Category Archives: Nihilism

Succession, which launches its third season Oct. 17, is not a show that will back away from a challenge.

The end of the second season radically clarified the series vision. Though the relationship between patriarch Logan (Brian Cox) and son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) had long been a central concern, their bipolar power struggle over the future of the family company felt less reinvigorated than reimagined at seasons end. And in the first seven of nine episodes of Season 3 perhaps the shows most sharply observed run so far Succession probes the contours of its new reality.

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Kendalls public declaration of his fathers culpability in various scandals has split the Roy family, and the show, in two. In Loganland, an unsteady titan attempts to stabilize his position. And in Kendalls corner, instability is to be relished. Swirling around the patriarch are his other children the obsequiously crass Roman (Kieran Culkin), the emboldened Connor (Alan Ruck) and, last and least in Logans affections lately, the unfortunate Siobhan (Sarah Snook). Kendall, meanwhile, receives advice from crisis publicists (Dasha Nekrasova and Jihae, both gifted and arrestingly chilly additions), who seem most interested in staying on payroll by saying yes. Kendall, having been given a chance to free himself, wishes instead for unlimited wishes.

Kendalls fatal flaw is impulsiveness a trait his father has learned to project as temperamental intimidation. And the sons long-term plan goes only as far as the dopamine rush of popularity among Roy critics. Logan, too, seems unmoored, with family frequently left to guess at his intentions. Shiv sums it up when she tells Roman, early in the season, He missteps all the time. Hes not Dad from 20 years ago hes now-Dad.

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This creates a state of affairs that Roy foot soldier Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron) describes as snake linguine: On Logans side, the timeline of succession apparently has shifted rapidly forward, while the person doing the deciding grows less predictably daily. This brings to the fore childhood aches and patterns: Though the season pivots as Kendall seeks familial affirmation and chemical alteration at a birthday party, Logan seems to be the only character getting older. In a small, illustrative moment deep into the season, Connor confronts Siobhan about the toy post office she used to run in the Roy household. The implication is that her role in the firm and the family, as if they could be disentangled was ornamental then, and remains so. Ruck and Snook show us that the line hurts, and that it was intended to.

Its now apparent, after a first season in which the Roys felt difficult to access, that the family members are so locked into their mindsets that they merely present as unknowable. Now, liberated, Kendall doesnt know how to act ignoring his children until he realizes his need for them, baiting controversy until he realizes that he lacks courage, or nihilism, sufficient to wage total war. In the vacuum left by his dark-star charisma, the other Roys struggle to find their place.

This struggle extends to characters a bit lost within the show. That Greg (Nicholas Braun) and Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) are siloed in a story of their own is a potent statement about the Roy familys treatment of perceived outsiders. It also means theres a toxic-buddy dramedy embedded in Succession, one that often feels simply ancillary. More effectively drawn is Siobhans disaffection as, placing poor bets on her fathers sensitivity, she finds herself on the outside of an empire now defined by its rage.

Which leads to the seasons defining triumph. While Logan and Kendall both feel isolated in their solitary desire for domination, they are forced into confrontation with a richly populated world. The first two seasons left this viewer hungry for a sense not just of Waystar Royco but of the world that it has made: A vulnerable corporation attracts fresh adversaries, and a say-anything bad-boy heir draws in intriguing collaborators. Adrien Brody and Alexander Skarsgrd excel as titans of industry whose interests intersect with Logans and Kendalls; Sanaa Lathan is appealingly brusque as Kendalls lawyer; the comedian Ziwe crops up, doing a fictionalized version of her Showtime chat show that lends a sense of just how notorious the Roys are. And an impending presidential election raises the question of which candidate will catch Logans eye, and win his embrace.

The episode dealing with the political race will, and should, generate much discussion once it airs. But does it come as any surprise that its Siobhan the family member who believed that minds could be changed through the soft power of finesse who ends up losing? This transcends the easy comparison to Ivanka Trump flunking out as a White House moderating force (though thats certainly in there): It makes for the shows most confrontational statement yet about what drives the powerful. Despite the motivations of Siobhan, Roman and Kendall, respectively, what matters here is not good works, material gratification or love (synthetic or real). The true elite still live for the simple thrill of killing. And much of the way through a glimmeringly brutal season, the greatest challenge Succession has posed for itself is, once again, pulling insight and enjoyment out of staring into the heart of darkness.

Succession returns to HBO Sunday, October 17 at 9 p.m. E.T.

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Succession, Stronger Than Ever, Builds Its Third Season Around a Family Civil War: TV Review - Yahoo Entertainment

Thoughtful news consumers might have read last weeks announcement of an audit of the 2020 election results in four Texas counties and pondered its purpose. Why would former President Donald Trump call for such an audit after losing badly in almost 100 previous recounts, audits and lawsuits aimed at finding widespread voter fraud? Why would he make such a play in Texas, a state he won? Whats the endgame here?

Serious conservatives who are willing to put principle before politics people like Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley know that this audit wont change the outcome of an election that is almost a year old.

The conspiracy theorists who want to come up with all these ways or reasons why this election wasnt right they might very well find something else (to doubt), Whitley told The Texas Tribune. Its time to move on.

Nor will the audit ensure more accurate counts in future elections. That issue was explored thoroughly by the Legislature this year, resulting in a host of new voting rules, many of which this newspaper supported. Elected bodies of seated public servants are the proper venue for such considerations.

But if this election audit isnt about changing the last election or improving future elections, what is it about?

This stunt, like so many that have tried to pass for public service in recent years, is about feeding the monster of populist nihilism. And the Republicans in charge of the state should know better.

