#How Hitchens Can Save the Left

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Matt Johnson

Published: Jan 27, 2023

“Christopher Hitchens: From socialist to neocon.” It was an irresistible headline because it’s a story that has been told over and over again. The novelist Julian Barnes called this phenomenon the “ritual shuffle to the right.” Richard Seymour, who wrote a book-length attack on Hitchens, says his subject belongs to a “recognisable type: a left-wing defector with a soft spot for empire.” By presenting Hitchens as a tedious archetype, hobbling away from radicalism and toward some inevitable reactionary terminus, his opponents didn’t have to contend with his arguments or confront the potentially destabilizing fact that some of his principles called their own into question.

Hitchens, who died in 2011, didn’t make it easy on the apostate hunters. To many, he was a “coarser version of [conservative commentator] Norman Podhoretz” when he talked about Iraq, and a radical humanist truth-teller when he went on Fox News to lambaste the Christian right: “If you gave Falwell an enema,” he told Sean Hannity the day after Jerry Falwell’s death, “he could be buried in a matchbox.” Then he gave Islam the same treatment, and he was suddenly a drooling neocon again. He defied easy categorization: a socialist who spurned ideology, an internationalist who became a patriot, a man of the left who was reviled by the left.

The left isn’t a single amorphous entity—it’s a vast constellation of (often conflicting) ideas and principles. Hitchens’s style of left-wing radicalism is now out of fashion, but it has a long and venerable history: George Orwell’s unwavering opposition to totalitarianism and censorship, Bayard Rustin’s advocacy for universal civil rights without appealing to tribalism and identity politics, the post-communist anti-totalitarianism that emerged on the European left in the second half of the twentieth century.

Hitchens described himself as a “First Amendment absolutist,” an echo of historic left-wing struggles for free expression—from Eugene V. Debs’s assertion of his right to dissent during World War I to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Hitchens argued that unfettered free speech and inquiry would always make civil society stronger. When he wrote the introduction to his collection of essays For the Sake of Argument in 1993, he had a specific left-wing tradition in mind: the left of Orwell and Victor Serge and C.L.R. James, which simultaneously opposed Stalinism, fascism, and imperialism in the twentieth century, and which stood for “individual and collective emancipation, self-determination and internationalism.”

Hitchens’ most fundamental political and moral conviction was universalism. He loathed nationalism and argued that the international system should be built around a “common standard for justice and ethics”—a standard that should apply to Henry Kissinger just as it should apply to Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein. He believed in the concept of global citizenship, which is why he firmly supported international institutions like the European Union. He didn’t just despise religion because he regarded it as a form of totalitarianism—he also recognized that it’s an infinitely replenishable wellspring of tribal hatred.

He also opposed identity politics, because he didn’t think our social and civic lives should be reduced to rigid categories based on melanin, X chromosomes, and sexuality. He recognized that the Enlightenment values of individual rights, freedom of expression and conscience, humanism, pluralism, and democracy are universal—they provide the most stable, just, and rational foundation for any civil society, whether they’re observed in America or Europe or Iraq.

And yes, he argued that these values are for export. Hitchens believed in universal human rights. This is why, at a time when his comrades were still manning the barricades against the “imperial” West after the Cold War, he argued that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should intervene to stop a genocidal assault on Bosnia. It’s why he argued that American power could be used to defend human rights and promote democracy. As many on the Western left built their politics around incessant condemnations of their own societies as racist, exploitative, oligarchic, and imperialistic, Hitchens recognized the difference between self-criticism and self-flagellation.

-

One of the reasons Orwell accumulated many left-wing enemies in his time was the fact that his criticisms of his own “side” were grounded in authentic left-wing principles. When he argued that many socialists had no connection to or understanding of the actual working class in Britain, the observation stung because it was true. Orwell’s arguments continue to sting today. In his 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism,” he criticized the left-wing intellectuals who enjoy “seeing their own country humiliated” and “follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong.” Among some of these intellectuals, Orwell wrote: “One finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of the Western countries.”

Hitchens observed that many on today’s left are motivated by the same principle: “Nothing will make us fight against an evil if that fight forces us to go to the same corner as our own government.” This is a predictable manifestation of what the American political theorist Michael Walzer calls the “default position” of the left: a purportedly “anti-imperialist and anti-militarist” position inclined toward the view that “everything that goes wrong in the world is America’s fault.”

Indeed, the tendency to ignore and rationalize even the most egregious violence and authoritarianism abroad in favor of an obsessive emphasis on the crimes and blunders of Western governments has become a reflex. Much of the left has been captured by a strange mix of sectarian and authoritarian impulses: a myopic emphasis on identitarianism and group rights over the individual; an orientation toward subjectivity and tribalism over objectivity and universalism; and demands for political orthodoxy enforced by repressive tactics like the suppression of speech.

These left-wing pathologies are particularly corrosive today because they give right-wing nationalists and populists on both sides of the Atlantic—whose rise over the past several years has been characterized by hostility to democratic norms and institutions, rampant xenophobia, and other forms of illiberalism—an opportunity to claim that those who oppose them are the true authoritarians. Hitchens was prescient about the ascendance of right-wing populism in the West, from the emergence of demagogues who exploit cultural grievances and racial resentments to the bitter parochialism of “America First” nationalism. He understood that the left could only defeat these noxious political forces by rediscovering its best traditions: support for free expression, pluralism, and universalism—the values of the Enlightenment.

Hitchens closes his book Why Orwell Matters with the following observation: “What he [Orwell] illustrates, by his commitment to language as the partner of truth, is that ‘views’ do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think; and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.” Despite the pervasive idea that Hitchens exchanged one set of convictions for another by the end of his life, his commitment to his core principles never wavered. They are principles that today’s left must rediscover.

Matt Johnson is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming book, How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment, from which this piece is excerpted.

#Matt Johnson #How Hitchens Can Save the Left #liberalism #liberal ethics #universalism #pluralism #freedom of speech #freedom of expression #free speech #first amendment #identity politics #identarianism #woke authoritarianism #authoritarianism #tribalism #religion is a mental illness

[kriswager]

A very different Hitchens

I am listening to an episode of the podcast Decoding the Gurus, a podcast I have some issues with, especially their both-side bullshit. In this episode, they have Matt Johnson on. Matt Johnson is the author of How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment. It is an interesting episode, because the Hitchens that Matt Johnson talks about is not…

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#Christopher Hitchens #Decoding the Gurus #Hitch-22 #Hitchens #How Hitchens Can Save the Left #Iraq War #Matt Johnson #Podcasts

[grandhotelabyss]

And now Terry Eagleton weighs in on Amis with the obituary as hatchet job, letting slip with remarkable explicitness, almost coarseness, what radicals sometimes prefer to cloak under "smash the fash" moralism: that, all things being equal, they prefer a reactionary or a fascist to a liberal, and for two reasons: first, they think liberals are secret fascists anyway, at least after being mugged, and so an avowed fascist is more honest; and, second, they credit reactionaries and fascists with worldviews as articulated and englobalizing as the radicals' own, whereas the liberal is merely a naive empiricist without a thought in his head, more literally reactionary than the reactionary (who has at least read Aquinas or Heidegger or somebody and has therefore thought everything through) because all he can do is react. Therefore, say Eagleton, ultra-right-wing literary modernists are to be preferred to their liberal literary heirs.

What saves Eagleton here is how very well this applies to the particular cohort he's discussing, typified by the "'no bullshit' bullshit" (in Stefan Collini's words) Hitchens ended up adopting from Orwell. There is a streak in the Anglo character—and the Anglo-by-adoption character, as witness Rushdie—of a bluff and constitutionally anti-intellectual empiricism that strands the English novelist, when he turns pundit, in the very clichés he wished to war against. Already in the 19th century Mill and Arnold tried to wed English liberalism to Continental idealism precisely to relieve this intellectual enervation. To that extent, Eagleton's Marxist (and Catholic and Irish) critique may be defended.

It should also, however, be answered with counter-evidence. I don't mean to startle some of my younger and more enthusiastic followers, but we have historical reasons to be wary of actively pursuing a situation where radical fights reactionary in a zero-sum contest as the bottom drops out of society. Leaving that aside, literary liberalism, in the broadest sense, also encompasses fuller visions than Eagleton credits, even among the modernists, such as the mysticisms of Woolf and Forster. The politics to which he reduces Conrad, Lawrence, Yeats, and Eliot do not exhaust the whole of their sensibilities, either. As for American literature, which Amis revered, Eagleton's critique applies not at all—even the broad-minded Mill thought Emerson a madman. And why not mention the highest high modernist of them all?—I mean Joyce.

It's true that translating the dense and almost second-sighted perceptiveness Amis worshipped in Bellow and Nabokov into a political program can go wrong in all sorts of ways since it has no syllogistic hedge against ethical error—but then it's not like the far left never slaughtered anybody either, a point underlined by Hitchens's conviction that in supporting the Iraq War he'd kept faith with the tradition of Marxist revolution. The moral high ground Eagleton thinks he's standing on doesn't exist.

At its best, Amis's literary aestheticism is an ethic, is even an authentic spiritual practice, a higher way of seeing, if one perilous to translate directly into an elaborated ethical, still less a political, system. Eagleton identifies real 20th-century problems, but only offers long-played-out 20th-century solutions.

#martin amis #terry eagleton #literary criticism #literature #english literature #marxism #modernism

[automatismoateo]

Why I left Islam after being a devout Muslim for 38 years via /r/atheism

Why I left Islam after being a devout Muslim for 38 years I was born and raised in Bangladesh. Both my parents were Muslims, so I too was brought up as one. Coincidentally the school I attended was funded by the Saudi government and studying Arabic was compulsory for the students up to the 8th grade. Moreover, only Muslim students were admitted and the teachers were selected from active members of a political party called “Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami”. The party’s manifesto calls for establishing Sharia laws in the country. Accordingly, our teachers were more invested in making us proper Muslims than following the national curriculum. So we were punished (often corporally) for our transgressions of Islam, i.e. not wearing trousers the correct way (hem of the legs must be above your ankle), mispronouncing Arabic words and phrases, and being late for the Midday prayer. Not attending the prayer was not an option, as teachers were sent to all corners of the campus to find each and everyone. Students who did not voluntarily go to the school mosque, and were “found” by the teachers, were punished in front of the whole congregation. But since it was done to “save us from the eternal punishment of God”, our parents were quite grateful to the teachers and rather optimistic about our future rewards in the “eternal life” after death. In the end, the students were grateful too (albeit, some more begrudgingly than others). On the other hand, my parents were believers of one of the Sufi traditions of Islam. So at home God was not about right and wrong, or heaven and hell. Instead, He was all about love. He created us out of love and He must be discovered through love as well. We need to submit to God just like we surrender ourselves to our lover/beloved. In my 20s and early 30s (2000 - 2015), I defended Islam with my “interpretations” of the Quran and hadiths. In hindsight, it was more or less the apologies used by Muslim “intellectuals” like the author Reza Aslan or tv journalist Mehdi Hasan. ISIS or Al-Qaeda were misguided, but the real reason behind the rise of terrorism was Western interventions (military/economic/cultural). I believed that the Moon was split by Muhammad, the final prophet of God. I also believed that the prophet flew on a winged-horse to the Heavens. At the same time, I knew that the flying horses of Helios were a man-made myth. At 35, to make my apologetics stronger, instead of relying on my “interpretations” of interpretations by past “Islamic scholars”, I decided to study the Quran and hadiths myself. It took me more than two years to complete my study but I realized that these cannot be defended. At best they are 7th - 10th century efforts of building/maintaining a religious community and provide them with explanations for the apparent mysteries of the real world. In 2018 I came across a YouTube channel called “The Masked Arab”. His superbly explained video series was the final nail on the coffin of my theist life. I realized how Islam promotes and intensifies communal division, misogyny and bigotry. I also realized how I had played my part in promoting such evils by defending Islam, by providing a friendlier face for the religion, under which it can carry on oppressing the less privileged. So I became an atheist. Around the same time I found the Four Horsemen of atheism. I particularly fell in love with Christopher Hitchens and his rhetoric. Inspired by him I still call myself an anti-theist. That’s how and why I left Islam at 38. Thank you for reading. Have a good day! Submitted February 23, 2024 at 03:22PM by AmitRahman (From Reddit https://ift.tt/rA6JflF)

#reddit

[alyblacklist]

Hi Aly! I really liked your previous post and your devotion to the ship, so I was wondering if you had, by any chance, a list of Keenler scenes/episodes? I know it is a lot to ask, but considering the situation we are in, I wanted to start rewatching the series focusing fully on Keenler! Another thing. Do you know where I can find the comic that you uploaded in the post with your thoughts about Ressler being Liz’s source of light? Thank you for everything!! ❤️

Hi there and thank you!  Sorry it’s taken me a day or two to respond to this - I recently posted a list of fav Ressler/Keenler eps off the top of my head in the Keenler group chat here on Tumblr so this list will be very similar to that with some additions.

