Four months ago I slipped in the kitchen and banged the back of my head on the floor, producing a subdural hematoma.. Thus began a saga that led me to the emergency room at UNC hospitals, and put me on a ventilator for five days. At one point the neurological team treating me were ready to give up, and were only dissuaded by the intervention of my son, Tobias and my doctor, Thomas Keyserling.
Now, three months later, I am much improved, although consigned to a wheel chair [as much by my Parkinson's as by the effects of the fall.]
There is one small problem: I failed my swallow test. As a consequence, I run the risk of pneumonia in my lungs if I eat or drink anything. Hence I receive all my food through a tube in my stomach. I have not eaten or drunk anything in three months. Sigh.
I have a good deal to say about one thing and another. But it will take time. I hope you amused yourself in my absence.
142 comments:
What a lovely thing to see as I open my browser for the first time today! Just yesterday I happened to read of “an important paper by Robert Paul Wolff” in Jonathan Bennett’s Kant’s Dialectic. The superstitious side of me is desperately hoping these are signs of more good to come in the next, oh, 24 days or so. Here’s hoping they prove worth sticking around for! ;)
It’s just so good to see you back here!
It is great to see your post here. I'm glad your doctors didn't give up.
It is great that you're back. We were starting to worry!
It's wonderful to have you back.
Extremely happy to hear you doing and feeling better. Wishing you all the best!
"Ditto", as Patrick Swayze's character said many times in the movie "Ghost"
This is welcome! In mid-August a friend (95 y.o.) suffered a similar injury and didn't make it. Hopefully your recovery augurs the same for the Republic.
The world was a lonelier place without RPW. I only checked in occasionally, mostly just to make sure that the universe was continuing as always with Dr. Mulvaney lobbing an occasional pseudo-insult my way. Four months is but a moment in real life, but an eternity in internet-time, which I mostly passed in a foxhole ducking the Harris-is-a-Joyful-Warrior memes whizzing over my head. The only other internet thingies I can remember of the past four months of the internet is the powerful artistic re-working of the presidential 'debate' by 'The Kiffness', and the recent piece by Justin Smith-Ruiu on why one should vote for Harris, which I link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BrCvZmSnKA and https://www.the-hinternet.com/p/kamala-harris-for-president
welcome back! and sorry to read you still have some problems--that unable to eat/drink sounds dreadful. Best wishes.
Professor Wolff. There's no reason you should remember me but I was one of your students at Columbia right before you went to UMass. I just ran across Tobias's Facebook page and was very sorry to hear about everything you've been dealing with, but happy at the recent good news. Best wishes. Tom White
Echoing the above sentiments.
Very glad to read this. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
He’s baaaack! And very glad we all are too.
Great news indeed.
Best wishes for continued recovery; so glad to have you back!
Welcome back Professor Wolff! Wishing you a speedy recovery!
I am so glad you are alright. I have been worried! Feeding tubes--while not aesthetically pleasing in the least--are an invention for which I have been grateful more than a few times. May you make a steady and long-term recovery. You have been missed!
Great to hear from you again. Looking forward to reading what you have to say about what's going in society.
Best wishes Professor Wolff. I am really glad that you are alive and functioning, though the stomach tube and the wheelchair sound like a bitch. You have an eager audience for your opinions on this blog but don't knock yourself out trying to cater to us. Your health should be your priority. So only opine it helps.
The last should be 'only opine IF it helps'.
Dear Professor,
It's very good to read from you. Good news in a crazy world.
So glad to hear that you're back. Wishing you all the best.
So glad to see you back online! Here's hoping to get to eat real food again before long!
Well, I'm a monkey's uncle! YOU'RE BACK!! Congratulations and I hope you can enjoy a delicious dinner, normally - soon!!!!
So glad to hear from you! Thank you for touching base
Hurrah! I knew you’d pull through! For YEARS I have been touting my pet theory re the health benefits of pure political hatred (much to the horror of those of my friends and family who subscribe to the soggily liberal consensus gentium). Simply put: hating keeps you alive, while being NICE (as we’re constantly advised to do) will give you headaches, piles, cancer, or worse. So here’s to the one thing we can thank Donald Trump for: keeping RPW alive and kicking!
I'm happy to see you back, Professor Wolff. Now I wish for you the enjoyment of being able to savor real mouth-pleasing food. I look forward to your resumption of wisdom about life.
Happy to see you back; you mean so much to us!
Happy to see you back and I hope you start to feel better - I've missed your posts!
Very glad you’re back. I’ve missed your blog, from which I’ve learnt so much over the years and enjoyed thoroughly to boot
I am sure that the esteemed Professor Wolff is both angry (I would not say hate-driven) and nice....
David Zimmerman, Agreed. Martin Luther King was angry, but not driven by hatred. I'd say the same of Professor Wolff.
The very little musing I've done about a possible connection of love--or--hatred and longevity has mostly been motivated by trying to understand the great resonance of Blind Lemon Jefferson's 'See That My Grave is Kept Clean'. What is it about last wishes--what love-or-hatred do they articulate?-- and that one in particular? Alexander Cockburn was of course the great recent advocate of joyous political hatred, but he was not long-lived by modern standards. I knew well an 89-year-old woman who died in 2017; her only (last) wish was to see Hillary Clinton become president, and likewise know one now who only wishes to live to see Harris become president. I gather that the current wisdom says the best bet for longevity is to be a shepherd who eats a Mediterranean diet and/or have lots of close friends and family, especially younger ones. RPW shows the way: if you, for example, hate apartheid, then lecture in South Africa and start a scholarship fund.
What a relief to see you back online, Professor! Some of the news we got early in the summer had us really worried. I am so glad you were able to pull through. And I don't think there could be any more convincing proof that the Flying Spaghetti monster really exists and answered my prayers!
Btw how is Susie doing?
It was a joy to see your post, Professor Wolff. Tiggers are not to be repressed! I look forward to hearing what you've been thinking about.
Re: love and hate, MLK is a singularly unillustrative example. As a preacher man, he was obliged by the employee handbook (a/k/a the New Testament) to pretend, on pain of termination of employment, that certain things (like proper, fitting, and appropriate HATRED) do not exist.
Anyway, I said this is just a pet theory. Speaking for myself, I HATE Trump, Vance, and the rest of that crew (for reasons which I’ll assume are obvious), while I’m merely angry with the Dems (ditto). In lieu of the NSF funding to allow me to turn my pet theory into academic research, I await RPW’s thoughts on the matter.
Great news. Best wishes.
I am so relieved to read your recovery is progressing. I know how difficult is to recover from this type of injury from my years in human services. The good new on the political front is the Harris campaign is beating up on Trump/Vance and though the polls are tight, I expect she will win big.
There is a certain symmetry in pseudo-analysis being met with a pseudo-insult, no?
