caved to its activist staff and fired James Bennet? It’s no accident this was over an op-ed that argued that if New York City would not stop the rioting in the streets, the feds should step in to restore order. For the far left activists who now control that paper, the imposition of order was seen not as an indispensable baseline for restoring democratic debate, but as a potential physical attack on black staffers. They saw restoring order within the prism of their own critical race ideology, which stipulates that the police are enforcers of white supremacy, and not enforcers of the rule of law in a liberal society. It was a sign that the establishment left were willing to tolerate disorder and chaos if they were directed toward the ideologically correct ends — which is how Democratic establishments in Minneapolis and Seattle and Portland responded. The NYT, CNN and the rest tried to ignore the inexcusable, and find increasingly pathetic ways to dismiss it. This week, their staggering bias was exposed as absurd.
It is just as true, of course, that the president has shown a similarly cavalier and even more cynical attitude to urban unrest. In the case of the protests outside the White House earlier this summer, he deployed law enforcement so crudely and counter-productively that he seemed to want to inflame it still further for political reasons. He’s more than usually aware that chaos is always good for authoritarians, and has delighted in excoriating Democratic mayors and governors for tolerating it. He has also sent signals to law enforcement that he supports abuse of suspects, and ignored the real threat of white nationalism in police and military ranks, and of terroristic white nationalist movements in general.
I find the interaction between some cops and vigilantes in Kenosha deeply, deeply disturbing. Non-college-educated white men make up a lot of the police forces and military in the US — and Trump has big margins of support among them, counts them as his own cops and soldiers, and signals that he will always have their back. As the far left has indiscriminately smeared the police, and promised to abolish or defund them, they have helped Trump co-opt them in a terrifying dynamic. As Trump was eulogizing a murdered policeman, the leftist mob outside was in the midst of a “frig The Police” demonstration. If the Dems want to fight an election on that choice — and some do — they’re engaged on a suicide mission.
And let’s be frank about this and call this by its name: this is very Weimar. The center has collapsed. Armed street gangs of far right and far left are at war on the streets. Tribalism is intensifying in every nook and cranny of the culture. The establishment right and mainstream left tolerate their respective extremes because they hate each other so much.
The pattern is textbook, if you learn anything from history: an economic crisis resulting in mass unemployment; the pent-up psychological disorders a long period of lockdown can and will unleash; a failure of nerve on the part of liberals to defend the values and institutions of liberal democracy, and of conservatives to keep their own ranks free of raw demagogues and bigots. But critically: a growing sense of disorder and violence and rioting as simply the background noise; and a sense that authorities do not have the strength or the stomach to restore order. What most people want in that kind of nerve-wracking instability is a figure who will come in and stamp it out. In Trump, we have someone who would happily trample any liberal democratic norm to do it. And the left seems to be all but begging him to do it — if only to prove them right.
A long time ago, I was mocked for saying that I believed that the election of Donald Trump was an extinction-level event for liberal democracy. But this is where we are. There is no place for liberal debate or dissent, just competing mobs deploying propaganda, intimidation and mutual racial hatred. Norms are trashed, from the shameful cooptation of national monuments for partisan purposes, to violating the privacy and peace of ordinary citizens because they are not in the ranks of agitators. Liberals are now illiberal; conservatives are revolutionaries. The Republican convention we are witnessing makes no pretense of even publishing a platform — all to demonstrate total and unfailing fealty to the leader whose own family is now assumed to succeed him. What about this pattern of events do we not already understand?
Yes, we still have an election. But barring a landslide victory for either party, it will be the beginning and not the end of the raw struggle for power in a fast-collapsing republic. In a close race, Trump will never concede, and if he is somehow forced to, he will mount a campaign from the outside to delegitimize the incoming president, backed by street-gangs and propaganda outfits. If Biden wins, we may have one last chance for the center to hold — and what few hopes I have rest on this.
But Biden, let’s face it, is weak and a party man to his core, and has surrendered to the far left at almost every single turn — from abortion to immigration to race. You’d be a fool I think, to believe he could resist their fanaticism in office, or that if he does, he won’t be toast in a struggle to succeed him. He remains the only choice in this election. But on the central question of civil order, he blew it last week and so did the Dems. Biden needs a gesture of real Sister Souljah clarity to put daylight between him and the violent left. He has indeed condemned the riots, with caveats. But at some point, the caveats have to go. And the sooner the better.

[diegobueno]

So much BS, so little time.

...Kamala Harris say, as she did yesterday: “The reality is that the life of a black person in America has never been treated as fully human.” This is what Trump has long defended as “truthful hyperbole” — which is a euphemism for a lie.