But over the past 12 years, extending back through the Trump administration and to the birthers and pizzagate loonies during the Obama administration, too often folks on the right have given quarter to those peddling conspiracy.

Republicans have always fostered a healthy skepticism about government effectiveness. We remember President Ronald Reagans timeless quip in 1986: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are Im from the government and Im here to help.

But now, more than a third of a century after that quote, too many representatives of Reagans party have traded healthy, small-government skepticism for pugnacious, anti-government disillusion. The results are predictably devastating. A negative virtue can never produce a positive vision, so the candidate who can carry the cynics of a party is not the candidate who can best light the way forward, but the one who can sow the most turmoil.

Republicans havent cornered the market on undermining public confidence in elections without first proving widespread fraud in court. Lets not forget that progressive standard-bearer Stacey Abrams still hasnt conceded a 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia. But many Republicans have elevated this tactic to virtuoso levels.

As journalists, we welcome a healthy dose of skepticism, especially for politicians. But theres a difference between skepticism that asks probing questions and cynicism that denies plain facts.

And that is where this action is taking voters. This is not an audit; its a training drill, a catechism in denying reality and exalting fear.

This audit wont make our elections fairer or more accurate. But it will encourage many Americans to dismiss facts, disrupt the functions of government, and denigrate public service. And in that regard, what we all should fear is that it will succeed.

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Opinion: Texas election audit will build cynicism, not fairness - Yakima Herald-Republic

Virtue is under certain circumstances merely an honorable form of stupidity: who could be ill-disposed toward it on that account? And this kind of virtue has not been outlived even today. A kind of sturdy peasant simplicity, which, however, is possible in all classes and can be encountered only with respect and a smile, believes even today that everything is in good hands, namely in the "hands of God"; and when it maintains this proportion with the same modest certainty as it would that two and two make four, we others certainly refrain from contradicting. Why disturb THIS pure foolishness? Why darken it with our worries about man, people, goal, future? And even if we wanted to do it, we could not. They project their own honorable stupidity and goodness into the heart of things (the old God, deus myops, still lives among them!); we others we read something else into the heart of things: our own enigmatic nature, our contradictions, our deeper, more painful, more mistrustful wisdom. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

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Nihilism Quotes (419 quotes) - Goodreads

Life is absurd and we are all Sisyphi here.

The main question of absurdist philosophy lies in the disharmony between the human inner strive to find an inherently valuable meaning of life and the meaninglessness of the world we live in. The question is everlasting but intractable and even unsolvable to some extent. This is an oxymoron because the human brain is programmed to process the identification of significance; the connection between a word as a language unit and its meaning is a fundamental trait of human nature.

On the other hand, a word is just the tip of the iceberg. For example, the word blockchain has completely different semantic meanings for a developer, crypto hodler, NFT artists, or absurdist:

The Myth of Crypto Sisyphus

One of the most famous absurdist books became Albert Camus paper with the eponymous name to the well-known Greek myth. The main dilemma of the story permeates throughout the narration of the philosopher. Sisyphus task of pushing a boulder up a mountain over and over again seems meaningless but the conclusion of the essay is

"The struggle itself ... is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy".The depiction of such work to the power of infinity can be observed in many modern jobs. Even if anyone thinks crypto may save them from a boring office job, just look in the mirror:

Three Ways of Resolving the Absurd Dilemma

The absurdist community figured out three possible ways to resist the dilemma of absurdism. The first one is escaping existence, which was disregarded by Camus because it doesnt solve the problem. The second way is spiritual: belief in a transcendent idea.

The third solution is to accept the absurd. This is the path for those who want to achieve the highest level of freedom. However, its not that easy. Camus strongly believed that this way included both rebellion against the absurd as well as accepting its unstoppable power.

This literally means we, people, need to accept human nature while still opposing it. Sounds like one more oxymoron. On the other hand, isnt it the same when a person buys high and sells low knowing it has to be vice versa?

Absurdism Partially Derives from Nihilism

Nihilism is one more strain in existentialist philosophy. A nihilist tends to reject some of the fundamental aspects of human life, such as values, morality, or objective truth.

Values are meaningless? An NFT of Invisible Rock #91 costs 888.888 ETH! Perhaps most NFT holders are nihilists. How do we explain this dissonance between objects and values? It is nothing more than the irony of life.

The most popular nihilistic character of today is Rick Sanchez from the Rick and Morty Netflix (NASDAQ:) series. To be more precise, hes a representative of cosmic nihilism, a branch of philosophical study. Rick believes in no foundation for human purpose, which is represented in his actions and language.

We warned you about the language!

Existentialism is the Source of Absurdism

In contrast to nihilism, the fundamental idea of existentialism is that existence precedes essence. This literally means that things are born without a meaning and only then they obtain the purpose. Moreover, the essence of things is highly subjective.

This is the Rubicon, beyond which things can acquire opposite meanings. Just take a look at animal coins. Arent their meanings opposite to what crypto is supposed to be? Crypto is about technology and decentralization meme coins are about hype and quick profits. Its a twist in values.

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DailyCoin's Crypto Memes of the Week #10 A Journey Into the Philosophy of Absurdism By DailyCoin - Investing.com

Ansu Fati hadn't played at the Camp Nou for ten months, yet managed to bring everyone together much in the same way he did on his debut. Only then, when he made his first ever appearance, his only purpose was to learn while, on Sunday against Levante, he had to act as a psychologist, as a marriage counsellor and as an influencer.

