Caesar, he remarks, did not cease (should be SEIZE) power against the wishes of public opinion. He was called into being by a void begging to be filled:
Much more recent history comes to mind as well: in 1980, Isaac Asimov, the famous biochemist and science-fiction author, published a brief essay concerning American attitudes as exemplified by the slogan, "Don't trust the elites," with a warning about general intellectual rot. (Or slightly more remote, in the 1950s -- Adlai Stevenson, perhaps the original Egghead, a continuing if now lesser-used epithet.) My favorite excerpt from the essay has always been this:
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
Or perhaps watch the early part of Marvel's movie, The Avengers, where pop-culture writers created a short speech by Loki of Asgard. He is threatening -- promising? -- to free mankind from .. freedom itself:
"Is this not simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power. For identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."
We can treat the choice of a guiding political philosophy as equivalent to buying grocery staples, I suppose. Pick one: Loki's worldview, or the implications of the quote from Tiberius in the newsletter.
The satisfaction I reap seeing my opinions (about democracy v liberalism and about the eerie parallels with ancient Rome) articulated brilliantly by you is over-balanced by sense of impending doom. Above and beyond the sadness of losing our freedom for future generations, especially in America, twenty-first century Earth is not a safe place for a bunch of Caesars to run around in. I'm not clinically depressed, but I think I should be.
I spent quite a few years genuinely depressed about this--remember, I was in Turkey, watching it happen for ten years, so I had a head start. (If you'd like to read my summary of what happened there, I think this is the best article I wrote explaining the story: https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/04/24/guilty-men/. I wish I could return and correct the dead links.) I went through all the stages of grief. My friends were worried about me. I was furious with the people who worried because I didn't want them to worry about *me*--I wanted them to worry about what was happening to Turkey. And when Trump was elected I nearly went nuts: That's why I wrote all of this, in the vain hope that if I just explained it clearly enough, people would understand. But at some point I shed the narcissistic delusion that anything I wrote would so much as change a single mind, no less the course of history. And in the past few years, despite everything, I've been happy. I've made my peace with my powerless to change any of it. Liberal democracy may be living on borrowed time, at this rate, but aren't we all? Civilizations come and go. Nothing lasts forever. I'm grateful for every single day that I'm free to write whatever I want to write and grateful for every day that I'm not being bombed to smithereens. I hope it lasts for the rest of my life. If it doesn't, I want to have spent the good times being grateful for them and enjoying them, not worrying about when they'll end.
I agree. But an element of your thesis is that the election of “every man” politicians either foreshadows the rise of authoritarian leaders or maybe even plays an indirect causative role. As an example you mentioned Vance. My point is that he’s a poor example because he’s not “every man” and he’s surely not likely to be sitting next to you on a bus, inebriated or not.
As for the Ivy League, if it collapsed, it would be a happy day. My take is a bit different than yours. I think modern-day Caesars arise in part as a response to the nonsense perpetrated by elite educational institutions that mentally healthy people find so outrageous that they suffer temporary insanity around Election Day.
“That Herschel Walker and J.D. Vance are poised to join our elite surely signifies the public’s belief that this elite should be composed of men whom you might find sitting next to you, inebriated, on a Greyhound bus. It’s a spectacularly egalitarian sentiment—admirable, in that sense—but it’s insane.” (Claire Berlinski)
Do you really think J.D. Vance is a good example to prove your thesis?
Did you read “Hillbilly Elegy?”
Vance’s relatives may have been likely to sit next to you inebriated on a Greyhound bus, but not Vance. He’s a graduate of The Ohio State University and the Yale Law School. He served in the United States Marine Corp and was stationed in Iraq.
In 2017, he joined Revolution LLC, an investment firm founded by AOL cofounder Steve Case and in 2019 he co-founded Narya Capital in Cincinnati with financial backing from venture capitalists Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Andreessen. Ultimately he raised he raised $93 million for the firm.
Vance is the antithesis of the type of politician who you’re suggesting leads to Cesarean leadership.
