This also makes me think of the concept for androids in Ridley Scott's very flawed Prometheus, (and the Alien series as a whole). This promotion with Michael Fassbender as David 8 nails it exactly, and the role of an android in capitalism, even though the ball was massively dropped in the full length film and the character eventually went full cartoon.
Behind this I think there is a simple logic, a machine society selects for machines. It gets a little blurry, did the androids and their value system create the capitalist machine, or is just the interplay between the emergent structure (from history) and the kinds of people it empowers and rewards?
Have either of you ever looked at Dmitry Orlov's book Shrinking the Technosphere? I read it a while back so my memory about it is a bit hazy. Orlov is a Russian emigre who returned to Russia and is usually a defender of Putin, but this book has some really great and trenchant commentary on the way technology is destroying human autonomy and making modern life even less sustainable. https://www.amazon.com/Shrinking-Technosphere-Technologies-Autonomy-Self-Sufficiency/dp/0865718385
This Human vs. Android, sounds on the average citizen level like male vs female, in a contemporary world where women are now granted ontological priority and sole moral authority. Talk about a foundation for male nihilism!
Is it true that the romantic ideal is collapsing--that the dominant political/social form is now
a highly individualized, sacred female desire.
Is it true that most women today want emotionally available men who will admire them, but not dominant them, who are strong, but not harsh, present, but not demanding reciprocity.
Lots of men seem to be reacting to this situation by largely withdrawing from social, economic and relational concerns while simultaneously exhibiting greater and greater resentment at being encased
in a demand structure that to them only advocates becoming a a second degree women.
Are male figures more than comic helpers, affective nurses or cheerful allies? This social dynamic seems to erase the paternal and elevate the maternal as being the only legitimate ethical guide.
What I am arguing is often portrayed as far-right extremism but in truth is simply a demand for some legitimacy of the Male way of being.
What we may have in the U.S. today is a type of postliberal identity absolutism, accelerating the road to social collapse.
No, I think you misunderstood my comment. I see the male as primarily a moral island--tending to be quite comfortable standing alone. I see the male often as a human being without the proper sympathy of feeling or empathy. For myself, an increased capacity for connection and empathy helped me live this long--such capacities I tend to see as more female.
But I also feel that our culture may have gone overboard in so completely endorsing this female form of being. I believe I called it postliberal identity absolutism.
A man is an island? Hilarious. Tell this to the single men carrying around their dogs like they were their children/wives, using animals to fill their need for affection and empathy and care.
Hey! I resemble that remark! (Except I also have my wife for affection, empathy and care - and my [disclaimer: rescue, "unedited" Doberman bull terrier mix - but mostly Doberman] is way too big to carry around - not that I'd do it if she was smaller).
For many males, including myself, a clear recognition of a desire for connection seems to take a significant degree of self-reflection, even if you spend time hugging dogs (which I have done and continue to do).
Yasha, you maintained, in an e-mail response to me a short time back, that absent your wife and child, you could imagine yourself engaging in some type of heroic assassination behavior--which I take to be, on a symbolic level, a representation of man as an emotional island standing comfortably alone, willing to act against what he considers a genocidal war--again, man as island standing courageously alone, doing what he believes necessary.
Terrific response. No, I am an 82 year old guy married for 46 years but an active participant in a men's discussion group (all white) that runs from ages 35 to 86.
Many of the guys are what I would call good liberal married progressives who seem quite comfortable in verbally accepting their role as white male oppressors. Remember I said "seem."
In my youth I was on the far-left. Was going to help lead a revolution. Did political organizing for 14 years, with all efforts failing. Then began a long agonizing reflection on how I was so wrong about so many things.
Operated a "research firm" for 40 years which wrote people's dissertations and theses.
The corruption in the field of higher education is vastly understated based on a life-time of experience in such corruption.
I'm on a standby chore right now, so this is a good opportunity to while away the time.
Maybe you should give the far-left another try, because I think many of your answers will be there. Not sure if it matters to you at this point in life, but speaking from middle age (you're just a bit younger than my grandparents), I can say that I'm satisfied with the answers I get from that quarter.
If you're 82, your youth was in the 50s and 60s, which was the time when the Western far-left was doing some soul-searching and in my view, throwing away the baby (historical materialism, classical Marxism) with the bathwater (Stalinism) and replacing materialist analysis by cultural ad hoc explanations. Because I think starting from the basis adds clarity to the cultural stuff, I conclude this was a mistake.