That's because Ansu Fati lifted the spirits of everyone involved with the club, rubbishing Ronald Koeman's defeatist mantra of "this is all that there is" and all the sputtering of president Joan Laporta, who tries to escape the stage without a scratch. Perhaps the goal was just a sidenote, because what the kid brought to the people was hope and that, in football, is a powerful force. In the end, what Ansu did was an act of pride and rebellion. The unprecedented thing is that he was against those who rule at Barcelona.

Carlo Ancelotti was wrong, and in admitting it, he was right. He took the blame for starting Fede Valverde at right back, but why did he do it? With that decision he lost two options: an actual right back and a progressive midfielder which could have been Valverde's role, against an excellent Villarreal. There is no doubt that Real Madrid's attacking potential is abundant, even if it ran dry on Saturday.

The fact that Thibaut Courtois seems to be Real Madrid's best player every game is great news for the goalkeeper but troubling for the rest of the team. We are talking about the defensive system, not the defenders themselves. David Alaba was undoubtedly a good signing, but defensive lapses are leaving Real Madrid vulnerable on the break.

It seems clear that nobody is going to walk LaLiga Santander this season. The upper-middle class is going to fight between them and even the more modest sides like Rayo Vallecano, with Radamel Falcao, are impressing.

However, it is strange to see Atletico Madrid struggling as they are. Their inconsistency and inability to get going in most of their matches so far is unusual from them. Diego Simeone tends to correct mistakes but he's not going to let things get out of hand. It's not his style.

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Ansu Fati is the antidote to Koeman's nihilism - MARCA.com

(Credit: Phil Rees / Alamy)

Buzzcocksare one of the most influential punk bands of all time. Their music provided an introspective and often funny take on the bleak socio-economic landscape of 1970s Britain. Through encompassing genres such as power-pop and pop-punk, they put a refreshing twist on the genre that had become way too wrapped up in its pretence of nihilism and anti-establishment sentiment.

Dont get me wrong, Buzzcocks were both of those things, but they managed to do it in a way where they really gave you something to think about. Pete Shelley and Steve Diggles lyrics went into more depth about their surroundings than any of their contemporaries could ever have hoped to do, perhaps except for The Clash.

Buzzcocks showed that as a spirit or ethos, when tinkered with, punk could be an even more potent beast than the one the likes of Sex Pistols exuded. Inspired by the likes of Velvet Underground, The Stooges, Can and a lot of the other German stuff, frontman Pete Shelley was always interested in artists that were more on the noisy side but were funny as well, and it showed.

This divergence from the norms is what endeared the band to fans. In addition to being one of the most iconoclastic groups of the first British punk wave, Buzzcocks are also cemented in popular culture for another reason. This is the show they organised on June 4th, 1976, atThe Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester. This wasnt any old show, though. Organised by the then-unknown pair of Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley, who were students at Bolton Technical College making their first waves under the moniker Buzzcocks, the show galvanised the city. Those in attendance would go on to become some of the biggest and most important names in British music. These included members of Joy Division, Morrissey, Mark E. Smith and John Cooper Clarke. Hell, even Mick Hucknall of Simply Red was watching on.

Whilst we could go on about those in attendance, the gig was also significant for another reason. It was the band who headlined the show, the vanguard of the nascent British punk movement, who would go on to become one of the most iconic punk bands of all time; Sex Pistols.

Devoto andShelleyhad read a review of one of their London shows in theNMEand were totally enthralled. In a retrospective interview with The British Library back in 2016, Pete Shelley, Steve Diggle and ex-manager, Richard Boon looked back on those momentous days.

For about ten minutes, the trio set the scene. They discussed the dire situation that Britain and Manchester before music found themselves in back in the mid-1970s. Shelley explained: In those days, it was a whole different country, you see. Everybody was into heavy metal, but it wasnt as widdly-widdly, things like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. There was a lot of Blues, and it was all to do with how many notes you could fit into your twenty-minute guitar solo.

Then, the interviewer asked the burning question: What gave you the idea to bring the Sex Pistols up to Manchester?. Speaking of the time they first heard about Sex Pistols, Shelley said: In February, there was one day we were in the coffee bar and Howard had bought a copy of theNME.

He continued: We saw this review, and it said they did a Stooges song. If theyd have said they did a Faces or Small Faces song, wed have flipped over and carried on going. But because they did a Stooges song, we thought, Theres another band who likes The Stooges!'

Perplexed but excited that another set of people their age were into The Stooges, Shelley recalled: That evening we drove down to stop at Richards. At the time, Boon was studying at Reading University, and that night Sex Pistols were playing locally. Of the experience of seeingSex Pistolsplay live for the first time, Boon said it was just inspiring.

The rest was history. That review and the explicit mention of Iggy and The Stooges helped kick off a wave of music that would completely change British culture. It is a great reminder that music is nothing but linear and a clear reflection of just how pervasive Iggy and The Stooges influence was.

Watch the Buzzcocks interview below.

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How The Stooges are linked to the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and a very famous Manchester concert - Far Out Magazine

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Books on the less-than-famous Max Stirner (1806-1856) are rare, but an intrepid author, Jacob Blumenfeld, has found something of note for the contemporary reader. Stirners only volume, The Ego and Its Own (1844), has been called both the most revolutionary book ever written and the worst book ever written. His thought has sparked the interest of anarchists, libertarians, existentialists, Bohemians, nihilists, and more. Stirner certainly presses a certain form of atheism to its ultimate end. Karl Marx wrote against Stirner in The German Ideology (1846), which may be a good prima facie reason to read Stirner; but, of course, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Given his philosophy, I wonder if Stirner had any friends at all although he did dedicate his book to My Sweetheart. Yet just possibly Stirner can inspire us to adopt a radical iconoclasm that frees us to resist all ideologies and find radical freedom.

