If it were true that all Trump voters were ipso facto racist in intent (rather than simply in effect), it would be easier to dismiss them, but, alas, plenty, perhaps most, are just ignorant. The answer to "how could this happen" lies always—not just usually but always—in the material conditions. Such conditions are terrible for a great many people in this country—if you ask a seemingly normal working person why they're voting for Trump, they'll answer that their groceries cost way too much. That they have misidentified the succor for their ills is almost beside the point, except that it reinforces one's sense that it is impossible for quite ordinary people to work out what is happening in the world & why. (Of course it is true that Trump is as racist as anyone has ever been.)
No one mentioned the Weimar Republic. But the principle that only material conditions as bad as those of Weimar influence the political present is duly noted. I'm scribbling it in my copy of History & Class Consciousness.
Economic conditions are good by any relative measure here on planet Earth. And what I take issue with is the proposition that most tRump voters are not ipso facto racist but rather voting with their wallets and pocketbooks. To paraphrase Patrick, if tRump is the personification of his voters will, it is the will to be proud and open racists (or at the very least to silently enjoy the ignoble glee of watching immigrants and other minorities suffer). I see scant evidence that the typical GOP voter views the prospect of his presidency as yielding greater personal wealth. In fact, tRump never really makes that tRump University pitch to voters at large, yet his racist campaign promises have no bounds. And even GOP voters can’t be foolish enough to believe that this candidate who makes Machiavelli look like a social worker will offer greater government support services.
The anti-tRump meme from the last election, the one that said “Make racists afraid again,” was apt. But after the initial emergence of tRump, those voters who used to be afraid to show their true racist stripes are silently, and not so silently, adopting this cycle’s Democratic slogan in their own way — “we’re not going back.”
You're foolish if you think leading macroeconomic indicators are a reliable index of what life is like for average working people. Look at real wages since the 1960s:
What I said was if you ask the average working person why they're voting for Trump, they'll say that their groceries cost too much. Which is true, as various articles in recent months have shown again & again. They actually are worried about how far their dollar goes. Jobs reports and yield curves don't matter to anyone in that existential situation. Nor do they care that Weimar had it worse. Their struggles are real, & you can shill for the Democrats all you like without convincing them.
It's comforting to believe they're all just racists, but most of them couldn't tell you what Trump said about Haitians. Nor do they have a rosy view of government services. Most would say they're against welfare. That's not the point—the point is precisely that their incoherence explains their support for someone who hates them.
But you don't seem like you know any mechanics or janitors, who a generation ago would have been a lock for the Democrats. What changed is the long downturn that begins in 1973. It's at that scale that we need to understand economic trends. I'd encourage anyone who doubts it to read Robert Brenner or David Harvey or Paul Mattick.
If Trump wins, Democrats will have only themselves to blame, yet again. But I don't expect someone who simply repeats their talking points to understand.
I don’t doubt that they complain about their grocery bill, though it is less costly in real terms than most anyplace in the world. What I doubt is that they think their personal economic conditions will get better under tRump, particularly since that is hardly a pitch the candidate ever makes. And what he does promise ad nauseam with his “diseased racist rhetoric” is abundantly clear. It is delusional to assert that his voters are not buying what he is actually selling.
They’re not paying attention to what he’s selling, buddy, that’s the whole point. There’s the core of racist fanatic idiots & then there are millions of people who “don’t follow politics,” but they don’t like how things are so they figure they’ll vote for the other guy, or they’ll listen to some family member who claims Harris is a socialist, or all their friends are voting for Trump. I personally told a Trump supporter just last week about his family separation policy and the guy was flabbergasted. But keep telling yourself you know better.
not only all of this but I find it so strange that people dont bring up more the civil trial conviction of sexual assult. Given how regularly the criminal trials of money landuring and the illegal acts as president which had far reaching effects.
You have to look at demographics—urban vs. rural, black vs. white, etc. These tend to correlate with income differentials for obvious and unjust reasons (though class is not merely a matter of income).
I don't consider myself educated on matters of politics or history. Would you radically disagree with perhaps a more "conservative" amendment to your phrasing "...lies always—not just usually but always—in the material conditions" in comparison to something like "...lies often, and in typically in large part, in the material conditions..."?