If what she said is a lie, police departments across the country could easily prove her wrong if they just stopped shooting black people for no reason. And how can one damn Harris for one supposed lie when we've got a president for whom it would be noteworthy if he ever told the truth?

And any civil authority that permits, condones or dismisses violence, looting and mayhem in the streets disqualifies itself from any legitimacy.

Again, how do the Republicans have any moral high ground here? Trump is encouraging right wing thugs like Patriot Prayer, Proud Bois, and Kyle Rittenhouse to stir up trouble, and conservative media are promoting them. If you want to foster respect for the law, you've got to set an example. Trump has surrounded himself with criminals like Michael Cohen, Paul Manfort, George Papadapoulos, Roger Stone, Rick Gates, Michael Flyn, all of them convicted now, and only the office of the presidency prevents him from joining their ranks.

One of the most devastating lines in president Trump’s convention speech last night was this: “Tonight, I ask you a very simple question: How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?”

And here the whole Republican party is trying their best to undermine the rule of law, to weaponize the branches of government to serve their partisan ends rather than the people. Contrary to what this guy says, it's the Democratic Party that is trying heroically to prevent the Trump administration from tearing down the country. Trump has no business claiming any high ground whatsoever.

If Trump wants to run on a platform of law and order, he might try respecting a few laws himself. If the Republican party wants to stand for law and order they need to act now to stand up to Trump and stop the erosion of the constitution that is rapidly taking place under this administration.

[barney]

You make strong points, and by and large I agree with you. But, as a matter of strategy, if the Democrats deny that looting is a problem, or even happening, and Trump is able to turn this into a law and order election, that will be calamitous. That is Sullivan's point, and I agree. I am sure you agree there is a distinction between legitimate protest, which is protected under free speech (or so I understand) and violent destruction. For me, the huge wave of support for BLM after the disgraceful Floyd case showed that many Americans have a good heart, and it saddens me that I think this has partly dissipated due to the protesters' violence and also the violence stirred up by pro-Trump thugs and the federal thugs he sent in.

[lennygoran]

Trump is able to turn this into a law and order election, that will be calamitous.

Barney like this-not good. Regards, Len

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/ ... burgh.html

[diegobueno]

...if the Democrats deny that looting is a problem, or even happening, and Trump is able to turn this into a law and order election, that will be calamitous. That is Sullivan's point, and I agree.

You're suggesting a defensive strategy, particularly one that assumes the Republican framing of the Black Lives Matter protests as nothing but rioting and looting, when the fact is that 93% of the protests were nonviolent, that outside agents (such as the "Umbrella Man" who was photographed smashing store windows in Minneapolis and who turned out to be a member of a group called "Aryan Cowboys") were perpetrators of much of it, and the unmarked DHS troops who invaded Portland abducting protesters, and shooting tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowds so that right wing media could have footage of rioting and mayhem to broadcast to discredit the whole BLM movement. And Sullivan himself buys into it:

where mobs of wokesters went through the city chanting obscenities, invading others’ spaces, demanding bystanders raise fists in solidarity, with occasional spasms of violence. These despicable fanatics, like it or not, are now in part the face of the Democrats: a snarling bunch of self-righteous, entitled bigots, chanting slogans rooted in pseudo-Marxist claptrap, erecting guillotines — guillotines! — in the streets as emblems of their agenda.

This is insane nonsense and Republicans are going to spout this excrement though November. In the meantime we're going to have "militias" in the streets like Proud Bois and Patriot Prayer, who aren't going to conduct themselves like choirboys themselves. To defend against nonsense like that only acknowledges that the charges carry weight.

So Biden really needs to wage an aggressively offensive (as in the opposite of defensive; the Republican campaign is offensive enough) campaign. Trump is handing them material right and left. I mean, troops who died or were captured in war are losers and suckers? It's OK for Putin to pay bounties on the heads of American soldiers? This is what they've got to run with down to the finish line.

[barney]

...if the Democrats deny that looting is a problem, or even happening, and Trump is able to turn this into a law and order election, that will be calamitous. That is Sullivan's point, and I agree.