For the comic book - I know the books are available as graphic novels for purchase through Amazon. I still have my original digital editions through the Comixology app back from when I got the new issues live and I think they still sell them both as individual issues and as graphic novels.  I also feel like I saw a post somewhere (Reddit maybe?) recently that said they are available somewhere else online but I’m not sure where and I can’t find it easily. If anyone knows, please chime in for anon.  They were last published as individual issues during S3.

Anyway, the non-exhaustive list because I’m sure I’ve missed something:

Season 1: Stewmaker (the hug of course!), The Courier (when she listens to him talk about how the job is all he has left), General Ludd (his sympathy for her pain when she loses her dad), Anslo Garrick (giving up the code once he sees Liz’s face), Mako Tanida (moments throughout but especially her talking him down from shooting Jonica), Kingmaker (the bridge talk plus the “I didn’t know where else to go” at the end), Berlin (him with her in the wreckage of her apartment)

Season 2: Lord Baltimore (Ressler rolling his eyes at the rinse & repeat of failed relationships plus her concern for him not seeing the psychiatrist); Monarch Douglas (lots of moments, but especially her hand on his shoulder at the end), Mombasa Cartel (ambulance scene at the end when she confronts him about the drugs), The Scimitar (the great fake hospital scene where she saves them both and shirtless Ressler!); The Decembrist (near fist fight with Tom with the whole “what are you, her boyfriend? line); Luther Braxton Conclusion (where he confronts Red at the end of the memory manipulation and sweeps Liz off in the blue blanket); Ruslan Denisov (where she confesses about the Harbor Master); The Deer Hunter (he stops her from killing the woman and then confronts her outside about not turning herself in over the harbormaster); The Longevity Initiative (birthday dinner!); Tom Connolly (letting her go!)

Season 3: The Troll Farmer (she was my partner and the scene with the trap door in the bar, chasing her to the Embassy), Marvin Gerard (Embassy car chase and rescue! diner door scene), Eli Matchett (first phone calls, “good person” talks), Arioch Cain (his testimony; fear that she was dead and the Aram hug), Kings of the Highway (the chase) The Director 1 & 2 (multiple jail scenes, car scene, saving her from the bullet, I’ll keep you safe I promise, etc.)., if you can stomach the wedding in 3.17,  their talk before her wedding &. him showing up at the church, The Artax Network (Ressler only), reaction to her office being cleaned out, taking her foot massager; Alexander Kirk Conclusion (Ressler only) willing to let Red kill Kirk and learning Liz is alive.

Season 4: Esteban (willing to risk himself to rescue her; Cuba restaurant scenes), Mato (rescue at the summer palace and the second hug!), The Forecaster (first time they’re back together in the field), The Harem (those lovely park bench scenes), Isabella Stone (another ambulance scene at the end), Dr. Bodgan Krilov (Liz attacking Krilov and talking Ressler down from shooting Hitchen), The Debt Collector (Samar telling Ressler he needs to be there for Liz despite his suspension; shootout at the cabin).

Season 5: Greyson Blaise (not really a Keenler ep but just fun all around with Ressler in jeans); Miss Rebecca Thrall (Ressler making excuses for phone calls with Prescott), The Kilgannon Corp (horror at her engagement ring; working together on the case); Ian Garvey (another clingy hug (hug #3!) and all the scenes at the hospital), The Informant (Ressler only but very important for his mindset), The Capricorn Killer (his arm around her talking about silver linings), Sutton Ross (the interrogation scenes and Liz’s escape)

Season 6: Dr. Hans Koehler (the “I know you” in the parking garage), The Corsican (all the scenes at the UN), Alter Ego (banter over his cousin’s wedding and the idea of hiring a date), Marko Jankowicz (the entire episode), Minister D (Liz’s concern for Ressler testifying and her reaction when he does), Robert Vesco (library scene, scene with Red and Dembe), Robert Diaz (matching outfits, arrested)

Season 7: Louis Steinhil Conclusion (talk about “we,”); Norman Devane (teasing Aram and talk about seeing her happy), Hannah Hayes (the talk about a year or seven), Victoria Fenberg (the ballet discussions), Cornelius Ruck (the ballet scene at the end), Twamie Ullulaq (discussions in Alaska), Brothers (all of their scenes together but especially the final one), Roy Cain (conversation in the car about Red’s health), The Kazanjian Brothers (the conversation in their office)

Phew.  Hope that helps anon!

#anon #keenler

[startledstars]

How can for (extreme) example kids being physically abused/raped by strangers/parents be a trial to overcome for good? Girls being kidnapped and sold for sex? Students stepping on a little puppy for views? If this is a sometimes situation where god lets evil thru, then its everyday 24/7 around the world not just sometimes. God cant stop evil, bacause we are everything between good and evil. Not god makes live wonderful nd miserable but we do. Towards us and others. Being afraid of live being meaningless none guiding us, that is what makes religioun(and other factors) u are free when u are open to see. There is no pure good and evil. Whatever you wet thru its not your fault, you happened to be where its bad but you are grown up indipendent and you can choose to be 'good' or 'bad' in order to help u or other people so long u live. But this god, at least how christianity potrays him, is a fear in your head that prevents you at crumbling infront of the worlds truth to make this all more bearable. People should believe whatever they want as long as it gets them going. But saying all you want is the truth, and yet believing in a god as the catholic religion and you present him. You seem to scared for the truth if you are willing to leave it at that. A simple as god knows. What kind of truth are you after? Be at least honest with yourself

Hi,

These are the right questions. The problem of evil is a Big One. 

In the past century, we’ve had:

two cities decimated by a nuclear bomb

hundreds of millions of people killed by their own governments (socialism is orders of magnitude worse than the holocaust)

famines that lead to parents killing and eating their own children

a global “pandemic” that governments used as a power grab, shutting down the global economy, causing millions of people to starve

And these are only the things we know. For every rape, abuse, and act of violence that is reported, there are many more that go unreported and unpunished. However, almost every rapist/abuser/theif/murder/politician is justified in their own mind. The true mark of an evil person is that they believe they are righteous, to the point where they are above any laws, and will never be sorry for anything they do. 

So, in a Godless world with no objective standards, it’s anyone’s game. Evil is simply a perception; an opinion. Same with good. You can choose to believe in a random, meaningless world where Shit Just Happens and humans are the highest power. You can choose to ignore the fact that there is an undeniable order to reality, where even atheistic scientists admit the universe is so finely tuned, they have to reevaluate their own theories. (That’s actually why the multi-verse theory exists. Scientists have no solid evidence that our universe is one of infinite parallel universe. Watch this video, time stamp 43:19 where famous athiest Dawkins admits the multiverse theory has no scientific evidence.)

You can turn your back on God because He allows things you disagree with. That’s what it usually boils down to: we look at evil with our limited intelligence, perception, and imagination, and decide that because we can’t find a reason for every single instance of wrong doing, no reason can exist. 

It’s like a teenager getting mad at his parents because they enforced curfew. Like a toddler raging because she was denied that fifth piece of candy. In those moments, because the child can’t comprehend their parent’s decision, the parent’s character comes into question.

This is pride and short-sightedness, especially when we’re talking about an infinite creator operating on an infinite universe over an infinite span of time. 

Again, I’m not condoning or justifying evil. The question of evil and human suffering is extremely valid. And I’ve never shied away from looking at the darkest parts of humanity, because that is an important piece of understanding reality. If you do a little digging, you’ll find that this world is so much more evil that you or I could begin to comprehend. People are evil, and it’s going to continue to get worse.

In the face of such evil, it would be easier to not believe in God. (There’s a post sitting in my drafts about how I actually tried to be an athiest because I couldn’t justify evil.) So I think you’re saying that I’m not sincere when I say “search for the truth,” because from your perspective, I believe in God either out of fear, or because it gives me a false sense of comfort. While I can understand why you might think that (because this is how I used to feel about Christians) it’s simply not the case here. 

No one forced these beliefs on me. I am not part of any church or denomination-- the ‘catholic’ comment is a bit out of left field. I don’t blame myself for what happened to me. I don’t blame any victim for their circumstances. Idk there’s some level of misunderstanding and too much to unpack entirely. 

But, if you’re looking for real answers to the problem of evil, I’d suggest approaching The Big Man himself. I do this all the time-- when I see something absolutely horrible, I ask Him how he could possibly allow that. Sometimes, He will give you answers (if you’re willing to hear Him out) and almost every time, He will send a sense of peace. This is something you have to experience for yourself to understand. 

Also, here are some debates between Atheists at the top of their field and Christians. Both sides present arguments better than I ever could, and I actually watched these videos thinking the Atheists might sway me but. Well, see for yourself:

Does God exist? William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens

Richard Dawkins vs John Lennox - The God Delusion Debate

William Lane Craig and CosmicSkeptic Discuss The Kalam Cosmological Argument

(Not a debate but worth checking out)  Stephen Meyer: The Return of the God Hypothesis

Would God Allow Evil? CosmicSkeptic vs InspiringPhilosophy

And here’s a muslim vs. atheist debate to round things out

Bolded my favorites. These take a few hours to get through, but if you’re really interested in the problem of evil or the proof for God, these guys present it well. (btw surprisingly there is more logical/scientific proof for God’s existence than for the athiest or pantheistic model of reality. Check out this short clip. Science and religion used to be two sides of the same coin; people took an intelligent, ordered approach to studying the universe because they believed in an intelligent, ordered creator. So God answered the “why” and science answered the “how” of existence. Just some food for thought.)

I’d also recommend you look into the biblical story of Joseph (his own brothers sold him into slavery, but because of this, Joseph ended up ruling all of Egypt and saving the very brothers who betrayed him). And also the book of Job. While we can’t know everything about the mystery of evil, we can know enough to make an informed decision about God’s existence/character.

Anyways, thank you for this message. I hope you’ll consider the information in this response. I’m glad that you are asking the hard questions, and assure you that the answers are worth seeking and finding. Good night and God bless you :)

#spiritual awakening #spiritual awareness #wow anon really dropped the whole problem of evil\ #literally the biggest problem in human history #right in my ask box #i rlly did my best #also lets not forget the jesus death at the cross #arguably the ultimate evil would be to punish an innocent man for the sins of the guilty #but god did that #because to defeat death you gotta die and come back #you can only defeat the ultimate evil by subjecting yourself to it first #and because of jesus' suffering literally billions of people are living better lives and have hope for the future #again its hard to understand unless youve experienced how REAL the peace joy and good health is #all the blessings are tangible #but it starts by searching for the truth #god actually wants you to ask him the hard questions #he does not command blind faith #he reveals his character to you first and allows you to make a decision

[thealiensknow]

Vonda Smith and Wrong Man

Vonda Smith's case, which was featured in episodes 1 and 2 of Wrong Man's second season on the Starz network, concluded with more questions than answers. Whether you believe Vonda is innocent or guilty (in any capacity), I think we can all agree that this case needs to be reopened and reinvestigated.

Johnny Lawrence, the "blood splatter expert" determined two things to be true of the blood stains found in Vonda's car: the blood was NOT planted and that the car was only used to transport Jessie, it was not the site of her beating or death. Me being me, I have some questions about this. When Johnny Lawrence performed the forensics on Vonda's car by spraying a chemical onto the passenger seat and surrounding area to reveal hidden blood stains, why was there no blood on the passenger seat's headrest or on the front, where a passenger's back would rest against? Jessie's most series injuries were inflicted to the back of her head... so where in the world was all that blood? Why would there be so many blood stains on the seat if Jessie was supposedly seated there? If she was seated in the passenger seat and bleeding, would her own body (buttocks and thighs) not have protected the seat, shielding it from blood? Additionally, Mr. Lawrence stated that the blood on the glove box was caused by expirated blood- blood that's been expelled from the nose or mouth (an air passage) with some force. Reviewing the autopsy report however, it doesn't appear that Jessie sustained a broken or bloody nose, any major injury to the mouth or any internal injury that might cause her to cough up blood... expirating it onto the glove box. I like to think two heads are better than one and I wish Wrong Man had gotten a second opinion on this.

Also... if the blood wasn't planted in the car and was already in there when Vonda drove her car to Sharon's house to pick Emma up, then Vonda, Sharon and Emma all lied about not seeing any blood in the seat... and I have a hard time believing they all lied.

Speaking of lying... what's up with the bomb Vonda dropped? Initially, Vonda claimed that she didn't see who returned her car, then she said it was Gary Ealey and then finally, she said it was her own son, William. So, which is the truth? More to the point, how can anyone possibly trust what she says after she was caught lying? What else has she lied about? Lying doesn't make you a murderer, but it does make you untrustworthy.

