The Rudderless West

[Santiago Odo]

In August 1990, George H.W. Bush met Margaret Thatcher in Aspen right after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. The pair resolved not to allow Iraq’s “naked aggression” to stand, and it did not. This was how the West was supposed to work — and how, sometimes, it did.

Today the U.S. and Great Britain scarcely govern themselves, never mind shape world order. Theresa May, who as prime minister resembles Thatcher in no respect other than gender and party, just suffered the worst parliamentary defeat in nearly a century over her Brexit deal. Donald Trump, who as president resembles Bush in no respect other than gender and party, presides over a shuttered government, a revolving-door administration, a furiously divided nation, and a mistrusted and mocked superpower.

The West is now rudderless. To be rudderless puts you at the mercy of elements. The elemental forces of politics today are tribalism, populism, authoritarianism and the sewage pipes of social media. Each contradicts the West’s foundational commitments to universalism, representation, unalienable rights, and an epistemology built on fact and reason, not clicks and feelings. We are drifting, in the absence of mind and will, toward a moment of civilizational self-negation.

Anyone who reads the NYTs, but especially those who have noticed its shift to a sort of Maoist Propaganda Outlet, will have noticed a radical shift in tone and in content. If I were to attempt to provide an example of how 'Cultural Marxism' functions, the Times would be a good example. I am not sure if it came out in Diebert and Jupe's attempt to establish a definition, but one element of it seems to be that it 'spins of its own accord' and within its own terms and preoccupations, while the material world, the economic world, the underpinning machinery as it were, grinds on.

Who do you think -- I mean of the commentariat -- who do you think offers the best hermeneutic in order to be able to *interpret* our present? Do you think that anyone can? Is there anyone who is actually doing it? Is it even possible? Now, each one of us (to one degree or another) offers an interpretation. We all attempt one -- how could we not? Curious, isn't it? that we have no choice by to deal in hermeneutics. Even if our terms might be outlandish and lunatic.

Recently I watched a talk -- the sort of thing we all might watch on YouTube and which the Algorithmic Gods present to us -- in which the thesis of the speaker was that we are not in a phase similar to that of the 1930s, but rather to the middle of the 15th Century and the invention of the Gutenberg Press. Now, with our belovèd Internet, we have an instrument through which we can receive information that lends to our Interpretive Processes; that determines them.

But it seems to me that if we are 'rudderless' as the opinion writer suggests, we are rudderless insofar as we do not have an interpretation that we can work with. Rather, we have 'tattered manuscripts' or 'ghosts of idea' that appear in our meditative séances.

Now, what is the relationship between our Exterior World which is likely heading toward some sort of Catastrophic Event (usually in times of great upheaval this has been the process, no?) and our Interior Worlds? I think this has been one of the *points of contention* that has often taken shape on the Forum, has it not? The notion of 'enlightenment', the 'praxis' of it, the conversation about *it*?

Each contradicts the West’s foundational commitments to universalism, representation, unalienable rights, and an epistemology built on fact and reason, not clicks and feelings.

This is an interesting introspective sentence, isn't it? I cannot say that I would have expected such in the Times. The entire epistemological question is rather a grand one, isn't it? He simplifies it grotesquely, of course, yet it is not a bad place to start.

Come now Boys & Girls, let us put down the Silly Swords of False Disputation and speak outrightly on these important questions. I am interested in knowing what you genuinely think.

[Santiago Odo]

Since the devilish Times puts it articles behind a pay wall, here is the text of the opinion piece I quoted from (and only because it mentions a few interesting terms and concepts):

In August 1990, George H.W. Bush met Margaret Thatcher in Aspen right after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. The pair resolved not to allow Iraq’s “naked aggression” to stand, and it did not. This was how the West was supposed to work — and how, sometimes, it did.

Today the U.S. and Great Britain scarcely govern themselves, never mind shape world order. Theresa May, who as prime minister resembles Thatcher in no respect other than gender and party, just suffered the worst parliamentary defeat in nearly a century over her Brexit deal. Donald Trump, who as president resembles Bush in no respect other than gender and party, presides over a shuttered government, a revolving-door administration, a furiously divided nation, and a mistrusted and mocked superpower.