Dr. Mulvaney, My dear fellow, don't you have anything better to do than to attempt to insult people on the internet? Here, as mostly elsewhere, I don't have a clue as to what you're trying to say. I'm not aware of having attempted here to analyze anything; rather, in a manner inspired by Wittgenstein and Walter Benjamin, I've assembled a little constellation of remarks around the idea of a political hatred as being good or bad for one's longevity.--You don't care for it? Okay, whatever. I've done what I can for your spiritual health by recommending a good dose of Fela Kuti.-- A pseudo-insult, by contrast, is someone attempting to insult another person, but the utterance is so vague, unspecific, unexplicated, inarticulate, wayward, etc. that it has something of the form and tone of an insult, but nothing of the determinate content. This is the last time I'll respond to any of your silly, petulant utterances, at least until you come to realize that I'm right about everything. If I were to attempt an insult of you, which I certainly wouldn't, it would be in the form of a song like this (with your vast knowledge of music, I take it that you know the tune):
Hi Diddly Dee, Mulvaney insults me!
He wakes all cranky from his nap.
Looks at The Stone, and thinks, “Oh, snap!
That dastardly Rapko won’t shut his yap.
I’ll add a dollop of my usual crap.”
Hi Diddly Dee, Mulvaney insults me!
Mulvaney’s the dwarf among commentators tall.
Over every discussion he casts a pall.
He’s got a Phd? Well that’s about all.
He doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the wall.
Hi Diddly Dee, Mulvaney insults me!
Should you ever make a comment that has any substance to it I will be happy to compliment you. But like Herr Szeliga, you think you have climbed to the heights of speculation, and naturally like to share that with us. Stringing together some connections that you think are related (and profoundly important) has nothing to do with Benjamin's concept of constellation, only with your vanity. Your problem is you think your excrement has no odor.
I really shouldn’t add to this … but I can’t help myself! This reads not like Rapko himself, but like a (poorly executed) Rapko forgery. If that’s the case, it would be the most deranged thing to happen on here by some amount … but would go some way towards bringing this forum into line with the rest of the internets.
I'm giving you hug in my mind.
Welcome back professor :), this post comes as a ray of light at a tough time. All the best
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i just happened onto your videos this evening and am loving them. Thank you or sharing your hard earned insights.
It struck me that by this time in recent elections Dr. Wolff was imploring us to make contributions. I think we should welcome him back with a flood of commitments to candidates of your choice. Harris/Walz doesn't need money now, but there are lots of down ballot races -U.S. Senate and House, and state constitutional offices.
Also, is anyone willing to make predictions?
Excellent suggestion.
Heather Cox Richardson has an interesting piece pointing out that it has become increasingly obvious that this election is about electing J. D. Vance president.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQXJkTRhVnlWGwvqFTFZBmTHvSH
Awhile back I pointed out that competency would eventually settle Trump's legal problems. Another sun-downing or so will likely resolve the election.
aaall - I read the H.C.R. piece as well, I subscribe to her posts, and she hit the nail on the head. Trump is failing to maintain his ego under the pressure of knowing he is going to lose again and when he does the legal system can finally put him in jail, or psych ward. As to money in politics, I have made a contribution to Sen. Casey's campaign who is opposed by a carpetbagging, hedge fund billionaire who I think will lose big.
Is nobody interested in making predictions, or anybody interested in contributions?
Christopher Mulvaney
I wish I could share your optimism. Both the Presidential and the Casey/carpetbagger campaigns appear to be too close for my comfort.
David Palmeter
It's the data not in the polls that matters now.
1)There has been a massive surge in new voter registrations prompted by Harris' entering the race and changing the political dynamic on a dime. The surges continues after Harris wiped the floor with Trump at the debate, and then with Taylor Swift's endorsement. There have drastic increases in new registrations among women, large increases among black women voters, specifically older Black women, and the youth vote. One things is clear, it is not the Trump campaign that is driving these increases.
2) the Harris campaign has raised about $1 billion since she entered the race. Trump is nowhere close to that despite Elon Musk's largess.
3) there has also been a huge increase in people volunteering. Biden's campaign invested early in field organization and left Harris with an organization that now has lots of folks to do the work of canvassing, identifying supporters and turning them out to vote. That means all the highly motivated newly registered voters will be contacted by staff over the next 15 days. Since early voting has begun in most places, this means that as democratic votes are cast they will be crossed off the GOTV lists making it easier for campaigns to focus their efforts more efficiently on the remaining folks.
One thing not to do is focus on the polling averages. One of the republican strategies has been to create new polling outfits that essentially do junk polls that weight the averages in Trump's favor. People are referring to this as 'flooding the zone.' In addition, I don't think pollsters have a clear sense of what the electorate will look like this time because all the new voter registrations take time to be processed by the town clerk, then sent to the Secretary of State's office who then do their thing after which they are posted publicly and only then can pollsters get those lists and adjust their panels accordingly.
One last thing the best communication strategy I know of is, after making the case against your opponent end with the question: Is this the person you want to see as president. Harris is doing this in her campaign stops: showing videos of Trump's latest rallies and then asking if the country can afford this deluded psychopath (tho she doesn't put it quite so succinctly). The guy running against the Black Nazi in N.C. ran a great ad using this technique. after highlighting the insane he's said, they end with that question:is this who we want running the state?
I think this race will be a blowout. Trump will lose, the Democrats take the House, and while I am less confident about the Senate, I am hopeful. Political scientists have this theory of periodic realignment of voters. 1932 ended republican hegemony, 1980 put them back on top, but the 2018, 2020, elections showed a trend in favor of the Dems and I think there is no reason to think that trend won't continue this time.
Lately I feel like I'm a political therapist for my friends who are depressed after reading the latest NYT's analysis of the latest poll. Stop looking at that crap, and especially stop paying attention to betting odds. Here's to hoping I'm right.
^That's genuinely helpful stuff. I could use some political therapy for sure. (Left to my own devices, the best I've got may be negligibly better than: "538 is giving Trump 52%, but hey, they also had Kansas City as the underdogs in the Super Bowl!")
Thanks for all that.
Dr. Wolff
I'm grateful to see you're better and are commenting again. Hopefully we'll get to read your opinions on the current Presidential Race. Of course, on your own good time if you feel like it.
DP, I think you’re right to point to a realignment going on in American politics. But it seems to me that realignment might turn out to be a double-edged sword. It’s one that may benefit the Democrats in the short run. But what sort of Democratic Party will it become?
I ask that question because I look to other places and see realignments that have resulted in the destruction of the left in democratic socialist parties. And where these parties still survive, as in Britain, they are no longer socialist and very questionably democratic—more like technocratic. To be sure, many of the party functionaries and MPs have (as do I) recent working-class ancestors. But most of them are Thatcher’s progeny, not even Attlee’s or Wilson’s, convinced of their own merit and devotees of meritocracy.
You’ll get the picture.
I hope Trump is soundly defeated and look forward to a great upheaval in the Republican Party as the two groups that each believe that Party belongs to them fight it out. Since the Democrats have been involved in that sort of thing since the 1960s, they might even be in a position to offer their preferred Republicans some advice?
Best wishes, jw
thanks...