I think our hosts, Evgenia especially, have done a good job to explain in materialist terms why it is that life sucks for both men and women right now. I agree that feminism under capitalism is putting a Band-aid on a gaping wound: better than nothing, but far from solving the problem.
To the extent that there is a pandemic of loneliness in rich countries, and that people engage in self-defeating stuff like nihilism, anti-natalism (meaning, being against having children itself, rather than a personal option) and traditionalism (forgetting that all that is solid melts into the air, that is, it was capitalism that destroyed those traditions), this is because they've been pushed to their limits by the daily grind of life under capital.
People aren't idiots. They'll only choose to find partners and have children if they have minimal material prospects to build a family properly, or if children are the only ones who might care for them in old age (the reason birth rates are still high in very poor countries). If both men and women are working too much for too little, burnt out and one unforeseen expense from bankruptcy; and if there isn't solid state support for parenthood (consistent tax rebates, state-provided daycare accessible for all who want, extended maternity and paternity leave with guarantees of return to the former career track, public healthcare and education etc), then they'll forfeit family-building. And probably forfeit finding partners, too, because what fun is there in a partner if you're too tired and stressed to enjoy their company?
That's the basic Marxist notion that a society is working when it reproduces itself across generations. A long-term partnership with a signficant other is among the most momentous decisions an adult can make and of course it will reflect the inner workings of they society they live in.
Ironically, not only Marxism but Keynesianism talk about how the increase in prosperity should lead to a decline in working hours and an increase in free time. But Keynesians failed to realise worker exploitation eats up all gains in productivity as these are sucked into profits, so capitalism has no incentive to decrease working hours. (And this says a lot about contemporary China.) Free time and lower stress levels are probably the best remedies for loneliness, lack of sex and low birth rates. Contrary to what apologists of individualism say, humans are social animals and naturally drawn to each other. All the social media junk whipped up by corporations to dehumanise them has failed to mitigate loneliness. In fact, a big irony of social media is that people use it to try to find partners, or to lament their failure to (TikTok videos of lonely young women have become commonplace, or so I have heard, as I don't have TikTok).
So bashing on women who want to at least enjoy the little autonomy left them by the system without men telling them what to do and how to do it will take your friends nowhere. Your enemy is the system that's pitting everyone against everyone else.
One of the reasons I like the Nefarious Russians is that I see lots of my younger self in their current perspectives and actions--much to be admired.
Your note raises so many great issues about the modern Left. To focus on just one issue for a moment--surviving under modern capitalism.
I come from a quite humble background (secretaries, shopkeepers, metalworkers). There were no professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers, or academics) in my family--just high school graduates. When I got into Graduate School, I initially thought this is going to be terrific, small classes in which we would be able to discuss ideas.
What I discovered instead was a stifling professionalism focused not on ideas but on credentials, status, and "expertise." I hated this environment and then the Vietnam war broke out and I was able to merge my hatred for the professionalism of Graduate School education with my hatred for the war--I might end up being drafted to fight in a war that seemed quite insane.
I developed a new conception of myself, revolutionary leader, anxious to overthrow capitalism, which I saw as the fundamental driving force of American foreign policy.
After 14 years of different types of political organizing (in unions, in communities, in a Leninist/feminist political party advocating that secretaries--primarily women--sieze control of their corporate offices) I experienced political defeat but still had to make a living.
My only real skill was research and I took that skill and spent the next 40 some years of my "professional" life shoving the credentialism that I had grown to hate right into their faces. I ran a company of misfits who were emotionally unsuited for the corporate/academic world but who loved faking statistical research and who loved undermining academic pretense.
Most of my initial staff were of the Left but, as the years rolled on, some of the increasingly censored right also joined the good times of giving these arrogant academic asses the finger.
This finally gets me to the topic of survival but I've rambled on for too long. If you are interested in further discussion keep in touch.
P.S. " I ran a company of misfits who were emotionally unsuited for the corporate/academic world but who loved faking statistical research and who loved undermining academic pretense."
this sounds an awful lot like the "AI LLM" business model. Minus the legalized intellectual theft.
