This essay is part of Public DiscoursesWhos Who series, which introduces and critically engages with important thinkers who are often referenced in political and cultural debates, but whose ideas might not be widely known or understood. The series previously considered the life and work of Antonio Gramsci, Jacques Maritain, and Michael Oakeshott.

On the surface of things, there might be little to connect Harry V. Jaffa (1918-2015) and Allan Bloom (1930-1992). Bloom was a cosmopolitan sophisticate, having lived and taught in Europe for many years and his passion was for philosophy at the highest level. He was not open about his sexual orientation, his political interventions were vigorous rebuttals of feminism, and he mounted a spirited defense of both the differences and the complementarity of men and women. We might say he was more interested in the philosophic life than political contests.

Jaffa, on the other hand, was briefly a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater, for whom he wrote that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. He was an American patriot whose overwhelming interest was the American regime, in both its original founding and its rebirth under Abraham Lincoln. Unlike the seemingly apolitical Bloom, Jaffa courted controversy, for instance, in his very public opposition to gay marriage in California. Yet the problem on the surface of things does get to the heart of things.

The connectionand the conflictbetween Bloom and Jaffa is based on different interpretations of the work of Leo Strauss, the twentieth-century political philosopher who taught them both. In essence, Strauss can be said to have promoted two significant ideas. First, the idea that there is a fundamental break between ancient and medieval philosophy, on the one hand, and modern philosophy, on the other. Second, the idea that philosophers throughout history, perhaps less so as modernity progressed, wrote in an esoteric manner. Esoteric writing is the practice of speaking to two different audiences at the same time and saying different things with the same words. Arthur Melzer has written an exhaustive treatment of the subject, but parents of small children will also be familiar with the practice.

Jaffa described Strauss as the Socrates of our millennium, a characterization Bloom never had an opportunity to affirm or deny. Yet in his obituary of his teacher, Bloom wrote, those of us who knew him saw in him such a power of mind, such a unity and purpose of life, such a rare mixture of the human elements resulting in a harmonious expression of the virtues, moral and intellectual, that our account of him is likely to evoke disbelief or ridicule from those who have never experienced a man of this quality. For both Jaffa and Bloom, their encounter with Strauss was the turning-point in their lives, akin to the escape of the prisoners from Platos cave.

Two Approaches to Strauss

The clever if somewhat unfortunate title of his last book, The Crisis of the Strauss Divided, plays upon Jaffas second and most famous work, a study of the Lincoln-Douglas debates entitled The Crisis of the House Divided, and gets to the heart of the difference between these two figures. With Jaffa at Claremont in California and Bloom at Cornell, Toronto, and Chicago, the consequences of that division turned into East Coast and West Coast Straussianism. Jaffa and Bloom represent the two ways of understanding Strausss devotion to political philosophy, specifically with respect to esotericism and natural right, as I will discuss below. In other words, ought one to accentuate the philosophical or the political in that term?

Jaffa, the former boxer, was by far the more political of the two men, Bloom the more philosophical. Jaffas work on Lincoln, the Constitution, and his very public debates with other scholars and even Supreme Court nominees were legendary for their acrimony. William F. Buckley, Jr. famously said, If you think Harry Jaffa is hard to argue with, try agreeing with him. It is nearly impossible. Jaffa was a political animal through and through. Bloom, by contrast, fled Cornell for the University of Toronto as an escape from the political radicalization of American campuses, returning to his beloved University of Chicago only much later.

Blooms scholarly work consisted mostly of translations and close commentaries on the same. He cultivated an urbane and detached style, seemingly uninterested in day-to-day politics. But this was not entirely true. He had a steady stream of phone conversations with well-placed graduates in Washington, DC, keeping him up to date on even the most intricate details. Saul Bellow, the American novelist, detailed these conversations in his fictionalized biography of his friend, Ravelstein. While some of the accounts are exaggerated for dramatic effect, it is clear that Bloom delighted in politics, or at least in the great issues of war and peace, though one could never imagine him campaigning.

If we consider their first works of scholarshipJaffas on Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, Blooms on the ancient rhetorician Isocratesthe picture becomes more blurred. Whats more, Bloom did write on the American Constitution, and Jaffas pugnacity was born of a devotion to the truth at least as strong as that of any philosopher. The one did not simply take up the political side of Strauss and the other the philosophical, so much as develop his legacy and establish each his own by means of emphasis. And regarding that legacy, all hinged on the idea of classical natural right.

Classical natural right was Strausss attempt at capturing the difference between premodern political philosophy and the modern emphasis on individual rights. Modern rights (always in the plural) attach to an individual from the state of nature or, in the rarefied version of John Rawls, the original position. These rights are not even political insofar as they are not up for debate or negotiation. Classical natural right, by contrast, looks to the organizational principles of the society or the regime, as Strauss preferred. As Aristotle put it in the Politics: Justice is a political matter; for justice is the organization of a political community, and justice decides what is just. Classical natural right did not rely on pre-political fictions to understand politics, but looked to the best of human nature to orient the political order. As we will see, Blooms reading of Strauss emphasized the need to decipher the esoteric meaning of texts, which might not entail any consideration of natural right, while Jaffa believed that following Strauss back to premodern philosophy required an intense focus on natural right.