Here's a prediction:
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/10/22/harris-is-expected-to-win-both-the-popular-and-electoral-votes.html
Note the gaming of the betting markets as well as the dubious polls. DJT is up ~3X over the past couple weeks which is way weird. Also, it seems the the NYT "somehow" found out that Jamie Dimon supports Harris on the QT. For what it's worth my spidy sense says Harris.
It seems we have reached the point where some would vote for Kamala Harris even if she stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot someone. Or, rather, if she promised to continue the unlimited flow of of weapons & money and unwavering diplomatic cover at the ICC, ICJ, & the UN Security Council for a state perpetrating a genocide.
"Guy Zaken [a former Israeli Defense Forces bulldozer driver assigned to Gaza] provided further insight into their experience in Gaza. 'We saw very, very, very difficult things,' Zaken told CNN. 'Things that are difficult to accept.'
The former soldier has spoken publicly about the psychological trauma endured by Israeli troops in Gaza. In testimony to the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in June, Zaken said that on many occasions, soldiers had to 'run over terrorists, dead and alive, in the hundreds.'
'Everything squirts out,' he added.
Zaken says he can no longer eat meat, as it reminds him of the gruesome scenes....
He maintains that the vast majority of those he encountered were 'terrorists.' ...
'So, there is no such thing as citizens,' he said, referring to the ability of Hamas fighters to blend with civilians. 'This is terrorism.'"
Way back in the fall, when reports first began emerging of claims from Palestinian eyewitnesses that the IDF had been bulldozing tents of Palestinians, burying them alive, even I said on Twitter that the claims sounded so horrific that they sorely tested credulity. Yet here we are, with a former IDF soldier essentially admitting they did in fact do this. (Yes, he says they bulldozed alive "terrorists," yet also says that "there is no such thing as citizens [civilians].")
And we've heard nothing from Kamala Harris indicating that her policy toward Israel and Palestine will be any different than what we have seen already.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/middleeast/gaza-war-israeli-soldiers-ptsd-suicide-intl/index.html
No doubt, Eric, we'll soon be asked to watch with sympathy for the Israeli soldiers some updated version of "Waltzing with Bashir." It's all the Palestinians' fault for causing them to suffer.
To talk about the elecction in seriousness: every one I talk to and my own (Bat sense? Spidey sense?) tells me Trump will win decisivelly in November. A Stoic philosopher counsels me not to engage with 'Maggot Heads' in the WSJ, but I do, to make myself give the illusion of doing something helpful and out of curiosity and in the fantasy I could be a second coming of Hitchens who would kick Trump's ass easily and thereby redeem himself. This is a fairer venue to discuss why Harris is so wanting as a candidate (even though I like her as a person and she's our man or woman so to speak) Does anybody not share my disappointment, and if so why? I have my own theories. If Trump wins which is likely, I will try to exercise Stoic virtue, but it is hard. Trump and Harris and America are all externals and beyond our control. We have to be prepared for the worst and face it bravely, especially here in America,
I think it is the other way around. You need a theory of mind for the voters who will sway this election- they aren't particularly bright but they know "what's going on," and they see Harris who Trump ridicules as dumb and to them she sounds dumb and they see Trump and he sounds and acts like someone who would play a President in a movie to their impoverished imaginations. They think that things will be the same with Trump only better as if he were Reagan, out of sheer stupidity and indoctrination by Fox and whatever crap py media they consume. It is they who will say, "I don't like Trump, but at least he gets things done," even though it is obviously bullshit of the first magnitude.
We may very well be in for it big time. The only question is how will the worst unfold?
Some very black humor:
Question: what's an Israeli surgical strike?
Answer: That's when they deliberately target surgeons.
Dear Professor Wolff:
I finished listening to your lecture on Freud and feel compelled (!?!) to offer the following points. (Allow me to say, in order to preemptively address the inevitable criticism, that I am also a connoisseur of psychotherapy and have been analysed myself).
W/r/t Penis Envy, I’m afraid you’re selling it short (HA! See what I did there?). As Karen Horney thought, Freud got this half right, but it took a woman to point out which half. Women didn’t envy the penis but rather the privileges that accrued to penis-holders: education, career, money, independence, and so on.
W/r/t to current treatment modalities, behaviorism has morphed into Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Needless to say, brute economic factors, as applied by insurers are what drive changes in this area, but CRT rests on a Cartesian conception of the body as a kind of organic trolley that merely contains the intellect, which is the only part that really matters. In CRT you are encouraged to perform the Munchausen maneuver of pulling yourself out of your misery by grasping your own ponytail.
Anonymous @ 12:36 pm: I'm afraid to ask, but what makes you think Trump is likely to win, and decisively at that? Is it more than a gut feeling? No hard feelings in your direction either way, I just hope for the sake of my sanity that your thought-process happens to be less compelling than Christopher Mulvaney's above.
I wonder, BTW, if s. wallerstein is still willing to gamble on Trump's defeat. If I were you (Anonymous), I'd be tempted to wager that $50. :)
There was a talk show host in the nineties named Morton Downey Junior, who was as repellent as Trump and as self righteous as his supporters. I remember sensing this is the wave of the future, then there was Buchanan's Presidential bid, then Palin, now Trump. Plus there was the long sequence of upping the ante, meaning 1/6- the next logical step is full fascism- but most of it is familiarity with the discontents and opportunists who like Trump- who are family, friends, and coworkers. I don't think they're evil, they just have a hard lot and they don't know what hit them, but it still hurts and they see they were screwed, and maybe they read the NY Post- I work in a public library, we're middle class and working class but intellectual- and I grew up ethnic NYC in the eighties- I can't read their mind, but I can take a good guess and manage to get along with them. Plus I try to read people not just judge them (though I unwisely debate them in the WSJ comments page) but hear them. The man on the street or the salt of the earth or Trump's people do all the dirty work and are lied too and taken advantage of and are the true Americans, that's how many of them see themselves and they think everything the Times and the elite tells them is BS, that's how they see it. Trump is the fascism of fools you might say. Well we'll see, plus Harris is smart but she's not a natural politician, she can't handle herself and for a street smart and asshole "business man" like Trump who can or it seems to him have his way with people (shoot someone on fifthe avenue) she's stupid.
I do think that Hitchens or Obama or Bille Clinton or even Reagan would wipe the floor with him, but this is the proverbial hand we've been dealt.
What do you think? Am I making sense?
MIchael, I don't recall offering to bet that Trump will lose, but I take your word for it that I did. I don't follow the U.S. electoral news as closely as most people here do, but no, I'm not betting on this election now. Too close to call from what I can see.
Glad that you're back Bob. Sending you best wishes! - Alex Campbell
s.w., I didn't quite manage to find it after clicking around for a couple minutes, and I don't know if it's possible to actually run a search through all the previous comments, but I'm sure the offer was in some semi-recent thread...maybe one of those 200-comment threads I didn't feel like looking through again.
I'm a little less sure that the amount was $50. I didn't say anything at the time, but I was close to considering the gamble myself, thinking it'd make a Trump victory feel marginally less terrible. ;)
Anonymous: Thanks for the reply. It gives me a better sense of where your foreboding comes from, yes.