America’s founders borrowed the name of the upper house of our legislature, the Senate, directly from the Romans. All 100 U.S. Senators are college graduates and many of them, both Democrats and Republicans are Ivy Leaguers. If the election of rabble is what leads to authoritarianism, it would seem that Americans at least have nothing to worry about.
Caesar wasn’t a commoner, either, but he sure knew how to play to the plebs. Although I don’t think Vance is half so talented as Trump or others in his confederacy of Ivy League impersonators. Here in Virginia, it is interesting to see former Majority Leader Eric Cantor suck up to the Trumpists in his futile attempt to remain politically relevant in the Commonwealth. You’d think he’d be satisfied to be a high powered corporate attorney and investment banker.
WigWig, I don't think I can begin to tell you how little an Ivy League education impresses me. I spent years so high in the ivory tower I could see the clouds. I know perfectly well that *nothing* about that experience means that someone who emerges from it will be a responsible statesman.
And being a venture capitalist? Let's just say, "There was no more ruling class, only an owning class of new rich, the spineless novi homines who could substitute socially, but never politically, for the fallen aristocracy" sounds about right.
In drilling several levels deeper into active links here to earlier CosmoGlobo wrtings on her New Ceasers shtick (as, by my lights, it surely is!), I found this —posted 26 Aug 2020, just before the impeccably free and fair elections that deposed the incumbent caesarian president— by the "simple country Orthodox Rabbi" Moshe Averick, who died only months later, may his memory be for a blessing...
"The strangest of all: A brilliant young lady is obsessed with the notion that one of the biggest problems facing America is Donald Trump as President. Are you actually still waiting for a Philosopher King to appear on the horizon? Your words and thoughts are most definitely Invariably Interesting, but what vision are you offering, Claire? What world do you want us to embrace?..."
Drill in there yourselves to read the whole thing.
Claire, "thou know'st not less of me than all." Another brilliant, invariably interesting cri de coeur.
Claire, "thou know'st not less of me than all." Another brilliant, invariably interesting cri de coeur.
Claire, a minor editorial note:
Caesar, he remarks, did not cease (should be SEIZE) power against the wishes of public opinion. He was called into being by a void begging to be filled:
Ah, right you are. I've fixed it. Thank you!
Really well done; thank you.
Much more recent history comes to mind as well: in 1980, Isaac Asimov, the famous biochemist and science-fiction author, published a brief essay concerning American attitudes as exemplified by the slogan, "Don't trust the elites," with a warning about general intellectual rot. (Or slightly more remote, in the 1950s -- Adlai Stevenson, perhaps the original Egghead, a continuing if now lesser-used epithet.) My favorite excerpt from the essay has always been this:
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
Or perhaps watch the early part of Marvel's movie, The Avengers, where pop-culture writers created a short speech by Loki of Asgard. He is threatening -- promising? -- to free mankind from .. freedom itself:
"Is this not simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power. For identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."
We can treat the choice of a guiding political philosophy as equivalent to buying grocery staples, I suppose. Pick one: Loki's worldview, or the implications of the quote from Tiberius in the newsletter.
The satisfaction I reap seeing my opinions (about democracy v liberalism and about the eerie parallels with ancient Rome) articulated brilliantly by you is over-balanced by sense of impending doom. Above and beyond the sadness of losing our freedom for future generations, especially in America, twenty-first century Earth is not a safe place for a bunch of Caesars to run around in. I'm not clinically depressed, but I think I should be.
I spent quite a few years genuinely depressed about this--remember, I was in Turkey, watching it happen for ten years, so I had a head start. (If you'd like to read my summary of what happened there, I think this is the best article I wrote explaining the story: https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/04/24/guilty-men/. I wish I could return and correct the dead links.) I went through all the stages of grief. My friends were worried about me. I was furious with the people who worried because I didn't want them to worry about *me*--I wanted them to worry about what was happening to Turkey. And when Trump was elected I nearly went nuts: That's why I wrote all of this, in the vain hope that if I just explained it clearly enough, people would understand. But at some point I shed the narcissistic delusion that anything I wrote would so much as change a single mind, no less the course of history. And in the past few years, despite everything, I've been happy. I've made my peace with my powerless to change any of it. Liberal democracy may be living on borrowed time, at this rate, but aren't we all? Civilizations come and go. Nothing lasts forever. I'm grateful for every single day that I'm free to write whatever I want to write and grateful for every day that I'm not being bombed to smithereens. I hope it lasts for the rest of my life. If it doesn't, I want to have spent the good times being grateful for them and enjoying them, not worrying about when they'll end.