Overcoming Orthodoxies

For Allan Bloom, the role of the teacher is to free a young mind from the reigning orthodoxies of the day, the stories told by the city. In his phenomenally successful Closing of the American Mind, he decried the influence of German philosophy on the students he was encountering in the classroom. These young men and women had absorbed a soft nihilism or relativism through the general culture and were, as a result, unteachable. Since they believed nothing, there was nothing from which the teacher could turn their eyes. According to Bloom, relativism has extinguished the real motive of education, the search for a good life. What good is it to turn someones eyes from shadows if they wont open them?

Bloom pursued zetetic philosophy, in which the search is more important than the discovery because philosophy is less a doctrine than a way of life. Socratic skepticism is not nihilism, however. The philosophic life is an adventurous struggle out of Platos cave. To join Bloom on this adventure meant he was going to offer signposts, not conclusions. And so we find his scholarship consisting mainly of commentaries on works he translated, most notably on Platos Republic and Rousseaus Emile. What he sought in these works and offered to careful readers and students was adamantly not to reduce philosophy to a set of definitions and easy-to-remember formulae.

Given that Bloom thought philosophy must question all considered judgments, it is no surprise that his criticism of John RawlssA Theory of Justice was so spirited. Bloom asks, Is he a seeker after truth, or only the spokesman for a certain historical consciousness? Rawls, as he notes, ignored the history of political philosophy, as if the nihilism of Nietzsche, the historicism of Hegel and Marx, or the penetrating examination of the soul in Platos dialogues never happened. For Rawls, life is easy to understand and its fulfillment an easygoing eudaimonianisma life of simple pleasure. A thoroughgoing student of Rawls could never produce great literature. There would be no dilemma for Hamlet, no dagger floating before Macbeth.

In a section of the review entitled The Misuse of Aristotle, Bloom pointed out that Rawls used Aristotles authority to claim something the philosopher never stipulated. According to what Rawls called the Aristotle principle, humans want to develop their capacities, and societies that allow and encourage them to do so are, on balance, betterthat is to say, they would be chosen from the original position. But Aristotle never said any such thing, and the passage Rawls cited to suggest that he did points in another direction. According to Bloom, the argument from the Nichomachean Ethics teaches that philosophy is the only way of life that can properly be called happy. Indeed, Bloom goes on to say much more: The philosopher is not as such a social man; Aristotle never even says that the moral virtues, including justice, are necessary to the philosopher in order to philosophize. This open questioning of the utility of the moral virtues to the philosopher was the source of contention between Bloom and Jaffa.

The Examined and Examining Life

One of Jaffas most direct responses to his younger contemporary was in a review of Blooms bestseller. According to Jaffa, Bloom was unable to understand the American mind because he was too preoccupied with philosophy and too uninterested in politics. As Jaffa put it, no one can comment instructively on the relationship between political life and the philosophic life who does not know what political life is. It is a fair comment, but was it fair to Bloom? Consider Blooms thoughtful appreciation of Raymond Aron, one of the greatest political minds of the twentieth century, or his own book Confronting the Constitution. Jaffa goes on, several pages later: For Bloom the question is not, What is Justice? It is, Which book about justice do you like best? Jaffas complaint was that Bloom was more concerned with philosophical texts than philosophical truth or, more to the point, natural right.

Indeed, the charge of nihilism underlies the whole review. For instance, Jaffa suggests Bloom was more concerned that his students relativism was dclassthan that it was wrong: One might say that American relativism is comic in its blandness and indifference to the genuine significance of human choice, whereas in its German version fundamental human choices take on the agonized dignity of high tragedy. Yet elsewhere in the same review Jaffa writes what could have come from the pen of the man he was criticizing. According to Jaffa, The life lived in accordance with the knowledge of ignorancethe truly skeptical life, the examined and examining lifeis, by the light of unassisted human reason, the best life. The next sentence, though, gets to the heart of their disagreement: The regime that is best adapted to the living of this life is the best regime. Again, Bloom would probably agree, but might argue that it is a non sequitur. Once one has discovered the best life, pursue it, and dont engage in politics.

What would Strauss say? The question arises because both laid claim to his legacy. In his review of Closing, Jaffa writes, One can only conclude that if Bloom says that the one thing needful is the study of the problem of Socrates, and yet makes no mention of Strausss study of the problem of Socrates (or of Greek philosophy), then he cannot think that Strausss study is the needful one. For Jaffa, following Strauss back to premodern philosophy meant devoting oneself to classical natural right. For Bloom, it meant uncovering the esoteric meaning of texts, which might be indifferent to natural right altogether. Although he never says it, there is a strong suggestion throughout this review and other pieces that Jaffa considered Bloom to be Strausss Alcibiades.