You mention Morton Downey Jr. on TV, and progressing (in the sense that a disease might progress) from there to Trump - I don't think it's at all unusual or unrelatable to feel that these sorts of red flags are appearing in our worlds with greater and greater frequency. (Hence the popularity of the movie Idiocracy, for one thing.) They aren't the whole story, of course, and my hope is that the, er, non-red flags outlined by CJM and others will be shown in retrospect to have had more predictive value. :)
And I also relate to the part about trying to get along with the Trump/GOP-supporters in one's circle. There's definitely appeal in refusing to see them as simply evil. As with everyone, their ideology comes from "somewhere," and somewhere not entirely of their own choosing, with unavoidable limitations and perhaps distortions. I also want to say that there is much more to a person than their politics - or at any rate, I'd find it a lot harder to live with the opposite thought.
Of course I don't find this perfectly aligns with the idea of regarding people as grown-ups who are responsible for their values and decisions, and trying to engage them in constructive critical dialogue on the presumption that they "should know better." But eh, I've got nothing better at this point.
^Stoicism has a lot to admire, for sure. I happen to be pretty bad, or at least undeveloped, when it comes to the pursuit of virtuous detachment and rational self-mastery and such; I get anxious and scatterbrained and worry intensely about stuff that doesn't matter, etc. But Stoicism does I think exemplify at least one - probably most/all - of the basic lines of contemplation for the purposes of self-improvement and (for lack of a better word) coping...
(There's a certain sort of jackass comment one sees online from time to time: "Cope harder." Even Russell described Stoicism as "sour grapes." But short of willfully deluding oneself, there's nothing strange or shameful about coping per se. Coping even feels like the task of life sometimes.)
Anyway, FWIW, I think all the "coping" thoughts basically boil down to a few. Let X stand for whatever's troubling you: Then you have, (1) "X is out of my hands," (2) "Everyone has to deal with X," (3) "X doesn't matter all that much."
That's all the platitudes I have time to go into at the moment. :) Also perhaps of interest and somewhat adjacent to Stoicism - just something that I've "overheard" and that it occurs to me to look into: Buddhist death meditations! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maraṇasati
Michael, if you're interested in whether Stoicism "works", you might look into the late Foucault. Dying of Aids, Foucault got very into Stoicism and contrary to what the anti-Foucault brigade claims, Foucault was all too aware that Aids was real (his father was a doctor.) There's stuff about Stoicism in the 3rd volume of the History of Sexuality, translated as The Care of the Self (or something like that), his lectures in the College de France and elsewhere in the early 80's and scores of interviews given by Foucault as a media superstar in the 80's.
Michael, I'm a beginner, you do feel, you don't repress your feelings in a Freudian way, you accept your feelings with equanimity, one fundamental idea is the fundamental divide: there are things we cannot control and things we can control. The idea is not for the world to grow so stale you hardly taste it or to have no feelings; but wisdom, so you can act when the time comes. We are entering a moment for Stoicism. Let me add lots of people, including you and me before I learned of it as a school of thought, practiced Stoicism quite accidentally, it can be such a natural wisdom. The idea isn't to tell the world how it should be, which is foolish, but to survive and act. Even revolutionaries such as those who hang out on this blog, if they were wise, would learn from Epictetus and Socrates. We're not the first to face "the end of the world." It is good to have some perspective.
Interesting:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/10/robert-paxton-on-fascism-and-trump
Eric, recent developments and the likely results of a Vance/Musk administration for Gaza and the world in general makes Biden's screw ups post 10/07 irrelevant.
s.w.,
Little was known about AIDS in the early days of the disease, so to point out that Foucault was, at least initially, skeptical about AIDS is not "anti-Foucault."
I'd point you to the second paragraph of the section "Final Years," including certain of the notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault#Later_life_(1970%E2%80%931984)
LFC, Funny but my source of information is a later edition of the Eribon biography which is referred to in the footnotes in the Wikipedia article. Did Eribon change his version to a more politically corrrect one in the later edition or did he talk to more people who were close to Foucault before writing the later edition? I'd tend to say the latter because Eribon, another French gay philosopher, seems to have interviewed a lot of people who knew Foucault personally.
s.w.,
I was thinking specifically of the interview with Edmund White that's referenced in the relevant Wikipedia paragraph, where White says he mentioned AIDS to Foucault (in the early days of the disease) and Foucault's response was dismissive. I'm on my phone at the moment so can't easily do copy & paste, but look at that paragraph in the section "Final Years" and look at the footnote to the White interview.
LFC, the Edmund White quote is from 1981 and Foucault lived 3 more years, during which he studied Stoicism and other ancient forms of life-philosophy. The Eribon quotes in the Wikipedia article are from the 1991 edition of his biography of Foucault: I have the 2011 expanded edition which goes into a lot of detail about Foucault's last years, based on interviews with his close friends, including his partner.
I insist about this because I have run into die-hard anti-Foucault people (who generally detest all French philosophy) who claim that Foucault believed that all "reality is socially constructed" including illness, which is not true. To simplify, Foucault believes that there is something "out there" and that we create or invent differing discourses about it and that those discourses are basically and generally unconsciously motivated by our power urges and needs. That's a simplification.
s.w.,
This will be my last comment on this here. (We can continue the discussion if necessary by email or on my blog perhaps.)
I have read some Foucault (though not as much, I'm guessing, as some readers of this blog have). Obviously he accepted or believed that there is such a thing as physical illness, as an "objective" biological reality. However, in 1981 when AIDS had just appeared, Foucault was skeptical about it. That was actually not that unreasonable a reaction, given that it was a new disease (at least in humans) about which little at first was understood. I'm perfectly willing to grant that as time went on he changed his view about AIDS and, if Eribon says he studied Stoicism (which would make some sense, given e.g. that the second volume of History of Sexuality on classical Greek views of sexuality prob makes some reference to Stoicism), then I have no reason to doubt that.
But if you want to defend Foucault against his (sometimes ignorant) critics, I'd respectfully suggest that pretending he did not say certain things in 1981 that he evidently did say is not the most effective way to defend Foucault's thought and work.
Ok, that's my last comment on this here.
Top Battleground States Presidential Election Polls - Real Clear Politics average
If you ever wondered how you would have acted in Germany in 1932 now you know.
Rum, Romanism, and rebellion.
Judging by his latest faux pas, one can reasonably say that Joe Biden must be one of this blog's regulars. Maybe LFC or aaall.
Election day is five or six days, depending on how you count. It is Trump's race to lose, as he is the dominant figure of our time. There is no anti-Trump- not Biden anymore and definitely not Harris, though she is doing well and her best. The system meant to filter filth like Trump is history and Trump through his charisma and shitty street smarts exploits virtual reality to create new facts on the ground. I don't think he'll win though I fear his victory, because the race is his to lose and he just might lose it. The winds just might favor us and a few people might out of revulsion or decency rebuke this distasteful ogre with the fake orange hair
aaall: If you ever wondered how you would have acted in Germany in 1932 now you know.