You're suggesting a defensive strategy, particularly one that assumes the Republican framing of the Black Lives Matter protests as nothing but rioting and looting, when the fact is that 93% of the protests were nonviolent, that outside agents (such as the "Umbrella Man" who was photographed smashing store windows in Minneapolis and who turned out to be a member of a group called "Aryan Cowboys") were perpetrators of much of it, and the unmarked DHS troops who invaded Portland abducting protesters, and shooting tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowds so that right wing media could have footage of rioting and mayhem to broadcast to discredit the whole BLM movement. And Sullivan himself buys into it:

No, I'm suggesting that the Democrats tell it as it is. The Democrats have (rightly) defended the right to protest, and so do I. And I've no idea of how much is violent. If you say 7%, let's agree on that - but the Dems should not defend that 7% or they are playing into Trump's hands. Further, I agree with many ordinary Americans that looting and violence are wrong and not justified by past wrongs. After all, they are not hurting people in Fifth Avenue or Wall Street - it's ordinary people like them who suffer. Small businesses and shop owners.
And I certainly accept that the far-Right bears responsibility for considerable violence and may indeed be trying to discredit BLM. I think you must know me well enough to realise that I am not a Right-winger. I used to be pinker than I am now, where I regard myself as a centrist.
Do you not share my sense that BLM began with massive American and international sympathy and support, and could have been a catalyst for real change (and may yet still be), but that this support is slowly dissipating, not least because of the violence?

[diegobueno]

If you say 7%, let's agree on that - but the Dems should not defend that 7% or they are playing into Trump's hands......
Do you not share my sense that BLM began with massive American and international sympathy and support, and could have been a catalyst for real change (and may yet still be), but that this support is slowly dissipating, not least because of the violence?

I think the Black Lives Matter organization, such as it is, needs to have moved to take control of who marches under its banner. Basically "Black Lives Matter" is nothing more than a slogan, and anyone can come in and march in the streets, put signs on their lawns, wear T-shirts with the motto. It also means that people with bad intentions can join them. It's not like Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was able to make its participants pledge to nonviolence. What BLM lacks is a leader like MLK. The late John Lewis expressed his support of the BLM movement, but emphasized that it had to be done in a nonviolent way.

Most of the things that we did back in the 1960s was good trouble, it was necessary trouble. And so what I try to say to young people is when you see something that is not right, not fair or not just, you have to speak up. You have to speak and and make some noise....
But we have to respect the right of everybody to be heard. And you do that in a non-violent, orderly fashion."

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/da ... ld-respect

I also think that BLM needed to take control of when protests took place. You can't have protest marches every evening in the same place for months on end. Having them come night after night made people take notice and it made some things happen, but as an ongoing thing it gets tiresome. It would be more effective to march in one place for a limited period of time, then stop, then go somewhere else. In other words, keep the protests happening but spread out the burden to the communities affected. That would require much more organization than BLM has at its disposal.

My involvement with BLM is limited to the little tag line which I've put at the bottom of my CMG posts. Many of my neighbors have signs in their yards that read "Black Lives Matter", as do many of the churches in the area. I'm clearly not keeping up. I have less sympathy for Antifa, whatever that is. There's no Antifa organization at all, just a bunch of small groups of young males using the label. Unlike the BLM people, they show up looking for a fight, like the Sharks looking out for the right-wing Jets. Nothing good can come from these confrontations.

Joe Biden has also denounced the violence, but it doesn't matter, because to people like Andrew Sullivan it will never be enough. He doesn't even recognize that Biden did it at all. As far as he's concerned Biden is handing out bricks the way Trump hands out paper towels and sayinging "go to it guys!". Because idiots like Andrew Sullivan are just out to smear the protesters as thugs, and all who support them as Marxists or fascists or whatever.

I think a more pertinent question to ask is why doesn't Donald Trump condemn violence committed by the Proud Bois, Patriot Prayer, the Charlottesville marchers? Why does he encourage them, call them "fine people" or even "patriots"? Why is the onus on Democrats to denounce violence but not Republicans? Trump has been encouraging violence since his 2016 campaign when he said "I love the old days, you know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out in a stretcher, folks." I don't know what old days he was referring to. 1934 Germany perhaps. But you see where we are now.

[barney]

I think a more pertinent question to ask is why doesn't Donald Trump condemn violence committed by the Proud Bois, Patriot Prayer, the Charlottesville marchers? Why does he encourage them, call them "fine people" or even "patriots"? Why is the onus on Democrats to denounce violence but not Republicans? Trump has been encouraging violence since his 2016 campaign when he said "I love the old days, you know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out in a stretcher, folks." I don't know what old days he was referring to. 1934 Germany perhaps. But you see where we are now.

Haven't you answered your own question? The Republicans have accommodated Trump for for years, fully aware of his white supremacy and loathesome character, along with all the rest. In a sort of reverse discrimination, I no longer expect any moral compass from a Republican, merely a sort of shriekiness. It's a bit like Samuel Johnson with female preachers: "It's like a dog walking on its hind legs. It's not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all." (Strong proto-feminist, Johnson, not.) Republicans DO denounce violence, though of course only from the other side, because it is Trump's path to re-election. And if Democrats denounce it strongly as well they take that string away from Trump's bow and rob his campaign of any purpose. That was the whole point of Sullivan's article. I don't share your disdain for him, by the way, but perhaps you know more about him. I admire that, like Mitt Romney, he has long been prepared to speak out about Trump despite being a right-winger.

