Hoisted from 2022-05-09 Mo: "Modernity", Marshall Berman, & Hannah Arendt: The coming of steampower society, & how under it & its successors furious anger at prosperity & change that is not yours &...
The angry, isolated people that I have met are too apathetic to vote (I live in Appalachia). They may rant and rave if someone gives them an ear, but they don't show up to vote.
The voting proto-fascists I know are above average income and are not socially isolated. They tend to be the petite bourgeoisie. They have disdain for the poor, angry, and isolated - whom they consider lazy moochers.
Also, fascist leaders aren't banal. They radiate hate. Their lieutenants may or may not be banal, but they become more subdued when facing prison time or capital punishment.
Thank you Brad. Does this mean that we are finally resurrecting Arendt’s reputation? Over the last twenty years I have found that many of my acquaintances insisted on rejecting her. Yet, I find myself returning ever more often to Arendt, Fromm, Solzhenitsyn, and Havel. Primo Levi’s If This is A Man sits in my office daring me to read it, as it has for more than a decade. Recent events mean that I now must finally torture my soul with the reality of our inhumanity. Lessons are painful to relearn.
Today is Presidents’ Day. While not a president, now is a good time to remember Eleanor Roosevelt, who successfully lobbied for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Like Arendt, the ideas dismissed as unfashionable are needed more than ever. It is not the left or the right that argue against our universal values, but the left and the right. We are back where we started on the 26th of June, 1945.
The angry, isolated people that I have met are too apathetic to vote (I live in Appalachia). They may rant and rave if someone gives them an ear, but they don't show up to vote.
The voting proto-fascists I know are above average income and are not socially isolated. They tend to be the petite bourgeoisie. They have disdain for the poor, angry, and isolated - whom they consider lazy moochers.
Also, fascist leaders aren't banal. They radiate hate. Their lieutenants may or may not be banal, but they become more subdued when facing prison time or capital punishment.
Thank you, and please keep writing.
That scene from Dostoevsky is so similar to Loki's speech in Germany in The Avengers.
Thank you Brad. Does this mean that we are finally resurrecting Arendt’s reputation? Over the last twenty years I have found that many of my acquaintances insisted on rejecting her. Yet, I find myself returning ever more often to Arendt, Fromm, Solzhenitsyn, and Havel. Primo Levi’s If This is A Man sits in my office daring me to read it, as it has for more than a decade. Recent events mean that I now must finally torture my soul with the reality of our inhumanity. Lessons are painful to relearn.
Today is Presidents’ Day. While not a president, now is a good time to remember Eleanor Roosevelt, who successfully lobbied for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Like Arendt, the ideas dismissed as unfashionable are needed more than ever. It is not the left or the right that argue against our universal values, but the left and the right. We are back where we started on the 26th of June, 1945.
I look forward to listening to the podcast.