Another defining characteristic of this mentality is the war on time. Individuals have to be shorn asunder not only from nature but also of the vision of themselves as rooted in time. Instead, people are mired in presentism that doesn’t allow for the existence of either the past or the future.

I’ll just give one example and you can think of many others. Remember when Bernie Sanders was excoriated for saying something back in 1972 that didn’t completely jive with today’s sensibilities? One would think that it’s pretty unfair to blame Bernie for not anticipating how the speech codes would develop half a century later, right? But the people who denounced him didn’t seem to notice that a lot of time passed.

Or this whole argument of let’s not read Aristotle because he was sexist-racist-classist. It comes from the same incapacity to accept the passage of time.

And then these same people seem completely unperturbed by the possibility that whatever they say today might look as out of step with the new speech codes fifty years from now. Because the future doesn’t exist either. It’s all endless, rootless, unchanging present.

One of the central characteristics that the liberals / neoliberals share is their war on nature.

Neoliberals believe that nature needs to be subjugated to the needs of global capitalism. Nature is the enemy that needs to be defeated and squeezed for every penny you can get from it.

Their opponents are appalled by this approach to nature. Yet they also see nature as the greatest enemy of human autonomy. That there are biological realities of human existence that stand outside of individual definition and control is an idea that they cannot tolerate. Nature has to be subjugated to the consumerist idea of choice.

Think about the inane fashion of biohacking that is so popular with the Silicon Valley idiots. I mean, we can ridicule all we want, but this is just an extreme manifestation of this phenomenon.

Conservatives keep blabbering about family values and smaller communities. But all they really ever advance is economic deregulation, globalization of the economy, and crushing inequality. Dog eat dog, everybody is out for their own self-interest.

As for the progressive achievements, they have all happened strictly in the area of personal sexual autonomy. There is a lot of talk about other things, but this is what really got achieved.

It doesn’t mean that “they are all the same” because they clearly aren’t. But the shared root is clear. Neoliberalism is still liberalism. And for all the talk about solidarity, togetherness and communities, the only cause that actually gets advanced by anyone is that of an independent, autonomous, alienated individual. An individual who derives all meaning from the self.

Macron came to the US and lectured POTUS about the importance of globalism. Then he went to the economic forum in Russia and pathetically, subserviently praised and complimented Putin. I’ve been reading a lot of reporting from the forum and the reaction of people who are there is “wow, what got into Macron? This is kind of embarrassing to watch.”

When he was first elected, Macron wasn’t that into Putin. That was understandable, given how hard Putin had worked to get Marine LePen elected instead of Macron. And then something happened. Nobody knows what it was, of course, because such things aren’t made public. But there’s clearly something because Macron is now Putin’s most eager defender and one might even say lackey. It’s really a big deal that Macron would be exalting Putin right after the investigation of the MH-17 crash concluded Russia is to blame for it.

What’s curious that it was the exact same thing with Sarkozy. He was making anti-Putin noises, and then Putin visited, they talked alone for 40 minutes, and Sarkozy became his best friend. I have my ideas on what it is that Putin says in these meetings to get them on his side but I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist. In this post, I’m only relating the generally known facts. If there’s interest, we can discuss our conjectures in the comments.

It’s really weird to see one’s home cemetery in the news in this context. That’s really not how I would have wanted us to get in the news.

The theory I’m talking about is, of course, liberalism. It can take all kinds of forms. There is neoliberalism which concentrates on the economic freedom that individuals supposedly will deeply benefit from when supposedly left to interact freely with supposedly free markets. It never quite works out this way but in theory it should.

Practitioners of other forms of liberalism evince discomfort with their neoliberal brethren and concentrate on other ways in which this freedom to be alienated can be practiced.

Then they all bicker about which freedom is more freedomey. No, it’s all about free markets. No, it’s all about bodily autonomy. No, it’s all about freedom to choose your identity. Your freedom is impinging on my freedom! Your freedom of expression hurts my feelings! Your market freedom hurts much more than feelings! And on and on and on they go, equally oblivious of their shared roots.

The fashioning of the individual consciousness that perceives itself as unique and separate from others, from nature, and from any pre-existing order is the great project of modernity.

For that project, the word “freedom” is key. The alienation of the individual from everything and everything is posited as liberation. Now that individuals are no longer constrained by any inherited tradition or by any relationship not fully of their choosing and now that they are less and less constrained by the limits created by nature, they will finally be free to realize their full selves. At least, that’s how the theory goes.

This article is making me unhappy. It’s saying that Democrats might not win the House because of California, of all places. It’s all propaganda, right? I’m not knowledgeable about California but the article doesn’t sound right.

If I were on this vacation without Klara, I wouldn’t mind the endless rain in the least. I love rain, and I could stay in bed reading, which is enough to make me feel happy.

But I feel guilty that I brought a kid to this place where she’s stuck inside all day, and nothing fun is happening.

I think the Weinstein investigation is a travesty. I know we are all supposed to be super happy he’s been indicted but it’s all a total joke. Investigators traveled to LA, to Europe even, dedicated an enormous number of hours and resources to something like this while the murder of a Jonny Garcia in Southern Bronx gets zero resources and the rape kits of women outside of Beverly Hills don’t get processed for years.

I know, I know, this all just supposed to be the beginning. The justice will trickle down to the less posh eventually. Because the trickle down theory has proven to be super reliable. Not.