Brad Delong recently wrote
What gets me is Delong's formulation of "The Good Life." I'm rather fond of that term, ever since reading William Irvine's "Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy," since it's a lovely, if controversial, introduction to Stoicism1. Delong correctly identifies the true threats to most of us living the good life: collusion between large economic forces to create unproductive and even destructive entrepreneurial enterprises: those enterprises that ultimately end up taking wealth out of the system, hoarding it to the few at the expense of the many, lifting almost no boats at all.
Which has nothing to do with sex. Or race2. It's about the unfeeling forces of the sociopathic entities known as "corporations" living among us, collecting vast amounts of capital to deploy against the barriers to its objectives (you know, things like you and me). Conservatives have railed against biology ever since Antoine van Leeuwenhoek described bacteria and spermatoza in the first microscope powerful enough to see them3.
The invention of the birth control pill and antibiotics released an entire sexual revolution, and the conservatives are still complaining about how it gave women the freedom to do other things with their bodies and minds, rather than enslave them to biology's strings. Nobody complains that we're free from polio or smallpox, that our lives are longer, our bodies stronger, our minds clearer, for much longer than our ancestors (well, almost nobody). We've upset the natural order of things by eliminating the 1 in 3 childhood death rate, by controlling plague outbreaks, and by instituting a public health and hygiene regimen that makes us more effective and productive than our drunk ancestors. It's only in sex that this really seems to upset the conservatives, who really wish the whole genies and bottles thing.
Trans people, gays, lesbians— everyone should be allowed to pursue The Good Life. Progressive agreed a long time ago that minorities are just as deserving of a Good Life, one freed from interference by both the state and by singular corporate forces, while also supported by effective and ethical institutions. We've come to agree that LGBT people are just as deserving. The battle over sexuality is way to keep two groups that would normally ally to fight the oligarchial monopolization of our food, our water, even our attention spans, instead fight each other into the ground.
While the fascists laugh.
1 Irvine's book reaches a conclusion that no ancient Stoic would recognize: that the point of Stoicism is to reach a state of "tranquility." The ancient Stoics recognized that tranquility was an excellent state, but it was not the point of Stocisim. The point of Stocism is to train oneself to experience real joy rather than hedonistic pleasures, and to be completely prepared to respond effectively to the shocks and tragedies of existence.
2Although the 19th century populists were undoubtly racists. When the populists became the Populist Party, they explicity excluded Black and Chinese people from their ranks by the party's founding charter. We shouldn't sugar-coat the issue here.
3 Ever notice that it's always biology? Even creationist geology has no villains, but creationist biology is full of hatred for Antoine van Leeuwenhoek, Charles Darwin, and Gregor Mendel. There's no creationist equivalent of chemistry or physics (not for lack of trying). It's always about biology, and it's always about sixth grade biology. Everything learned afterward, about the messiness of sex and gender, the way actual biology doesn't care about human categories and absolutes, is thrown away by conservatives and the anti-trans "radical feminists" alike. While the fascists laugh within their vaults of cash.
The original American populists were reality-based small farmers and others, who accurately saw railroad monopolies, agricultural price deflation, and high interest rates as crippling their ability to lead the good life. They sought policies—sensible, rational policies in the main—to neutralize these three historical forces. They were not Volkisch nativists distracted from a politics that would have made their lives better by the shiny gewgaws of ethnic hatred and nativism.Rod Dreher, in a recent article challenging the "Why are Christians so hung up on sex," also recently wrote:
To the contrary, it is you who have elevated sex and sexuality to the most important issue in the Church. This is no surprise. You have been formed by a popular culture that has elevated sex and sexuality to the center of our existence. The Church is the only institution left that tries to order sex rightly, to put it in its proper placeDreher is at least honest in that he's given up trying to change the world, and instead advocates a retreat from for Christians, or at least the Christians who believe as he does. The magazine for which he writes, however, maintains an unceasing drumbeat against the legitimization of GLBT issues, of Trans issues, and of the lives of the laity as they live it. The American Conservatives is a full-on participant in the highly schizophrenic far-right with its bizarre fusion of Christian Nationalism and the weirdly homoerotic masculinist doctrines of the "red pill" Reddit dudes.
What gets me is Delong's formulation of "The Good Life." I'm rather fond of that term, ever since reading William Irvine's "Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy," since it's a lovely, if controversial, introduction to Stoicism1. Delong correctly identifies the true threats to most of us living the good life: collusion between large economic forces to create unproductive and even destructive entrepreneurial enterprises: those enterprises that ultimately end up taking wealth out of the system, hoarding it to the few at the expense of the many, lifting almost no boats at all.
Which has nothing to do with sex. Or race2. It's about the unfeeling forces of the sociopathic entities known as "corporations" living among us, collecting vast amounts of capital to deploy against the barriers to its objectives (you know, things like you and me). Conservatives have railed against biology ever since Antoine van Leeuwenhoek described bacteria and spermatoza in the first microscope powerful enough to see them3.
The invention of the birth control pill and antibiotics released an entire sexual revolution, and the conservatives are still complaining about how it gave women the freedom to do other things with their bodies and minds, rather than enslave them to biology's strings. Nobody complains that we're free from polio or smallpox, that our lives are longer, our bodies stronger, our minds clearer, for much longer than our ancestors (well, almost nobody). We've upset the natural order of things by eliminating the 1 in 3 childhood death rate, by controlling plague outbreaks, and by instituting a public health and hygiene regimen that makes us more effective and productive than our drunk ancestors. It's only in sex that this really seems to upset the conservatives, who really wish the whole genies and bottles thing.
Trans people, gays, lesbians— everyone should be allowed to pursue The Good Life. Progressive agreed a long time ago that minorities are just as deserving of a Good Life, one freed from interference by both the state and by singular corporate forces, while also supported by effective and ethical institutions. We've come to agree that LGBT people are just as deserving. The battle over sexuality is way to keep two groups that would normally ally to fight the oligarchial monopolization of our food, our water, even our attention spans, instead fight each other into the ground.
While the fascists laugh.
1 Irvine's book reaches a conclusion that no ancient Stoic would recognize: that the point of Stoicism is to reach a state of "tranquility." The ancient Stoics recognized that tranquility was an excellent state, but it was not the point of Stocisim. The point of Stocism is to train oneself to experience real joy rather than hedonistic pleasures, and to be completely prepared to respond effectively to the shocks and tragedies of existence.
2Although the 19th century populists were undoubtly racists. When the populists became the Populist Party, they explicity excluded Black and Chinese people from their ranks by the party's founding charter. We shouldn't sugar-coat the issue here.
3 Ever notice that it's always biology? Even creationist geology has no villains, but creationist biology is full of hatred for Antoine van Leeuwenhoek, Charles Darwin, and Gregor Mendel. There's no creationist equivalent of chemistry or physics (not for lack of trying). It's always about biology, and it's always about sixth grade biology. Everything learned afterward, about the messiness of sex and gender, the way actual biology doesn't care about human categories and absolutes, is thrown away by conservatives and the anti-trans "radical feminists" alike. While the fascists laugh within their vaults of cash.
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