…I’d like to write a post carrying forward the speculative theodicy of Trumpism, now in relation to the pandemic, the latter as a perfect supplying of the absence, a unification of isolated atomized individuals as and within the whole and universal state, the deepest state, and the only available protector and sustainer of life, but I’m rusty. I can feel my linguistic joints creaking as I try to write sentences that are not composed for the sake of finishing a job or entertaining a colleague while finishing a job, or that are not “statements” or “arguments” in one or another programming idiom.
I don’t even remember how I last had this blog set up to handle a new post without a category. For instance, do these still get tweeted out? Are you still getting notified about new posts, bob, or anyone else?
Maybe more, maybe later, or maybe I’ll confine myself to random observations on TV shows or amusing tweets.
CKM: I think it would be a singular misfortune–to himself and his audience–if a thinker and writer possessed of such substantive and stylistic gifts as you are were to have “lost the habit” for good, and so it goes without saying–…
I was hoping we’d continue the brief exchange we began last year. When last we met, we were debating the merits of a piece by one Mr. Spencer who fervently asserted that left of center parties had an opportunity to reap bountiful electoral harvests if only they would nominate candidates of an especially “progressive”, not to say Bolshevik, stripe. Since then, some events transpired that have a bearing on that thesis.
In the case of the UK parliamentary election, Labour attempted to carry forward Spencer’s proposal with admirable fidelity and suffered a humiliating defeat, while the triumphant Conservatives were led–as Joe Biden remarked at the time–by a veritable clone of Donald Trump. Here in the USA, in the Democratic Party primaries, we saw Bernie Sanders fail to reduplicate the momentum of his 2016 run, and Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy was an embarrassing flop.
Having said that, the corona virus crisis surely changes everything and I can’t help but think that the enormous economic dislocations that will almost certainly result suddenly favor the Democrats and even perhaps their most “progressive” current. It’s a case study in the power of chance in human affairs. And while I sincerely pray for our country to be delivered from the ill effects of this ordeal, I fear that it brings us perilously close to the brink of one mode of national bankruptcy or another…
I’ve read a number of interesting books in the domain of political philosophy recently, mostly in the “Straussian” vein–including a couple of books by Leo Strauss himself: namely, Liberalism Ancient and Modern and Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. At my age, I find that reading Strauss constitutes the peak of my pleasure in reading. Only the Bible and poetry rival it. I’ve even begun to imagine that I’ve transferred my philosophical fealty such as it is from “existentialism” broadly construed (a school of thought ultimately rooted in Hamann, I guess) to Straussianism, the attempt to recuperate the viability of classical perspectives (especially the virtue of sophrosune)–and as a corollary, to assist in the revitalization of theological perspectives as the necessary competitors of philosophy against which philosophy attains self-definition…
How ’bout you–read anything interesting lately?
Well, just thought I’d chime in…