I often reflect on the parallels between what we are witnessing, indeed participating in, in Palestine today and the situation in Europe in the 1930s. Most of the world in those years turned away Jews seeking to flee the Nazis. Now most of the world does nothing in the face of endless war crimes and genocide, and some of the most powerful countries, notably the United States, are complicit on almost every level.
Posted on X yesterday by Craig Mokhiber, the former director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:
"Hannah Arendt spoke of the banality of evil. She said that the frightening thing about people who commit or go along with evil acts like genocide is not that there is something unusual about them but rather that that they are so 'terribly and terrifyingly normal.' It was this normality that was 'more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.' I look around today and see the many people among my neighbors, my colleagues, my relatives, the politicians and the media, who support or tolerate this genocide in Palestine, and I am terrified. Not only for Palestine, but for all of humanity. Not only for today, but for the future."
Eric, People from developed nations have never cared much about the fate of those in 3rd world countries such as Palestine. Psychologist Paul Bloom has an interesting book, Against Empathy, where he explains how empathy works: we tend to empathize with those like us. Bloom argues for rational compassion instead of empathy; rational compassion would lead us to care more about the fate of folks in Gaza.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf5MThSniiY
It's useful to look at both Gaza and Ukraine as the U.S. (& etc.) responses to both are related and epic fails. I'm assuming (hoping) that Harris picks a better foreign policy, Justice, Defense and national Security team. A Trump/Vance/Musk presidency would, of course, be a domestic and foreign policy across the board disaster.
Eric, perhaps the Western Hemisphere on Earth 2 welcomed the St. Louis.
Just to be clear, I definitely don’t want another Trump presidency (though why must one now engage in such a ritualistic assertion when one wants to adopt a position a la SDS--part of the way with LBJ?). The hyperactive chaos was infuriating and exhausting. And I’ve just read somewhere that the non-wonderful R. Kennedy jr. is hoping he’ll be in a position to ban vaccines. And he’s just one of the sub-nutters we’d have to endure.
But as a non-American, which may perhaps account for the fact that I’m more sensitive to foreign policy futures than some others, I find myself pondering aaall’s suggestion that Harris, if elected, will pick a better foreign policy, etc. team.
Trump I have no doubt will pursue an erratic and bullying approach to other countries. He might even, in Israeli style, bomb those who don’t bend to his whimsical will.
But on the other hand—I’d cite, e.g., Harris’s words at her convention and elsewhere concerning American lethality—I dread just where she and those who think like her might go. There will be, I very much fear, no limits to which she will not go to preserve the American imperial system (a system, by the way, Trump is surely right in viewing as in decline, though his understanding as to why that is so is ludicrous, like so much else he utters). And even when she and her team don’t feel pressed to go to extremes, the system will still be maintained by violence of some sort on a daily basis.
So what do I have to hope for? Occasional explosions of brutality directed at other particular parts of the world? Or some degree of regular violence, the degree of which again has no clear limits depending on just how threatened they perceive American domination to be. Fanciful thinking, might you say? Look at the expansionary record since…the Barbary pirates? the Indian wars? the Spanish American war? . . .
The publisher of Haaretz, Amos Schocken, has unleashed a furor in Israel by saying at a conference in London:
"The Netanyahu government doesn’t care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population. It dismisses the costs to both sides for defending the settlements while fighting the Palestinian freedom fighters that Israel calls terrorists. In a sense, what is taking place now in the occupied territories and parts of Gaza is a second Nakba...
A Palestinian state must be established. And the only way to achieve this, I think, is to apply sanctions against Israel, against the leaders who oppose it, and against the settlers."
Predictably, there are now calls from mininsters of the government to boycott Haaretz. Schocken has been forced to partly recant.
'the Palestinian freedom fighters that Israel calls terrorists'
--freedom fighters?
Of course he's walking back his comments.
'Just to be clear, I definitely don’t want another Trump presidency (though why must one now engage in such a ritualistic assertion when one wants to adopt a position a la SDS--part of the way with LBJ?).'
I get that the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) had a complex relationship. Just to be clear.
'Fanciful thinking, might you say? Look at the expansionary record since…the Barbary pirates? the Indian wars? the Spanish American war? . . .'
'Fanciful thinking' is a correct and usable phrase in written English. Anyways, I have no doubt that US presidential candidates would take very different diplomatic approaches. I am amused that the idea is to figure out which one of these is, and which is not, pro-Imperialist. If the biggest difference between the two presidential candidates when it comes to U.S. relations with the world can be boiled down, then okay, I just don't know that this is how to do it.
Trump would be a foreign policy (and domestic policy) calamity. He would greenlight everything Netanyahu wants to do w/o bothering w/ even the mild restraints that the Biden admin has tried, albeit ineffectively, to impose. (Jared Kushner's so-called plan for Mideast peace when Trump was in office was a joke.) Trump claims he wd "solve" or "settle" the Ukraine war instantly; we all know what that means.
Trump btw has never said, contrary to R McD, that the American "imperial system" is in decline; rather, Trump has said that the U.S. itself is in decline. As someone who is ignorant of history and geopolitics, Trump's conceptual apparatus, such as it is, likely does not even include the notion of an American "imperial system." (Personally, I have some caveats about that terminology, but at least I understand what it intends to convey.)
I meant to write "may have some caveats..."
Btw recall what happened re the Mideast when Trump was in office. Among other things, Israel and the UAE signed a normalization-of-relations agreement, the Abraham Accords, in 2020. Some analysts have suggested, persuasively imo, that this contributed to Hamas's perception that the Palestinian issue was being further brushed aside and may have strengthened Hamas's belief that a dramatic (for lack of a better word) operation was required to put the issue back on the table.
As it turned out, the result of putting the issue back on the table in that way has been an immense amount of human suffering in Gaza (proximately caused by the IDF).
So one lesson is that it is a mistake to pursue normalization agreements betw. Israel and its Arab neighbors when those agreements ignore the Palestinian issue. If Trump is back in office, he will likely double down on that approach while letting Netanyahu complete the destruction of Gaza.
P.s. except of course, that now the Arab states will require the Palestinian issue to be included.
Thanks for your response, LFC.
As to American decline, you’re probably right, that Trump has no conception of an American imperial system (most Americans don’t; we are surrounded by all sorts of denialism it seems) —why, by the way, do you put scare quotes around these words?—but nevertheless, the America whose passing Trump regrets is in decline because it is the key part of a very extended, a global system, and its firm control of that system is waning. No? Hence, to belabour the obvious, even if he doesn’t think in the same terms as I do (assuming he thinks at all rather than just running off at the mouth), he does, it seems to me, recognise that something is ailing the USA, but his understanding as to why that is so is morally and politically bankrupt.
But to conclude, I’ll just mention that Sheldon Wolin had some comparisons to draw between the American system and the Athenian one, which too tried to meld domestic democracy and and its imperial reach, and failed.
