It amazes me that the reaction thinking can swallow up social movements into the madness of the mob. Yes, when layout on a spectrum, it is only a minority position, but, in which case, the reaction thinking becomes the majority outlook through the echo chamber of the techne.
We are doing the echo chamber now in this social media environment. But there is a difference between the minority of intellectuals and the mob position. So, it is estimated that Trumpism works on a quarter of the American population. A morality of a mob which is a minority on the spectrum of the American demography. As Richard Hofstadter showed, back in the early 1960s, in the course of American history, intellectuals were/are only a minority on the spectrum. What tends to occur is schooling of intellectuals.
Even with the intellectuals of the opposite position to our own intellectualism, it at least begins, with something less than reaction thinking we see today. For myself, for example, I am strongly opposed to the position of William F. Buckley Jr., and his American South neo-conservatism. However, I see in Buckley an intellectual position, in the 1960s, which could not be dismissed as reaction and mob thinking as Trumpism is in the 2020s.
Buckley’s earlier neo-conservativism work on a certain logic which has been skewed by Trumpism. Not x (liberalism) but y (a new conservatism). Make no mistake, though, in the context of the 1960s civil rights movement, Buckley was being reactionary, but being much smarter about it than the current mob. He formulated a new position for conservative thinking, one based on Southern State Rights and redescribed as “the Southern Way of Life“. This became the intellectual basis, over the four to five decades, to Trumpism, through the Moral Majority and the New Christian Right movements, and secularised during the late Bush administration into “Might is Right” (“USA, USA, USA“) movement.
The mob’s logic — all minority positions — is x = zero (liberalism offers nothing for me personally), so non-x (fascist thinking). Forgive my poor logic writing here. The better logicians are welcome to formulate the mathematical language in its better expression. But the point is historiographical solid. Historical forgetfulness leads a population into the spiral history theory of stupidity.
What is needed? Conversations and agreements to the compatibilism, as I have explained in my short piece, Finding Peace from the Culture-History War: A Historiographical Message for the Times.
My concern is that we have Buckley’s Chance to turn matters around, and we are trap on the spiral of eternal return (see links above, “the spiral history theory of stupidity”; each word here has a different link in the phrase, and the same with other phrasing above).
What humans need and want of life is Peace, if also Survival and Flourishing. This is what we have to keep foremost to Mind.
https://www.academia.edu/50114448/Finding_Peace_from_the_Culture_History_War_A_Historiographical_Message_for_the_Times
Featured Image:
Unknown photographer – “William F. Buckley Jr., The Art of Fiction No. 146” in The Paris Review. From Wikipedia.
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1395/the-art-of-fiction-no-146-william-f-buckley-jr The photograph was originally published online by Reuters/National Review in 2008 and guaranteed free non-commercial use; further information can be seen in the metadata. However, as a handout photo originally, it almost certainly emerged in the 1970s with no evident copyright notice, hence the chosen licensing information.
National Review Magazine founder William F. Buckley Jr. is seen in an undated handout photo.
Donald Trump speaks to record crowds at the Prairie Capital Convention Center in Springfield, IL on November 9th, 2015. Photo 62076674 | Donald Trump © Tommy Jeffers | Dreamstime.com
Neville Buch
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