How can anyone even begin to discuss the fate or status of "the left" - especially post-WWII in the US-dominated west [but also the early 1900s - 1920s] without noting that, perhaps more than any cause in collective human history, the [more often than not, morally criminal] capitalist class has mobilized through overt violence, propaganda, erasure, and intimidation against most - or any - "left" movement or zeitgeist deemed to be a remote current or future threat to rent seeking and profits? Spanning the gamut of government - progressive to conservative - and the almost all-powerful business community - to the techno-surveillance industry - non-stop and without mercy; though often dressed up in very compelling narrative language [including many overt lies].
Ironically, perhaps, [but definitely on-topic] you describe and make tribute to yourself as a converted member of "the [human] left" to The Borg. And all to poke a finger in the eye of someone else?
Because that position is so overdone. Always put the entire blame on the "system," without ever engaging in any careful reflection on our own political messages, mobilization tactics, and nonuse of powerful cultural forces within the U.S that influence individual behavior, beyond materialism. And, indeed, my company was exactly like an LLM business model! That is why I'm so happy to see AI developed and currently being used by most undergraduates, graduates, professors and administrators. They all deserve each other. Since the real name of the game is status, influence and phony expertise, not careful examination of ideas.
Ignorance and arrogance among the "well-educated" will only increase with AI and that is, from my nihilistic perspective, a gigantic plus for a future populism that is, as yet, largely undefined.
By the way, I love the Aaron Good book, and would be happy to discus it with you sometime, especially his use of the insights of Carl Schmitt.
How do you view Schmitt's description of the nature of the political?
So sorry I don't fit your apparent definition of the perfectly pure, selfless "radical." Much of my fury is certainly not healthy and I have struggled my whole life to contain it--but for about 40 years it just slipped out.
This is just such a compellingly disturbing 'take' that I am, well, compelled to ask exactly what you mean, but more importantly, exactly what you see as the solution, given you've put such a fine point on the perceived problem.
"In a demand structure that to them only advocates becoming a a second degree women.
Are male figures more than comic helpers, affective nurses or cheerful allies? This social dynamic seems to erase the paternal and elevate the maternal as being the only legitimate ethical guide."
What could possibly have led you to this viewpoint? What is it that males are not 'allowed' to do - and - should be tolerated or even venerated? I'm absolutely genuinely curious.
In my old age, I'm still trying to figure things out.
I've always had a deep nihilistic fury within myself that I attributed, historically, solely to external political events (some formative things, for me, were theJFK assassination, Civil Rights movement, Vietnam War) but none of these events, in themselves, do justice to this type of personal rage and resentment. For any successful politics to take hold in this country, a greater appreciation of the complex, interwoven dynamics of both the external and internal as motivating factors need to be considered more carefully.
Just think of what appears to be the largely psychological foundation for the genius of Donald Trump, a man who unreflectively radiated his deep personal resentment to mobilize a powerful right populist movement. Imagine what he might have achieved if he was more aware of his own internal dynamics.
The shreds of the Left that still exist in this country will get nowhere with the general population unless they first allow themselves to become more vulnerable. This is a wonderful quality I sense in both Evgenia and Yasha--yet they both cling to some rigid/outmoded/ political ideology which demands the appearance of invulnerability and all-knowing. Talk about a losing position in 2025.
"Donald Trump, a man who unreflectively radiated his deep personal resentment to mobilize a powerful right populist movement. Imagine what he might have achieved if he was more aware of his own internal dynamics."
Donald Trump motivated a tiny minority of voters in a situation where more people than ever stayed home due to the Palestinian genocide and "nothing will fundamentally change" politics of senile Joe Biden and the clueless Democratic corporate-owned elite. Trump has by no means EVER won a plurality of voters or potential voters let alone achieved an electoral "mandate" - and if you are trying to pass that turd floating in a punchbowl off as reality then I have to assume you're not a serious person.
I'm not kidding or being flippant. Go to Z Library (there's a Mozilla/Firefox plugin that is legit among a sea of scammers) and download the EPUB or PDF.
I'd be interested in continuing this discussion after you've gotten through the 4th or 5th chapter.
I read this excellent book shortly after it first came out.
I am in agreement with a significant part of his argumentation.