Presumably you disagree, I'm just probing as to the degree to which you hold to that point of view. I'm not at all saying you're wrong. Perhaps the more I read, the more strongly I will tend towards that position (again, it's something I think explains in large part many, many things). I'm just not sure if it can go all the way.
I mean, it’s no secret that I’m a Marxist, which just means I'm convinced by the analysis of capitalism in Capital (esp vols 1 & 3). Have ideas ever had material effects on history, sure, but why? I’d argue you’re gonna find materialism at the bedrock. But exceptions probably could be adduced.
Fleeing the United States does seem like less and less of a half-joking hypothetical. But on a brighter note, please do translate Thomas, whatever the state of our country upon its publication, I would love to read that.
I am so appreciative of section III. I woke up this morning with usual crippling election anxiety and, picking up prisms, veils with a cup of coffee for the porch before the kids woke up, I actually thought to myself how much I would love you to expound here about the impending doom. Reading your writing always makes me feel better, even about terrible possibilities. And it has. I’m so afraid what the next four years might be like under Trump down here in the kingdom of Jeff Landry, where I think the manualist thomist horde will flock (or whatever hordes do) to make a laboratory for the new ressourcement of American theocracy.
The Didache is a much shorter (and much more appealing) text; perhaps you and your son would try your hand there? In any case, am happy to hear about your translation of Tao Te Ching; I was just revisiting your translation of the first portion of it yesterday.
I am applying to Cambridge to study; hopefully, that will happily take me away from the nightmare madhouse of American politics for at least one year.
While I am not a fan of Seraphim Rose, I've read his translation of the Tao. I don't know if it is any good, but it did get me interested in eastern religio/philosophical text.
It seems to be a consistent pattern that otherwise brilliant and insightful writers will frequently stoop to the banal and one-dimensional level of “orange man bad” or “Trump is literally Hitler” type rhetoric—usually regurgitated from skewed media narratives—as it pertains to this particular subject alone. It really suggests that there may be some truth to the notion of a “Trump derangement syndrome” which brings out the worst in even some of the greatest minds.
I am tempted to say something insulting, but it seems superfluous to do so. To call an evil degenerate Nazi-loving moron what he is hardly qualifies as derangement. To fail to recognize the aptness of such words qualifies as willful ignorance.
To be sure, Trump is easy to dislike; he’s certainly no role model for personal morals. Yet there’s arguably room for nuance regarding the relative merits of his substance and policy.
No, there is not. He has no substance (other than lard) and his only policies are persecution of immigrants, vengeance on his enemies, and pardoning himself. Please consult my previous reply for further clarification.
I'm sorry, but I must speak out. There is a coherent moral rationale to seeing one's vote for Kamala as a vote against Trump, for whom there is simply *no* moral excuse to support, full stop, and it's a rationale that I find as compelling as I do the competing reality that change cannot happen if good people are constantly coerced towards the lesser of two evils ad infinitum, but regardless:
What on Earth do you mean "out of the loop," and how can you abide a self-admitted fiction of such a profound magnitude for any reason?
I'm wholeheartedly convinced that we aren't given the moral luxury to abide any such fiction in the face of 42,000 + dead Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom are women and children, under her vice presidential watch - esp when she has, in response to questioning about whether she would as president even consider mitigating arms shipments to the Zionist entity, said something like, "I am unwavering in my support to Israel's security," which is the politically correct way of saying, "I will continue to supply them with the bombs they've used to depopulate Gaza" - and that that using the language of decency and intelligence to describe such a person amounts to a kind of insult to intelligence and even the most mundane forms of basic moral decency in the most disappointing of ways.
With love and the absolute totality of due respect, Dr. Hart, can we get a mumbling word about that?! Can we see a little bit of that "refusal to make obeisance" to the Slanderer, to the Archon of this Aeon, to the logic of power, oppression, and compromise on the mountain in your discourse surrounding this gigantic, blood-stained elephant in the room?! Are Palestinian lives not as precious as Ukrainian lives? Suffer me, a Middle Eastern and Qafqazi man, an honest, dignified answer, please, because my heart - like many hearts - is breaking.