Whether it was Gary or William or someone else entirely who returned her car, it doesn't necessarily mean they killed Jessie, but one thing is certain, one person can not drive two vehicles at once, so whoever returned the car, was absolutely with (at least) a second person... the person driving the white van.

I had hoped Mr. Matthews, the defense witness who says he saw Jessie get into a white van, would have been asked about Vonda's car. If Jessie borrowed Vonda's car and drove it back to her place on Cross Anchor, then what happened to Vonda's car if Jessie left in a white van? Was her car left behind at Jessie's? Was it ever there at all? The white van must exist because Mr. Matthews saw it, Jessie's neighbor Edward Hitchens saw it, and then Vonda saw it thirty minutes later at her house. Are all three of them lying? How could three strangers have independent sitings of a white van if it didn't exist?

Who, in Jessie's life, owned a white van? JD Ealey's youngest son, Donavan was said to have owned a white van at the time and was close friends with Jessie and JD's friend Dudley Hudson also owned a white van. Oddly, when Wrong Man confronted Dudley's mother about his and JD's alibi and they learned that it was a lie, Ira Todd said that they simply couldn't find Dudley to question him and that JD was in federal prison and they just dropped it. But was JD ever really in federal prison? Back in October 2018, he was swept up in multi-agency drug bust with 21 other individuals, but JD never appeared for the hearing. To my knowledge, he's been roaming Greene County, free as a bird, with a warrant out for his arrest ever since. In fact, to my great surprise, I saw him with my own two eyes back in August 2019 at the Wal-Mart in Greeneville. So.... there's that. As far as Dudley Hudson goes, he's newly married and living in FL.

While we're on the topic of bad guys, we should include a person that Wrong Man surprisingly didn't mention, Lee Britton. Lee Britton lived on Jud Neal Loop for years and was friends with Dudley Hudson. A day or two following Jessie's murder, Lee (who did not know Jessie) allegedly made a cross and placed it at the memorial site. When a friend and neighbor brought up Jessie's death in conversation just days later, Lee made a very strange comment. He allegedly said that they (the police) know who did it, that it was the grandma (Vonda). Now, this is a weird comment for Lee to make to his neighbor for two reasons: one, how did Lee know that the police said that and two, why would the police tell anyone who they thought was a suspect?

Fast forward to December 2016, just four months after Jessie's death and Lee, out of the blue, acquired a white van, which he never drove after obtaining. I was told that the van just sat on Lee's property until it simply disappeared a few weeks later. Could it have been Dudley's van?

Many have wondered if Lee Britton could have been involved with Jessie's death because he savagely assaulted a female neighbor 11 months after what had happened to Jessie.

Perhaps we'll never know the absolute truth of this case or what truly happened to Jessie, but we can keep trying. We can continue to question everything and play detective and reach out to others who might be able to help. Any avenue we can take (or create) in an effort to reveal the truth and bring Jessie and her unborn baby justice, is well worth our time and energy.

As for Vonda... I tried. I've tried really, really hard to help her... but I don't like liars.

When I reached out to Joe Berlinger with Vonda's case and was working with his team at Radical Media, I felt like maybe we were saved... and that they'd come in and investigate, find the truth, solve the case and bam... justice for all. But, this case is terribly complex and messy and a resolution will not be easy to attain. I therefore, wrote a book about this case... in hopes of it spreading the word and maybe catching the attention of more sleuths like us or even a professional that could help. The book is called Devil's Playground and can be found on Amazon.

I'm also now working with an investigation agency called Fireball Approves. Tammy and Sam are working on this case as we speak and they have a secure phone line that anyone can call anonymously to offer tips and info. Their contact info is as follows:

786-369-0073

[email protected]

[email protected]

[agentredfort]

Would Hitch die for Ruby? Would Blacker die for Ruby? Would Ruby die for Hitch? Would Ruby die for Blacker? Would Hitch die for Blacker? Would Blacker die for Hitch? I NEED TO KNOW HOW MUCH THESE 3 LOVE EACH OTHER.

Excellent questions. I’m not sure if you want to hear the answers.

Would Blacker die for Ruby?

Lockdowns are never fun. Lockdowns that are actually serious, and not just an accidentally tripped alarm or yet another tedious unending drills are, of course, even worse. The lights are off, the door's locked, they're huddled behind a cabinet at the far end of the room, waiting for the all-clear to let them know that intruders have left the building. Blacker can see Ruby's hunched over form dimly in the darkness. She looks tense and furious. She wants to do something to stop this, but can't, and that scares her more than anything.

Footsteps, outside. The door rattles once, twice, and then shatters open. The splintering noise makes both of them flinch, and they exchange glances that say more than words ever could. Blacker stops breathing. The footsteps are inside, now, and they're heavy and purposeful. The person who's just broken down the door comes to a stop in the middle of the room, and there's a moment of silence.

"I know you're in here," says the guy. He sounds more amused than anything.

He looks at the reflection in the cabinet, and sees that the guy standing in the middle of the room, visible in distorted chrome, is wearing all black and is carrying a dangerous-looking gun. He looks back at Ruby, and realizes that this guy only knows that someone's in this room - he certainly can't have predicted that there's two of them, and if he gets up right now before the guy can notice Ruby -

Ruby seems to have come to the same conclusion, because she grabs his arm, her grip surprisingly strong. "No," she says, barely moving her lips - the word just a slight exhale of air. "No." 

"Stay down," he tells her, keeping his voice low.

"He'll kill you," she hisses, desperate and wild. "He'll kill you and you'll die and I can't deal with that, no, no, no -"

"I can hear you breathing," calls the man with the gun, and there's an ominous click, and there's a grin in his voice as he says, "don't make me come and find you!"

There's no time for all the things he wants to say. He prises her hand off his arm, ruffles her hair lightly, affectionately; and stands - and hopes to god that she won't end up being as traumatized by what comes next as he knows she will be.

Would Hitch die for Blacker?

"Got the handcuffs off yet?" Blacker asks, trying to twist around to see - they're bound back-to-back, of course - but ultimately failing.

"Getting there," says Hitch, grunting. Another few seconds pass - clink, clink, insert swearing here - and then he says, "again, sorry for getting you into this mess."

"No prob, kinda comes with the job description. Now, if we don't get back to HQ before lunch, well - then I might get mad."

He feels rather than hears Hitch laugh, and then then the clicking and rustling and swearing starts up again. Within five minutes, Hitch's handcuffs are off, and he's working on Blacker's.

"Any idea who these guys are?" Blacker wonders, watching the other man work.

Hitch offers a half-slope of his shoulders in response, a quick shrug. "None. Hang on -" and click, the handcuffs are off.

Blacker stretches his arms briefly, shakes his wrists out. "Okay," he says. "Let's get out of here."

"If anybody shows up," Hitch says, seriously, "just run. I'll hold them off as best as I can, but - you know, just look for an exit, try to get out, get help. We don't know what they're capable of."

Blacker pauses, thinks for a second about stating the obvious - but that's basically suicide, no matter how well you can handle yourself - and then realizes how pointless it is.

"Got it," he says instead, nodding, and they head out of the room without a word.

 Would Ruby die for Hitch?

Sometimes time is measured in hours, and sometimes it is measured in days, and sometimes it's measured in split-second freezeframes, captured one after another in a frantic rush that can only be processed properly when the action has ceased.

Click. Rooftop fight. Fantastic. On the bright side: three goons already taken out between them (Ruby got lucky with a kick below the waist and a punch to the head, and the other two were a team effort) and there's only one left. One the not-so-bright side: Hitch is weaponless, the guy's got a gun, and she's got maybe five ten twelve seconds before Hitch beefs it because this guy does NOT look like he's up for conversation.

Click. She scans the rooftop. No options but to take the gun-wielding man down herself. There's only one way to a girl Ruby's size to stop a guy that size and oh boy she doesn't like it but Hitch Hitch Hitch.

Click. She might survive this. She might. She's survived worse before. Maybe.

Click. Rugby tackles are undignified but sometimes you gotta work with what you have. The man never saw it coming. Who expects to be tackled at point-blank range by an terrified angry teenager, especially so close to the roof edge? It's a stupid thing to do.

Click. Ruby is the undisputed queen of stupid decisions.

Click. Distant shout, 'kid NO' from the rooftop above, she's already falling. So's the other guy, so task accomplished, Hitch'll be fine at least.

Click. Maybe she'll catch onto a windowframe before she hits the ground. That'd be nice, she thinks, and convenient too. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Click.

Would Blacker die for Hitch? 

"Which of you is the man known as Art Hitchen Zachary?" the woman in dark blue asks, and there's an unpleasant glint in her eye which Blacker really doesn't like, so that's what makes him stand up in response before he's even aware he's doing it.

"I am," he says, "it's me."

Blacker never really pictured himself as a heroic kind of guy, but he always liked to think of himself as a fundamentally good one.

Hitch, next to him, makes a little choked horrified noise that Blacker could literally not have got out of him in any other circumstances, and says, "wait -" but Blacker just shakes his head, pre-empting that.

"He's just trying to save me," he says, inwardly admiring how steady he's got his voice to sound. "Guys, it's fine. Ignore him. I'm Hitch. What do you want?"

"Uh-huh," says the woman in blue, eyeing him. "I take it you know exactly what you've done to make our organization... displeased with you."

"Yes," Blacker says, forcing himself to channel Hitch, to stay calm. No. I have no idea what you're talking about. But that's fine. He's disposable - Spectrum can easily find another coding expert, or Ruby or Miles can take over (they're both good enough, or working together they could accomplish anything if they just stopped arguing) - but Hitch is not. LB needs him, Ruby needs him - Spectrum needs him.

"I see," says the woman, and her face curls up into a horrible little grin, promising all manner of dreadful, nasty things. "In that case - Mr Zachary, do feel free to come with me. We have a lot to talk about."

 Would Ruby die for Blacker?

It takes her less than a second to realize what's wrong with the scene she can see through the window set into the door in the coding room they've been using - only milliseconds to figure out that there's something majorly wrong with the way that the pens on the table are set out. Too neat, too perfect - too conveniently covering one blind spot. It takes her less than a second to work this out, but it inevitably will take longer than that to communicate all this, because words are unwieldly and not as razor-sharp and well-polished as her thoughts and deductions are. Blacker could have probably worked it out himself, but she moves faster with leaps of logic like this and he's distracted and there's just no time.

Blacker is talking about some new advance in technology, something inconsequential and light, and he's grinning at her over the steam that's curling up over his coffee cup, and he's yet to notice the way her expression's changed to completely serious, so that means he doesn't have time to stop her when she elbows him out of the way just as he's opening the door, and forces herself into the room first.

“Ruby, what -"

For a moment she thinks she must've overreacted - and that would be embarrassing but fine because it means that Blacker would be all right and so would she - but as it turns out, she was right, because it's about that point that the hidden mechanism goes off and the dart or whatever it is shoots right into her neck, and she has about enough time to swear in some very age-inappropriate terms before she's down on the ground and the coffee mug's been dropped and shattered and Blacker's yelling out the door for help and pulling her upright to (for the first time that she can actually remember him doing) scold her about her terrible, dreadful life choices (which, fair, but.).

"Next time," he tells her fiercely, "just let me take the damn dart. I'm not worth this, Ruby, I'm really not."

She grins at him kind of, sideways, and says, "thought there was something wrong with the room. Got it right again."

He sighs, lets out of a desperate half-laugh, and says, "yeah, and it sucks. Hold on, Rube. Help's on the way. I'll shut up and let Doctor Harper chew you out for this, huh?"

"Yeah," she breathes. "Yeah." She reaches up, fumbles for his hand, and squeezes it hard. He squeezes back, just as hard, and she thinks about telling him what a cool person he is and how glad she is that he's her friend, but it's kind of hard to talk and she's feeling super cold so she just holds his hand for a while and waits waits waits.

 Would Hitch die for Ruby?  

He's taken bullets for older people, and certainly less trustworthy people - and definitely people that he's liked a lot less. He's taken a lot of bullets, really. What's one more? You never really get to the point where you enjoy taking a bullet for someone, but this time, he thinks he might have gotten pretty damn close. Better him than the kid, after all. Better him than the kid.

It's not complicated, of course, but it doesn't need to be.

Love is a powerful motivator, of course.

It always is.

#ruby redfort #my fic #weird spy family #some of these are less thought out than others #who am i kidding they're all not well thought out #hitch #blacker #enjoy i guess #Anonymous

[miss-musings]

The Good & Bad of NBC: or, Why “The Blacklist” is everything that’s wrong with TV, and “The Good Place” is everything that’s right (SPOILER EDITION)

(Written Oct. 2018… pre-S6 of TBL and mid-S3 of the Good Place.)

NOTE: THERE WILL BE MAJOR SPOILERS OF BOTH SHOWS. DO NOT PROCEED UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THEM BOTH!!!!!!!

In case you haven’t, there is a spoiler-free version of this post here.