[jserraglio]

There are plenty of Republicans who have broken with Trump, just as many Democrats, including Biden, have spoken out against those that resort to violence. But I agree with Barney, Those condemnations by the leaders of each camp haven’t been forceful enough.

[barney]

There are plenty of Republicans who have broken with Trump, just as many Democrats, including Biden, have spoken out against those that resort to violence. But I agree with Barney, Those condemnations by the leaders of each camp haven’t been forceful enough.

Precisely. But even more than that, it is not about the morality of the violence (as I say, I think the looting is disgraceful), it's the political strategy. Trump seems to be floundering, especially with the twin blows of his expressed contempt for the military and the Woodward revelations that he knew about Covid and therefore is responsible for tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. (That Republicans don't care about these or explain them away show how low Trump has brought the party.) The one way Trump might win, there is general agreement, is if he can make it a law and order election, portraying the Democrats as soft on looters. (This is quite separate from the validity of the BLM protests).
So the Democrats cannot fall into this trap: they must also sound tough on looters so that Trump can't make this a winning strategy of differentiation.

[jserraglio]

Precisely. But even more than that, it is not about the morality of the violence (as I say, I think the looting is disgraceful), it's the political strategy. Trump seems to be floundering, especially with the twin blows of his expressed contempt for the military and the Woodward revelations that he knew about Covid and therefore is responsible for tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. (That Republicans don't care about these or explain them away show how low Trump has brought the party.) The one way Trump might win, there is general agreement, is if he can make it a law and order election, portraying the Democrats as soft on looters. (This is quite separate from the validity of the BLM protests).
So the Democrats cannot fall into this trap: they must also sound tough on looters so that Trump can't make this a winning strategy of differentiation.

Agree, and I think Biden would agree too. He’s a savvy politician who’s giving ‘em fits at FoxNews: There they flail about in search of a line of attack that has purchase: first Fox stated Biden was suffering from dementia (Didn’t we hear that selfsame canard parroted on CMG by an estimable defender of all things Right?)—then Fox’s line became that he was hiding in his basement—and now that he’s out and about effectively taking down Trumpism, he’s accused of using a teleprompter during interviews. Desperation breeds desperate measures.

As for pinning looting and rioting on Joe Biden, not a chance, given Biden’s provable record of supporting cops. That lame horse just ain’t gonna trot.

[barney]

I hope you are right, Joseph, and you probably are. It's just that I struggle to cope with the apparent fact that 4 in 10 Americans admire Trump, are unconcerned at his loathsome personality and single political policy: personal enrichment and exaltation. 4 in 10!!! How is it possible? After that he only has to get another 8 or 9 per cent, or, rather, enough people in the right states. You have constantly maintained he can't do so, and I know you are a close observer. Again, I can only hope you are right, but I am worried. Of course I've always inclined to pessimism. It saves time.

[jserraglio]

You have constantly maintained he can't do so

Doughboy can do so but I am betting he won’t. A pitiful 40 percent approval rating alone won’t be nearly enough, every loser of US presidential landslides gets that. But if Doughboy can win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, he will win; then I’ll shut my mouth—and, if the CV doesn’t do me in on the job by then, emigrate.

[Belle]

Intellectuals hate progress. Intellectuals who call themselves “progressive” really hate progress. It’s not that they hate the fruits of progress, mind you: most pundits, critics, and their bien-pensant readers use computers rather than quills and inkwells, and they prefer to have their surgery with anesthesia rather than without it. It’s the idea of progress that rankles the chattering class—the Enlightenment belief that by understanding the world we can improve the human condition.
Steven Pinker, Harvard University.

So funny when you consider how progressives have projected reactionary behaviour onto conservatives - or attempted to do so!! Until now.

[jserraglio]

So funny when you consider how progressives have projected reactionary behaviour onto conservatives - or attempted to do so!! Until now.

The problem is not that ultra-right conservatives are hidebound reactionaries. Far from it. It is that they are nutty radicals. Truly conservative Republicans like Govs. Larry Hogan and Mike DeWine, Sens. Mitt Romney and Jeff Flake, former Govs. John Kasich and Jeb Bush, former Cabinet members Mattes, Cohen and Powell, the Lincoln Project’s Republican super PAC, etc. never tire of pointIng out how looney extremists hijacked their party.