42,000 + dead, over 120 journalists slaughtered, swaths of young children shot in the head and chest, civilian and humanitarian infrastructure eviscerated, from schools to government buildings to shelters and tents to hospitals (esp now, given current accelerations and the COMPLETE collapse of service infrastructure in Northern Gaza, as of yesterday), patients and refugees burned alive *before our very eyes.* In high definition. Viewable on YouTube. The soldiers of this "most precious ally" bragging about it on Tiktok and Instagram, where they document their revival of Shoah in beautiful technicolor for the entire world to see. Humanitarian and NGO volunteers from abroad slain and then thrown under rubble by the Zionist entity. Rape and torture being visited upon Palestinian prisoners *held without charge* at Sde Teiman and the US spokespeople using their boilerplate sweet-nothings to cover it up *under the Biden administration with Kamala as his VP.* A 19 year old acquaintance of mine, whose family I tried helping evacuate through fundraising, entering into martyrdom nearly 2 months ago when shrapnel from a US made bomb flew into his skull as he stood along the shores of the beach on the land of his father and his father's father, trying to get internet access, when the occupation forces dropped it. Mohammad "Medo" Halimy (of blessed memory).
Hind Rajab. Ismail al-Ghoul. Ahmed al-Najjar. Shaban al-Dalou. Aysenur Eygi. Muhammad Saeed Adel Abu Al-Rous. Musk Abdul Hay Sami Al-Halabi. Saba Ahmed Ali Al-Qazzaz. THOUSANDS of others - Allah yerhamhoum.
Would you comfort the families of any of these Shuhada by telling them that the woman who stood before AIPAC, wished them good morning, and called her address to them an "honor" in March of 2017 (https://youtu.be/McK8bPR8pzU) can be fictitiously thought of as "out of the loop" ? Or would you suffer to implore those, like me, who have been arrested, thrown into holding, and then released without charge for peacefully protesting university investments in the Zionist entity (with the Paschal Troparion on my lips and your writings regarding the radical moral ethos of Christian orthodoxy in my mind) that our Christian struggle for "the least among us" (Matthew 25:31–46) is united with greater fervor and witness to He Who overcame death by imagining, in the most beguilingly reactionary of fashions, this monster, this demon, to be positively possessed of some virtue in being less willing to extend her already inexcusably far-reaching cruel, callous disregard for human life than her more wicked, more intractable opponent.
I am not, here, inveighing against using a defensive vote, but the *fiction* of Kamala or any of these people as "intelligent" and especially as "decent" is neither necessary nor even helpful to the defensive aim, *and it matters* what language we use. It *matters* that we are morally consistent. I cannot find a single record of Christ compromising either in deed *or in word* anywhere in your own translation of the New Testament, and that alone should be instructive.
In the end, I may very well vote for Kamala as a defense against Trump and his demonic forces, but I may also vote third party; I'm torn, and I'm running out of time. No matter what, though, I cannot imagine Christ suffering to, though He did no such thing before Pilate, call Kamala anything other than a monster — than a malicious instrument of the same forces of atomization, division, power, oppression, and privilege that late neoliberal economics and all of their politics and, indeed, the logic of the current cosmic Aeon consist in. If you want to ask Him, you can find Him in Gaza, crushed beneath the rubble (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/10/8/know-their-names-palestinian-families-killed-in-israeli-attacks-on-gaza).
*FORGIVE MY MANY EDITS; THEY ARE SYNTACTICAL IN NATURE. I AM WRITING THIS DURING A PARTICULARLY VICIOUS MIGRAINE.*
Kyrie Iesou Christe Eleison Me. May peace and Allah's blessings and His mercy be upon you, David.
Sorry, but what if it were your own wife and child that you saw incinerated before your very eyes?
Forgive me for being graphic and unpleasant, but this is the reality we're dealing with, and anyone who isn't willing to confront that reality and put themselves in the victims' place has no business voting or discussing the matter. And it's the reality a vote for Harris would support.
If you can honestly tell me that if it were your own wife and child, you believe you would vote for the person who publicly swore to continue supplying the artillery to massacre even more of your loved ones, then fine. But I don't believe you would. And I believe you'd be more than capable of making a rather invincible defense for that refusal.