(Author’s note: So, if you’re reading this you may or may not have read the other version first. If you have, I’m basically going to be going over the same material with the same structure, with some of the text basically copy/pasted from the first version. But, where I held back on the spoiler-y details before, I’m now going to be going all out. I’ll reiterate: PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS VERSION UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN BOTH SHOWS!!! Thank you.)

For any of you unfamiliar with my content, I’ve been analyzing different aspects of The Blacklist for the past few years, including calling attention to what I believe are flaws in its plotlines and characterizations.

This April, I happened upon The Good Place on Netflix and absolutely gobbled it up. I watched all of S1 in pretty much a single day; S2, in a similarly short time frame. Now, I’ve probably seen every S1 and S2 episode at least four times, and I’m watching the S3 episodes as they air on NBC before The Blacklist returns in January for its sixth season.

Now, it’s definitely not fair to compare The Blacklist and The Good Place. The former is an hour-long (44 minutes/episode) crime drama procedural that has had 22 or 23 episodes per season in five seasons. The latter is a half-hour (22 minutes/episode) ‘genre’ comedy set in the afterlife that has 13 episodes per season in three (ongoing) seasons.

So, TBL has an approximate 4,840 minute run-time, and TGP’s is approximately 858 minutes (including all of S3).

That means that The Blacklist’s overall runtime is almost SIX times the length of The Good Place.

Even so, both of these feature prominent TV actors, including Emmy Award winners James Spader and Ted Danson, respectively; both center on a relationship between a 30-something white woman and an older white man(whether that relationship is romantic, platonic or pseudo-familial is debated by fandoms of both shows); and both of these are NBC shows.

So, while it might not be exactly fair to compare these two shows, I’m going to do so anyway, because I feel like where the Blacklist struggles, The Good Place shines as a quality television program.

Now, don’t think for an instant that The Blacklist is a completely worthless show or that The Good Place doesn’t have its flaws. There are good and bad aspects of both shows, but I’m going to be comparing the two by focusing on three key things that make a TV show compelling:

Plot Progression

Character Interactions

Character Development

1. PLOT PROGRESSION

I think anyone who’s seen the Blacklist will tell you that this show’s plot is convoluted AF. In S1, it seemed like the show was setting Berlin up to be the show’s overarching Big Bad. But, then he gets killed off in S2 while the Cabal takes the forefront. The Cabal kinda hangs out until the end of S3, really, and then gets mostly forgotten until Ressler kills Hitchen in S4. And, Mr. Kaplan becomes Red’s enemy because she was once Liz’s nanny????

This show is so fucking weird.

It continues to frustrate me that all of the show’s major plot developments/revelations come during a mid-season or season finale, or a season or mid-season premiere. The Blacklist’s plot structure continually revolves around the idea of ‘sweeps week,’ when the network tries to boost its ratings by promising major reveals and developments during certain time frames.

Why not space some of these things out more instead of giving us what is essentially filler? We go along for the ride week after week, hoping to get clues or developments to the overarching story, only to be frustrated at the world’s slowest drip ever.

I feel like the first part of S5b really fell into this trap. It reveals to the audience shortly after Keen’s return that Ian Garvey is a dirty cop. And then we wait like 4-6 episodes (I don’t remember exactly how long) until Liz realizes this too. Jeez. Why drag it out so long?!?!

Now, I will say that the decision to kill Garvey in 5x19, rather than the season finale was a good idea. As it breaks the mold of having to wait until the (mid)season finale for the Arc’s Big Bad to finally bite it.

But, while that might’ve been a small victory, it still doesn’t make up for all the times this show has thought it was pulling the rug out when all it was doing was being predictable AF.

Between Liz “dying,” Kaplan helping her, Kirk being her stepdad, Mr. Kaplan being the one coming after Red, Tom dying, Liz trying to trick Red into revealing his secret by playing like she’s in danger and needs him to rescue her, the bones being the Real Reddington, etc...  it continually frustrates me that folks here on Tumblr predict everything that’s going to happen with pinpoint accuracy. It makes the show boring and rote. (Not the folks on Tumblr; more the fact that this show’s plots are so predictable.)

Conversely, the Good Place – per the show’s creator Mike Schur – centers on the idea of subverting expectations. Based on the pilot’s premise, you might assume that the finale will be Eleanor revealing that she doesn’t belong in the neighborhood. But, Schur and his writing team have said multiple times that they focus on trying to make each episode end with a cliffhanger, and doing those big reveals or developments earlier in the season than the audience expects.

As Schur (or maybe some other writer or exec) recently said on the Good Place podcast, 2x09 “Best Self – where the crew leaves the Good Place to head to Bad Place HQ – feels a little like a season finale, despite the fact that there were three more episodes left in S2.

The Blacklist, IMO, also suffers from overdramatic promotions that sometimes make it seem like each episode is going to have some shocking development, when in fact, you could probably skip it and not really miss much (unless it’s a premiere or finale).

I feel like I remember the S2a promos about Liz hiding Tom in the boat, which of course, everyone predicted, really hyped up that reveal so that it was a real let-down whenever we finally got the truth.

TGP, on the other hand, doesn’t really have episodic promos like The Blacklist does, which might work in its favor. (Although, I will say that I was pissed the NBC Thursday night comedy line-up promos ruined the 3x01 Trevor reveal before the actual episode ended.)

I mean, compare how TBL handled the Boat Door Reveal in S2 versus how TGP handled the Michael-sacrifices-himself-to-save-Eleanor development. If TGP had done it like TBL’s, we would’ve known a week or two in advance that someone was going to sacrifice themselves to save Eleanor. It would’ve been these dramatic promos going like “Who! Will! It! Be?!?!!” with like pictures of all the cast members flashing by. And, of course, everyone would predict it would be Michael and/or Chidi, we would all be right and subsequently disappointed.

Also, while I feel like TBL tends to play things safe – very rarely breaking away from the crime drama procedural vibe – TGP doesn’t mind taking chances, so long as whatever they’re taking a chance on fits within the ‘world’ of the show.

If you haven’t seen my rant about TBL’s S5b, I was so excited after Liz woke from a coma to see how the show might tackle that plotline. Would Liz be traumatized? Would she be reluctant to rejoin the Task Force? What if she decided to give up her life with the FBI altogether and raise Agnes? What if she had PTSD? etc.

And, the show went the very predictable route of not showing much, if any, of Liz’s physical therapy or psychological trauma, and having her get back ‘out in the field’ (proverbially speaking) pretty much right away. She pawned Agnes off to Scottie and then kicked it in the woods for an episode.

Whereas, with The Good Place, we got to see major glimpses of Eleanor’s year after her near-death experience in 2x12. Granted, not much of it, but given the show’s time constraints and break-neck speed (in terms of plot development as opposed to TBL), it was nice that we got to see Eleanor become a better person, backslide, and then make a decision on whether she wanted to try to make progress again or whether she was going to stay in her rut forever.

Clearly, you can seen how one’s plot progression is preferable – as a viewer – to the other. It’s also helpful, I imagine, as a writer, to let the plots unfold organically, as fast or as slow as they need to… instead of having to either rush them or drag them out to reach a certain point in the season’s schedule.

2. CHARACTER INTERACTIONS

As said above, both shows focus on the connections between its male protagonist and female protagonists. While ultimately it’s the female protagonist’s journey, the male protagonist is a guiding force in her journey, helping her along and pushing her to make decisions (whether good or bad).

(Although, I guess you could argue that Chidi is really TGP’s male protagonist, but considering that Ted Danson is more heavily promoted, I’d argue Michael is really TGP’s male protagonist.)

And, for both shows, its two main protagonists are part of a six-person main cast.

For The Good Place, the cast is Eleanor and Chidi, Tahani and Jason (two other residents in Eleanor’s neighborhood), Janet (the neighborhood’s anthropomorphized mainframe/help desk), and Michael.

The Blacklist’s cast, as of the end of S5, is Reddington and Keen, her fellow agents Donald Ressler, Samar Navabi and Aram Mojtabai, and their task force director Harold Cooper.

Now, the Blacklist primarily focuses on the relationship between Reddington and Keen; he doesn’t interact with the other cast members very frequently and Keen’s interactions with them are pretty basic and often work-focused. There aren’t very many crucial interactions between non-Reddington/Keen pairings, especially in more recent seasons of the show. While S1 and S2 tried its best to have Keen interact with Ressler, Ressler interact with Reddington, Cooper interact with Reddington, Keen interact with Navabi, etc., S3-5 have more focused on the Reddington/Keen dynamic at the expense of everyone else.

Granted, I like the Reddington/Keen dynamic (in some respects), but giving it more weight in the runtime unfortunately means that the remainder of the cast has to tackle the more procedural aspects by trying to track down the Bad Guy of the Week while Reddington and Keen get to have more of the character-driven serialized moments and developments.

Compare this, though, with TGP and its interactions outside of the Eleanor/Michael dynamic.

Throughout different points in S1 and S2, we got significant interaction between almost every single possible pairing of characters on this show. (And I mean pairing in a non-romantic sense.)

We see Eleanor fall in love with Chidi, become ‘mates’ with Tahani, become bros with Jason, and try to kill Janet and then later give her relationship advice. Meanwhile, Michael has his falling out with and subsequent heartfelt apology to Chidi; he admits to Janet that she’s his most loyal friend; in S1, he seeks out Tahani’s help; and in S2, he seeks out Jason’s feedback. Tahani and Jason’s romantic connection is explored, as is Jason and Janet’s. Chidi and Tahani have an important bonding moment in S1, and even the dynamic between Chidi and Jason is touched on some.

So, while TBL’s cast feels a little separated and almost cliquish, TGP’s six castmembers feel like a cohesive team where any two or three characters can be trusted to carry a scene and have an emotional connection/interaction. The former comes off as weak writing and show structuring, while the other is far preferable to watch.

3. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

As I’ve said in several other TBL posts, THIS is probably my biggest grievance with the show … even more so than the weird-ass plot structure.

Despite supposedly being major characters, Ressler, Cooper, Samar and Aram get very little in the way of growth or development. I can barely describe them, their personalities, their desires, their moral codes, etc. in maybe a paragraph for each character. And these are people who have been on this show for FIVE FUCKING YEARS!!! How is that possible that they’ve gotten so little development in so much screentime?

Again, remember, TBL’s runtime is SIX TIMES that of TGP. And yet, I feel like any and all of The Good Place’s major characters get way more development simply in the first season than TBL’s peeps do in five.

I could definitely describe Jason, Tahani, Chidi and Janet’s personalities, desires, moral codes, etc. in like a page for each character.

Now, granted, I suppose the show’s structure lends itself better to that. The characters have to do a lot of soul-searching, so to speak, in almost every episode. Whereas, the Blacklist’s cast has to chase down the week’s bad guys, which takes up at least 20-30 minutes per episode.

Okay, okay. Maybe it’s not fair, considering that TBL clearly doesn’t care about its non-Reddington/non-Keen characters. So, let’s focus on both shows’ two leads and their character arcs.

Let’s look at Reddington’s character development versus Michael’s.

Despite having much more screentime and weight within the show, Reddington’s arc PALES in comparison to Michael’s. Granted, Michael started out as a literal demon whose entire purpose was to torture people. But, over time, we saw his genuine curiosity about humans transform into a genuine desire to understand them and want to be one of them. Yes, he only seeks them out after 802 reboots because he feels he has no other options (thanks to Vicky threatening to blackmail him). But, as he learns ethics alongside the humans, he realizes he needs to become a better ‘person’ (read: demon) to better care of them. Because he OWES IT TO THEM.

Reddington’s character development, meanwhile, seemed to come more in the latter half of S4 when he was trying to deal with Mr. Kaplan coming after him and he was trying to confront this spectre of death that seemed to be looming over him.

Yet, even after all that bullshit with Mr. Kaplan, where he called him out for keeping secrets from Elizabeth that she had the right to know, he still held all the cards and kept his secrets to himself and killed anyone who got in the way.

If Red had really grown, the way Michael did in S2, he would’ve confessed to Elizabeth at some point that he wasn’t the real Reddington, that he stole her father’s identity, and he’d been keeping it from her all this time because of “x.”

While Michael has learned and grown as an individual, Reddington has stayed relatively static in terms of personal growth. Not to say we haven’t seen different sides of him, what he would do when he faced difficult scenarios, like Liz’s death or losing his criminal empire… but the Reddington in the S5 finale is too much like Reddington in the pilot episode. Which is absolutely ridiculous, given how much screentime and emphasis he’s gotten over FIVE SEASONS!!!

Michael has learned to admit when he’s been wrong, apologize and become a better friend to his humans, while Red still has yet to do Liz (a woman he loves immensely in some capacity or other) the basic kindness of telling her that he stole her dad’s identity.

Alright. Now let’s look at Elizabeth Keen versus Eleanor Shellstrop.