The West is now rudderless. To be rudderless puts you at the mercy of elements. The elemental forces of politics today are tribalism, populism, authoritarianism and the sewage pipes of social media. Each contradicts the West’s foundational commitments to universalism, representation, unalienable rights, and an epistemology built on fact and reason, not clicks and feelings. We are drifting, in the absence of mind and will, toward a moment of civilizational self-negation.

When did the drift begin? Probably in 1989, when Francis Fukuyama published his landmark essay “The End of History?” and a decade of democratic complacency took hold. Why worry about the health and fate of liberal democracy when its triumph was inevitable and irreversible? Why teach the benefits of free markets and immigration — or the dangers of socialism and nativism — when history had already rendered a verdict?

And why do the tedious work of preserving the foundations of free government when it is so much more interesting to reinvent it?

Complacency breeds heedlessness. Liberals were heedless when they wrote off moral character as an essential trait of a good presidency. Conservatives (like me) were heedless when we became more concerned about the state of democracy in Iraq than in Iowa. Liberals were heedless when they embraced identity politics without ever thinking it could also be used against them. Conservatives (again, like me) were heedless when we downplayed the significance of the populism and scaremongering infecting the movement via talk radio and Fox News.

The heedlessness occurred on the other side of the Atlantic, too. European integration is a blessing; integration without genuine democratic accountability and consent isn’t. Similarly, immigration is a blessing; immigration without assimilation is a curse. Two generations of European leaders allowed the former without requiring the latter, and then airily dismissed public discontent as politically insignificant and morally illegitimate. Now they are living with the consequences.

As for Brexit, the 2016 decision by 52 percent of the British electorate to leave the European Union over the vehement objections of the 48 percent (details to be hashed out later, if ever), must surely count as one of the worst considered in the island’s storied history. But not as foolish as the decision by former Prime Minister David Cameron to put a foundational question up for a popular vote — just as he had put another foundational question, the independence of Scotland, to a vote two years earlier — without seriously considering the consequences of things going the wrong way.

The problem here wasn’t a failure by Cameron and the “Remain” camp to make a stronger case for staying in the European Union, or to read the polls better. It was a philosophical failure — a failure to understand that the purpose of representative government is to save democracy from itself. I now find myself vaguely rooting for a hard Brexit, on the theory that lasting lessons are only learned the hard way.

Or not. Bad typically begets worse, and a hard Brexit will most likely accelerate every other fissiparous and dangerous trend in British politics: a new push for independence by Scotland and possibly Northern Ireland and Wales; a greater chance of NATO-skeptical, anti-Semitic Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister; Britain’s extended absence as a meaningful and active presence on the world stage.

What about the United States? Among many conservatives I know, the view of Trump is that chaotic management, clownish behavior and ideological apostasies are irritants, not calamities, and prices worth paying for deregulation, tax cuts, and conservative courts.

Really? These same conservatives spent the past 30 years preaching the importance of judgment, good character, and respect for institutions in the person of the president. They were right. What will they say when they find these attributes missing in the person of a president whose policy preferences and political affiliation they don’t share?

The West is not adrift in placid waters. With limited resources but ruthless methods, Vladimir Putin has gone about undermining democracy from Kiev to Kansas. With equally ruthless means and far greater resources, Xi Jinping has raised the banner of efficient authoritarianism as the preferred model of 21st century governance.

What does the West have to say in its own defense? Who does it have to say it? And who will fix the rigging and reset the rudder in time for the next squall?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

"The West is now rudderless. To be rudderless puts you at the mercy of elements. The elemental forces of politics today are tribalism, populism, authoritarianism and the sewage pipes of social media. Each contradicts the West’s foundational commitments to universalism, representation, unalienable rights, and an epistemology built on fact and reason, not clicks and feelings. We are drifting, in the absence of mind and will, toward a moment of civilizational self-negation.

Each contradicts the West’s foundational commitments to universalism, representation, unalienable rights, and an epistemology built on fact and reason, not clicks and feelings.

This is an interesting introspective sentence, isn't it? I cannot say that I would have expected such in the Times. The entire epistemological question is rather a grand one, isn't it? He simplifies it grotesquely, of course, yet it is not a bad place to start.

Would you consider the idea that this very notion of universality, representation and unalienable rights -- or moreover the way it was being deployed in the world being it by Soviet methodology or American "leading" exceptionalism, might have been such a faulty rudder, fundamentally flawed and misaligned with whatever is actually the way things are beyond our mini-world of selves?