Dr. Hart, I know how Trump and Maga are very dangerous to democracy. But, I really would know what you think about the authorianism of Kamala (for example, she use yours powers of criminal execution to persecute a journalist, David Daleiden, that exposed the involvement of Planned Parenthood in illegal trafficking of fetuses - she used yours powers to pursued this journalist); and if she win, unfortunately the lobby of abortion going to grow. Moreover, she statated that Church hospitals did not have the right of deny abortion - which an assault to liberty. But, anyway, Trump is a abortist as well (he remove pro-life plataform fo Republican Party) and an authoritarian. However, I really don't think that Kamala is very less dangerous than Trump - could be less worse; but, even that, is bad. (RFK Junior would be less worse than Trump, Kamala and Biden).
And I think that democratic voters is not less dangerous than the republican and Maga voters, because they try to murder three times the oposite candidate. It's for all these reasons that I really don't believe that democratic and liberals are very less democratic and dangerous than conservatives. In fact, in a study, were demonstrated that liberals are more authoritharians than conservatives because they think that your ideology is not authoritarian; in effect, they tend not to see that your attitudes are authoritharian.
The reason Kamala Harris is so unappealing to black men is she put so many of them in prison while protecting the police. Say what you will about Trump (who was convicted in civil court for being a racist), at least he never put any black men in prison.
Kamala lost the trust of many black men by endorsing and implementing racist laws and policing strategies, which makes her, at some level, a race traitor. Black men don't expect an old white man to be the paragon of racial justice. They do expect it from one of their own.
Can we just PLEASE apply a consistent standard of rigor where it matters most?
Trump's record of harm against Black Americans:
1. He rescinded Obama-era DOJ guidelines design with the express intent of both reducing racial profiling and increasing the use of de-escalation tactics in lieu of lethal or violent force.
2. The DOJ under Trump rolled back Obama era so-called consent decrees, which were these like oversight things imposed upon police departments within the US that had a record of abuse, discrimination, and corruption. These consent measures were imposed in an attempt to increase accountability where racial police brutality had been rampant, particularly in places like Ferguson and Baltimore.
3. There's something called the 1033 Program, whereby surplus military equipment from the DoD is basically just given to police departments around the country, equipping them with high powered rifles, amored vehicles, increased access to surplus ammunition, etc; this was inhibited to varying degrees under Obama. Donald Trump discarded those Obama-era inhibitions, contributing to the already rapidly increasing militarization of this country's local police forces as it's been seen in recent decades. This increase in control over an access two more and more effective forces of violence has always, for this entire country's history including now, correlated positively with state-sponsored, often deadly violence against black Americans. Just take a look at the use of flash bangs, smoke grenades, and rubber pellets during the 2020 George Floyd protests.
To imagine that none of this results in increased jailing, or even death, for black people in America is just to be wrong. I'm sorry, but this is the truth.
Well, I'm simply not reduced to childish political tribalism. In one side, we have Donald Trump guilty for 6 january in an attack to democracy, the xenophobic attack against the haitian people - I'm brazilian, and in my country we had a greate immigration of haitians in 2011; I know then, and they a very work, decente and civilized peope; attacks of Trump and idiots conservatives against them is sheer xenophobia and moron. I could list another various examples of degeneration of Trump and Maga. However, I can see that the another side is very dangerous - like I said earlier in my comments -, for example, the attempt of assassination of Trump, the persecution of pro-life activists and the statement that the liberty of Catholic Church Hospitals in refuse to perform abortions is wrong. And, again, I may list another various degradations of Kamala and liberals. So, when something say that the liberals and Kamala have problems is to you mental gymnasts? Well, supose that a conservative just see the problems in the liberal side and in Kamala; but, they deny - and in fact they really all the time do it that - that Trump is dangerous, that he is guilty of the attack in january 6, that he is xenophoby. Well, wouldn't that be mental gymnastics? And if you goes and list all that things that Trump made, and Maga and conservatives call you communist and say you're doing mental gymnastics, does you would think that this is a alienation and a dogmatic? I think you would agree that yes, is a dogmatic and alienated attitude towards who is Trump and what he made. And this is how many conservatives and Maga act. But, now, suppose that some person say various things dangerous in liberal side, show that they have many problems to, and he is called fascist and that he would do it mental gymnastics, wouldn't be the same attitude of this idiots conservatives? So, I think is very worth agree to disagree and transcends this idiot polarization and try to investigate the facts. Another important thing is that if a person believe that Kamala is less worse, that doesn't mean that this person is liberal or that he or she supports Kamala; and that is the same thing with Trump. The politics of this country are resembling the third world politics of Brazil: in one side, we have a kind of Messiah that will save America, and another side we have the personification of democracy; depending on who a person votes for, he or she will be considered a fascist or a communist for the other side; in the end of the day, the otherness is lost. And, by the way, I think that tthings will get much worse no matter who win the election. And finally, I really respect all that Hart says about the politics - even I think some things does not correspond to reallity -, especially the lack of compassion with poor (that is something I witness in my country, where neither left neither right thinking that they are important), because his concern how things go around is very factual, and, in fact, if Trump win I really thing that, for instance, xenophobia will grow and polarization going to be more worst.