Blumenfelds approach is to expropriate Stirners thought in the spirit of Stirner:

I will now reconstruct the strange logic of Stirners argument, step by step. My aim is to give a consistent reading of the text, articulated not in the order Stirner himself laid out, but as I reconstruct it through the text, perhaps even despite it. As Fred Madison said in David Lynchs Lost Highway, I like to remember things my own way. Not necessarily the way they happened. This is one way through the twists and turns of Stirners argument, my way.

Nevertheless, the author does also take pains to explicate Stirner in terms of Stirners own thought. Indeed, in the long Chapter Two, My Stirner, Blumenfeld never seems to correct or amplify Stirner, so its sometimes hard to know if he is using Stirner as raw material for his own views or if he is agreeing with Stirner himself. He does advocate more for Stirner than critique him. And we should, Blumenfeld claims, resist the temptation to criticize Stirner as a philosopher who gave us a system. That was Marxs error. Rather, Stirner is a philosophical provocateur who need not be held to standards of consistency or even intelligibility. Nevertheless, in reading this book, we must ask Is it true that Stirner means X? and Is X true?

It is true that Stirner encouraged his readers to consume his work however they wanted. Consider Stirners view of truth:

Truth is dead, a letter, a word, a material that I can use up. All truth by itself is dead, a corpse; it is alive only in the same way as my lungs are alive namely, in the measure of my own vitality. Truths are material, like vegetable or weed; as to whether vegetable or weed, the decision lies in me (p.105).

Of course, Stirner wants us to take this statement as true as corresponding to reality otherwise there is no reason to write it. The assertion of truth claims as being true is a necessary quality of any discourse even the discourse that denies this fact. Even saying Theres no such thing as truth is necessarily asserting that very proposition to be true. Moreover, if a philosopher contradicts himself, then his philosophy is illogical at that point, since a pair of real (as opposed to superficial) contradictions cannot both be true. And if a contradiction is found, the question then becomes how much that contradiction matters to a philosophical system. Some contradictions are minor. Others bring the whole system down into a pile of ruins. Nevertheless, one might still scavenge a few pieces of rubble for use in another edifice. Myself, I am hard pressed to find any usable stones in Stirners work.

Blumenfeld plies his trade with the tools of the continental tradition of philosophy. He relates Stirners ideas to the work of Foucault, Derrida, Heidegger, Levinas, and Badiou. But he also places Stirner in his historical and philosophical context, which consists largely of his relation to Hegel, Fichte, and Marx. So what was Stirners big idea and what of it?

First, the title of Stirners magnum (and only) opus, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1844), is difficult to translate. It has been rendered as The Ego and Its Own, but others have translated it as The Unique One and Its Property. Its thesis is that each individual is unique and cannot be subsumed under any broader category even the category of human. In other words, we define ourselves for ourselves, and should not let ourselves be defined by God, the Good, the state, the culture, or anything else. The Stirnerian self is neither a creature of God nor a member of a social class, such as citizen or worker, nor a mere member of a biological species. To be defined or identified by anything alien to oneself is both to be limited, and to be made into the property of someone or something else. To submit to any ideology, religion, or philosophy outside of oneself is to become enslaved to spooks or specters that do not exist. All abstractions applied to the unique one must be rejected. For someone to claim that there are objective abstract categories beyond the unique one, is to suffer alienation from ones own potency as a creator. That is, I am depriving myself of my rightful power through something unreal. Thus, to think I have moral responsibilities say, to not murder a fellow human being simply because I am a human being, is a false reification of a mere idea into an objective (and absolute) reality. Loving your neighbor as yourself becomes doubly impossible: there is no neighbor (a spook) and there are no demands of love (another spook). Stirners solution is the consistent affirmation of the creative nothing of the unique one. When I know that all things are nothing to me, I resist both reification and alienation. The price of this endeavor, however, is the eradication of any given meaning, purpose, or value to life. Heres the rub that Blumenfeld wants to avoid: nihilism.

Perhaps the unique one in the titles translation is better than ego for Stirners use of the German word einzige. This is because Stirner has a particular idea of the individual in mind, as a evaluating entity who subjects all of his experience to his own expropriation and exploitation. In this sense, the unique one takes ownership of its property by its sheer assertion. One thinks here of Nietzsches idea that the strong those who most consistently exercise the will to power create values for themselves. But Blumenfeld notes that Stirner goes further than Nietzsche, since the will to power is for Stirner but another spook another false idealization of whats not there, and the unique one would be subsumed and alienated from its creative energies by employing the idea.

Some have accused Nietzsche of plagiarizing Stirner. But if so, Stirner could not object, since Nietzsche would be thereby exercising his own unique power over an object of consumption, and plagiarism would be only another spook to exorcise through autonomous valuation and expropriation.

So what of the title of this book on Stirner, All Things are Nothing to Me? Blumenfeld takes this phrase as the master concept for Stirner. The unique one grants whatever value there is to anything outside of itself. But all things are no thing in themselves; or, nothing has value power over me, the unique one. So, all things mean nothing to me. Even the unique one is a nothing, since it cannot be categorized abstractly or labeled essentially. Stirner claims it cannot even be named; and thus, like the Buddha, Stirner advocates ineffabilism at the core of his philosophy. This something I know not what (to steal a phrase from John Locke), called for convenience the unique one, is ravenous, rapacious, and utterly singular. And somehow, contrary to the dictum ex nihilo nihil fit (Out of nothing comes nothing), it manages to create meaning out of its own nothingness.