The Republicans should have nominated MacArthur instead of Ike in ‘52, and we could have just gotten this mess over with then.
If ever asked if I believe all are created equal the response is ‘Do I ever remind you of Albert Einstein?’
I agree. But an element of your thesis is that the election of “every man” politicians either foreshadows the rise of authoritarian leaders or maybe even plays an indirect causative role. As an example you mentioned Vance. My point is that he’s a poor example because he’s not “every man” and he’s surely not likely to be sitting next to you on a bus, inebriated or not.
As for the Ivy League, if it collapsed, it would be a happy day. My take is a bit different than yours. I think modern-day Caesars arise in part as a response to the nonsense perpetrated by elite educational institutions that mentally healthy people find so outrageous that they suffer temporary insanity around Election Day.
Oh, dear God! I agree with WigWag!
Me too
“That Herschel Walker and J.D. Vance are poised to join our elite surely signifies the public’s belief that this elite should be composed of men whom you might find sitting next to you, inebriated, on a Greyhound bus. It’s a spectacularly egalitarian sentiment—admirable, in that sense—but it’s insane.” (Claire Berlinski)
Do you really think J.D. Vance is a good example to prove your thesis?
Did you read “Hillbilly Elegy?”
Vance’s relatives may have been likely to sit next to you inebriated on a Greyhound bus, but not Vance. He’s a graduate of The Ohio State University and the Yale Law School. He served in the United States Marine Corp and was stationed in Iraq.
In 2017, he joined Revolution LLC, an investment firm founded by AOL cofounder Steve Case and in 2019 he co-founded Narya Capital in Cincinnati with financial backing from venture capitalists Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Andreessen. Ultimately he raised he raised $93 million for the firm.
Vance is the antithesis of the type of politician who you’re suggesting leads to Cesarean leadership.
America’s founders borrowed the name of the upper house of our legislature, the Senate, directly from the Romans. All 100 U.S. Senators are college graduates and many of them, both Democrats and Republicans are Ivy Leaguers. If the election of rabble is what leads to authoritarianism, it would seem that Americans at least have nothing to worry about.
Caesar wasn’t a commoner, either, but he sure knew how to play to the plebs. Although I don’t think Vance is half so talented as Trump or others in his confederacy of Ivy League impersonators. Here in Virginia, it is interesting to see former Majority Leader Eric Cantor suck up to the Trumpists in his futile attempt to remain politically relevant in the Commonwealth. You’d think he’d be satisfied to be a high powered corporate attorney and investment banker.
WigWig, I don't think I can begin to tell you how little an Ivy League education impresses me. I spent years so high in the ivory tower I could see the clouds. I know perfectly well that *nothing* about that experience means that someone who emerges from it will be a responsible statesman.
And being a venture capitalist? Let's just say, "There was no more ruling class, only an owning class of new rich, the spineless novi homines who could substitute socially, but never politically, for the fallen aristocracy" sounds about right.
In drilling several levels deeper into active links here to earlier CosmoGlobo wrtings on her New Ceasers shtick (as, by my lights, it surely is!), I found this —posted 26 Aug 2020, just before the impeccably free and fair elections that deposed the incumbent caesarian president— by the "simple country Orthodox Rabbi" Moshe Averick, who died only months later, may his memory be for a blessing...
"The strangest of all: A brilliant young lady is obsessed with the notion that one of the biggest problems facing America is Donald Trump as President. Are you actually still waiting for a Philosopher King to appear on the horizon? Your words and thoughts are most definitely Invariably Interesting, but what vision are you offering, Claire? What world do you want us to embrace?..."
Drill in there yourselves to read the whole thing.