Both characters have suffered from character regression, where they start at Point A, then develop and grow over time to reach Point B, and then – for whatever reason – regress to Point A again.

Elizabeth Keen started out happy and bubbly in S1a, went to dark and gritty in S1b-3a, then went back to happy and bubbly in S3b to S5a, then back to dark and gritty again in S5b.

Eleanor started off as an Arizona dirtbag, then became a good person to the point where she decided to sacrifice herself by going to the Bad Place... then got rebooted 802 times... then started as an Arizona dirtbag again, progressed to the point where she was the only one of the four humans who passed her test from The Judge ... then was sent back to earth and was saved from death, so she decided to change her life, backslided and now is AGAIN trying to become a better person.

Now, while Eleanor’s character regression fits within the confines of the show, Keen’s makes no sense. She’s confronted and overcome so many challenges over the show’s the five seasons… so, why hasn’t she learned from them? Why is she still relatively the same, especially considering that x-number of seasons ago, she was so completely different?

Why is she back to being all angry and hateful and dark, etc., when it’s like... she has a young daughter who’s lost her father, she lost 10 months with her after being in a coma.... and she just wants to go beat up dirty cops??? I feel like if they wanted us to see an Elizabeth Keen that had learned from her experience, she would’ve given up her life with the FBI, saying that it’s put her in danger, severed ties with Red (or tried to) because he’s also endangered her (via the bones), and spent time with her daughter, whom she claims is more important than anything else in the world.

And, whereas Eleanor was not a very likable protagonist at the outset but she becomes more likable over time, Keen started out as somewhat likable but has become more annoying as her character continually regresses.

All in all, to quote (or at least paraphrase) some other Tumblr user, “I can’t believe The Good Place literally invented character development.”

TL;DR

Again, just to reiterate, I think there’s good and bad in both shows. But, there’s a reason why I’ve seen every episode of the Good Place at least four times and why TGP S1-2 is currently #4 on my list of All-Time Favorite TV Shows.

The Good Place pushes the envelope by subverting expectations and having major developments earlier in the season than expected; it makes sure that almost every character has significant moments with every other character; and it ensures that each of them has a major character arc that works within the confines of the show.

The Blacklist, in comparison, does what too many other shows on TV do: it treads water plot-wise; it focuses too much on some characters at the expense of others; and even the characters it focuses on don’t show any significant or organic growth.

And, that’s why, IMO, The Blacklist represents everything that’s wrong with television now; and The Good Place represents everything that’s right.

#the blacklist #the good place #nbc the blacklist #nbc the good place #tbl #tgp #lizzington #hellstrop #eleanor x chidi #michael x eleanor #eleanor x tahani #tahani x eleanor #eleanor x michael #chidi x eleanor #chidi x tahani #jason mendoza #tahani x jason #eleanor shellstrop #michael the demon #chidi anagonye #tahani al jamil #janet the good place #michael the good place #michael the architect #elizabeth keen #raymond reddington #harold cooper #donald ressler #samar navabi #samar x aram

[paraclete0407]

I feel I have done little but to attack the Christians right and left who actually looked out for my body as well as spirit and kept me company when no one would and inspired me not to lust or get in political arguments or strain every muscle-fiber and sweat every drop to displace an immoveable object and for their trouble I am basically mad at them for what they have that I don’t - your wife, your muscles, your training, your past, your firm footing in life, where you’re going.  I just lack passion and affection and neighbors / friends and more passion, try to be ‘technical’ about everything, preaching about good relationships and sacrificial generosity.  I read ‘The Meaning of Marriage’ and realized that husband and wife could be one flesh - it clicked - but IDK why I tried to share this.

All these novel-ideas and I like to set up sentiments and situations but then too I feel as if Korea is practically my only reality - a if, like I said on my last night, ‘This is the first thing I gained’ - and now the present absence or distance is the ‘operative condition’ of my life or the ‘keynote.’  I also realize now that I fell in to the Millennial / Miles Klee (in past) habit of sophisticated coastal elites writing evocations of ‘wholesome’ Midwesterners or Southerners, with the implication being that they will sooner or later become - to take a short leap of intuition - media, or, education.  I guess Kent Haruf is all about this where the characters are defined by adultery or trying to play the white knight or I had a thought of ‘Teacher Dream’ where all these utility clerks pushing in carts and I felt glad at first to remark to myself I am carrying multitudes of learning but then felt sad I wasn’t doing anything much but muse about what I used to be.  I got in the habit of trying to open bout my personal story / narrative concerning Christian belief but now some people won’t even stay on the phone if I mention NK and play games about anything.  Am I a drug pusher?  I wasn’t even asking for money, just expanding on my interest as the other person had expanded.

I don’t thik it’s not even a big deal - Milwaukee could get nuked or attacked by neo-Nazi’s with bombs and assault weapons with all these mixed-race marriages and adoptions and I know for a fact Wisc’s got neo-Nazis all over.  Nuclear war!  Not a lot of manufacturing left in some areas or farmland, just old buildings and human souls.  Everyone was starting to believe that C-19 was over but then Delta and I started to remember everything from ‘16 and how my spirit wants to drive as fast as possible around be prepared for welcome our angelic invaders / victors (literally); I felt as if the heavenly military have hair-triggers and just open fire if they see sth they don’t like.  

I had tried to elevate my understanding of the Midwestern soul or the customary ‘course of life’ in terms of male self-consciousness or expectations-versus-outcome which in retrospect was not as comprehensively smart as I had liked to believe but only beautiful and pleasing to the intellect.  My ideas about the Midwestern novel helped make me a friend but in retrospect I don’t know why I even tried to get in to the genre when my whole image of life is here just somehow being and/or being with Koreans.  

I feel sometimes as if I don’t really know anyone and for a long time my main character has been some clone or graft of my brother.  I’ve lost my standards.  I just look at all the world going by.  Maybe I ought to just pray and write poems for a while since I have a sense of what is going on or at least what I hope will soon be happening.

I keep reading books too and I bought up all the books I could then got rid of them.  

I had been living in a case of ‘eventually’ for years and didn’t realize the Covid ‘revolution’ or Delta would suddenly appear and I would be regarding ‘last things.’

I keep wondering whether I ought to talk about Korea or Asians at all.  It’s - they are - my one hit-you-up lapel-grab button-hole and tell tell tell.  In this time of wanting to give away one’s best I am like pine-tree, ‘far away and over there,’ beautiful and intense.  People back away from me.

I wonder whether everyone feels as confident as I do in their understanding of what’s going on right now in history - and whether it’s even useful or even acceptable to talk about it that way as it sounds like total Marxism.  Anyway I was talking about Satan and Judgment and I mean it 100% literally and I saw it and recognized and heard the word for it, ‘Judgment.’  I wonder whether Tolstoy in War and Peace was 100% confident in having the character label Napoleon anti-Christ and who’s the instantiation or manifestation of anti-Christ today if that is ‘dispensationally appropriate / valid.’  I read Coronavirus and Christ numerous times and feel it cannot be quite the last days but then since when does David J. Johnston not believe that he likes believing?  But sincerely and fully who’s out there saying anti-Christ stuff like oppressing religion?  I feel I’m only against false religions but then I go around being not very loving to anyone and only excuse myself - ‘an excuse is twice is a lie’ - by dint of that no one ever opens to me here.  [relationship is no].  Sleep on street in K-Town LA just if I’m in LA I want a projectile weapon.  

...Who’s the one saying everyone can be together today and religion is bad?  I almost feel it’s Anglo America with Christopher Hitchens (St. Theresa bad, alcohol good, nuke North Korean ‘dwarves,’ making special stipulations so that not only can he not live a believing life but ‘if I die and want God that’s not me’), Johnson acting like he understands everything; America(?).  I remember when I read the Obergefell opinion there was the phrase ‘love that lasts beyond life’ or something.  It made me think of stones in Egypt and stuff or the Middle East(?).  I wonder am I a terrible person just for having certain pure ideas?  People appear to look at me and go like, ‘Solzhenitsyn, Hobby Lobby,’ just attacking others’ values wile I’m really a misogynist casual rapist.  

I’m just trying to supply some narrative for why I came to crystallized convictions after years of studying and writing.  My friend said ‘pastors who study porn are disgusting’ which I agree with but then part of me is like there’s evil everywhere; someone’s gotta study war, pornography, weapons, fat people ~ but I see like no good; I see ‘image-aspirations’ and ‘identitkits.’  She wanted me to teach AmLit which I felt like it sends all kinds of confused messages that lead to disappointment and all of these Rutgers girls believed they were Jane Austen and that’s again why I say send your daughters to Bethlehem Seminary and just learn from OT NT faithful women b/c the rst are literal ‘Gossip Girl’ that I can tell or it’s just sad but I don’t wanna be Norman Mailer and attack the corporate cool girl - Generation Alpha’s rising and here I am coping, depressed they just wants sports-based instructional design.  They appear to want nothing or IDK; pressure their parents.  Am I just seeing the same narrative again about the MS cafeteria, the Lunchable someone has and I don’t and I am ‘special’ and feel ‘proud’ if not a ‘solemn pride’ that my mom gave me healthier foods but then believed I would get the big-ticket items we were saving up for - it’s ancient history but part of why I lost my mind and nearly my life in quest of a) personal glory or vindication that I’m not like others and b) ‘educational justice’ or ‘fairness’

I remember how when I first lived in South Korea I was reading St. Augustine partly because it is interesting and lovely and talks about the reading life and growing up, love-failure,’ parents’ weird maniacal greed and impatience to become grandparents, and incredible things about history and the heart and pedagogy and basically everything, which is why I feel as though ‘Confessions’ but also ‘City of God’ are covering the whole sky right now, people rediscovering the actual existence of sin, the violence of history (which some are lip-licking for), the ways in Time and in Eternity...

At that time I felt reading ‘Confessions’ and much else made me better than others or that ultimately I was not required to deal with some people or look at them that carefully nor wonder how they got to be the way they were as I could just stay with my books and have consolation and uplift.  I wanted to write my own ‘Midwestern novel’ with the title ‘And I Will Give You Rest’ and the topic of coping, basically or abandoning desires and ambitions.  My other novel ‘Commitment’ is going out the window I’m afraid since the desire or intention it reflects is rapidly coming up to me as reality.  On Grace to You the description of ‘rest’ included ‘lack of apprehension.’   I also felt that since my parents and younger brother appeared to be night-terminally obstructing my aspirations through unlawful backhanded means I would include my ‘confinement’ I might as well ‘mix in Eastern and Western characters’ and talk about the present world-situation but it’s still fiction at a terrible moment in Time and I sincerely feel that America and England are defending values and ideas that aren’t even really good for anyone.  Kindness and gentleness and rights and non-enslavement to the state and absence of a state religion such as in NK (from what I can tell), are excellent, but chauvinism, complacence, some aspects of procedural and parliamentary governance.  

I also remembered how at 27 and then 34 I’d fall asleep when I saw someone really beautiful.  One of these people made me feel lost without resources and the other gave me a notion of living love.

I feel as if my whole life is actually one story which circles around a dream I had in 2015 about birth but also involves this beauty of holding love; honestly I do not know why else I am still alive as I have contributed so little economically.

[ricardotomasz]

Such is life! Behold, a new Post published on Greater And Grander about We Must Stop Putting Our Heroes on Pedestals, For They Topple Too Easily

See into my soul, as a new Post has been published on http://greaterandgrander.com/2020/10/we-must-stop-putting-our-heroes-on-pedestals-for-they-topple-too-easily/

We Must Stop Putting Our Heroes on Pedestals, For They Topple Too Easily

As is the custom in an election year, I keep getting into fights on Facebook over political matters. Because of the online spaces I inhabit, the general theme is, Joe Biden is a terrible candidate, and not a true progressive, and not as good as Bernie Sanders.

The unfortunate mistake that Bernie Sanders supporters keep making is that they put him on a high pedestal that nobody else can climb to. Now I'm not saying Bernie Sanders is a bad guy, I'm simply saying that some see him as perfect, and unimpeachable, and that is just not true. First off, Bernie Sanders likes rape. In 1972, when he was 31, Sanders wrote a fictitious essay in which he described a woman enjoying being raped by three men. In addition to that, Bernie Sanders turned his back on Tara Reade, and endorsed Joe Biden for President after his campaign encouraged her to come out and make false allegations. Bernie also co-sponsored a bill to ship Vermont's nuclear waste to a poor Hispanic community in Texas, which earned him the label of environmental racist. Also on the list: Sanders violated campaign finance laws, criticized Clinton and Biden for supporting the 1994 crime bill that HE HIMSELF voted for, and he voted against the Amber Alert system which has saved over a thousand children from being kidnapped.

Now, I'm not writing this article to humiliate Bernie Sanders. Bernie's done a good enough job of that on his own. What I'm trying to articulate is that we must recognize that our heroes are flawed human beings, just as we are.