Moreover, Stirners quest for absolute autonomy alienates him from any moral truths outside of his own subjective property-making. Yet to deny objective moral truths is both counterintuitive and counterfactual. It is morally wrong to torture the innocent for pleasure, full stop. Female genital mutilation is an offense against women wherever and whenever it occurs, full stop. Human trafficking is wrong, full stop. Humans have certain inalienable rights, as The American Declaration of Independence puts it. The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights (1948) agrees when it affirms the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. These ideas are not spooks, they are truths. Stirners paltry if big-talking ego is helpless to falsify or relativize them. There is such a thing as intrinsic moral meaning. The best I can say about Stirner here, is that at least he recognized that if there is no God and no objective moral values, then the unique one had to be self-referentially confined have no external reference point for its judgements and thus have no recourse to anything beyond its arbitrary positing of value. If this is not nihilism, then nihilism does not exist. But nihilism does exist, and nihilism is false, given the objective existence of the moral truths just mentioned, and many more.

A final chapter assesses Stirners relation to Marx and communism. (Blumenfeld is sympathetic to the communist tradition, having co-translated a book called Communism for Kids.) Marx and Stirner seem in many ways to be opposites, but Blumenfeld takes Stirners to be a kind of prelude to Marxs account of alienation and liberation. Stirner advocated an insurrection against all authority outside the unique one, but Marx went on to identify the particular social forces that subject people to class ideologies. This, at least, was how Marx used Stirner and Blumenfeld tends to agree. But would not Stirner simply disavow Marxism as just another ism another spook needing exorcism since it trades on so many abstractions, such as the party, the proletariat, the state, and the very idea of class, without which concepts Marxism dissolves? Moreover, Marxs theory of history as dialectical materialism, is a Spook of spooks, because it identifies a world-historical process encompassing all societies and individuals. If Stirner held any political doctrine it would be anarchism, which is the opposite of collectivism, the essence of Marxism.

Prof. Douglas Groothuis 2021

Douglas Groothuis is Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary.

All Things are Nothing To Me: The Unique Philosophy of Max Stirner, by Jacob Blumenfeld, Zero Books, 2018, 155pp, 11.99 pb

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All Things are Nothing To Me by Jacob Blumenfeld | Issue 146 - Philosophy Now

With help from Renuka Rayasam and Tyler Weyant

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks to reporters as she leaves the U.S. Capitol. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

PROGRESSIVES PILGRIMAGE It is an article of faith among most Democrats that progressives will always cave to their more centrist colleagues when the time comes to vote on major legislation. And yet, on the brink of a historic bout of congressional chaos, the exact opposite appears to be happening.

Over the past few days, the left has been galvanized by the idea of voting down the bipartisan infrastructure package unless their moderate counterparts first provide some commitments on the party-line social spending and climate bill. That sentiment could change at any moment. But theres one reason it might not: Instead of facing the usual chastisement from prominent Democratic-leaning pundits, progressives are being cheered on for their intemperance.

Kill the Bill, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo wrote this morning. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie tweeted his endorsement: Either both bills pass or neither does.

For some in the party, this is legislative nihilism. Shooting the hostage may work as a concept in a Keanu Reeves movie. But in Washington, it is considered a self-destructive hissy fit.

For progressives, however, its been lovely if a bit bewildering to watch.

Its a beautiful sight, Rebecca Katz, a longtime progressive operative, said of liberal lawmakers linking arms, grabbing the detonator, and pointing menacingly at the BIF. This is the most together theyve been. I mean, I cant remember the last time weve seen something like this. Ive been retweeting Jonathan Chait and Hillary Clinton people today. Its very confusing.

During the Clinton and Obama years, progressives routinely swallowed their pride, as Katz noted. The most classic case came during the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Back then, the progressive ecosystem rallied around the public option as a litmus test of the bills intellectual virtue. Then they agreed to pare it back so that states could opt out, then so states could opt in. Then they dropped the concept entirely, replacing it with a provision that would have opened up Medicare coverage for those 55 and older. And when that didnt get the votes, they begrudgingly moved forward without it with one exception.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), a lifelong single payer advocate, was the last progressive holdout on the ACA. Because a number of centrists were already opposed to the bill, his vote truly mattered. To win it, Barack Obama brought him on Air Force One and called him onstage at an event in Cleveland, where the crowd encouraged the congressman to vote yes.

Kucinich did. The bill passed. And, ultimately, Democrats were and are grateful for it.

So why is that model not happening today? Why arent Rep. Pramila Jayapal and the squad bending to moderate senators and centrist House counterparts?

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at [emailprotected]. Or contact tonights author at [emailprotected] and on Twitter at @samstein.

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BLAME (OR THANK) OBAMACARE For starters, the progressive universe is markedly different from the one that existed in 2010, in large part because of Obamacare and its aftermath.

The progressive lawmakers most vocal about stopping the infrastructure bill unless they get assurances on the reconciliation bill first were elected after the passage of the ACA. The progressive writers who covered the Obamacare debate now find themselves leading newsrooms or in prominent perches at opinion pages. And the prevailing view among progressives of that experience is not just that, ultimately, a good legislative outcome was reached, but that the party made perverse, perhaps unnecessary, tradeoffs that did political damage to the law and to the Democratic Party.

The public option was, after all, a popular component of the bill. But the accommodations went beyond that. The bills authors also delayed the distribution of subsidies to buy insurance to, in part, help keep the price tag under $1 trillion, a symbolic number that bothered moderates. That delay meant that no one felt one of the most tangible, positive, impacts of the law for years. As one operative who worked on the bill put it: That was suicidal.