For anyone interested:
Evan Hill, “Gods of the moment, choosing who lives or dies,” a review of Alexander Wrd’s book, “The Internationalists:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/gods-of-the-moment-choosing-who-lives-or-dies/
a quotation therefrom:
“And it was being steered by the same people who had done so for nearly two decades, a Democratic elect whom critics such as Alex Thurston, an associate professor at the University of Cincinnati’s School of Public and International Affairs, have described as “the keepers of order within American foreign policy, the crew that cleans up Republican foreign policy disasters […] reliable defenders of an American imperial order.” Subject to what Thurston calls the “homogenizing effects” of a pipeline that typically leads through Ivy League universities, political campaigns, and Senate or State Department posts—and the small world of consultancies and think-tank fellowships that serve as nesting grounds when out of power—this foreign policy elite rarely critiques itself. Far from the portrayal put forward in The Internationalists, they are, Thurston argues, marked by “ideological vagueness, a belief in American greatness, and a preference for the status quo.”
*******
“Great power politics: Adam Tooze on Bidenomics”
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n21/adam-tooze/great-power-politics
A searing reminder of how much of a disaster Biden foreign policy has been. Reading that piece is infuriating--and it doesn't even mention the Victoria Nulands, who manage to stay in power no matter which of the two corporate parties is in office.
The author makes one glaring error, however.
There are events and forces in the world, such as climate change, that materially affect every American. And then there are those things that may materially affect only a few but touch on the conscience of many. The bombing of a faraway village using US weapons may change nothing, materially, in the lives of millions of Americans, but it may affront their sense of justice or their beliefs about the United States’ proper role in the world. These aren’t questions of addition or subtraction and can’t be measured on a ledger. They are not about putting a dollar in someone’s pocket. It seems unlikely that an American who supported the defense of Ukraine or the withdrawal from Afghanistan, or who now opposes the wars in Gaza or Lebanon, did so while thinking first of their paycheck or mortgage. Nor has the Biden administration argued that the Gaza war benefits the middle class.
Actually, Biden has indeed argued that feeding the military-industrial complex with more dollars for Ukraine and Israel creates American jobs.
This supplemental request invests over $50 billion in the American defense industrial base—ensuring our military continues to be the most ready, capable, and best equipped fighting force the world has ever seen. The funding will expand production lines, strengthening the American economy and creating new American jobs. This request also addresses the global humanitarian impacts of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and of Hamas’ horrific attacks on Israel, including by extending humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2023/10/20/letter-regarding-critical-national-security-funding-needs-for-fy-2024/
Eric, it's hard to find folks who are worse than Biden and Harris, but if you search a bit, you'll find one: Donald J. Trump.
Victoria Nuland is, I believe, a career Foreign Service Officer. So saying that she "manages to stay in power" regardless of which administration is in office is a bit like saying that a tenured professor "manages to hold on to her job" when the university gets a new president. In other words, the phrase "manages to" is inapt here. (I'll read the linked review when I get a chance.)
P.s. though it is true that she could remain in the Foreign Service and probably be shunted off, say, to an ambassadorship without suffering a technical demotion if a particular administration did not want her as under sec for political affairs (or something comparable).
Pps in case it's not clear, the relevant distinction here is between political appointees and career civil servants; she is in the latter group.
One of my redlines is genocide. Are you saying Trump would kill people deader?
Israel has now bombed children at a polio vaccination center during what was supposed to be a humanitarian ceasefire, according to reports from WHO.
Clueless.
Eric, As for Gaza, I don't see much difference between Biden/Harris and Trump. They're all atrocious.
However, there are other issues. Women's reproductive rights, transgender rights, Vance's misogyny (the childless cat lady stuff), immigration (Trump's story about the Haitians eating pets and threats to deport even documented immigrants), the war on critical race theory in the schools,
the war on gender theory in the schools, Biden's relatively pro-union stance, etc. You guys follow U.S. politics closer than I do.
Finally, Harris seems like a rational psychologically normal person. Whatever her politics, I prefer to have a rational psychologically normal person in charge of things (everywhere, even in my apartment building, not to mention a superpower with nuclear weapons) than someone as mentally and emotionally unbalanced as Trump is.
Eric, I left out climate change. My sister, who is an enviromental activist, will kill me.
Harris has decent policies on climate change and other environmental issues. Trump denies climate change.
Prediction Update:
The Selzer poll is the gold standard in Iowa and its latest poll shows that a massive change in voter preferences has occurred. Keep in mind that Trump won Iowa in 2020 by 8 pts.
In June, ‘24 their poll showed Trump with an 18-point lead over Pres. Biden. Now the poll shows Harris with a 3% lead: a 21 point shift in 41/2 months. The gender gap is huge. Women 65+ favor Harris with a margin of more than 2- 1: 63% Harris to 28% Trump. Independent women voters favor Harris by 28 pts. One thing that may be driving the gender gap is that Iowa’s abortion ban came into effect several months ago so the issue is very salient there.
The good news doesn’t end there: currently all of Iowa’s congressional delegation is Republican. The Selzer poll indicates that The Democrats may pick up 2 seats.
John Mearsheimer: "I'm not voting for Trump, and I'm not voting for Harris.... I won't vote for the Democrats because of the genocide in Gaza. I think the Biden administration is complicit in the genocide and genocide is a red line for me, and I would never vote for Biden or for Kamala Harris because, again, they are complicit in the genocide."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPA1orNv6SQ
@ 1:53
I continue being unable to understand the reasoning of those who say they will vote for neither candidate. They are different, and one of them will be President. I don't agree with either of them 100%. Trump would be destructive of the very fabric of the country. This is not an election about policy. It is an election about the very values that make democracy at all possible. The structure must be preserved. Policy debates can follow.
Eric, When Trump's disastrous and incompetent policies begin to affect everyone and your Democrat liberal friends blame you for not supporting Harris, how will you feel? And if Trump turns out to be the new Hitler, as some liberal Democrats claims (I have my doubts), how will you feel? These are real, not rhetorical questions. I'm genuinely curious, without personal hostility.
It seems to me, David, and perhaps you too s.w., that you're not taking human passions into sufficient account. There's surely something in most of us--perhaps almost all of us--which causes us to take a "let the skies fall" stance with respect to something--something which might even mean we'll be sacrificing our own lives. In other words, rationality surely has its limits, though we likely don't know what these limits are until we're faced with that something. For Mearsheimer it has to do, it seems from the quoted words, with being unable to bring himself to lend any sort of support to someone who is in fact, if not in word, supporting genocide. You may not like it, but his is, to me at least, an emotionally and morally understandable position.
I meant to add that you yourself espouse just such an emotional and moral position when you assert "The structure must be preserved." and the like.
Anonymous, I don't believe that Mearsheimer's posture about the election is any more or any less moral than that of David Palmeter. Decent people can differ about what is the decent thing to do and still remain decent. The indecency is Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Since most decent people have decided that Harris is the lesser evil with regards to Trump, I just wonder why someone would decide to take a contrarian posture to that and refuse to vote for Harris, especially when that can lead to social ostracism from friends and family members, whom, at least in my case, I would describe as "decent".