In late July of 1968, when I was a member of SDS, I went to Cuba to see the Cuban revolution first hand. Todd Gitlin, the then President of SDS, organized the trip and I believe (I may be mistaken) Aaron Good's dad was in my contingent.
When we arrived in Cuba, the Soviet Union had just invaded Czechoslovakia and our SDS contingent decided to have a debate about whether we supported the invasion. The vote was to support the invasion but there were 5 or 6 of us who voted to condemn it, including myself.
The next morning, those of us who voted against the legitimacy of the invasion were told by "leadership" that we would not be allowed to continue on the trip.
To make a long story short, after talking to our Cuban hosts, we were allowed to rejoin our "comrades" despite having been arbitrarily expelled because they didn't like our views on the Soviet invasion.
This type of vicious censorship, which is rarely discussed on the "Left," is one of the reasons the "Left" is in shreads. It has never been very open to perspectives that don't mouth the current party line.
Unfortunately, your comments about me mentioning Donald Trump appear to be a continuation of that long, pathetic tradition.
"if you are trying to pass off that turd floating in a punch bowl off as reality then I have to assume you are not a serious person."
No, you don't have to assume that I am not a serious person.
I assume you are, and would love to get into a more in-depth discussion, especially about Good's use of Schmitt's ideas.
I think "the (western) left" has been subjected to an unprecedented, extremely well financed, overt and covert destruction campaign since the 1950s, both in Europe (Operation Gladio, Strategy of Tension, for ex.) and in the US (COINTELPRO, CHAOS, MK-ULTRA, etc.).
The stuff about "the left" being censorious, "in shreds" and all the rest of it can be traced right back to the ever-present sabotage, infiltration, mis/re-direction, and other facets of the long-term private capital war on western socialism in all its forms and at all levels of society. Furthermore, criticism grounded in fact is not "censorship" - and your perception of it as such tells me a lot about what the dynamic in Cuba was probably really like. Trump motivating a "powerful" rightist political (and cultural) movement simply could not happen (and I still argue it actually hasn't if you want to discuss real numbers) without the aforementioned absolute war unleashed on the genuine left (including by the Democrat Party - which since the 1960s exists as a bulwark against *a* populist left wing movement for private capital and the GOP) in the US dating, frankly, and correcting my earlier statement, to before WWII.
Of course, the western left has been subjected to sabotage, mis/redirection, etc. and etc. since before WWII. Let me try to be a little more specific on how this played out on my Cuba trip.
One of the most militant, rhetorical "Leftists" on this trip (I believe many were from the Columbia takeover of 68) was actually an FBI undercover agent who later went before Congress, and identified himself as such, and then gave the names of everyone on the trip and his interpretation of what went on (you can find his testimony in the Congressional Record).
So, one piece of advice for you in the future is to initially be extremely skeptical of those people who articulate the most militant Left rhetoric in any group setting/meeting--often, based on my experience, they may turn out to be undercover FBI, military intelligence, or ClA. I also have my own "battle scars" from my illustrious career on the Left with the CIA reading my personal mail and the FBI coming to my apartment complex to intimidate me, my wife, and the apartment manager by letting him know they were keeping on eye on me.
But looking back on all of this intrigue, with some sixty years of reflection, it is beyond time for what is left of the Left to take a more in-depth look at:
• the inadequacy of its own ideas,
• the likely inadequacy of serious self-reflection regarding individual political motivations for political activity, and
• the continuing inadequacy of seeing themselves as simply victims of "overt and covert destruction campaigns."
Thanks for this essay and the link to PKDs. It is extraordinary how he seems to have anticipated the current AI / LLM world.
This also makes me think of the concept for androids in Ridley Scott's very flawed Prometheus, (and the Alien series as a whole). This promotion with Michael Fassbender as David 8 nails it exactly, and the role of an android in capitalism, even though the ball was massively dropped in the full length film and the character eventually went full cartoon.
https://youtu.be/9lOSh7diZfY?si=tloHM5W0x9goxzuu
Behind this I think there is a simple logic, a machine society selects for machines. It gets a little blurry, did the androids and their value system create the capitalist machine, or is just the interplay between the emergent structure (from history) and the kinds of people it empowers and rewards?
