Experimenting with Content
Instead of my usual longer form posts, which I will continue to publish as time goes on, I want to start experimenting with sharing different types of things on this Substack.
So, starting this week, I want to share three pieces of media that have made an impact on me that week and why you might want to check them out too.
The New Labour Revolution (A Doc)
This is an interesting series on how Gordon Brown and Tony Blair took over the British Labour Party in the 1980s and 1990s. To me it is an excellent example of how determined young people can take over a political machine and reorient its direction.
My takeaways:
Every political realignment needs two things:
A popular demand for change.
An intellectual foundation for a new direction in which to lead.
It is not an iron law that political parties naturally respond to shifts in the popular mood. [But change is also possible]
Elections only happen every few years. Parties can lag for many cycles in a row, and the electoral mood can shift in those intervening years.
If the new intellectual foundation is bad, parties can revert back to failed ideas and directions.
A determined campaign by young leaders to understand how parties work can yield results over a sufficient period of time.
Gordon Brown is a beast, but he didn’t have enough ruthless ambition to personally take risks to take over. But Tony Blair did. Blair had that dog in him.
The Enlightenment (A Book)
This book is an excellent summation of the ideas that constitute what we now describe as the enlightenment. By understanding these ideas, we can better understand how far we’ve strayed from the intellectual legacy that was the foundation of our American experiment in self-government.
My Takeaways:
The chattering class treats people like sheep. The CNN pundits don’t think that you can be trusted to think for yourself. This is a radical departure from the enlightenment’s starting point of citizens as reasonable and reasoning individuals.
Today, we see far too much stereotyping in the media.
The plebs are thought of as unthinking idiots who need to be spoon fed opinions.
Many believe that “dangerous” ideas must be sanitized by BigTech or government censors.
I don’t think enough people defend enlightenment values in public discourse.
On the Right, we have a resurgent neo-pagan, might-makes-right ideology that has gained increasing purchase through the Trump years. Suddenly, everything is a revenge mission where the ends always justify the means. All political disputes are war by other means. Opposing factions can no longer disagree based on reason alone, and disputes are often settled with political purges. Party members must take evidentially unsupportable positions on whether the 2020 election was stolen. Reasoning from actual facts is dead.
On the Left, we have this idea that somehow dissenting against the Democratic leadership weakens the party and therefore opens the door to President Trump in 2024. Differences should be suppressed, the President shouldn’t be primaried, etc.
The leadership on both the right and left converge in the view that people shouldn’t say things that they secretly believe out loud. There is no room for reason, only superficial unity. This is not how America is supposed to work, and I think the trend is very clear that America can’t sustain in this fashion forever.
Ulysses (Poem)
I’ve bolded the lines I like the most.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,