Productive Tension

The contest between Harry Jaffa and Allan Bloom over the legacy of Leo Strauss has passed to their students with generally much less acrimony. But that tension, like the one between Athens and Jerusalem that Strauss so often returned to, has produced some of the finest scholarship of the last half century or more. From the students of Bloom, translations and commentaries have added to the treasury of works we have to study. From the students of Jaffa have come some of the most penetrating studies of American politics. When the streams cross and the West Coast turns to philosophical texts or the East to American politics, especially to the work of Tocqueville that Jaffa never fully appreciated, the divisions are blurred and the results are invigorating.

It would not be too much to say that the students of Bloom and Jaffa are producing the most interesting work in political philosophy, broadly understood. Blooms students include Thomas Pangle, Catherine and Michael Zuckert, and Francis Fukuyama. Jaffa taught Thomas G. West, John Marini, and Hillsdale Colleges president, Larry P. Arnn. Indirectly, Jaffa and Bloom influenced Harvey C. Mansfield, Pierre Manent, Daniel J. Mahoney, and Charles Kesler. While only a partial list, their scholarship would be the foundation for a far better education in political wisdom and statesmanship, as well as literature, than any reading list produced by the American Political Science Association.

Understanding political philosophy far more broadly than it usually is may be the most important legacy of Bloom and Jaffa. The only project they worked on together, a study of Shakespeares political thought, opened for their students and others the body of great literature as a source of political wisdom. Freed from the reigning orthodoxies of our day, theirs are often alone among students of literature who can see that the tedious categories of race, class, and gender are mere shadows dancing on the wall.

Whatever might have divided them, Harry Jaffa and Allan Bloom both found in Leo Strausss classroom an approach to philosophy that changed their lives. Their own students found the same in their classrooms, and so unto the third and fourth generations. There are real and important differences in what they experienced and, more importantly, how they understood it, just as with Socrates students. If Strauss really was the Socrates of our millennium, Bloom and Jaffa are the best evidence for this claim.

Source for Allan Bloom photo: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf7-00081, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

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Harry V. Jaffa and Allan Bloom: The Contested Legacy of Leo Strauss - Public Discourse

Its a plot as old as plots: a city slicker comes to the countryside with preconceived notions about the rural folk and then finds that theyre smarter and better than his city friends (or, alternatively, that theyre just as venal as the people he left behind). Short-statured sitcom actor B.J. Novak portrays this city slicker in his directing debut Vengeance, a movie that transports him to West Texas, and if this satire isnt entirely successful, theres more than enough to suggest he has talent as a filmmaker.

Novak stars as Ben Manalowicz, who has secured his place as a staff writer for The New Yorkerand now thinks of branching out into podcasting. His boss (Issa Rae) pointedly asks him what yet another middle-aged white guy could possibly have to say. His answer comes in the form of a distraught phone call from Ty Shaw (Boyd Holbrook), whose sister Abilene (Lio Tipton) has died in her small town a five-hour drive from the Texas city she was named after. Ben and Abby slept together a few times while she was in the Big Apple pursuing dreams of music stardom, and she made it seem to her family that the two of them were much closer than they were. When Ben is guilted into traveling to Texas to attend her funeral, Ty seriously tells him that she didnt die of an opioid overdose like the authorities say but was murdered by a conspiracy of Mexican drug cartels, pedophiles, and the deep state. A podcast is born, initially with the insensitive title Dead White Girl.

Speaking of insensitive, Ben plays along with the fiction that he and Abby were practically engaged, because he means to make fun of the paranoid rednecks or at least hold them up to ridicule while he investigates what makes them tick. His disillusionment plays out in humor that is admirably specific to the region: When Ben asks whether the city of Abilene is near Dallas, he receives the curt reply, Dallas aint Texas. Later on, at his literal first rodeo, he gives a big cheer for the University of Texas and quickly finds out hes deep in Tech country. A local music producer (Ashton Kutcher, going for understatement for once) gestures at the blasted desert landscape and tells Ben, People here have creative energies and nowhere to plug them in. It goes into conspiracy theories, drugs, and violence. (The movie was actually filmed in the Albuquerque area, since youre wondering.)

Yet the script doesnt set out to absolve the Texans, either. For all the Christian paraphernalia in their house, the Shaws call Abbys youngest brother El Stupido (Eli Bickel), and Ben is the only one who addresses the boy by his given name of Mason. The boy, in turn, gives him a vital piece of information that cracks the mystery. The family conceals an important piece of information from Ben, and the New Yorker finally explodes at them in that most Texas of locations, a Whataburger parking lot. To Tys defense that they followed their hearts, Ben says, You follow your heart, the world is flat, and vaccines contain microchips.

If only that line hadnt come in the midst of a much longer speech. Novak the director lets Novak the writer go on for too long. The climactic confrontation with the villain of the piece really needed pruning, even if Im chilled by nihilism of the bad guys thesis that America is the way it is because were all going to die someday and our social-media hot takes will be the only proof that we were ever here. Vengeance has more than a few amusing moments and was significantly better than I expected, but it still feels like the work of a beginner who has more to learn.