It seems that posts about the Donald “Avoiding STDs was my own Vietnam” Trump elicit as many replies as DBH’s best theological and philosophical insights. I don’t think that the lover of pornstars and business fraudster deserves even the slightest bit of attention from our dear host, but I understand that in these dark times he cannot stay silent.
But US politics and the future of humanity are minor matters. The most important news from today’s article is that the future of this Substack and its upstanding community is all but secured. Now that young Partick has stepped in as his father's collaborator, we can rest content in knowing that long after DBH has retired as a beekeeper in Sussex, his son and future grandchildren will continue to educate our offspring on this website on all issues theological, philosophical, musical, literary, and baseball.
Reference?! You mean to tell me you have never gone around London in an Iverness cape and a deerstalker hat solving crimes and thwarting evil professors?
“To me, these attempts to ground private awareness in something somehow prior to consciousness or to treat subjectivity as the posterior result of some kind of objectivity are all still rather on the order of saying that a room full of mirrors sees itself simply through the accumulated force of all its specular recapitulations. Consciousness comes first or it comes not at all.” From All Things…
Thanks for that thought. Captures I think so much of this book!
Somewhat related, at least in the vague category of "Eastern", I recently finished All Things Are Full of Gods, which I truly loved. I know you have spoken about a deep appreciation for Vedantic work on consciousness, more specifically the qualified nondualist variety of Ramanuja.
I was wondering if you had ever been interested in or compared the Vedantic work to the Kashmir Saivite/Trika works, like Abhinavagupta. So much of All Things made me think of the Trika system.
I had wondered if you held any admiration -- however slight -- for the Gospel of Thomas. The epigraph to your translation of the New Testament is quite lovely, I think. And it is perhaps not the only bit of gnomic brilliance in that text (though I confess, it's been years since I read it straight through).
But I wanted to ask you if you have any resources you like for studying Coptic. I'm working on a side project that will require it (and probably Syriac), but I don't know it at all. I read Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, so I'm fairly used to the particular habits necessary for studying ancient languages.
I’m drawn to the Christ of Matthew and Luke, who is moved by pity and moral indignation, who loves the poor, and who forgives sins. I don’t see that in the Christ of Thomas. But my views may evolve.
As for learning Coptic, get the volumes by Bentley Layton and Thomas Lambdin.
Why do you say so,I love them both, though I'd prefer plotinuz and plato to aristole and proclus(thought both great) as I'd prefer Gaudapada, Shankara, vivekanada to Ramanujra(thou great)
What would be the distinction between Lao Tzu and Zhangzu other than him writing so much more ? that causes the preferring
I was empathetically sad to think of you shedding yourself of the U.S. because of the present state of affairs (the thought had crossed my mind also but only fleetingly). Bonhoeffer’s internal conflict over leaving Germany and ultimately deciding to return came to mind, however. It really brings to the forefront any concept of national pride. Not the ignorant fools embracing US at the expense of the other, but the ideals of what this country should/could be. What responsibility, if any, do we have to “stick it out”, even to our own demise?
If it were true that all Trump voters were ipso facto racist in intent (rather than simply in effect), it would be easier to dismiss them, but, alas, plenty, perhaps most, are just ignorant. The answer to "how could this happen" lies always—not just usually but always—in the material conditions. Such conditions are terrible for a great many people in this country—if you ask a seemingly normal working person why they're voting for Trump, they'll answer that their groceries cost way too much. That they have misidentified the succor for their ills is almost beside the point, except that it reinforces one's sense that it is impossible for quite ordinary people to work out what is happening in the world & why. (Of course it is true that Trump is as racist as anyone has ever been.)
Not all the voters, just the movement itself. The Democrats abandoned the working class long ago.
