One old book, two new books

We live at the whim of our victimization and serve the state at the pleasure of our leaders, who are among the greatest of victims, exploiting not only the true victims once thought of as being either black or brown—those who have every right to claim victimization as a political position. We comprise a fairly new, largely white coalition, based upon not-so-successful political practices of the past, and have come to constitute a victimized class that stretches from the Far Right to the Far Left.

The Nazi’s called it Lugenpresse; the Republicans call it “fake news.” It comes in many flavors and feeds those hungry for something sweet and fattening enough to make them forget their victimization for at least a few minutes so that they can feel good enough about themselves to go on believing the lies that promise them the truth, not the truth of their victimization, which is colored with red dye and sodium glutamate and comes out of a tube not unlike the tube that squeezes frozen Dairy Queen confections into high-sugar content cones, but a truth that isn’t true and is therefore a lie.

The whole bluster now of the Educated v. the Uneducated as the great political divide, as expressed by many media outlets in the form of official polls and surveys, seems too like a kind of sinister ploy. The truth is that we’re all philosophers, whether we’re educated or not, most of our waking lives. Making decisions, weighing meanings—the things we have to do everyday to survive—are all philosophical determinations. And very often the uneducated outperform the educated in ‘doing philosophy’, being more original thinkers and not thinking that what they’re actually doing is something as exalted as philosophy.

These days one should get a prize for waking up in the morning, and another prize for getting out of bed.

I find the news that Hitler gave Mussolini a leather-bound edition of Nietzsche’s complete work for his sixtieth birthday oddly comforting. Perhaps it’s because I wasn’t there at the time and can read that it happened in a book. Apparently the Nazi’s used Nietzsche’s work against its original intent, lifting out only the passages that supported their purpose and programs, making him the poster-boy he wasn't for the Nazi movement. I know Mussolini was finally strung up by his own people, hung upside down on meat hooks in front of a half-built Standard Oil gas station.. I wonder what happened to that book?

Too many people I know are staying away from politics, not far enough away so that they can’t complain and play at being the victim but far enough away not to get hung.

We’re led now by ghost-writers and televised personalities, part of the great victimization movement that’s galvanized millions from Florida to Wyoming. The president himself often feels sorry for himself in public, asking for a kind of pity that is strange to see from such a powerful public figure in a leadership position, receiving tremendous cheers for his honesty.

I recommend two new books that are on target—On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, and Renunciation by Ross Posnock.