If you want to study the political route map, see the role of G.H. Bush under Reagan and Dick Cheney under G.W as well. This is a strong ideology at work but since the establishment is near impossible to get going, they go around it, creating realities on the ground and fixing the policy and then "facts" around it. It even doesn't need to be managed, the policies and facts organize themselves. The media echo hall does it for them. Any Democrat presidency after this remained powerless to roll back anything or create much difference. Their focus is actually, caused by the underlying priorities, mostly on the immaterial and irrelevant. It's completely unreal, not even good or bad. By now the "rudder" is fully broken but that was before the last elections already evident.

Some more about Bush The Vice President’s Men -- Seymour M. Hersh

or perhaps, more into the psychological aspects of this: Remembrance - The Dehumanised Human

[Santiago Odo]

My dear and very special friend, hello!

Receive my blessings.

Would you consider the idea that this very notion of universality, representation and unalienable rights -- or moreover the way it was being deployed in the world being it by Soviet methodology or American "leading" exceptionalism, might have been such a faulty rudder, fundamentally flawed and misaligned with whatever is actually the way things are beyond our mini-world of selves?

In fact, I would not. And that is because I am metaphysically oriented differently than (I reckon) you are.

Within out idea-systems -- our essential predicates -- we assert that universality is 'the way things are'. A reflection then of a truthful description of things and, by extension, a notion to be lived in accord with. However, the idea has to be defined to be useful.

The essence as I understand it is 'spiritual' and has to do with the soul. But it does not have to do, necessarily, with applications of false-universality or propaganda-models to the entire world, especially those that are political and economic and hegemonic. The same could be said for 'representation' and 'unalienable rights', but I would tend to look at these issues through an older conceptual lens.

But what you are talking about, naturally, is a general perversion of power and a perverse ideology of manipulation that attends it. The Americanopolis as Pierre Krebs uses the term. I have read more or less mainstream reportage that indicates that the elder Bush was from his beginning a CIA operative, and as such a political-military operative or para-military operative within American affairs. It is the management and coercion system that developed out of the Second WW.

It seems to me of vital importance to come to an understanding of this system, and these systems, and to understand how they work. Now, I would suggest as one means toward this E Michael Jones talk on The Slaughter of Cities. Here, an outline is provided. A way to *see* things which might inspire one to organize oneself in relation to it.

Do you see, my son?

Yet this does not go to the center of the point that I wished to bring forward. While I accept the general sense that you have presented through your links, I am more interested in the question of interpretation of our reality in larger, albeit connected, senses.

For you, I have gathered, you *see* many things like a good observing machine. But I am less convinced that you understand much. Or, put another way, your pessimism can only place you within a dreary postmodernism. It is circular, yes, but you have become enamored of those unending circles.

Let me help you!

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Within out idea-systems -- our essential predicates -- we assert that universality is 'the way things are'. A reflection then of a truthful description of things and, by extension, a notion to be lived in accord with. However, the idea has to be defined to be useful.

The essence as I understand it is 'spiritual' and has to do with the soul. But it does not have to do, necessarily, with applications of false-universality or propaganda-models to the entire world, especially those that are political and economic and hegemonic.

But wouldn't you say that the soul (or genius) of a place has very much to do with the political, economic and hegemonic modes of thinking, building and behavior of the inhabitants?

In any case, I think you're not understanding what I meant with the American and also modern "notion of universality, representation and unalienable rights". Your answer seems to have filled in the blanks a bit too much. Do I really have to elaborate? Not gonna!

Or, put another way, your pessimism can only place you within a dreary postmodernism. It is circular, yes, but you have become enamored of those unending circles.

It only looks dreary to those looking for their joy in all the oddest and maligned sort of places. And we already established that your intellectual framework to discuss the notion of postmodernism is simply way too limited. Plus it's not that interesting really!

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Found this Interesting article but I'm not posting this in agreement but more as illustration.

A liberal elite still luring us towards the abyss by Jonathan Cook, British journalist writing for many mainstream newspapers.

It's mainly a response to the short manifesto written by 30 respected intellectuals, writers and historians. Click and read if not familiar as it's very current and interesting. The article from Cook is most telling in its tail:

There are small voices struggling to be heard above the roar of the dying liberal elites and the trumpeting of the new authoritarians. They need to be listened to, to be helped to share and collaborate, to offer us their visions of a different world. One where the individual is no longer king. Where we learn some modesty and humility – and how to love in our infinitely small corner of the universe.