The Conservative Lincoln Project:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KLyOuWAzns

[barney]

Intellectuals hate progress. Intellectuals who call themselves “progressive” really hate progress. It’s not that they hate the fruits of progress, mind you: most pundits, critics, and their bien-pensant readers use computers rather than quills and inkwells, and they prefer to have their surgery with anesthesia rather than without it. It’s the idea of progress that rankles the chattering class—the Enlightenment belief that by understanding the world we can improve the human condition.
Steven Pinker, Harvard University.

So funny when you consider how progressives have projected reactionary behaviour onto conservatives - or attempted to do so!! Until now.

Typically facile and ignorant misunderstanding by Pinker. His book on the Enlightenment was a joke. As former Oxford don Peter Harrison pointed out in a review, "If we put into the practice the counting and gathering of data that Pinker so enthusiastically recommends and apply them to his own book, the picture is revealing. Locke receives a meagre two mentions in passing. Voltaire clocks up a modest six references with Spinoza coming in at a dozen. Kant does best of all, with a grand total of twenty-five (including references). Astonishingly, Diderot rates only two mentions (again in passing) and D'Alembert does not trouble the scorers. Most of these mentions occur in long lists. Pinker refers to himself over 180 times." Like Dawkins, he is entirely ignorant of philosophy and theology, hugely influential in the Enlightenment, because he thinks that what he doesn't know doesn't matter. All the key Enlightenment figures were really cognitive psychologists - just like, guess who, Pinker.
I'm not sure what he, or you, mean by intellectuals hating progress. What is an intellectual? What is progress? What is the evidence for the "chattering classes" - another lazy, prejudiced piece of dog whistling - hating progress?
In short, Belle, a typical contribution to the debate by you.

[jserraglio]

Typically facile and ignorant misunderstanding by Pinker. His book on the Enlightenment was a joke.

Yes, but did not the scientific journal Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) nominate one Steven Pinker as the premier member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS)? I assume this to be the same person.

[barney]

Very good Joseph. Pinker and Grayling could be matched bookends from science and philosophy.

Just before I leave Harrison (it's a very long and critical review), I want to quote one of the best paragraphs I've read in a review:
For the sceptical reader the whole strategy of the book looks like this. Take a highly selective, historically contentious and anachronistic view of the Enlightenment. Don't be too scrupulous in surveying the range of positions held by Enlightenment thinkers - just attribute your own views to them all. Find a great many things that happened after the Enlightenment that you really like. Illustrate these with graphs. Repeat. Attribute all these good things to your version of the Enlightenment. Conclude that we should emulate this Enlightenment if we want the trend lines to keep heading in the right direction. If challenged at any point, do not mount a counter-argument that appeals to actual history, but choose one of the following labels for your critic: religious reactionary, delusional romantic, relativist, postmodernist, paid up member of the Foucault fan club.

[jserraglio]

Just before I leave Harrison (it's a very long and critical review), I want to quote one of the best paragraphs I've read in a review:
For the sceptical reader the whole strategy of the book looks like this. Take a highly selective, historically contentious and anachronistic view of the Enlightenment. Don't be too scrupulous in surveying the range of positions held by Enlightenment thinkers - just attribute your own views to them all. Find a great many things that happened after the Enlightenment that you really like. Illustrate these with graphs. Repeat. Attribute all these good things to your version of the Enlightenment. Conclude that we should emulate this Enlightenment if we want the trend lines to keep heading in the right direction. If challenged at any point, do not mount a counter-argument that appeals to actual history, but choose one of the following labels for your critic: religious reactionary, delusional romantic, relativist, postmodernist, paid up member of the Foucault fan club.

In many respects then, Pinker’s book in this retelling could double as a CMG post that lashes out incoherently at leftist identity politics and cancel culture.

[lennygoran]

In many respects, Pinker’s book In this retelling could double as a CMG post that lashes out incoherently at leftist identity politics and cancel culture.
[/quote]

This made me think of trump yesterday again mentioning Biden taking drugs-in 2016 he did the same for Hillary. Anything goes these days with this criminal lying bully. Regards, Len

[jserraglio]

This made me think of trump yesterday again mentioning Biden taking drugs-in 2016 he did the same for Hillary. Anything goes these days with this criminal lying bully.

To sin, one must eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Chubby Hubby is a Prelapsarian, he lives by Fatburgers alone.

[lennygoran]

To sin, one must eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Chubby Hubby is a Prelapsarian, he lives by Fatburgers alone.

Joseph you got me again! Regards, Len

What is the meaning of prelapsarian?
adjective. Theology. occurring before the Fall: the prelapsarian innocence of Eden. characteristic of or pertaining to any innocent or carefree period: a prelapsarian youth. supralapsarian.