To be more clear, given that it is not radically evident that supporting Harris as an alternative to the fascist or quasi-fascist Trump is less morally correct than refusing to do so because Harris/Biden support genocide in Gaza and given that one is going to be ostracized by one's peers for refusing to vote for Harris, why would one refuse to vote for Harris?
Freddie deBoer's last two columns strike me as definitely expressive, and maybe illuminating, on the routine anguish of us leftists in voting for the Democrats. The current election just seems like a comic book exaggeration of this lifetime quandary. One interesting suggestion that deBoer makes is something the opposite of what Chomsky has urged in recent years: that it's the Democrats, not (selon Chomsky) the Republicans, who are no longer a political party, as the former, but not the latter, no longer articulate values and propose policies allegedly exemplifying those values . . . ---Leonard Cohen's line "Democracy is coming to the U.S.A." always reminds me of Gandhi's wisecrack when asked what he thought of Western Civilization: "I think it would be a good idea." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU-RuR-qO4Y
I think you misread what I wrote, s.w., though I'll concede I may not have made myself as clear as I should have. Anyway, I wasn't morally evaluating either. My intention was to point out that people may be moved to act by things so deep seated within us that David's relatively simple instrumental reasoning didn't allow for. And in my amendment to my first comment I was trying to suggest that David's assertions were themselves coming from his own passionate commitments. (Who was it said that reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions?)
Needless to add, perhaps, I like John Rapko's response/comment at 2:28 PM, especially the linking of Cohen to Gandhi, someone whom I often quote wrt western civilisation.
Since Mearsheimer seems untroubled by the Russian genocide in Ukraine one has to question his position on the Gaza genocide. He is also being disingenuous. If you listen to the link it's clear that M's real hope is that Trump gets elected, bails on Ukraine, and crawls to Moscow.
While Biden's response to both the Middle East and Ukraine demonstrates the bankruptcy of "escalation management" as a useful (for the U.S.) tool in foreign policy. Considering that as "support" is a step too far as Israel still has options should the U.S. pull the plug. Harris as VP has a very limited role here. Consider that Biden as VP opposed Obama's decision to escalate in Afghanistan. Obama still went with the generals. When he was the "decider" he chose to withdraw. For some reason M privileges one genocide over another and considers the president and VP as equals.
s.w., Trump is clearly in cognitive and physical decline. Should he win and the Reps carry the House, I assume Vance and the Christo-fascists that will comprise the cabinet will be invoking the 25th ASAP. We've already had a judicial coup and an insurrection so why not a palace coup to round things out?
Thanks, J R, for the references to freddie. I read his remarks as a rejoinder to a lot of people I encounter. It also reads in a way as a rejoinder to aaall's comment re Mearsheimer. It's as if Mearsheimer didn't have a position vis-a-vis the US/NATO--Russia/Ukraine going back many years. It's just that demand that freddie highlights: there's only one right position to have and if you don't take it you're damned. In other words, Ukraine and Gaza are separable issues, and like it or not, one is a most regrettable war while the other is a slaughter being visited upon a helpless people by one of the most sophisticated military machines on the planet.
I should have added that, certainly, I think, from a Mearsheimerian pt of view, that the US, particularly one particular political party bears a lot of responsibility in both cases.
I am surprised with Mearsheimer's position. I agree with the disgust in the Democrat administration, but it is easy to see that Trump and his minions have nobody to answer to when giving Israel the green light. Republican voters don't care about Gaza.
Anonymous
Of course I have emotions. Who doesn't? But grown-ups (e.g., those voting age) are presumed to have reason as well, and to be able to control their emotions enough to make rational decisions.
Allan Lichtman is not having a good night.
"The structure must be preserved."
Yet more evidence that Professor Wolff is mistaken when he says we all want the same thing.
I continue being unable to understand the reasoning of those who say they will vote for neither candidate.
I, on the other hand, understand your reasoning perfectly well, David.
You and people like you don't want change, any change. You are happy with the way things are. This is not a reproach. Yours is a legitimate and understandable position.
Where you go wrong is that you want to be seen as a "progressive" as well. But "progressive" and "conservative" are opposite. You cannot be the two things at the same time, David.
So, how do you and your kind deal with that? You don't proclaim your deep conservatism in public, but you do your best to hinder change, progress.
The idea behind the Harris/Walz ticket was to abort any possibility of real change, while pretending that real change is your real but always distant goal.
For you any possibility of change must be forever sacrificed - sadly - on the altar of avoiding an alleged apocalyptic catastrophe. Change is the eternally unavoidable casualty in the struggle against the anti-Christ: Sure, you want change but we have to forego it this time around to avoid the greatest threat to humanity. That's why every election, provided it's the current one, is the most consequential in American history. The Beast of the Book of Revelations may have always been slain, but it raises its ugly head time and time again.
Less-evilism, in short.
Ah, but what if no anti-Christ is to be found? Simple. Manufacture one.
S Wallerstein put that very cogently a few weeks back:
https://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2024/06/sic-transit-gloria-mundi.html?showComment=1722982473783#c5586413234552825987
The thing - as the last few hours show, David - is that that story isn't working anymore, is it?
Red Herring,
I don't think this election was about "progressive" and "conservative." To me, those are policy issues, and this was not an election about policy (although certainly policy changes will be made, and they aren't going to be at all "progressive." To me, this was an election about constitutionalism and something approaching fascism. There is, in Trump world, no loyal opposition, no opponents, only enemies who must be crushed.
You seem to be someone who thinks we had two bad choices. But even if that is the case, they were different choices and it seems obvious to me that one of them was better than the other.
But maybe I'm too pessimistic. Maybe we'll get to enjoy the governments fiscal problems being solved by the Chinese paying 25% tariffs on everything they sell us. Maybe we will be better off if we're pals with Putin and Kim Jong Un and they guy in Budapest whose name escapes me at the moment, and not with western Europe, South Korea, Japan and the like.
s.wallerstein: Harris has decent policies on climate change and other environmental issues.
Kamala Harris: "let's talk about fracking because we're here in Pennsylvania. I made that very clear in 2020. I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as Vice President of the United States. And, in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking. My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil. We have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over-rely on foreign oil."
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/presidential-debate-philadelphia-pennsylvania
(that last post was from me)
Approaching fascism? You old guys still peddling those ridiculous analogies after all these years? Maybe you should set up the Resistance already and start singing Bella Ciao at every opportunity... I mean, where the fuck are the SA or squadristi causing havoc everywhere?
Just wait.... they are coming
Eric,
Compared to Trump--a climate change denier--Kamala is the Queen of Green.
Anonymous: You are very wise, among the fools who fancy themselves with it and radical when homeys don't know what time it is, almost like some people whine for radical change because of an inability to kick with reality. They ordered revolution number nine from room service- the waiter delivered up Trump a la cart for four more years- Dumb, dumb, dumb and stupider
Don’t hold your breath
As I just commented elsewhere, a popular leftism might—I emphasise might— have been able to defeat Trumpian populism, but the powers that be within the Democratic Party blocked any turn of the party in that direction. Instead they continued along the twin paths of meritocracy and international capitalism and its conjoined emphasis on upholding and expanding its preferred global political order.