Have either of you ever looked at Dmitry Orlov's book Shrinking the Technosphere? I read it a while back so my memory about it is a bit hazy. Orlov is a Russian emigre who returned to Russia and is usually a defender of Putin, but this book has some really great and trenchant commentary on the way technology is destroying human autonomy and making modern life even less sustainable. https://www.amazon.com/Shrinking-Technosphere-Technologies-Autonomy-Self-Sufficiency/dp/0865718385
Currently reading the Carrère book on your recommendation Evgenia. Thanks! Reading it alongside The World Jones Made.
I used to think android behavior was ideal and a show of strength. Silly!
This Human vs. Android, sounds on the average citizen level like male vs female, in a contemporary world where women are now granted ontological priority and sole moral authority. Talk about a foundation for male nihilism!
Is it true that the romantic ideal is collapsing--that the dominant political/social form is now
a highly individualized, sacred female desire.
Is it true that most women today want emotionally available men who will admire them, but not dominant them, who are strong, but not harsh, present, but not demanding reciprocity.
Lots of men seem to be reacting to this situation by largely withdrawing from social, economic and relational concerns while simultaneously exhibiting greater and greater resentment at being encased
in a demand structure that to them only advocates becoming a a second degree women.
Are male figures more than comic helpers, affective nurses or cheerful allies? This social dynamic seems to erase the paternal and elevate the maternal as being the only legitimate ethical guide.
What I am arguing is often portrayed as far-right extremism but in truth is simply a demand for some legitimacy of the Male way of being.
What we may have in the U.S. today is a type of postliberal identity absolutism, accelerating the road to social collapse.
.
le
.
>This Human vs. Android, sounds on the average citizen level like male vs female,
In what way? What about PKD and his android v human sounds like male v female? What in his writings would make you draw that conclusion?
"A human being without the proper sympathy of feeling, is the same as an android..."
"they're androids--moral islands...They have no empathy..."
"The human is weaker and gentler than the android..."
Bright into my imagination the female form of being
That’s pretty crazy that you lived till 82 and you are essentializing women and see them as androids/machines. This is some stepford wives level shit.
No, I think you misunderstood my comment. I see the male as primarily a moral island--tending to be quite comfortable standing alone. I see the male often as a human being without the proper sympathy of feeling or empathy. For myself, an increased capacity for connection and empathy helped me live this long--such capacities I tend to see as more female.
But I also feel that our culture may have gone overboard in so completely endorsing this female form of being. I believe I called it postliberal identity absolutism.
A man is an island? Hilarious. Tell this to the single men carrying around their dogs like they were their children/wives, using animals to fill their need for affection and empathy and care.
Hey! I resemble that remark! (Except I also have my wife for affection, empathy and care - and my [disclaimer: rescue, "unedited" Doberman bull terrier mix - but mostly Doberman] is way too big to carry around - not that I'd do it if she was smaller).
For many males, including myself, a clear recognition of a desire for connection seems to take a significant degree of self-reflection, even if you spend time hugging dogs (which I have done and continue to do).
Yasha, you maintained, in an e-mail response to me a short time back, that absent your wife and child, you could imagine yourself engaging in some type of heroic assassination behavior--which I take to be, on a symbolic level, a representation of man as an emotional island standing comfortably alone, willing to act against what he considers a genocidal war--again, man as island standing courageously alone, doing what he believes necessary.
I've also been there and done that imagination.
Are you a single man I assume?
Terrific response. No, I am an 82 year old guy married for 46 years but an active participant in a men's discussion group (all white) that runs from ages 35 to 86.
Many of the guys are what I would call good liberal married progressives who seem quite comfortable in verbally accepting their role as white male oppressors. Remember I said "seem."
In my youth I was on the far-left. Was going to help lead a revolution. Did political organizing for 14 years, with all efforts failing. Then began a long agonizing reflection on how I was so wrong about so many things.
Operated a "research firm" for 40 years which wrote people's dissertations and theses.
The corruption in the field of higher education is vastly understated based on a life-time of experience in such corruption.
I'm on a standby chore right now, so this is a good opportunity to while away the time.
Maybe you should give the far-left another try, because I think many of your answers will be there. Not sure if it matters to you at this point in life, but speaking from middle age (you're just a bit younger than my grandparents), I can say that I'm satisfied with the answers I get from that quarter.