This isn’t Weimar. We didn’t get crushed and humiliated in war and our annual inflation rate would be a welcomed daily inflation rate in those times.
No one mentioned the Weimar Republic. But the principle that only material conditions as bad as those of Weimar influence the political present is duly noted. I'm scribbling it in my copy of History & Class Consciousness.
Economic conditions are good by any relative measure here on planet Earth. And what I take issue with is the proposition that most tRump voters are not ipso facto racist but rather voting with their wallets and pocketbooks. To paraphrase Patrick, if tRump is the personification of his voters will, it is the will to be proud and open racists (or at the very least to silently enjoy the ignoble glee of watching immigrants and other minorities suffer). I see scant evidence that the typical GOP voter views the prospect of his presidency as yielding greater personal wealth. In fact, tRump never really makes that tRump University pitch to voters at large, yet his racist campaign promises have no bounds. And even GOP voters can’t be foolish enough to believe that this candidate who makes Machiavelli look like a social worker will offer greater government support services.
The anti-tRump meme from the last election, the one that said “Make racists afraid again,” was apt. But after the initial emergence of tRump, those voters who used to be afraid to show their true racist stripes are silently, and not so silently, adopting this cycle’s Democratic slogan in their own way — “we’re not going back.”
You're foolish if you think leading macroeconomic indicators are a reliable index of what life is like for average working people. Look at real wages since the 1960s:
https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
What I said was if you ask the average working person why they're voting for Trump, they'll say that their groceries cost too much. Which is true, as various articles in recent months have shown again & again. They actually are worried about how far their dollar goes. Jobs reports and yield curves don't matter to anyone in that existential situation. Nor do they care that Weimar had it worse. Their struggles are real, & you can shill for the Democrats all you like without convincing them.
It's comforting to believe they're all just racists, but most of them couldn't tell you what Trump said about Haitians. Nor do they have a rosy view of government services. Most would say they're against welfare. That's not the point—the point is precisely that their incoherence explains their support for someone who hates them.
But you don't seem like you know any mechanics or janitors, who a generation ago would have been a lock for the Democrats. What changed is the long downturn that begins in 1973. It's at that scale that we need to understand economic trends. I'd encourage anyone who doubts it to read Robert Brenner or David Harvey or Paul Mattick.
If Trump wins, Democrats will have only themselves to blame, yet again. But I don't expect someone who simply repeats their talking points to understand.
I don’t doubt that they complain about their grocery bill, though it is less costly in real terms than most anyplace in the world. What I doubt is that they think their personal economic conditions will get better under tRump, particularly since that is hardly a pitch the candidate ever makes. And what he does promise ad nauseam with his “diseased racist rhetoric” is abundantly clear. It is delusional to assert that his voters are not buying what he is actually selling.
They’re not paying attention to what he’s selling, buddy, that’s the whole point. There’s the core of racist fanatic idiots & then there are millions of people who “don’t follow politics,” but they don’t like how things are so they figure they’ll vote for the other guy, or they’ll listen to some family member who claims Harris is a socialist, or all their friends are voting for Trump. I personally told a Trump supporter just last week about his family separation policy and the guy was flabbergasted. But keep telling yourself you know better.
Well, will you look at that:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/26/upshot/census-relative-income.html
not only all of this but I find it so strange that people dont bring up more the civil trial conviction of sexual assult. Given how regularly the criminal trials of money landuring and the illegal acts as president which had far reaching effects.
"Such conditions are terrible for a great many people in this country..."
But I think it's true that conditions are considerably poorer for people who are not voting for Trump, on average.
You have to look at demographics—urban vs. rural, black vs. white, etc. These tend to correlate with income differentials for obvious and unjust reasons (though class is not merely a matter of income).
I don't consider myself educated on matters of politics or history. Would you radically disagree with perhaps a more "conservative" amendment to your phrasing "...lies always—not just usually but always—in the material conditions" in comparison to something like "...lies often, and in typically in large part, in the material conditions..."?
Presumably you disagree, I'm just probing as to the degree to which you hold to that point of view. I'm not at all saying you're wrong. Perhaps the more I read, the more strongly I will tend towards that position (again, it's something I think explains in large part many, many things). I'm just not sure if it can go all the way.