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Vengeance: Conspiracy Theory - Fort Worth Weekly

Is That All There Is? Disaffiliation From Religion Increases

Perhaps one of the least liked of Jesuss parables is that of the wealthy man who reaps a great harvest, puts up extra barns, believes he should eat, drink and be merry, and finds himself dead that night. What a downer. Im reminded of Peggy Lees fabulous song Is That All There Is? thinking that those would be the last words of the wealthy man.

Exceptan awful lot of people think that is enough. They are satisfied with whatever the world can give; if they die, they die. Such is the nihilism afflicting the nones, the disaffiliated from religion folks. Statistics tell of a catastrophic decline in religious faith among those in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, but particularly among those who are younger. Each generation is less religious, and that fact is radically changing society. Most observers throw up their hands in confusion and despair, unsure why this is happening. However, the fact is we know why it is occurring. Its complicated, but we can understand.

Just a few factors in this decline include lack of religious practice in childhood, disaffiliation in high school and decline of the two-parent family, pluralism in religious belief, a politically conservative identification with religion., the absence of religious experience, and the inability of religion to answer big questions. There are other reasons, but these are the most important.

Two things mitigate a vibrant return to religious faith. First is the fact that the disaffiliated were never that connected to religious faith to begin with. Their parents and grandparents had begun the gradual disconnection decades before. Second, the growing isolation of individuals is directly connected to the decline in religious faith, which was the major player in community and civic life. Even now, those with the most connection to religious faith are the most involved in civic affairs and community practices.

Yet, a few things can be done to change all this:

Religious researchers point out that in the recent past, those who left religion were likely to come back as older adults. These researchers now say dont expect the disaffiliated to return. Not really having left much, they are not motivated to come back to something that never really fed them. I am not that pessimistic. The Church has always been able to talk to the culture, though it almost always is late to the table. Its time for the Church and those who think religious faith is important to step up. The modest proposals above wont completely deal with the nihilism gripping our world. But successful implementation of these suggestions might nudge the worldly from an eat, drink, and be merry way of approaching life to finding an answer to Peggy Lees soulful musical question, Is That All There Is?

***For clarity of reading, I deliberately left out footnoting the research as it is easily available on Google from the Pew Research Center, NPR, and other outlets.

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The Catastrophic Decline in Religious Faith And What To Do About It - Patheos

New York-natives Wasted Space has released their hard-hitting, new video "The First Time We Met." The chaotic, post-hardcore track is pulled from the group's recently released EP Never Odd Or Even, which dropped earlier this spring. The band is also currently on tour to support the 4-track EP. Despite the heavy topics that the track addresses, the video for "The First Time We Met" brings out a more lighthearted side of the three-piece.

The three-piece group shares of the track, "The song is about the haunting feeling of depression and anxiety, the music video is a spoof on John Wick where 'Bones' has come to kill us all for some unexplained reason. A little funny backstory is Bones is our lead singer's 'roommate' who he makes fun little skits for TikTok and Instagram with. Often these skits include some kind of mischief on Matt's part to the detriment of Bones so anyone following the band knows that there is a dispute between the two."

While the track is heavily marked by vocalist Matthew Lupkin's intricate, doom-filled delivery, "The First Time We Met" video brings a comical narrative to the forefront of the visual with a John Wick-inspired theme. Displaying their hilarious attitudes and DIY roots, the band is met with inevitable ruin and destruction as Lupkin comes face to face in a shoot-out with Bones. Despite taking on a more humorous tone, "The First Time We Met" effortlessly delivers a swift punch to the gut through groovy guitar riffs and echoing drums.

Based out of Buffalo, NY, Wasted Space brings groovy riffs, solid rhythms, and thought-provoking lyrics to the forefront of their releases.

Wasted Space is the group's interpretation of humanity and its steady decline, as they reflect the overwhelming sense of nihilism and cynicism that is imposed on society by the direction of the world and the people who inhabit it. The only way forward is to throw your hands up and embrace the chaos, hopefully with a smile.

Their latest release, Never Odd Or Even, and their new video for "The First Time We Met" are both currently available.

Watch the new music video here:

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VIDEO: Wasted Space Release John Wick-Themed Video for 'The First Time We Met' - Broadway World

If youve picked up a volume of literary fiction in the past decade or sopreferably one that drew favorable coverage in the New York Review of Books or snuck its way onto the Man Booker longlistyoure probably already familiar with the phenomenon of the MFA novel. Strictly speaking, of course, one does not need to have the degree to write such a book. It is a matter of style and tone rather than a rigid descriptor, reflecting the distinctive mode of writing selected for by both elite educational institutions and an increasingly insular publishing ecosystem.

The MFA novel is typically brief rather than epic, loath to channel the experiences of anyone beyond the author herself. Its plot is wispy and ill-defined, with its meandering storylines periodically punctuated by episodes of bad sex, substance abuse, reflections on the allure of suicide, gazes into the abyss of social media, and ruminations on impending climate apocalypse. One thinks of Sally Rooney, Lauren Oyler, Ottessa Moshfegh, Jenny Offill, and countless othersall very talented writers, to be clear, but all engaged in very similar projects. The dominant sensibility of the MFA novel is what Elif Batuman described in 2010 as an impulse to make literature into an unhappiness contest, or an unhappiness-entitlement contest.