If you're 82, your youth was in the 50s and 60s, which was the time when the Western far-left was doing some soul-searching and in my view, throwing away the baby (historical materialism, classical Marxism) with the bathwater (Stalinism) and replacing materialist analysis by cultural ad hoc explanations. Because I think starting from the basis adds clarity to the cultural stuff, I conclude this was a mistake.
I think our hosts, Evgenia especially, have done a good job to explain in materialist terms why it is that life sucks for both men and women right now. I agree that feminism under capitalism is putting a Band-aid on a gaping wound: better than nothing, but far from solving the problem.
To the extent that there is a pandemic of loneliness in rich countries, and that people engage in self-defeating stuff like nihilism, anti-natalism (meaning, being against having children itself, rather than a personal option) and traditionalism (forgetting that all that is solid melts into the air, that is, it was capitalism that destroyed those traditions), this is because they've been pushed to their limits by the daily grind of life under capital.
People aren't idiots. They'll only choose to find partners and have children if they have minimal material prospects to build a family properly, or if children are the only ones who might care for them in old age (the reason birth rates are still high in very poor countries). If both men and women are working too much for too little, burnt out and one unforeseen expense from bankruptcy; and if there isn't solid state support for parenthood (consistent tax rebates, state-provided daycare accessible for all who want, extended maternity and paternity leave with guarantees of return to the former career track, public healthcare and education etc), then they'll forfeit family-building. And probably forfeit finding partners, too, because what fun is there in a partner if you're too tired and stressed to enjoy their company?
That's the basic Marxist notion that a society is working when it reproduces itself across generations. A long-term partnership with a signficant other is among the most momentous decisions an adult can make and of course it will reflect the inner workings of they society they live in.
Ironically, not only Marxism but Keynesianism talk about how the increase in prosperity should lead to a decline in working hours and an increase in free time. But Keynesians failed to realise worker exploitation eats up all gains in productivity as these are sucked into profits, so capitalism has no incentive to decrease working hours. (And this says a lot about contemporary China.) Free time and lower stress levels are probably the best remedies for loneliness, lack of sex and low birth rates. Contrary to what apologists of individualism say, humans are social animals and naturally drawn to each other. All the social media junk whipped up by corporations to dehumanise them has failed to mitigate loneliness. In fact, a big irony of social media is that people use it to try to find partners, or to lament their failure to (TikTok videos of lonely young women have become commonplace, or so I have heard, as I don't have TikTok).
So bashing on women who want to at least enjoy the little autonomy left them by the system without men telling them what to do and how to do it will take your friends nowhere. Your enemy is the system that's pitting everyone against everyone else.
One of the reasons I like the Nefarious Russians is that I see lots of my younger self in their current perspectives and actions--much to be admired.
Your note raises so many great issues about the modern Left. To focus on just one issue for a moment--surviving under modern capitalism.
I come from a quite humble background (secretaries, shopkeepers, metalworkers). There were no professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers, or academics) in my family--just high school graduates. When I got into Graduate School, I initially thought this is going to be terrific, small classes in which we would be able to discuss ideas.
What I discovered instead was a stifling professionalism focused not on ideas but on credentials, status, and "expertise." I hated this environment and then the Vietnam war broke out and I was able to merge my hatred for the professionalism of Graduate School education with my hatred for the war--I might end up being drafted to fight in a war that seemed quite insane.
I developed a new conception of myself, revolutionary leader, anxious to overthrow capitalism, which I saw as the fundamental driving force of American foreign policy.
After 14 years of different types of political organizing (in unions, in communities, in a Leninist/feminist political party advocating that secretaries--primarily women--sieze control of their corporate offices) I experienced political defeat but still had to make a living.
My only real skill was research and I took that skill and spent the next 40 some years of my "professional" life shoving the credentialism that I had grown to hate right into their faces. I ran a company of misfits who were emotionally unsuited for the corporate/academic world but who loved faking statistical research and who loved undermining academic pretense.
Most of my initial staff were of the Left but, as the years rolled on, some of the increasingly censored right also joined the good times of giving these arrogant academic asses the finger.
This finally gets me to the topic of survival but I've rambled on for too long. If you are interested in further discussion keep in touch.
P.S. " I ran a company of misfits who were emotionally unsuited for the corporate/academic world but who loved faking statistical research and who loved undermining academic pretense."
this sounds an awful lot like the "AI LLM" business model. Minus the legalized intellectual theft.