The progressive faction today looks at that history and asks: Why, exactly, should we do that again?

The reconciliation package is popular. It is the Biden agenda. If its passage is materially threatened because moderates having been satiated by getting the infrastructure deal done no longer feel compelled to support it, then the party will once again be taking the suicidal path. Or so progressives believe.

Preserving the Biden political strength and Democratic brand heading into 2022 seems to be held most strongly by progressives here, said Faiz Shakir, a longtime progressive operative and Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign manager. Frankly, it should be held more broadly.

Progressives say they feel no compulsion to fold. Nor do they feel theyve been pressured to do so by the Biden White House. Collectively, they believe their position is essential in preventing Democratic self-sabotage even as others question the sanity of risking both bills for the benefit of one.

PUNDIT IN THE ARENA In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for George W. Bushs 2004 reelection campaign and current television anti-Trump pundit, started thinking about running for office. His resolve built all summer as Texas GOP leaders led special sessions focused on conservative priorities. But Dowd told Nightly's Renuka Rayasam he only recently decided to run for Texas lieutenant governor as a Democrat. Dowd had started his career running campaigns for Democrats, including former Texas Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, but became a Republican and started working for Bush in 1999.

On Tuesday night, Dowd filed paperwork that would allow him to start raising funds for his campaign, and he opened his campaign office this morning. He spoke with Nightly earlier today about his improbable run to beat well-funded, incumbent Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and why he switched parties again. This conversation has been edited.

Why arent you running against Patrick in the Republican primary?

The Republican Party as all of us knew it is gone. Its no longer a small D democratic party. Its an autocratic party. It is totally supportive of all of these awful things that are being done around the country, especially here in Texas. In my view, an enlightened Republican is something for the history books. And so the only small D democratic party left is the big D Democratic Party.

Have you talked to Beto ORourke?

I have. Hes a friend of mine. Beto was very energetic and supportive of me making the step forward. Im waiting on him to make his final decision and Im sure Ill see him along the trail.

If hes the gubernatorial nominee and Im lieutenant governor nominee, Im sure therell be times we campaign together.

How do you plan to distance yourself from former President George W. Bush, who is not exactly popular among Democrats?

I dont know how I would distance myself more than publicly breaking with him in the front page of The New York Times while he was president of the United States.

But its already an issue. Plus voters who look you up on Wikipedia will see that you helped Bush win reelection.

My political history is public knowledge. They can Google me for 10 minutes and find out all of the things Ive done. Im hopeful and have faith people are going to judge me for who I am right now and not what jersey I wore 15 years ago.

Have you spoken to former President Bush about your Texas run?

I havent talked to former President Bush in more than a decade.

How do you plan on winning in a state that hasnt elected a Democrat statewide in decades?

Im undefeated running Democratic campaigns in Texas.

That was a long time ago.

Texas is going to become a purple state because of the dissatisfaction with the Republicans, combined with the vast demographic change. Obviously, none of those are assured at a moment in time. I think Dan Patrick and Greg Abbott sped that process up. I consider Texas, at best, a light red state. In many ways, its a non-voting state.

Beto got within 2.5 points in the senate race against Ted Cruz. If he had done better among Independents, he had done just slightly better with Republicans, hed be U.S. senator.

But hes not U.S. senator. Its going to be a hard race to win.

Anything good in life is tough.

Congress primed to avert shutdown despite remaining conflicts: The Senate appears on track to prevent a government shutdown in less than 36 hours, as Democrats and Republicans wade through last-minute impediments to a stopgap funding bills speedy passage. Despite lingering issues, the measure could pass the upper chamber as soon as tonight or Thursday, with federal cash set to expire on Thursday at midnight. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a fiscal hawk notorious for blocking spending bills, indicated that he wouldnt object to quickly passing the continuing resolution, which would keep the government funded through Dec. 3. Once the Senate passes the stopgap bill, the House could move quickly to approve the measure, as well.

Trump donor: Corey Lewandowski made unwanted sexual advances: A Donald Trump donor is accusing Corey Lewandowski, one of the former presidents longtime top aides, of making unwanted sexual advances toward her at a Las Vegas charity event over the weekend. Trashelle Odom, the wife of Idaho construction executive John Odom, alleges that Lewandowski repeatedly touched her, including on her leg and buttocks, and spoke to her in sexually graphic terms. Odom said that Lewandowski stalked her throughout the evening.

GOP could split Colorados House seats under new congressional map: Colorados new independent redistricting commission passed a congressional map late Tuesday that would give Republicans a decent shot at controlling four of eight House seats in a fast-growing state. In a marathon, six-and-a-half-hour Zoom meeting, all but one of the 12 commissioners agreed on one of nine proposals just minutes before their midnight Mountain Time deadline. The map now goes to the state Supreme Court, which is almost certain to give its sign-off.

Japanese outgoing Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga (L) receives a bouquet of flowers from former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, after Kishida was announced the winner of the Liberal Democrat Party leadership election in Tokyo. | Carl Court/Getty Images

Former foreign minister to become new Japanese PM: Former Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida won the governing partys leadership election today and is set to become the next prime minister, facing the tasks of reviving a pandemic-hit economy and ensuring a strong alliance with Washington to counter growing regional security risks. Kishida replaces outgoing party leader Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who is stepping down after serving only one year.