To be sure, they did espouse “progressivism” of a sort. But that progressivism deserves scrutiny. When the movements for civil rights and women’s rights took off in an era only remembered by people of my age, at least in part they were linked to notions of quite far reaching systemic change. Recall that MLK was anti-war and an initiator of a poor people’s campaign and was murdered while actively supporting the efforts of garbage pick-up workers to get decent working conditions. Similarly, the women’s liberation movement, as I understood it, had their sights on quite fundamental aspects of the system under which we—unfortunately—still live.
But today’s self-styled “progressives” seem to have very limited aspirations. They, so many of those pursuing identity politics, while certainly right to point out the injustices they suffer, nevertheless seem to want nothing more than to be allowed to enjoy the benefits of the prevailing system. What choice do they have since they’re embedded in a context to which even the supposedly progressive political party assures them by action as well as word that there is really no alternative? They, too, are in favour of meritocracy and seem to have no regard for what the economic system they aspire to enter at a level commensurate with their education does to others both within and beyond the United States—being meritocrats, they’re even quite comfortable, I think, with the fact that only some of their identity group will actually benefit should the barriers to their entry into the system be lowered or removed.
But the great many left behind of all sorts, no matter their race, sex, or personal inclinations, have a way of asserting themselves. Maybe they’ll be subject to new forms of injury or even to the renewal of old forms of injury. But they’re not going to pretend that the capitalist-friendly reforms of the last 60 odd years meet their needs or their aspirations.
Maybe the catastrophic collapse in the vote for the Democrats will lead them to reconsider the path they’ve insisted on following. But I’m not holding my breath.
The Democrats and the Republicans in the U.S. have both almost always been "pro-capitalist" parties. What has distinguished the Dems historically (since the New Deal at any rate) has been a commitment to some degree of income redistribution and some degree of active intervention in the economy to promote competition (as opposed to oligopoly or monopoly) and full employment.
Starting roughly with Bill Clinton's turn toward "neoliberalism" (welfare "reform," NAFTA etc.), the Dems shifted somewhat ideologically. However, the party's basic commitments returned to the fore somewhat w Obama and more strongly w Biden, who has been the most pro-labor president in decades and whose legislative achievements, e.g., the infrastructure bill and clean energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, redound to the benefit of what are called, in the U.S. context, working-class voters (i.e., largely those w/o college degrees and/or employed in manufacturing and other blue-collar occupations). Reducing prices for insulin for those on Medicare (and some other prescrip. drugs) also benefited a large number of people.
The question is why these accomplishments weren't enough to give Harris victory. The most plausible immediate answer -- though it is of course not a complete explanation -- is that it is hard to be an incumbent party running in an environment of increased costs for necessities. This, much more than a commitment to "meritocracy" (a word that probably a majority of the U.S. electorate would have trouble defining), worked against Harris.
Note that while Harris lost the so-called blue wall states, the margins, last I checked, were narrow (Wisconsin, e.g., had the two candidates separated by about 30,000 votes).
Finally, it would be congenial to think that moving the Dems in a more leftist -- as opposed to rightist pseudo-populist -- direction would have electoral benefits. But relatively little in U.S. political history supports that assumption.
In their haste to show that the "capitalist-friendly reforms" of recent decades have not met their needs, the "left behind" members of the U.S. population have (re-)elected someone whose first order of business probably will be to restore tax cuts for the very wealthy. Thus, the working-class Trump voters have voted against their own economic interests in yet another almost-textbook display of false consciousness.
It seems to me, LFC, that you’re focussing too narrowly on the predicament the Democrats—and we all—now face. To be sure, the short term shouldn’t be ignored. But the longer term also deserves its due.
To refer to ancient times—what goes around often seems to come around again—
“The populares, then, served, faute de mieux and sometimes no doubt against their will, as leaders of what was in a very real sense a political class struggle: a blind, spasmodic, uninformed, often misdirected and always easily confused movement, but a movement with deep roots, proceeding from men whose interests were fundamentally opposed to those of the ruling oligarchy, and who were not concerned . . . with the mere exclusiveness, corruption and inefficiency of the senatorial government but with its rapacity and its utter indifference to their interests.” (G. E. M. de Ste Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (Duckworth, 1981), p. 352).
Also, by the way, while you’re emphasising the narrow margins by which Harris lost in, e.g., Wisconsin, I’d suggest you also take note of the enormous decline in the Democratic vote across the entire USA. The Republican vote didn't decline by nearly as much it seems.
I neglected owning up to the foregoing.
@Anonymous (November 6, 2024 at 9:31 AM)
I might be mistaken, but I doubt most or even many of the proponents of the "Trump is the second coming of Mussolini" theory really believe it. Sure, there may be some cognitively impaired enough to truly swallow that tripe, but I cannot believe they are a majority.
In my opinion, the Fascism thesis is popular not because it's believed, but because it's hoped it will stick and damage Trump. Scaremongering. Ask S. Wallerstein.
------
People have short memories. Believe it or not, the first incarnation of the Fascism thesis, back in 2016, was that Trump actually was the second coming of Hitler. He was a crypto antiSemite and the USA in 2016 was Germany in the 1930s, the Weimar Republic; a Reichstag fire event was imminent.
Four years later, after no American Fourth Reich materialized and as the numerous links between Trump and the Jewish community (family members, friends, staff and donors and foreign partners) became well-known the theory had to be revised. Now Trump was no longer Hitler v2.0, but Mussolini V2.0.
Red Herring, I'm flattered that you refer to my previous comments, but I wonder if you could in the future provide exact links since I don't generally remember what I say and I say different things depending on my moods, whether I'm trying to provoke or please others, whether liberal Democrats irritate me or I perceive them as my allies.
That being said, no, I don't believe Trump is the new Hitler or Mussolini. I see him as a demagogue, a con-man, an authoritarian populist, with a misogynous streak. In addition, the role of social media has created an entirely new political phenomenon, Trumpism, that channels the anger many people feel about the system and has imitators in Argentina, Milei and in Brazil,
Bolsonaro. There's a lot of rage and resentment against so-called "liberal elites" almost everywhere, that means against me and most of the readers of this blog. Whether that rage
is justified is besides the point. I'm not even sure that to speak of "justified rage" has much meaning.
Fascism does not nec. mean a carbon copy of Mussolini or Hitler. After Jan. 6, 2021, the well known historian Robert Paxton said he thought the fascism label now applied. Is he "cognitively impaired"? Obvs not.
If I were you, I wouldn't bother replying at any length to what Red Herring says. But that's up to you, obvs.
@ S Wallerstein
I'm flattered that you refer to my previous comments, but I wonder if you could in the future provide exact links since I don't generally remember what I say and I say different things depending on my moods, whether I'm trying to provoke or please others, whether liberal Democrats irritate me or I perceive them as my allies.
Sure. Here it goes:
https://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2024/06/sic-transit-gloria-mundi.html?showComment=1722982473783#c5586413234552825987
You can also find it on my first comment to this thread, above (on November 6, 2024 at 2:40 AM). :-)
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