Merriam Webster has 5 or 6 definitions for Hero. Most of them have to do with perfect figures of heroism, idols worthy of worship, etc. However, the two definitions I like most are:

c: a person admired for achievements and noble qualities

d: one who shows great courage

It's not just that I like these definitions, but I think it's important we remember these definitions. Heroes are real people, with flaws just as strong as their virtues. Sometimes the bigger the hero, the bigger the flaw.

Now you may say I'm wrong, but let me provide some salient examples.

Stephen Hawking was a womanizer who cheated on his wife. So was Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, JFK, Jackson Pollock, and Pablo Picasso.

Michael Jackson, Charlie Chaplin, and Woody Allen were all sexual predators who enjoyed the company of children.

Ghandi was, by all accounts, a terrible father, and also really racist towards black people when he was a lawyer in South Africa.

FDR instituted Japanese internment camps, and he was supported by Dr. Seuss. Yes, Dr. Seuss was a racist sonofabitch. Harry Truman would be considered by some to be a war criminal for using the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Henry Ford, Roald Dahl, and Woodrow Wilson were irredeemable racists, and anti-semites.

The Dalai Lama is in favor of world peace, and even wants to protect the whales, but believes abortion is unacceptable, and an act of killing. However, he has stated that abortion is acceptable "if the unborn child will be retarded" but at least he wants to protect the whales.

Mother Teresa's missions, despite having tons of charitable donations at their disposal, rarely — if ever — actually helped poor, sick people become healthy. In fact, most of these places, according to a 2013 paper published in Studies in Religion, were dirty, short on doctors, low on food, and largely bereft of painkillers. Nevertheless, Teresa found the suffering beautiful, like it was making the world a better, holier place. We know this because she said it to the famously anti-religious writer Christopher Hitchens: "There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ's Passion. The world gains much from their suffering." 

Jackie Chan is actually hated by many people in China for supporting the authoritarian Chinese government of Xi Jinping. Other Chinese stars have supported authoritarian actions, like Chinese actress, and star of Disney's Mulan, Liu Yifei.

Bill Gates, as highlighted in the Netflix documentary, Inside Bill's Brain, he was indicted for anti-Monopoly laws, and wants to open up a new generation of Nuclear power plants, which when they go bad, they REALLY go bad. His rival, Steve Jobs, was an egomaniacal narcissist.

And if you're thinking, 'well, those are all left-wing, bleeding heart liberals, my heroes are unimpeachable' I'd like to remind you that early in his administration, Abraham Lincoln advocated for sending African-Americans back to Africa. Conservative prime minister, Winston Churchill, was a terrible white supremacist.

John Wayne (who drove many innocent people to suicide through his support of the Hollywood Blacklist) in a 1971 interview with Playboy magazine, Wayne admitted he didn't like African-American people (or "the blacks" as he constantly called them) being in charge of anything because white people are apparently the only people who know what they're doing. As he said in the interview, "I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people."

Also, here is a list of the 68 out of the 149 founding fathers who owned slaves.

Abraham BaldwinGeorgiaArthur MiddletonSouth CarolinaBenjamin HarrisonVirginiaButton GwinnettGeorgiaCaesar RodneyDelawareCarter BraxtonVirginiaCharles Carroll of CarrolltonMarylandCharles Cotesworth PinckneySouth CarolinaCharles PinckneySouth CarolinaChristopher GadsdenSouth CarolinaCornelius HarnettNorth CarolinaDaniel CarrollMarylandDaniel of St. Thomas JeniferMarylandEdmund PendletonVirginiaEdward LangworthyGeorgiaEdward RutledgeSouth CarolinaEdward TelfairGeorgiaFrancis Lightfoot LeeVirginiaGeorge ReadDelawareGeorge WaltonGeorgiaGeorge WashingtonVirginiaGeorge WytheVirginiaGunning Bedford Jr.DelawareHenry LaurensSouth CarolinaHenry MiddletonSouth CarolinaHugh WilliamsonNorth CarolinaJacob BroomDelawareJames MadisonVirginiaJames McHenryMarylandJohn BanisterVirginiaJohn BlairVirginiaJohn DickinsonDelawareJohn HansonMarylandJohn HarvieVirginiaJohn MathewsSouth CarolinaJohn PennNorth CarolinaJohn RutledgeSouth CarolinaJohn WaltonGeorgiaJohn WilliamsNorth CarolinaJoseph HewesNorth CarolinaLyman HallGeorgiaMatthew TilghmanMarylandNicholas Van DykeDelawarePatrick HenryVirginiaPeyton RandolphVirginiaPierce ButlerSouth CarolinaRichard BassettDelawareRichard BlandVirginiaRichard CaswellNorth CarolinaRichard Dobbs SpaightNorth CarolinaRichard Henry LeeVirginiaRichard HutsonSouth CarolinaSamuel ChaseMarylandThomas AdamsVirginiaThomas Heyward Jr.South CarolinaThomas JeffersonVirginiaThomas JohnsonMarylandThomas LynchSouth CarolinaThomas Lynch Jr.South CarolinaThomas McKeanDelawareThomas Nelson Jr.VirginiaThomas StoneMarylandWilliam BlountNorth CarolinaWilliam FewGeorgiaWilliam Henry DraytonSouth CarolinaWilliam HooperNorth CarolinaWilliam JacksonSouth CarolinaWilliam PacaMaryland

Also, how many popes turned a blind eye to child molestation and child rape all around the world?

#Bernie2020, #BernieSanders, #NonComicBookSuperhero, #Politics, #Superhero

#Bernie 2020 #Bernie Sanders #non comic book superhero #politics #superhero

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Matt Johnson

Summary

Christopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today’s left, he’s remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout-a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neo-conservatism after the September 11 attacks. In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free inquiry, humanism, and universal liberal values. He was an internationalist who believed all people should have the liberty to speak and write openly, to be free of authoritarian domination, and to escape the arbitrary constraints of tribe, faith, and nation. He was a figure of the Enlightenment and a man of the left until the very end, and his example has never been more important. Over the past several years, the liberal foundations of democratic societies have been showing signs of structural decay. On the right, nationalism and authoritarianism have been revived on both sides of the Atlantic. On the left, many activists and intellectuals have become obsessed with a reductive and censorious brand of identity politics, as well as the conviction that their own liberal democratic societies are institutionally racist, exploitative, and imperialistic. Across the democratic world, free speech, individual rights, and other basic liberal values are losing their power to inspire. Hitchens’s case for universal Enlightenment principles won’t just help genuine liberals mount a resistance to the emerging illiberal orthodoxies on the left and the right. It will also remind us how to think and speak fearlessly in defense of those principles.

--

Introduction

First Principles

In the introduction to his 1993 collection of essays For the Sake of Argument, Christopher Hitchens affirmed his commitment to the left: “Everyone has to descend or degenerate from some species of tradition,” he wrote, “and this is mine.” Hitchens’s political trajectory is often presented as a story of left-wing degeneration. His career was “something unique in natural history,” as former Labour MP George Galloway put it: “The first ever metamorphosis from a butterfly back into a slug.” After Hitchens abandoned socialism and all other formal political allegiances, his critics say he became a fulminating reactionary, a neocon warmonger, and a dreary cliché: the defector, the sellout, the predictable left-wing apostate.

The standard left-wing narrative about Hitchens is that he exchanged his socialism for some species of neoconservatism. After many years as a left-wing dissident in Washington, DC, he took the side of the U.S. government when it launched the most maligned war since Vietnam. Sure, he said a few sensible things about the excesses and contradictions of capitalism in his days as a Marxist, established himself as the most lacerating critic of U.S. foreign policy in the American media, and did more to put an asterisk next to Henry Kissinger’s reputation than just about any other writer. But this long radical resume is now just a footnote in what many on the left view as a chronicle of moral and political derangement—the once-great left-wing polemicist becoming an apologist for the American empire. On this view, if the left has anything to learn from Hitchens, it’s strictly cautionary.

From socialist to neocon. It was an irresistible headline because it’s a story that has been told over and over again—according to many authorities on the left, butterflies have been morphing back into slugs since the dawn of natural history. The novelist Julian Barnes called this phenomenon the “ritual shuffle to the right.” Richard Seymour, who wrote a book-length attack on Hitchens, says his subject belongs to a “recognisable type: a left-wing defector with a soft spot for empire.” Irving Kristol’s famous description of a neoconservative is a liberal who has been “mugged by reality,” which implies a reluctant and grudging transition from idealism to safe and boring pragmatism. By presenting Hitchens as a tedious archetype, hobbling away from radicalism and toward some inevitable reactionary terminus, his opponents didn’t have to contend with his arguments or confront the potentially destabilizing fact that some of his principles called their own into question.

Hitchens didn’t make it easy on the apostate hunters. To many, he was a “coarser version of Norman Podhoretz” when he talked about Iraq and a radical humanist truth-teller when he went on Fox News to lambaste the Christian right: “If you gave Falwell an enema,” he told Sean Hannity the day after Jerry Falwell’s death, “he could be buried in a matchbox.” Then he gave Islam the same treatment, and he was suddenly a drooling neocon again. He called for the removal of Saddam Hussein and the arrest of Kissinger at the same time. He endorsed the War on Terror but condemned waterboarding9 and signed his name to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) for warrantless wiretapping. He defied easy categorization: a socialist who spurned ideology, an internationalist who became a patriot, a man of the left who was reviled by the left.

The left isn’t a single amorphous entity—it’s a vast constellation of (often conflicting) ideas and principles. Hitchens’s style of left-wing radicalism is now out of fashion, but it has a long and venerable history: George Orwell’s unwavering opposition to totalitarianism and censorship, Bayard Rustin’s advocacy for universal civil rights without appealing to tribalism and identity politics, the post-communist anti-totalitarianism that emerged on the European left in the second half of the twentieth century. Hitchens described himself as a “First Amendment absolutist,” an echo of historic left-wing struggles for free expression—from Eugene V. Debs’s assertion of his right to dissent during World War I to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Hitchens argued that unfettered free speech and inquiry would always make civil society stronger. When he wrote the introduction to For the Sake of Argument in 1993, he had a specific left-wing tradition in mind: the left of Orwell and Victor Serge and C.L.R. James, which simultaneously opposed Stalinism, fascism, and imperialism in the twentieth century, and which stood for “individual and collective emancipation, self-determination and internationalism.”

Hitchens believed “politics is division by definition,” but his most fundamental political and moral conviction was universalism. He loathed nationalism and argued that the international system should be built around a “common standard for justice and ethics”—a standard that should apply to Kissinger just as it should apply to Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein. He believed in the concept of global citizenship, which is why he firmly supported international institutions like the European Union. He didn’t just despise religion because he regarded it as a form of totalitarianism—he also recognized that it’s an infinitely replenishable wellspring of tribal hatred. He opposed identity politics because he didn’t think our social and civic lives should be reduced to rigid categories based on melanin, X chromosomes, and sexuality. He recognized that the Enlightenment values of individual rights, freedom of expression and conscience, humanism, pluralism, and democracy are universal—they provide the most stable, just, and rational foundation for any civil society, whether they’re observed in America or Europe or Iraq. And yes, he argued that these values are for export.

Hitchens believed in universal human rights. This is why, at a time when his comrades were still manning the barricades against the “imperial” West after the Cold War, he argued that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should intervene to stop a genocidal assault on Bosnia. It’s why he argued that American power could be used to defend human rights and promote democracy. As many on the Western left built their politics around incessant condemnations of their own societies as racist, exploitative, oligarchic, and imperialistic, Hitchens recognized the difference between self-criticism and self-flagellation.

One of the reasons Orwell accumulated many left-wing enemies was the fact that his criticisms of his own “side” were grounded in authentic left-wing principles. When he argued that many socialists had no connection to or understanding of the actual working class in Britain, the observation stung because it was true. Orwell’s arguments continue to sting today. In his 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism,” Orwell criticized the left-wing intellectuals who enjoy “seeing their own country humiliated” and “follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong.” Among some of these intellectuals, Orwell wrote: “One finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of the western countries.”

Hitchens observed that many on today’s left are motivated by the same principle: “Nothing will make us fight against an evil if that fight forces us to go to the same corner as our own government.” This is a predictable manifestation of what the American political theorist Michael Walzer calls the “default position” of the left: a purportedly “anti-imperialist and anti-militarist” position inclined toward the view that “everything that goes wrong in the world is America’s fault.” As we’ll see throughout this book, the tendency to ignore and rationalize even the most egregious violence and authoritarianism abroad in favor of an obsessive emphasis on the crimes and blunders of Western governments has become a reflex on the left.

Much of the left has been captured by a strange mix of sectarian and authoritarian impulses: a myopic emphasis on identitarianism and group rights over the individual; an orientation toward subjectivity and tribalism over objectivity and universalism; and demands for political orthodoxy enforced by repressive tactics like the suppression of speech. These left-wing pathologies are particularly corrosive today because they give right-wing nationalists and populists on both sides of the Atlantic—whose rise over the past several years has been characterized by hostility to democratic norms and institutions, rampant xenophobia, and other forms of illiberalism—an opportunity to claim that those who oppose them are the true authoritarians.