The influence of the MFA novelor, more precisely, the style of storytelling it exemplifieshas spread far beyond bookstore shelves and culture websites. Perhaps most notably, its a sensibility that shows up across the various streaming video series usually classed as prestige TV. How else to classify the moody, shoegazy character studies that constitute HBOs I May Destroy You, or Amazon Primes Fleabag, or Hulus The Bear?

Batuman and plenty of other writers have criticized this turn in storytelling for its self-doubt, its chic nihilism, and its parochialism. But perhaps theres a deeper issue in play here.

In a kind of enantiodromia, the ubiquity of the MFA novel and its mixed-media progeny may have produced and cemented the dominance of an opposite form of storytelling: the mystery-box narrative. Despite its near-omnipresence throughout popular culture, this kind of story is only rarely recognized as such. Or, perhaps, that is precisely why it remains so invisible.

Famously associated with film director J.J. Abrams, the mystery-box narrative launches the reader or viewer into the story in medias res, with the protagonists context and circumstances left deliberately unclear. As the story unfolds, the hero or heroine learns more about his or her own background, and about the rules and internal logic of the universe around them.

Abramss own work, of course, is suffused with this approach. Tasked with crafting the seventh Star Wars film, Abrams opens that movie by declining to explain precisely how the galaxy tipped from its post-Return of the Jedi equilibrium back into open warfare. He leaves his heroines parentage ambiguous, shuffles the beloved Luke Skywalker almost entirely offscreen, and makes his archvillain a smoke-shrouded figure of unclear significance. Whereas in 1977, George Lucas felt the need to spell out backstory in a lengthy title crawl, here the opening crawl serves primarily to obfuscate.

All of this, of course, is calculated to generate that most elusive of reactions: solid word-of-mouth and fan engagement. For popular movies and shows, vast fan communities now stretch across the internet, generating massive Reddit threads and page after page of dedicated messageboards devoted to speculating about plot points. Creators now know that split-second allusions to obscure elements of lorethe enormous corpus of backstory generated by decades-old franchiseswill be obsessed over for years by super-fans. A prime example of this is the TV show Westworld, which has derived most of its punch from its heavy reliance on asynchronous timelines as a source of mystery, and that regularly sparks feverish online debate.

The mystique of the mystery box has come to dominate pop culture. Just consider the near-maniacal fear of spoilers that overtakes the internet upon release of a much-anticipated genre film. This concern is historically novel: years ago, film trailers would lay out the movies entire plot, including the endinga choice that didnt deter audiences from showing up. The element of surprise, in other words, wasnt the only element that mattered.

And what happens when the other elements start to drop out? In the work of fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson, mystery-box storytelling reaches its apex. The Stormlight Archive, Sandersons as-yet-unfinished magnum opus, painstakingly unspools its story across a series of colossal, thousand-page volumesvolumes that would be virtually unreadable, if Sanderson didnt artificially generate plot momentum by withholding crucial background information from the reader.

As the Archive develops, its two lead characters slowly drift through the events of a fantastical world, picking up scraps of knowledge about the cataclysm that rocked their cosmos long ago and repristinating elements of pre-cataclysm wisdom. Protagonists spend page after page brooding over their own uncertainty, as they puzzle out the mysteries around themmysteries that readers know will eventually be disclosed, when the author finally deems it convenient. But properly speaking, the internal logic of the narrative doesnt demand this drip-feed of backstory, leaving the mystery increasingly feeling like an excuse for bad pacing. Indeed, if the rules and backstory of Sandersons fictional universe were laid out in a couple of pages, the justification for the series sheer bulk would collapse: Sandersons prose and character development, considered apart from the mystery-box milieu, arent especially strong. (Contrast this approach with J.R.R. Tolkien, who had no qualms about spelling out the logic of his legendarium from the outset, or Patrick Rothfuss, whose novels have a reverse-whodunit structure focused on how a foregone outcome will be achieved.)

The strange reality of contemporary American fiction, irrespective of medium, is that the MFA novel and the mystery-box narrative exist as a kind of cultural yin and yangone ubiquitous in high culture and the other in popular entertainment, with each serving as a foil to the other. In the MFA novel, plot is nothing, a dclass distraction from the virtuosity of the style and the nuances of the characters (or politics) on display. In the mystery-box narrative, plot is everything; stories become an interlocking mass of Chekhovs guns and internal cross-references, where the greatest imaginable sin is a plot hole or a failure to stick the landing.

Despite their differences, though, these two currents share a common root. The singular virtue that both modes of storytelling select for is a kind of technical competencefor the MFA novel, the proficiency of a well-chosen phrase or memorable personality, and for the mystery-box narrative, the skill of revealing just enough information to keep the consumer hooked. Altogether out of view is whether a story corresponds to any kind of essential truth or universal experience. Rather, for the MFA novel, what matters is that a story captures someones truth; for the mystery-box narrative, truth is merely internal coherence.

