Cause For Optimism?

Content Warning: Religious Violence

I’m not going to wade into the discussion surrounding Rebecca Solnit’s opinion piece [sol] that argues we should be optimistic, because the right-wing activity we are currently seeing is an extinction burst – progress is being made, yadda yadda. Mano comments on it over at his blog, [mano] and Crip Dyke weighs in over at Pervert Justice [pj]. To me, it’s just parochial – the US, the world’s economic and military super-power, is struggling over its internal rifts but mostly it’s still the smug self-congratulatory shitberg it’s always been. Arguing about whether a country founded upon slavery and genocide remains more or less fascistic is to be wearing rose-colored glasses so opaque you could use them to protect your eyes while welding.

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In Defense of Nihilism

One of the most influential books in my life has been Robert Paul Wolff’s In Defense of Anarchism [stderr] [wc]. It clarified my politics, to me, and made me able to understand why it was that I was so suspicious of politicians of all stripes. Taken along with Popkin’s History of Skepticism from Savanarola to Bayle [stderr] [wc] it made me feel as though I suddenly understood some things differently and in a more powerful way: skepticism, nihilism, and anarchism are all an alternative to politics or philosophy as usually practiced. That’s a dramatic claim but please let me try to justify it.

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