I mean, it’s no secret that I’m a Marxist, which just means I'm convinced by the analysis of capitalism in Capital (esp vols 1 & 3). Have ideas ever had material effects on history, sure, but why? I’d argue you’re gonna find materialism at the bedrock. But exceptions probably could be adduced.
Fair enough! Thanks for the response.
MAGA culture is a demonic egregore
Fleeing the United States does seem like less and less of a half-joking hypothetical. But on a brighter note, please do translate Thomas, whatever the state of our country upon its publication, I would love to read that.
I am so appreciative of section III. I woke up this morning with usual crippling election anxiety and, picking up prisms, veils with a cup of coffee for the porch before the kids woke up, I actually thought to myself how much I would love you to expound here about the impending doom. Reading your writing always makes me feel better, even about terrible possibilities. And it has. I’m so afraid what the next four years might be like under Trump down here in the kingdom of Jeff Landry, where I think the manualist thomist horde will flock (or whatever hordes do) to make a laboratory for the new ressourcement of American theocracy.
The Didache is a much shorter (and much more appealing) text; perhaps you and your son would try your hand there? In any case, am happy to hear about your translation of Tao Te Ching; I was just revisiting your translation of the first portion of it yesterday.
I am applying to Cambridge to study; hopefully, that will happily take me away from the nightmare madhouse of American politics for at least one year.
It’s been well translated before and poses few problems of interpretation. Thomas is a different matter.
Have you ever thought of going on a mad, multi-year saga to translate the LXX?
No.
Maybe you'll be able to apply for refugee status
While I am not a fan of Seraphim Rose, I've read his translation of the Tao. I don't know if it is any good, but it did get me interested in eastern religio/philosophical text.
It seems to be a consistent pattern that otherwise brilliant and insightful writers will frequently stoop to the banal and one-dimensional level of “orange man bad” or “Trump is literally Hitler” type rhetoric—usually regurgitated from skewed media narratives—as it pertains to this particular subject alone. It really suggests that there may be some truth to the notion of a “Trump derangement syndrome” which brings out the worst in even some of the greatest minds.
I am tempted to say something insulting, but it seems superfluous to do so. To call an evil degenerate Nazi-loving moron what he is hardly qualifies as derangement. To fail to recognize the aptness of such words qualifies as willful ignorance.
To be sure, Trump is easy to dislike; he’s certainly no role model for personal morals. Yet there’s arguably room for nuance regarding the relative merits of his substance and policy.
No, there is not. He has no substance (other than lard) and his only policies are persecution of immigrants, vengeance on his enemies, and pardoning himself. Please consult my previous reply for further clarification.
Agreed, though it's not very accurate to call the sanitized puppet of the world's most violent colonial ethno-state a great deal better.
I am going with the fiction that she was out of the loop. But my vote is against Trump.
I'm sorry, but I must speak out. There is a coherent moral rationale to seeing one's vote for Kamala as a vote against Trump, for whom there is simply *no* moral excuse to support, full stop, and it's a rationale that I find as compelling as I do the competing reality that change cannot happen if good people are constantly coerced towards the lesser of two evils ad infinitum, but regardless:
What on Earth do you mean "out of the loop," and how can you abide a self-admitted fiction of such a profound magnitude for any reason?
I'm wholeheartedly convinced that we aren't given the moral luxury to abide any such fiction in the face of 42,000 + dead Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom are women and children, under her vice presidential watch - esp when she has, in response to questioning about whether she would as president even consider mitigating arms shipments to the Zionist entity, said something like, "I am unwavering in my support to Israel's security," which is the politically correct way of saying, "I will continue to supply them with the bombs they've used to depopulate Gaza" - and that that using the language of decency and intelligence to describe such a person amounts to a kind of insult to intelligence and even the most mundane forms of basic moral decency in the most disappointing of ways.
With love and the absolute totality of due respect, Dr. Hart, can we get a mumbling word about that?! Can we see a little bit of that "refusal to make obeisance" to the Slanderer, to the Archon of this Aeon, to the logic of power, oppression, and compromise on the mountain in your discourse surrounding this gigantic, blood-stained elephant in the room?! Are Palestinian lives not as precious as Ukrainian lives? Suffer me, a Middle Eastern and Qafqazi man, an honest, dignified answer, please, because my heart - like many hearts - is breaking.