How can anyone even begin to discuss the fate or status of "the left" - especially post-WWII in the US-dominated west [but also the early 1900s - 1920s] without noting that, perhaps more than any cause in collective human history, the [more often than not, morally criminal] capitalist class has mobilized through overt violence, propaganda, erasure, and intimidation against most - or any - "left" movement or zeitgeist deemed to be a remote current or future threat to rent seeking and profits? Spanning the gamut of government - progressive to conservative - and the almost all-powerful business community - to the techno-surveillance industry - non-stop and without mercy; though often dressed up in very compelling narrative language [including many overt lies].
Ironically, perhaps, [but definitely on-topic] you describe and make tribute to yourself as a converted member of "the [human] left" to The Borg. And all to poke a finger in the eye of someone else?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377976782_Aaron_Good_2022_American_Exception_Empire_and_the_Deep_State_New_York_Skyhorse_Publishing
Because that position is so overdone. Always put the entire blame on the "system," without ever engaging in any careful reflection on our own political messages, mobilization tactics, and nonuse of powerful cultural forces within the U.S that influence individual behavior, beyond materialism. And, indeed, my company was exactly like an LLM business model! That is why I'm so happy to see AI developed and currently being used by most undergraduates, graduates, professors and administrators. They all deserve each other. Since the real name of the game is status, influence and phony expertise, not careful examination of ideas.
Ignorance and arrogance among the "well-educated" will only increase with AI and that is, from my nihilistic perspective, a gigantic plus for a future populism that is, as yet, largely undefined.
By the way, I love the Aaron Good book, and would be happy to discus it with you sometime, especially his use of the insights of Carl Schmitt.
How do you view Schmitt's description of the nature of the political?
.
P.S,
Oh. So you're a nihilist android, intent on destruction for destruction's sake, while making money off of the destruction.
Got it.
Exactly!
So sorry I don't fit your apparent definition of the perfectly pure, selfless "radical." Much of my fury is certainly not healthy and I have struggled my whole life to contain it--but for about 40 years it just slipped out.
This is just such a compellingly disturbing 'take' that I am, well, compelled to ask exactly what you mean, but more importantly, exactly what you see as the solution, given you've put such a fine point on the perceived problem.
"In a demand structure that to them only advocates becoming a a second degree women.
Are male figures more than comic helpers, affective nurses or cheerful allies? This social dynamic seems to erase the paternal and elevate the maternal as being the only legitimate ethical guide."
What could possibly have led you to this viewpoint? What is it that males are not 'allowed' to do - and - should be tolerated or even venerated? I'm absolutely genuinely curious.
In my old age, I'm still trying to figure things out.
I've always had a deep nihilistic fury within myself that I attributed, historically, solely to external political events (some formative things, for me, were theJFK assassination, Civil Rights movement, Vietnam War) but none of these events, in themselves, do justice to this type of personal rage and resentment. For any successful politics to take hold in this country, a greater appreciation of the complex, interwoven dynamics of both the external and internal as motivating factors need to be considered more carefully.
Just think of what appears to be the largely psychological foundation for the genius of Donald Trump, a man who unreflectively radiated his deep personal resentment to mobilize a powerful right populist movement. Imagine what he might have achieved if he was more aware of his own internal dynamics.
The shreds of the Left that still exist in this country will get nowhere with the general population unless they first allow themselves to become more vulnerable. This is a wonderful quality I sense in both Evgenia and Yasha--yet they both cling to some rigid/outmoded/ political ideology which demands the appearance of invulnerability and all-knowing. Talk about a losing position in 2025.
"Donald Trump, a man who unreflectively radiated his deep personal resentment to mobilize a powerful right populist movement. Imagine what he might have achieved if he was more aware of his own internal dynamics."
Donald Trump motivated a tiny minority of voters in a situation where more people than ever stayed home due to the Palestinian genocide and "nothing will fundamentally change" politics of senile Joe Biden and the clueless Democratic corporate-owned elite. Trump has by no means EVER won a plurality of voters or potential voters let alone achieved an electoral "mandate" - and if you are trying to pass that turd floating in a punchbowl off as reality then I have to assume you're not a serious person.