Congressional panel slams more baby food brands over heavy metals: Several leading baby food makers havent done enough to screen for neurotoxic heavy metals like arsenic, lead and cadmium in their products, according to a new House Oversight subcommittee report released today. The report follows up on an investigation from the same panel earlier this year, which found concerning levels of heavy metal contamination across many popular baby and childrens food products on the market, from rice puffs to infant cereals and purees findings that enraged parents and put pressure on the FDA to set some standards.

Nightly asks you: Has the Delta variant led you to change you or your familys Thanksgiving or holiday plans? Use our form to send us your responses, and well include select answers in a future edition.

More than 200,000

The ridership of Washingtons Metro train system on Friday, the first time ridership had topped 200,000 on a weekday since the pandemic began, according to the transit agency.

The view atop Clingmans Dome in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. | Tyler Weyant

ROCKY SHOTS TENNESSEE Nightlys Tyler Weyant writes:

Its my third day back from a vacation in East Tennessee. I posted some pictures of my trip on Twitter. A lovely scenic view hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One of the many bears I saw, this one hanging from a fence next to our house. Me, making a very weird face that I thought was a frown at the time, attempting to make fun of Tennessee football fans.

But of course, this wasnt really the vacation I went on. When we post our photos on social media, we never show the whole picture. Who wants photos of traffic jams, or 50-minute waits for restaurants?

There were plenty of other incidents that I could have shared: Me walking back to a car to grab a mask I thought I wouldnt need at a Lexington, Va., Sheetz, only to end up with a subpar sandwich because they were out of all chicken. Me nervously removing and redonning my mask at a restaurant where a woman within earshot coughed incessantly. And my family being the only masked people inside the China Bazaar knife and martial arts store (though I shouldve posted the life-sized Thundercats sword).

I posted Instagram photos of the fun we had at Hillbilly Golf, a mini golf course on the side of a hill that requires a tram to get to. But I didnt quite get around to finding a shot of the bucket of hand sanitizer that you had to dip your golf club into. Speaking of hand sanitizer, I shouldve had someone capture one of the approximately 9 trillion times I sought a dispenser at Dollywood.

We all know the images of our lives on social media, while maybe not complete lies, are seen through the rosiest of spectacles. Our decision-making on what to post makes us something like one-person TV showrunners: How much pandemic do people want to see in their living rooms, or, um, on their toilets, if any?

Im tired of Covid, and so is everyone who follows me. So we end up with a sanitized version of reality, minus the sanitizer. And we feel a bit hollow afterward.

Then again, there is a solution to this problem: Never tweet, especially on vacation.

A message from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network:

For every person who has cervical cancer detected early through the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (NBCCEDP), nine others dont have the chance. We must end this divide.

The NBCCEDP provides lifesaving cancer screenings in low-income communities and to uninsured and underinsured Americans, but fewer than 2 in 10 eligible people received breast or cervical cancer screenings through this critical safety net program. Increased funding for the NBCCEDP can help ensure more people get the care they need from the program and may even save states money on treatment costs when cancer is detected at earlier stages.

Tell Congress to take action and prioritize health. Tell Congress to increase funding for the NBCCEDP.

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Why progressives really may kill the bill - Politico

It has long been a central tenet of mainstream economic theory that public fears of inflation tend to be self-fulfilling.

Now though, a cheeky and even gleeful takedown of this idea has emerged from an unlikely source, a senior adviser at the Federal Reserve named Jeremy B. Rudd. His 27-page paper, published as part of the Feds Finance and Economics Discussion Series, has become what passes for a viral sensation among economists.

The paper disputes the idea that peoples expectations for future inflation matter much for the level of inflation experienced today. That is especially important right now, in trying to figure out whether the current inflation surge is temporary or not.

But the Rudd paper is part of something bigger still. It reflects a broader rethinking of core ideas about how the economy works and how policymakers, especially at central banks, try to manage things. This shift has also included debates about the relationship between unemployment and inflation, how deficit spending affects the economy, and much more.

In effect, many of the key ideas underlying economic policy during the Great Moderation the period of relatively steady growth and low inflation from the mid-1980s to 2007 that also seems to be a high-water mark for economists overconfidence increasingly look to be at best incomplete, and at worst wrong.

It is vivid evidence that macroeconomics, despite the thousands of highly intelligent people over centuries who have tried to figure it out, remains, to an uncomfortable degree, a black box. The ways that millions of people bounce off one another buying and selling, lending and borrowing, intersecting with governments and central banks and businesses and everything else around us amount to a system so complex that no human fully comprehends it.

Macroeconomics behaves like were doing physics after the quantum revolution, that we really understand at a fundamental level the forces around us, said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, in an interview. Were really at the level of Galileo and Copernicus, just figuring out the basics of how the universe works.

It requires more humility and acceptance that not everything fits into one model yet, he said.

Or put less politely, as Mr. Rudd writes in the first sentence of his paper, Mainstream economics is replete with ideas that everyone knows to be true, but that are actually arrant nonsense.

One reason for this, he posits: The economy is a complicated system that is inherently difficult to understand, so propositions like these the arrant nonsense in question are all that saves us from intellectual nihilism.

And from that starting point, a staff economist at the worlds most powerful central bank went on to say, in effect, that his own employer has been focused on the wrong things for the last few decades.

Mainstream policymakers, very much including Mr. Rudds bosses at the Fed, believe that inflation is, in large part, self-fulfilling that what people expect future inflation to look like has an ability to shape how much prices rise in the near term.

In the common telling, the Great Inflation of the 1970s got going because people came to believe inflation would keep spiraling. The surge in gasoline prices wasnt simply a frustrating development, but a harbinger of things to come, so people needed to demand higher raises, and businesses could feel confident charging higher prices for most everything.