In the end, both tendencies reflect a loss of faitha loss of faith in storytelling as a means of access to anything beyond bare contingency. And yet it seems to me that the stories that linger are those penned by authors confident in their ability to say something true. Those creators might be wrong, but at least they are audacious enough to trust that their vision of the world can speak for itself.

Without that faith, a far gloomier, more forgettable media landscape awaits.

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The MFA Novel and the Mystery Box - Patheos

The Republican-MAGA movement's reactionary agenda is clear enough. But the deeper motivations of many Trump supporters, at least beneath their absurd and offensive stated beliefs, is much less so.

What we might call the Great Demolition plot includes establishing a corporate oligarchy, a neo-feudalist regime based on long-term minoritarian rule and a malevolent pseudo-Christian theocracy undergirded by state thuggery and social authoritarianism, all of it infused with an incoherent ideological blend of anarchic libertarianism (on guns and most forms of regulation) and fascistic nightmare (white supremacy, antisemitism and numerous grades of conspiracy theory).

Millions of Americans support this regressive and oppressive agenda, but their views are not identical or monolithic: There are the probably well-meaning but horribly misguided Joe and Jane Average, the bloodthirsty fascists, the apoplectic culture warriors, the scheming plutocrats, the uniformed sadists, the gun-radical civilians, the Christian nationalists and "Dominionists," the QAnon believers, the con artists and grifters, the conformists, the deeply traumatized and the profoundly misinformed. All understand themselves to be "patriots," of course.

Clearly, there is a wide spectrum of motivations, beliefs, personalities, interests and objectives, intensity of conviction and degree of lunacy among these mistaken millions. But how can one account for this herd-like descent into paranoia, cultish-nihilistic rage against reality, and proliferation of sociopathic behaviors? A general answer is that extreme beliefs bear little if any connection with the object they purport to discuss. They stem from complex and often subterranean interplay between biological forces (such as neural-hormonal wiring or gender), constructed biographies (whether individual or collective), economic interests, one's sense of belonging and social networks, and "belief formation," meaning the cognitive, affective and behavioral dynamics of decision-making.

What is behind crazy beliefs? Craziness, in one form or another. Crazy beliefs result from dysfunctions and toxicity that, in many individuals, generate unbearable anguish. A more specific answer, then, is that fear plays a central role in individual devolution and mass indoctrination. As Corey Robin points out, fear has a social history. It is a political feeling, the raison d'tre and oldest manipulation tactic of repressive groups and regimes. Many Americans suffer from fear, derived from multiple poisoned sources. Desperate and despondent, they lash out through nihilism, tribalism and rhetorical or actual violence.

Fear has been part of the human experience since time immemorial. From Howard Sackler's screenplay for Stanley Kubrick's 1953 film "Fear and Desire":

There is a war in this forest. Not a war that has been fought, nor one that will be, but any war. And the enemies who struggle here do not exist unless we call them into being. This forest then, and all that happens now is outside history. Only the unchanging shapes of fear and doubt and death are from our world. These soldiers that you see keep our language and our time but have no other country but the mind.

Britain and the United States, to cite the obvious examples, were able to develop generally successful and more or less democratic governments over time because powerful potential enemies were far away, while internal dissenters often emigrated or were crushed. Historically, this included Roman Catholics in the U.K. and anarchists, socialists, Black radicals and other political dissidents in the U.S. In America's case, two vast oceans allowed for safety from external invasion and also for considerable social, individual and ideological diversity. Yet after the traumas of 9/11, the war on terror, the Great Recession, the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan and the COVID pandemic, Americans reacted as many other peoples have done before them, sliding downward into mass intolerance and violence.

That included the wholesale and largely unquestioned surrender of supposedly cherished freedoms through emergency laws and mass surveillance; extrajudicial kidnapping, torture and imprisonment; new forms of unconventional warfare (i.e., drones) waged against civilians and militants alike; and an enormous consolidation of power in the presidency and the executive branch. All of this went along with military adventurism, political radicalization and polarization, and an upsurge of magical beliefs and both mental and physical health crises, including opioid addictions, obesity and suicide.

After 20 years of mismanaged war in the Middle East, the U.S. finds itself in a situation disturbingly similar to Weimar Germany: disaffected veterans, militarized police, and right-wing radicalism converging with "mainstream" conservatism.

Fear is also inflamed through the national obsession with world domination, military power, militarized culture and gun idolatry. Historian Kathleen Belew, author of "Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America,"argues that each modern U.S. war was followed by a significant increase in domestic radicalism, white supremacy activism and paramilitary agitation. After 20 years of brutally mismanaged war in the greater Middle East, the U.S. finds itself in a situation disturbingly similar to Weimar Germany in 1919: With a relatively large and often disaffected veteran population (think of Timothy McVeigh), growing fascist penetration of the police and the military, increasingly militarized police forces, and armed militias (akin to the Freikorps in Germany) assaulting the legal-constitutional order. Right-wing radicalism has begun to converge with "mainstream" conservatism, fueled by a proliferation of entrepreneurs of chaos and the widespread cult of guns.