This sounds like the ultimate representation of the slightly racial picture Nietzsche painted, the one about the rising "European Chinesedom, with a placid Buddhist-Christian faith, and in practice clever-epicurean, like with the Chinese: reduced people". And perhaps it's understandable. We are tired of the big self, this heavy ego which sits more often in the way than generating beautiful visions of grandeur resulting in some ambitious action. It's impossible to oppose unless the defunct and obsolete itself would be upheld as special and desirable. Oh wait...

[Avolith]

Found this Interesting article but I'm not posting this in agreement but more as illustration.

A liberal elite still luring us towards the abyss by Jonathan Cook, British journalist writing for many mainstream newspapers.

It's mainly a response to the short manifesto written by 30 respected intellectuals, writers and historians. Click and read if not familiar as it's very current and interesting. The article from Cook is most telling in its tail:

There are small voices struggling to be heard above the roar of the dying liberal elites and the trumpeting of the new authoritarians. They need to be listened to, to be helped to share and collaborate, to offer us their visions of a different world. One where the individual is no longer king. Where we learn some modesty and humility – and how to love in our infinitely small corner of the universe.

This sounds like the ultimate representation of the slightly racial picture Nietzsche painted, the one about the rising "European Chinesedom, with a placid Buddhist-Christian faith, and in practice clever-epicurean, like with the Chinese: reduced people". And perhaps it's understandable. We are tired of the big self, this heavy ego which sits more often in the way than generating beautiful visions of grandeur resulting in some ambitious action. It's impossible to oppose unless the defunct and obsolete itself would be upheld as special and desirable. Oh wait...

But what about the transgressions against the individual in China? Would/should it be different in European chinesedom?

[jupiviv]

There are small voices struggling to be heard above the roar of the dying liberal elites and the trumpeting of the new authoritarians. They need to be listened to, to be helped to share and collaborate, to offer us their visions of a different world. One where the individual is no longer king. Where we learn some modesty and humility – and how to love in our infinitely small corner of the universe.

This sounds like the ultimate representation of the slightly racial picture Nietzsche painted, the one about the rising "European Chinesedom, with a placid Buddhist-Christian faith, and in practice clever-epicurean, like with the Chinese: reduced people". And perhaps it's understandable. We are tired of the big self, this heavy ego which sits more often in the way than generating beautiful visions of grandeur resulting in some ambitious action. It's impossible to oppose unless the defunct and obsolete itself would be upheld as special and desirable. Oh wait...

Classical liberalism in practice was the Last Man propped up by forces outside himself, which he never wanted to but is now being forced to confront.

Also interesting that Nietzsche and Kierkegaard regarded their contemporaneous Christianity essentially identically i.e. duplicitous Epicureanism. Nietzsche - repressed Wagner bromance + complicated irl waifu dynamics = Kierkegaard?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

But what about the transgressions against the individual in China? Would/should it be different in European chinesedom?

The people, as well as the individual, will become diminished if we'd see "clever-epicurean" as the call to increasing modesty, following our current numerical models on economy and climate, the legislation drain, social controls -- all will demand a stronger community building, with as least as possible people at the bottom and no big wasters of time, energy or morals at the top; and they would all leave and live elsewhere. China is in this sense seen as the mechanical power house, where success is built on the individual bowing for the needs of State, of community, of family, to strengthen, of course, the economy and that includes the environment, the "fifty years plan" to plan for future climate and so on.

This is only but one view. One more hopeful, using a quote from the same prophet: European-American restlessness connected with the hundredfold acquired Asian tranquility. From a more political or perhaps geographical view the natural bridge would be Russia. Now with the global networks this might not hold true, but the developments are very interesting as they center on Russia yet again, as psychological wedge.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Classical liberalism in practice was the Last Man propped up by forces outside himself, which he never wanted to but is now being forced to confront.

As illustrated by Francis Fukuyama prophesying the "end of history" — a belief that, after the fall of communism, free-market liberal democracy had won and would become the world's "final form of human government". Like some stable endpoint of humanity's sociocultural evolution. In the end of course all Hegelian. This mirrors to some degree Marxist analysis. It's all very late and decadent reasoning. And with that firmly post-modern, that is, the modern as end point. The idea of a "post" is ironic as it cannot move further because of the way it was conceived.