Hitchens was prescient about the ascendance of right-wing populism in the West, from the emergence of demagogues who exploit cultural grievances and racial resentments to the bitter parochialism of “America First” nationalism. And he understood that the left could only defeat these noxious political forces by rediscovering its best traditions: support for free expression, pluralism, and universalism—the values of the Enlightenment.

The final two decades of Hitchens’s career are regarded as a gross aberration by many of his former political allies—a perception he did little to correct as he became increasingly averse to the direction of the left. He no longer cared what his left-wing contemporaries thought of him or what superficial labels they used to describe his politics. Hitchens closes Why Orwell Matters with the following observation: “What he [Orwell] illustrates, by his commitment to language as the partner of truth, is that ‘views’ do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think; and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.” This is a book about how Hitchens thought—and what today’s left can learn from him.

==

It's still worth saving.

#Christopher Hitchens #Matt Johnson #How Hitchens Can Save the Left #identity politics #populism #left wing identity politics #right wing populism #liberalism #universal liberalism #universalism #Enlightenment #Enlightenment values #universal human rights #tribalism #tribeless #politically homeless #political tribalism #religion is a mental illness

[golshxd-blog]

So with the new camping platform put together,  and all our updated storage worked out to keep us organized as we go full-time in the truck this year, we were eager to hit the road. But despite all the improvements, we weren’t quite done. One of the reasons we were so eager to build a new platform and get more organized was that we got tired of constantly moving our cooler and bins of food gear in and out of the truck — then stashing it in the front seat every night to keep it away from animals. Laziness is the mother of invention!

Having spent almost six months mulling it over and scouring endless vanlife and truck camping Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest accounts, I had an idea that was almost original. I decided to take a trailer hitch storage rack and build and mount a small kitchen/storage box to it. Basically, a giant chuck box that we could plug right in to the back of the truck.

I drew up my plans, designing the interior around the dimensions of the Aquatainer and new RTIC 45 cooler I had ordered. I found a well-reviewed 500-lb capacity hitch rack over at NorthernTool.com for a great price,  and ordered that as my base.

5 feet of work space, and it doesn’t block my taillights!

My cooler came in right behind it, and I quickly got a feeling for just how tight the space in this new build would be.

The answer being “pretty darn.”

As I designed the build, Rebecca and I developed a list of must-haves to be incorporated:

It needed room for our two-burner Coleman camp stove, and leave plenty of remaining counter space for food prep.

It needed slide-out storage for the cooler so it was easily accessible.

It needed to store the six-gallon Aquatainer in a way that made water access easy.

It needed drawers to replace the food storage drawer we’d lost when we switched to the new camping platform.

It needed room to store our overly large but oh-so-comfortable camp chairs that we love.

It needed to store my ax, hatchet, and saw in a place that was easy to get to.

It needed room to store the odds and ends of camping and cooking gear in a way that was easily accessible.

It needed to be weather resistant.

It needed to lock for security.

After a few drafts and some tweaking, we were ready to get building! The camper was parked at my in-laws over the holidays as we were working on this, and my father-in-law was gracious enough to let me use his basement workshop and all his tools — it was realllllly cold out, and being able to work inside was a huge godsend. I also couldn’t have done it without the help of my awesome brother-in-law Jay, who dedicated countless hours to helping me design and assemble this monster. Thanks Jay!

With our designs finished, we were ready to get to work! We went with 3/4 inch ply, cutting carefully and pre-drilling every screw hole, along with using wood glue to keep it all snug.

I found some 100-lb capacity ball bearing drawer slides from Home Depot, and was able to mount my new cooler snugly up under the counter top.

After that, we moved on to the drawer and Aquatainer storage area. Due to the size of the camp chairs I mentioned previously, we weren’t able to make the drawers as deep as I’d hoped — we simply couldn’t have gotten the chairs out from underneath the cooler if the drawers were full depth. However, we were still able to get 12 inches of depth, which has worked out to be plenty.

With the slides and drawers assembled, it was time for a dry fit, to see how everything was going to fit before we glued it all together. It all worked great, so we loosened it all up, glued it to death, and cinched it all down tight!

Once we got the lid built and mounted, it was obviously time for a progress photo to send around.

As we were getting close to painting, and had gotten a few days of warmer weather, we moved our workstation upstairs to the garage. Once we were up there, I also built an overlapping lip system to help both hold everything closed and solid, and also to help keep water out.

It sure looked nice in the sunshine!

We started applying layers of polyurethane to the interior, and while those were drying, I went ahead and build actual drawers, and lined them with some drawer liner Rebecca had left over in the camper from our camper reno.

Then it was time to get outside and paint! We decided to go with multiple coats of a matte black Rustoleum paint, and got a locking hasp to match.

On the inside, I installed the drawers, and started mounting some organizational items: rubber-coated eye hooks to mount pots and pans and a small dustpan, Rebecca’s spice rack, and our camping first aid kit. I also installed some small bracing pieces on the left side of the counter top keep the stove and propane canisters from sliding around.

After a few coats of poly over top of the paint to seal it, we dropped the whole thing into the hitch rack, bolted it down tight, and were ready to plug it into the hitch! Around this time, I decided to call my monstrosity The Hitchen — hitch kitchen, get it? However, my brother-in-law scoffed and quickly corrected me. “It’s too small to be a Hitchen,” he said — “It’s a Hitchenette!” And since he was so obviously correct, I can now proudly present to you: The Hitchenette.

(Full disclosure: My after pictures were taken in Louisiana after I got a car wash, because everything was IMMEDIATELY covered in salt and snow when we were in New Hampshire, and I wanted better looking after pictures.)

On the right side, you can see the handles we installed, along with my Sam Adams bottle opener — gotta keep that handy!

We put some adhesive-backed reflectors around the frame for visibility. So far, no one’s hit us, so so far so good! And now for the opened up and loaded up view…

We love it! Everything is easy to get to, it takes seconds to open everything up and break everything down, we can get to the cooler without a problem, and it stays locked and secure when we’re not using it.

Rebecca did a fantastic job packing the drawers, and they hold a tremendous amount of food and supplies. We keep them from sliding with short bungee cords attached to a few eye hooks.

We locked the cooler down tight to the shelf with some 2-inch velcro straps I found at Home Depot, attached to some simple drawer pulls mounted to the top of the drawer.

And there you have it: The Hitchenette in all it’s newly-built glory! We’ve loved having it — it keeps our sleeping area free of food and camping supplies, it gives Rebecca a clean and organized place to do her food prep and cooking, and just generally saves us from endlessly loading and reloading the truck. Between the camping platform, the car top carrier, and the Hitchenette, we feel like we have everything we need to be successful full-timers this year. We’ll see how it goes — stay tuned, and let us know what you think in the comments!

[grandhotelabyss]

(Ask a black American if he or she thinks our Civil War didn't solve anything.)

—Susan Sontag, “Why Are We in Kosovo?” New York Times (1999)

It is because America's crime, its real crime, is to be America herself. The crime is to exude the dynamism of an everchanging liberal culture. America is like Israel in that respect, only 50 times larger and infinitely richer and more powerful. America's crime is to show that liberal society can thrive and that antiliberal society cannot. This is the whip that drives the antiliberal movements to their fury. The United States ought to act prudently in the Middle East and everywhere else; but no amount of prudence will forestall that kind of hostility. And this should not be news. For the radical nationalist and Islamist movements are not, as I say, anything new. Movements of that sort are a reality of modern life. They are the echo that comes bouncing back from the noise made by liberal progress. And this should tell us truths about the struggle that has suddenly fallen upon us.

—Paul Berman, “Terror and Liberalism,” The American Prospect (2001)

If you’re actually certain that you’re hitting only a concentration of enemy troops…then it’s pretty good because those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. And if they’re bearing a Koran over their heart, it’ll go straight through that, too. So they won’t be able to say, “Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.” No way, ’cause it’ll go straight through that as well. They’ll be dead, in other words.

—Christopher Hitchens, qtd. in “The Left and 9/11,” The Nation (2002)

My frustration, in other words, is not that we took action in Afghanistan but that we have not done enough. We should have fought the ground war and occupied Kabul; organized an international force to disarm the warlords, protect ordinary citizens, and oversee the distribution of aid; demanded that secularists be included in the negotiations for a new government and that basic women’s rights be built into a new structure of law. If this is “imperialism”—in the promiscuous contemporary usage of that term—I am for it: I believe it is the prerequisite of a stable peace.

—Ellen Willis, “Why I’m Not for Peace,” Radical Society (2002)

Obama understands the white liberal American distaste for power as a symptom of white privilege, and he is certainly right. 

—David Samuels, “Invisible Man: How Ralph Ellison Explains Barack Obama,”  The New Republic (2008)

The 20th century, with its struggles for equal rights, with the triumph of democracy as the ideal in Western thought, proved Douglass right. The Civil War marks the first great defense of democracy and the modern West. Its legacy lies in everything from women’s suffrage to the revolutions now sweeping the Middle East. It was during the Civil War that the heady principles of the Enlightenment were first, and most spectacularly, called fully to account.

—Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?” The Atlantic (2012)

(Whether for better or for worse—both for better and for worse—liberalism means war:

The Gnostic valorization of freedom at the same time articulates an exceedingly vindictive denunciation of the physical world, a condemnation far harsher than any perspective found in Christian orthodoxy. The radical dualism of Gnosticism means that its adherents assume a drastically different spiritual posture from that of the Christian believer; whereas the latter experiences saving knowledge as the increasing awareness of his or her sinful condition in a divinely created cosmos, the Gnostic sets out to regain his or her innocence in a world that is the misshapen and unregenerate product of a malign deity. Thus, Gnosticism, in order to sustain its belief in the innocence of the uncreated spark, must project all that is baleful and malevolent onto the cosmos itself. The assertion of this insuperable divide between one’s inviolable self and the woeful prison of matter generates an equally intractable sense of indifference to one’s actions in the world, since such indifference, which is actively assumed out of disdain and horror and thus not to be mistaken for detached quietude, demonstrates the powerlessness of the Demiurge to corrupt the divine spark within. According to [Harold] Bloom, the American Religion is likewise defined by the conviction that the world and one’s actions in it are irrelevant to the purity of the self: “If your knowing ultimately tells you that you are beyond nature, having long preceded it, then your natural acts cannot sully you. No wonder then, that salvation, once attained, cannot fall away from the American Religionist, no matter what he or she does” (265). Furthermore, if the creation is truly identical to the Fall, and the physical world reveals the designs of an antagonistic deity, then the sacrosanct self becomes defined according to its hostility against the order of being. For the American Religion’s worship of freedom is at the same time a war against otherness, which it understands as “whatever denies the self’s status and function as the true standard of being and of value” (Bloom 16).

—Peter Yoonsuk Paik, “Smart Bombs, Serial Killing, and the Rapture: The Vanishing Bodies of Imperial Apocalypticism,” Postmodern Culture [2003])

#liberalism #political theory #political philosophy #susan sontag #christopher hitchens #ellen willis #paul berman #david samuels #ta-nehisi coates #peter yoonsuk paik

[go-redgirl]

A Jew and famed author is warning Christians are in danger.

He says they are targeted by secular leftists.

They want to destroy Christianity in America.

Persecution against Christians is already happening.

It can get far worse.

David Horowitz exposes the truth in his new bestseller . . .“Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America”

Christianity, once the backbone of America’s civilized “Judeo-Christian” society, is under cruel and relentless attack.

Now a famous author and leading Jewish-American is speaking out.

David Horowitz warns that left-wing activists, working in tandem with Democrats and radicals, are attempting to tear down our religious freedoms.

They are waging a war against Christians in court and the media.

Their goal: to destroy Christianity in America.

Sounds unbelievable?

Think again.

Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America  is David Horowitz’s extraordinary look into the left’s calculated efforts to create a godless, heathen American society.

DAVID HOROWITZ is a noted conservative commentator and New York Timesbestselling author of Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America. He is the founder and CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center in Los Angeles.

Horowitz says these efforts must be stopped.

He argues that even Jews — and anyone who believes in God — will be in danger if Christians are not protected.

Already some extreme fringe groups are resorting to horrific violence to kill innocent, God-fearing worshippers, sometimes in their own churches.

Horowitz is a New York Times bestselling author and leading conservative thinker.

You have seen him on Fox News, and all the major networks.

His Dark Agenda shows how liberals and their radical allies envision a new millennium in which Christianity is banished.

Horowitz argues that Judeo-Christian values are at the very root of America’s democracy and success.

Kill off such values and all of our freedoms could perish.

Everybody could be in danger.