Fear also comes from the economy: Since the 1980s, economic survival has continued to demand more expensive degrees, longer working hours and greater productivity. Increasing financial pressure on individuals, families and communities has weakened the middle class by raising the costs of education, health care and real estate, and undermining wages, job security and organized labor. Americans fear exploitation and intimidation in the workplace, and also fear loss of status, health coverage and retirement pension. What's more, they fear each other, and not entirely without reason a factor that helps explain the proliferation of guns. (This is nearly identical to the classic "security dilemma" of international relations theory.)

Global economic forces subject Americans to the rule of the unaccountable one percent, the whims of the FIRE corporations (finance, insurance and real estate) and the condescension and pandering of their lackeys in both political parties. Workers tough it out while the masters of the new Gilded Age buy politicians, lawmakers, judges, think tanks, media outlets and experts; corrupt and exploit the skewed tax system; flout the law and the public interest (no major executive was incarcerated for the 2008 Great Recession); and corrupt the public spirit. To say that the system is rigged, as critics on both the left and right proclaim, is nowhere near adequate.

Abandoned by corporate Democrats, in 2016 the (white) working and middle classes turned in desperation toward an arsonist leading a gang of saboteurs. Their rage resulted from their dysfunctional context; their radicalization was a reaction against structural injustice. Their radical politics may be understood, in part, as a desperate reaction against despair. As Hannah Arendt wrote in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" about 1930s fascism, "the masses' escape from reality is a verdict against the world in which they're forced to live.... It's a protest against the real conditions of existence."

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Male anxiety and overcompensation have further befouled this witches' brew. Dominant models of American personhood, and especially manhood, are rooted in stereotypes of heroism, self-reliance, stoicism, greed, athleticism and competitive vigor, not to mention heterosexuality. Reality appears somewhat different, as the hard right is characterized by panic, emotional incontinence, unhinged rage and homicidal schadenfreude. (Of course I mean Donald Trump, but consider also Ann Coulter, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Laura Ingraham, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, etc.)

Archetypes of manliness are grotesquely distorted by far-right online "communities" of gamers, "incels" and white supremacists, and entirely too many women who embrace a cartoonish vision of masculinity and denigrate feminism. Anguished "conservatives" and "patriots" are incensed by women's progress, the evolution of gender mores and increasing acceptance of a wide range of LGBTQ+ identities. They are simultaneously insecure and arrogant, fragile and bellicose. Their aggressive bombast and misogyny only serves to reveal the compensatory role played by performative toxic masculinity in lessening their inner turmoil and re-establishing a vague semblance of psychic safety.

There is a continuum that encompasses run-of-the mill misogynists, "pick-up artists," men's rights activists, the online manosphere (e.g., MGTOW), extreme gamers, incels, incels who murder women, the alt-right, and activists and politicians who want to strip women of their rights. Male supremacy also feeds white supremacy, as white sexual anguish stokes racial anguish over Black men's virility and fuels the spread of the "great replacement" conspiracy theory.

This shared hostility toward women and minorities springs from recognizable sociopathic traits: entitlement, grievance, raging righteousness, cruelty, and social domination. Many are looking for father figures, authoritarian or even punitive fathers, for unapologetically dominant alpha males (John Wayne, Rambo, Trump, "Top Gun," John Wick) and models on how to be a real man (Jordan Peterson). In April of this year, Tucker Carlson infamously pushed an apocalyptic-messianic "documentary" called "The End of Men" that advocated "testicle tanning," or exposing male genitalia to red light, supposedly to boost testosterone levels, as a form of "bromeopathy."

In his 1897 classic of sociology, "Suicide," mile Durkheim argued that suicide was not a purely individual phenomenon, but was influenced by collective forces. A society that nurtures functional "little platoons" ( la Edmund Burke) and the sound social integration and regulation of individuals helps them cope with the rigors of life. When that kind of integration fails, the result may be what Durkheim called "selfish suicide" (individuals who feel disconnected), while deficient regulation may facilitate "anomic suicide" (when an individual lacks a sense of rules and meaning). On the other hand, too much integration, as in the military or cult movements, can facilitate "altruistic suicide" (self-sacrifice for the group), while excessive regulation may facilitate "fatalistic suicides" (in which someone breaks under the weight of rigid social norms). In other words, unbalanced forms of social cohesion produce specific pathologies. It's not much of a leap to conceive that American society, with its social isolation, incessant consumerism, endless commercial spectacle and social Darwinism, could produce all sorts of alarming compensatory strategies, such as the manic, cultish, bellicose energy of the MAGA faithful.