I have recommended this book to too many people to count, but I think you'd benefit uniquely from it as I have.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377976782_Aaron_Good_2022_American_Exception_Empire_and_the_Deep_State_New_York_Skyhorse_Publishing/fulltext/65c11466790074549768100b/Aaron-Good-2022-American-Exception-Empire-and-the-Deep-State-New-York-Skyhorse-Publishing.pdf
I'm not kidding or being flippant. Go to Z Library (there's a Mozilla/Firefox plugin that is legit among a sea of scammers) and download the EPUB or PDF.
I'd be interested in continuing this discussion after you've gotten through the 4th or 5th chapter.
I read this excellent book shortly after it first came out.
I am in agreement with a significant part of his argumentation.
In late July of 1968, when I was a member of SDS, I went to Cuba to see the Cuban revolution first hand. Todd Gitlin, the then President of SDS, organized the trip and I believe (I may be mistaken) Aaron Good's dad was in my contingent.
When we arrived in Cuba, the Soviet Union had just invaded Czechoslovakia and our SDS contingent decided to have a debate about whether we supported the invasion. The vote was to support the invasion but there were 5 or 6 of us who voted to condemn it, including myself.
The next morning, those of us who voted against the legitimacy of the invasion were told by "leadership" that we would not be allowed to continue on the trip.
To make a long story short, after talking to our Cuban hosts, we were allowed to rejoin our "comrades" despite having been arbitrarily expelled because they didn't like our views on the Soviet invasion.
This type of vicious censorship, which is rarely discussed on the "Left," is one of the reasons the "Left" is in shreads. It has never been very open to perspectives that don't mouth the current party line.
Unfortunately, your comments about me mentioning Donald Trump appear to be a continuation of that long, pathetic tradition.
"if you are trying to pass off that turd floating in a punch bowl off as reality then I have to assume you are not a serious person."
No, you don't have to assume that I am not a serious person.
I assume you are, and would love to get into a more in-depth discussion, especially about Good's use of Schmitt's ideas.
I think "the (western) left" has been subjected to an unprecedented, extremely well financed, overt and covert destruction campaign since the 1950s, both in Europe (Operation Gladio, Strategy of Tension, for ex.) and in the US (COINTELPRO, CHAOS, MK-ULTRA, etc.).
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/07/03/cointelpro-operations-helped-create-todays-dystopian-political-environment/
The stuff about "the left" being censorious, "in shreds" and all the rest of it can be traced right back to the ever-present sabotage, infiltration, mis/re-direction, and other facets of the long-term private capital war on western socialism in all its forms and at all levels of society. Furthermore, criticism grounded in fact is not "censorship" - and your perception of it as such tells me a lot about what the dynamic in Cuba was probably really like. Trump motivating a "powerful" rightist political (and cultural) movement simply could not happen (and I still argue it actually hasn't if you want to discuss real numbers) without the aforementioned absolute war unleashed on the genuine left (including by the Democrat Party - which since the 1960s exists as a bulwark against *a* populist left wing movement for private capital and the GOP) in the US dating, frankly, and correcting my earlier statement, to before WWII.
Of course, the western left has been subjected to sabotage, mis/redirection, etc. and etc. since before WWII. Let me try to be a little more specific on how this played out on my Cuba trip.
One of the most militant, rhetorical "Leftists" on this trip (I believe many were from the Columbia takeover of 68) was actually an FBI undercover agent who later went before Congress, and identified himself as such, and then gave the names of everyone on the trip and his interpretation of what went on (you can find his testimony in the Congressional Record).
So, one piece of advice for you in the future is to initially be extremely skeptical of those people who articulate the most militant Left rhetoric in any group setting/meeting--often, based on my experience, they may turn out to be undercover FBI, military intelligence, or ClA. I also have my own "battle scars" from my illustrious career on the Left with the CIA reading my personal mail and the FBI coming to my apartment complex to intimidate me, my wife, and the apartment manager by letting him know they were keeping on eye on me.
But looking back on all of this intrigue, with some sixty years of reflection, it is beyond time for what is left of the Left to take a more in-depth look at:
• the inadequacy of its own ideas,
• the likely inadequacy of serious self-reflection regarding individual political motivations for political activity, and
• the continuing inadequacy of seeing themselves as simply victims of "overt and covert destruction campaigns."
Really looking forward to that discussion.