In this story, the great achievement of the Fed in the early 1980s was to break this cycle by re-establishing credibility that it would not allow sustained high inflation (though at the cost of a severe recession).

That is why todays discussions over the inflation outlook often spend a lot of time focusing on things like what bond prices suggest inflation will be five or 10 years from now, or how people answer survey questions about what they expect.

Mr. Rudd argues that there is no solid evidence that the conventional story of the 1970s describes the real mechanism through which inflation takes place. He says theres a simpler explanation consistent with the data: that businesses and workers arrive at prices and wages based on the conditions theyve experienced in the recent past, not some abstract future forecast.

For example, when inflation has been low in the recent past, workers might not demand raises as they would in a world where inflation was high; after all, their existing paychecks go pretty much as far as they used to. You dont need some theory involving inflation expectations to get there.

Some economists who are sympathetic to the idea that central bankers have overly fetishized precise measurements of inflation expectations arent ready to fully dismiss the idea.

For example, Mr. Posen, a former Bank of England policymaker, says there remains a simple and hard-to-dispute idea about inflation expectations supported by lots of history: that if people distrust a countrys monetary system, inflation shocks can spiral upward. Economic policy credibility matters. But that isnt the same as assuming that some survey or bond market measure of what will happen to inflation in the distant future is particularly meaningful for forecasting the near future.

It has been a noble lie that has become a critical part of the catechism of global monetary policy, that long-term inflation expectations are not just interesting but are a decisive determinant of real-time inflation, said Paul McCulley, a former Pimco chief economist, commenting on Mr. Rudds paper.

This isnt the only way in which basic precepts underlying economic policy are shifting beneath economists feet.

Particularly prominently, for years central bankers believed there was a tight relationship between the unemployment rate and inflation, known as the Phillips Curve. Over the course of the 2000s, though, that relationship appeared to weaken and become a less reliable guideline for how to set policy.

Similarly, interest rates and inflation fell worldwide, for reasons that scholars are still trying to understand fully. That implied a lower neutral interest rate, or the rate that neither stimulates nor slows the economy, than was widely believed to be the case as recently as the mid-2010s.

In many ways, the Feds policies just before the pandemic were aimed at incorporating those lessons and embracing sustained lower interest rates and the possibility of lower unemployment than many in the mainstream thought reasonable a few years earlier.

In the realm of fiscal policy, some conventional wisdom has also been upended in the last few years. It was thought that large government debt issuance would risk causing a spike in interest rates and crowd out private sector investment. But in that period, huge budget deficits have been paired with low interest rates and abundant credit for businesses.

All of this makes it a challenging time for central bankers and other shapers of policy. If youre a policymaker and you dont have robust confidence in the parameters of the game you are managing, it makes your job a whole lot more difficult, Mr. McCulley said.

But if you are in charge of making economic policy that affects the lives of millions, you cant simply shrug your shoulders and say, We dont know how the world works, so what are we supposed to do? You look at the evidence available, and make the best judgment you can.

And then, if you think it turns out you were wrong about something, publish a sassy paper to try to get it right.

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How Does the Economy Work? A New Fed Paper Suggests Nobody Really Knows - The New York Times

Thoughtful news consumers might have read last weeks announcement of an audit of the 2020 election results in four Texas counties and pondered its purpose. Why would former President Donald Trump call for such an audit after losing badly in almost 100 previous recounts, audits and lawsuits aimed at finding widespread voter fraud? Why would he make such a play in Texas, a state he won? Whats the endgame here?

Serious conservatives who are willing to put principle before politics people like Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley know that this audit wont change the outcome of an election that is almost a year old.

The conspiracy theorists who want to come up with all these ways or reasons why this election wasnt right they might very well find something else [to doubt], Whitley told The Texas Tribune. Its time to move on.

Nor will the audit ensure more accurate counts in future elections. That issue was explored thoroughly by the state Legislature this year, resulting in a host of new voting rules, many of which this newspaper supported. Elected bodies of seated public servants are the proper venue for such considerations.

But if this election audit isnt about changing the last election or improving future elections, what is it about?

In a word, cynicism.

This stunt, like so many that have tried to pass for public service in recent years, is about feeding the monster of populist nihilism. And the Republicans in charge of the state should know better.

But over the past 12 years, extending back through the Trump administration and to the birthers and pizzagate loonies during the Obama administration, too often folks on the right have given quarter to those peddling conspiracy.

Republicans have always fostered a healthy skepticism about government effectiveness. We remember President Ronald Reagans timeless quip in 1986: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are Im from the government and Im here to help.

But now, more than a third of a century after that quote, too many representatives of Reagans party have traded healthy, small-government skepticism for pugnacious, anti-government disillusion. The results are predictably devastating. A negative virtue can never produce a positive vision, so the candidate who can carry the cynics of a party is not the candidate who can best light the way forward, but the one who can sow the most turmoil.

Republicans havent cornered the market on undermining public confidence in elections without first proving wide-spread fraud in court. Lets not forget that progressive standard-bearer Stacey Abrams still hasnt conceded a 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia. But many Republicans have elevated this tactic to virtuoso levels.

As journalists, we welcome a healthy dose of skepticism, especially for politicians. But theres a difference between skepticism that asks probing questions and cynicism that denies plain facts.

And that is where this action is taking voters. This is not an audit; its a training drill, a catechism in denying reality and exalting fear.

This audit wont make our elections fairer or more accurate. But it will encourage many Americans to dismiss facts, disrupt the functions of government, and denigrate public service. And in that regard, what we all should fear is that it will succeed.

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Election audit will build cynicism, not fairness - The Dallas Morning News