In Dark Agenda, Horowitz tells for the very first time of his secret meeting with acclaimed social critic and notorious atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of the religion-bashing God Is Not Great, and the surprising things Hitchens revealed to him.

Horowitz also reveals that the battle over abortion is much more than the right of “choice,” but about an agenda to stop Christians from advocating for their most basic rights.

Today, Horowitz says Donald Trump’s “genuine love for his country” has galvanized Christians to fight the secular war waged against them — as the president has become a lightning rod for the radical left.

______________________________________

OPINION:  He’s correct its a ‘war’ in this country between good and evil. The evil ones (Democrats) have already shown how evil they are, in this country.  Many, sitting in power in our Congress are constantly fighting against the the goodness that’s being bestowed by our President that represents goodness for our country, he’s fighting daily against the darkness of ‘evil’ (Democrats) because it goes beyond the political agenda through the wall of hell that’s being protected by the Democrats. 

[logothanatos]

The Insufferably Simplistic Scientistic Harris v. The Philosophically Clueless and Politically Confused Peterson

Introductory Evaluation of Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson as People

After my New Atheist days, I pretty much saw Sam Harris as largely, intellectually irrelevant. On the other hand, I have a rather more complicated opinion on Jordan Peterson because he sometimes seems well-meaning but at the same time philosophically and politically naive. That being said, the Zeitgeist seems to be signaling that Peterson has acquired a relevance, even if in a small cadre, and that some people still take Sam Harris seriously (which seems to in turn indicate that mass deconversion is still an ongoing process). I can only imagine Harris still being relevant to budding atheists who still hold on to aspects of conservative thinking and libidinal attachment as well as the Christian rights' historically muddled and confused political categories. Or alternatively to insecure right-wing evangelicals fearful of the recent church exodus of a good number of Americans (whether due to being SBNR or atheists), and thereby politically emboldened into repackaging purely intellectual issues of Christianity into a secular moral quest of maintaining the hegemony or integrity of white identity (white folks as "meritous" representatives of Western civilization and values and tasked with "saving" it). Admittedly that's about the same demographic I could imagine Jordan Peterson appealing to.

Granted that would make sense, as the atheist budding out of theism, especially if having a background in Southern U.S. culture and white, is likely to implicitly run with this politics of identity that incorporates an apocalyptic or "rapture" vision of the clash with Islam as a greater evil than Christianity. In addition they are likely stuck, within their performance of Americanism, in the historical mangle of highly simplified Cold War political categories, just like these evangelicals, leading to politically confused criticisms (it's no wonder many of them get confused when a Facebook meme page that frequently criticizes liberals and has some critical takes on identity politics turns out to be highly left-wing). In fact, there is a temptation amongst some of these atheists, I suspect, to reaffirm the social function of religion as a strategy in this perceived cosmic struggle, hence why some of them side with Peterson and betray the anti-theistic sentiments of the majority of the New Atheist crowd (especially those influenced by Dawkins in particular). It's a Hitchens-esque move.

In sum, both Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris are cheap supermarket preprepared packaged ramen noodles for evangelicals or atheists who just discovered philosophy as politics. As you can tell, these sociological aspects are a lot more interesting than the debate itself--I am not here using them as a counter-argument contra Harris and Peterson (that would be an ad hominem), but it is certainly something to consider given my assessment of them as persons already suggests a larger normative framework that potentially does clash with both Harris' and Peterson's assumptions. In other words, this can function as entry point. In any case, it at least justifies, sociologically, why I'd be wasting any time on these two people, although especially on Sam Harris at this point in my life (at least Peterson is a newcomer into the public intellectual scene).

Onto the Meat and Bones of this Lame Debate

But here's what I think of the (insufferable) debate here, which assesses both Harris and Peterson as debaters as well as philosophers, in addition to both their rhetoric and argument--keep in mind this is an original Youtube comment I made on the video, but all redacted and divided into sections:

Basically this video could've been renamed to "largely unworkable implicit logical positivism / pure correspondence theory of truth v. poorly argued and inconsistent pragmatism from philosophical novice," the former being Harris and the latter being Peterson.

On Peterson's Egregious Failings

A lot of pro-Peterson Youtube commenters seem to agree with Peterson's conclusion and are reconstructing Peterson's argument to sound better than it is. Guess what--even if Peterson's main claim and conclusion were right, it doesn't mean he argued it well. He did not. Sam Harris made some PHIL101 points that made Peterson look out of his element due to Peterson's elementary missteps in building a conceptually precise and consistent argument (whether or not Harris' conclusion is wrong). Peterson instead made a suggestive, appeal to intuition, which is not the same thing (which is fine if this were merely a discussion, and not a debate, and if Peterson had admitted as much). Saying that, given Darwinism, it may be expedient to treat truth in terms of usefulness, and this seems to be what conceptions of truth would be selected for, goes against the very rules of rationality intuited by people which makes Darwinism conceivable as demonstrable--Sam Harris makes this same point. Consequently, while Peterson shows its a suggestive possibility, an obvious flaw is there that Jordan Peterson does not address, instead wasting time on clarifying what he is trying to get at as if the issue were Harris not understanding what he quite literally said rather than his weak argument. To be clear, Peterson does have a problem with clarity or at least transparency of purpose in the rest of the debate, but on this particular point I'd say that was not at issue.

I also think it would've been more helpful if Peterson had just accepted Harris' definitions of truth, but tried to demonstrate how truth and usefulness are nonetheless related in the way he thinks they are as opposed to how Harris thinks they are. (This can be done through internal critique, or simply convincingly pointing out that there is a non-accidental correlation between truth, whatever it might separately or differently mean, and usefulness, whatever it might separately or differently mean.) This would've lead to some clarity or, if not clarity, some nonetheless straight-forward argumentation on Peterson's part. Instead he fumbles around trying to avoid using the word 'truth' inconsistently given he conflated another idea with it that isn't always interchangeable. It's like Peterson can't tell the difference between a definition (that meaning of a term according to its general usage) and a meaning (the many associations and possible directions the term can take) as well as the difference between an abstraction ('truth' emptied of any of the different meanings or uses the term might have, and just in its general potential for use or signification, or 'truth' in all its possible senses) and a concept ('truth' understood through a synthetic, consistent system of relations amongst ideas or propositions). This is why he unproductively, and, in fact, counter-productively resists Harris' initial, basic point. In fact, out of desperation, Peterson shifts the goalpost to showing that truth and the good are the same. This is an age-old position that Peterson could've drawn on for his arguments, but he can't manage to even at least problematize the is/ought dichotomy Harris is drawing. Peterson just reiterates his intuition that there is some special relationship between truth and the good not found between the good and anything else without really defending why the relationships he sees between the good and the true are suggestively special compared to the relationship between the good and other things.

On Harris' Rhetorical Banality and Lack of Nuance as well as the Laughable Accusations Harris, but especially Peterson, throw at Each Other

On the other hand, Harris' responses were uninspired and extremely limited, failing to provide nuance where opportunities were available (not surprising, since Harris sucks at that). His own position is also, while common-sensical, philosophically uninteresting, insufficiently systematic and too scientistic. In addition, Peterson's ignorance is on full display when he accuses Harris of postmodernism--Harris may or may not be wrong, but a lot of what Harris says would be heavily criticized by the archetypal postmodernists if there ever were any (e.g., Lyotard & Baudrillard). 

What is Postmodernism? Neither Sam Harris nor Jordan Peterson Really Seem to Know

One of the major points of the archetypal postmodernists is that the very fragmentation and isolation of identities and disciplines create contradictory normative contexts that constrict rationality in such a way that rational discussion cannot fully penetrate or resolve disagreements. Basically, for a lot of postmodernists, intellectual disagreement are often expressions of social power struggle, desire, etc., that are not rationally resolvable. (Notice that rationality here is just constricted; this means its still conceivable some truths are still objectively decidable, even if largely context-sensitive. The rules of logic still apply.) There are some postmodernists one can argue go the full length into pure relativism (i.e., the position that, not only is nothing or most nothing rationally resolvable and fully accountable, but nothing is rationally decidable), but this is over-all a strawman. One can also argue this particular [aforementioned point] leads to relativism, but that's not the same as to say that postmodernists deliberately endorse relativism. Not to mention that requires more leg work from Peterson, for example, beyond using "postmodern" as a pejorative stand-in for relativism (which he never conclusively demonstrates to be present in the argument being made).

Situating Sam Harris in Relation to Actual Postmodernism

In any case, the point is Sam Harris seems to be committed to an entirely opposite claim than the postmodernists, since he basically puts a lot of stock on conversation, on language, for finding the truth. I feel his inability to take critiques of this position to be his most serious flaw, and it bleeds into his more minor flaws (its his prerogative to try and naturalize morality, but he fumbles in his attempts because of this invulnerable epistemological approach he takes). This is why Harris might seem "close minded" to people--it has nothing to do with his argument itself being somehow unwilling to entertain possibilities. Harris actually entertains possibilities all the time (just witness his unbound use of hypotheticals in the debate!)--the problem is that he is unimaginative when he tries to do it.

Situating Jordan Peterson in Relation to Actual Postmodernism

In addition, its ironic for Peterson to accuse Harris of being postmodernist because the pragmatist epistemologists (e.g., Richard Rorty) were the philosophers most famously and controversially heavily influenced by writers I'd think Peterson would often consider (albeit sometimes incorrectly) postmodernists or proto-postmodernists (e.g., Heidegger [more of a phenomenologist that was a precursor to post-structuralism as well as postmodernism] & Derrida [actually more of a post-structuralist than a postmodernist]). In fact, Nietzsche's Darwinian critique of rationality looks like an early version of aspects of the postmodernist critique of rationality. Yes, Nietzsche was critiquing rationality, not creating a theory of truth. The only thing close to a theory of truth given his critique of rationality was his concept of Will to Power, which is a concept Nietzsche created as an alternative to Darwin's idea of survival instinct/drive. The fact that Peterson endorses Nietzsche but subscribes to conventional Darwinism while applying this to the topic of truth is a sophomoric mistake. Indeed, Peterson is so ignorant that he frequently pairs Marxism with postmodernism as if there aren't disagreements or potentially conflicting implications in the positions and critiques of the two traditions (for example, postmodernism tends to challenge the Marxist notion of historical determinism and the proletariat as universalizing [therefore revolutionary] subject).

Conclusion

Harris is an absolutely terrible philosopher, but Peterson gives the impression of a fucking novice that can't grasp basic distinctions and is mired in the scientific world where data precision and gathering as well as inductive reasoning tends to matter a bit more than argumentative competence and deductive reasoning (scientists distribute this last task into a division of labor, whereas a philosopher is at least supposed to be competent in a holistic way when it comes to argumentation). It is embarrassing Harris sweeps the floor with him when his credentials as a scientist give him an initial advantage in terms of public perception and when Harris himself doesn't hold significant status within the larger philosophical community. It's interesting to point out (and I'm saying this as someone interested in sociology, a socially exemplar soft science for a lot of people), that his area of science isn't even as quantitatively heavy as physics and other sciences. In fact, the replication crises in science seems to be most glaring in psychology. The reason these observations are interesting is that Peterson likes to present himself as having a hard-on for science while making incompetent but confident forays into philosophy, the latter likely for the sake of validating his religious longing. This doesn't put him that far away from Harris' more secular philosophically boring scientism, and also may suggest insecurities about his own field. At the same time, he lampoons and tries to discredit the field closest to his own by psychologizing them in unwarranted ways as a replacement for actually criticizing and engaging sociological methodology. Here I'm psychologizing Jordan Peterson, but only after I've already assessed his debate performance.

The fact that anybody finds either of these two people in the context of this debate worth their while is laughable considering how fucking limited not only the positions presented here are, but how fucking limited either of their arguments for their positions were. The mistakes I pointed out here are the most egregious and most frequent, but there are others such as their oversimplification of the issue of identity politics. I suggest budding atheists and self-doubting evangelicals actually read books, and I mean primary source accounts about a representative array of a tradition or world-view rather than relying on secondary source discussion as if they were unbiased simply because they conform to popular folk notions of things and present and argue against positions within the narrow political spectrum that has prominent mainstream representation. In other words, I hope these sincere Christians leave the bad Biblical hermeneutics and deferral to a messianic figure behind for once for fuck's sake. Their concerns about religion are legitimate, but they'd get much more out of directly, critically reading Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, etc., as well as the philosophers of modernity (both French and English) without force-fitting them into their monolithic and hegemonic preconceived boxes.

#jordan peterson #sam harris #philosophy #epistemology #philosophy of religion #philosophy of science #philosophy of biology #psychology #cognitive psychology #postmodernism #postmodern #poststructuralism #post-structuralism #darwinism #pragmatism #logical positivism #correspondence theory #correspondence theory of truth #new atheism #sociology #cultural sociology #atheism #theism #political sociology #conservatism #christian right #alt right #alternative right #liberalism #center-left