Indeed, the fear of death whether biological and social is the fear that underpins countless others. As anthropologist Ernest Becker showed in "The Denial of Death," individuals will do almost anything to lessen or forget this primal terror. Trumpers repudiate their loved ones, vilify reason and science, internalize outlandish lies and embrace servitude and mob rule. Cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias and amnesia are the ticket into the warm embrace of the tribe, which is both an extension of one's precious ego and a framework for security the basis of Abraham Maslow's pyramid of fundamental human needs.

Furthermore, terror management and grief processing are closely connected. Elizabeth Kbler-Ross famously identified five stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance. Millions of Trumpers grapple with loss and remain stuck at the initial, pain-filled levels of the grieving process: "The COVID virus is a myth, I am in control" (denial); "Mask mandate is Nazism and/or communism" (anger); "Dr. Fauci stole my life" (anger and depression); "If I take vitamin D, I won't be affected" (bargaining). They take longer to move toward acceptance, if that ever happens: "I will wash my hands and keep a safe distance." David Kessler, a foremost expert on grief and close collaborator of Kbler-Ross, added a sixth stage: seeking meaning. But actual meaning can only come after an acceptance of reality. Delusional sense-seeking is what happens when individuals and groups short-circuit the process, skip healthy grieving and rush into compensatory worlds.

The fear of economic exploitation, violence, political sclerosis, loneliness and death is easy enough to understand. Yet another fear torments Americans: fear of freedom.

The fear of economic exploitation, violence and war, institutional or political sclerosis, solipsism and death is easy to understand. Yet another fear secretly torments many Americans: fear of freedom, or rather fear of the charges and duties that responsible freedom entails. Erich Fromm, in his study of Nazism "Escape From Freedom," explains that the rigors of freedom create considerable anxiety in many individuals, who seek to lessen stress through three mechanisms: destructiveness, conformity with (and submission to) the group, and seeking refuge in an authoritarian movement that seems to offers direction and meaning. Today, the mainstream, conventional American sense of self is self-centered, entitled and inauthentic; and therefore also insecure and hyper-vigilant, aggrieved and bellicose. An epidemic of narcissism and unmoored subjectivity that cuts across generations, races, genders, sexual orientations, classes and political affiliations has fed the current crisis. Irritable individual sovereignty, freed from any sense of responsibility, helps many Trumpers indulge their narcissism, intellectual laziness and conformity.

Indeed, willful ignorance is key here. In 1546, John Heywood, perhaps inspired by Jeremiah 5:21, wrote: "There are none so blind as those who will not see." Self-indulgence mixes with the old populist mystique of practical knowledge and vocational skills to feed the fear and hatred of analytical culture and critical thinking and the particularly demanding form of freedom it offers.

As Richard Hofstadter remarked some 60 years ago, anti-intellectualism and paranoia are American traditions embedded in the national experience. In his 1963 classic "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," heargues that intellectuals and experts are viewed as "pretentious, conceited, effeminate, and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous, and subversive" and un-American. Historically, the American glorification of the "common man" tends to feed demagoguery, favors the lowest common denominator and fuels self-absorption, religious fundamentalism and suspicion of the experts and other Others. It is Jacksonian democracy run amok. Mangled English and a smug ignorance (of science, history, the world, legitimate sources of knowledge) become evidence of one's authenticity (Trump, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush) and good character. Hostility toward critical knowledge is also a form of revolt against the Enlightenment, against an ideal of truth that demands questioning one's ego, one's limits, one's safety and one's world. This ontological insecurity feeds paranoia, which Hofstadter defined as "the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy" that characterizes "more or less normal people" throughout American history.

Paranoia is found across historical time and space. Its American avatar harks back to medieval Christian millenarianism and end-time fantasies of destruction and salvation, which Norman Cohn describes as

the megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary; the refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict, fallibility whether intellectual or moral; the obsession with inerrable prophecies, systematized misinterpretations, always gross and often grotesque.

This portrait of medieval lunatics can be applied verbatim to contemporary QAnon believers, Christian nationalists and other "patriots." Trumpism is a charismatic, cultish and nihilistic mass movement that calls for destruction "for them" and salvation "for us." This helps explain why sadism, cruelty and sheer frenzy run deep in the MAGA circus: they bind the mob together toward mass cruelty and some apocalyptic showdown. Charisma replaces common sense. As Bret Stephens writes about the decay of moderate conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic: "Where there is sense, there is not much charisma; when there is charisma, there is almost no sense."

Trumpist zealots converge on style and substance, while their goals and deeper motivations remain diverse. Many Trumpers are not fearful at all, but arrogant, domineering and coldly conniving. Others the sour, surly, and surreal specimens whom Jordan Klepper interviews regularly demonstrate the truth of the adage that "there are limits to human intelligence but no limits to human stupidity." Others, like the morally flexible evangelicals, use the "Cyrus the Great" rationalization (Isaiah 41:2-4, 45:1-3) to proclaim that Trump, though imperfect, was anointed by God because he delivered their most cherished goals. Millions of others spurred by anguish are riding along in the bacchanal, serving as the useful idiots and shock troops for the Pied Pipers, princes and principalities (Ephesians 6:12) of Trumpistan.

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