42,000 + dead, over 120 journalists slaughtered, swaths of young children shot in the head and chest, civilian and humanitarian infrastructure eviscerated, from schools to government buildings to shelters and tents to hospitals (esp now, given current accelerations and the COMPLETE collapse of service infrastructure in Northern Gaza, as of yesterday), patients and refugees burned alive *before our very eyes.* In high definition. Viewable on YouTube. The soldiers of this "most precious ally" bragging about it on Tiktok and Instagram, where they document their revival of Shoah in beautiful technicolor for the entire world to see. Humanitarian and NGO volunteers from abroad slain and then thrown under rubble by the Zionist entity. Rape and torture being visited upon Palestinian prisoners *held without charge* at Sde Teiman and the US spokespeople using their boilerplate sweet-nothings to cover it up *under the Biden administration with Kamala as his VP.* A 19 year old acquaintance of mine, whose family I tried helping evacuate through fundraising, entering into martyrdom nearly 2 months ago when shrapnel from a US made bomb flew into his skull as he stood along the shores of the beach on the land of his father and his father's father, trying to get internet access, when the occupation forces dropped it. Mohammad "Medo" Halimy (of blessed memory).
Hind Rajab. Ismail al-Ghoul. Ahmed al-Najjar. Shaban al-Dalou. Aysenur Eygi. Muhammad Saeed Adel Abu Al-Rous. Musk Abdul Hay Sami Al-Halabi. Saba Ahmed Ali Al-Qazzaz. THOUSANDS of others - Allah yerhamhoum.
Would you comfort the families of any of these Shuhada by telling them that the woman who stood before AIPAC, wished them good morning, and called her address to them an "honor" in March of 2017 (https://youtu.be/McK8bPR8pzU) can be fictitiously thought of as "out of the loop" ? Or would you suffer to implore those, like me, who have been arrested, thrown into holding, and then released without charge for peacefully protesting university investments in the Zionist entity (with the Paschal Troparion on my lips and your writings regarding the radical moral ethos of Christian orthodoxy in my mind) that our Christian struggle for "the least among us" (Matthew 25:31–46) is united with greater fervor and witness to He Who overcame death by imagining, in the most beguilingly reactionary of fashions, this monster, this demon, to be positively possessed of some virtue in being less willing to extend her already inexcusably far-reaching cruel, callous disregard for human life than her more wicked, more intractable opponent.
I am not, here, inveighing against using a defensive vote, but the *fiction* of Kamala or any of these people as "intelligent" and especially as "decent" is neither necessary nor even helpful to the defensive aim, *and it matters* what language we use. It *matters* that we are morally consistent. I cannot find a single record of Christ compromising either in deed *or in word* anywhere in your own translation of the New Testament, and that alone should be instructive.
In the end, I may very well vote for Kamala as a defense against Trump and his demonic forces, but I may also vote third party; I'm torn, and I'm running out of time. No matter what, though, I cannot imagine Christ suffering to, though He did no such thing before Pilate, call Kamala anything other than a monster — than a malicious instrument of the same forces of atomization, division, power, oppression, and privilege that late neoliberal economics and all of their politics and, indeed, the logic of the current cosmic Aeon consist in. If you want to ask Him, you can find Him in Gaza, crushed beneath the rubble (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/10/8/know-their-names-palestinian-families-killed-in-israeli-attacks-on-gaza).
*FORGIVE MY MANY EDITS; THEY ARE SYNTACTICAL IN NATURE. I AM WRITING THIS DURING A PARTICULARLY VICIOUS MIGRAINE.*
Kyrie Iesou Christe Eleison Me. May peace and Allah's blessings and His mercy be upon you, David.
Sorry, but what if it were your own wife and child that you saw incinerated before your very eyes?
Forgive me for being graphic and unpleasant, but this is the reality we're dealing with, and anyone who isn't willing to confront that reality and put themselves in the victims' place has no business voting or discussing the matter. And it's the reality a vote for Harris would support.
If you can honestly tell me that if it were your own wife and child, you believe you would vote for the person who publicly swore to continue supplying the artillery to massacre even more of your loved ones, then fine. But I don't believe you would. And I believe you'd be more than capable of making a rather invincible defense for that refusal.
The only room for nuance when it comes to Trump is the number of ways to express the depth of evil that lies within character
Yeah, it's an enduring mystery why otherwise brilliant and insightful writers view a fascist, racist moron as a fascist, racist moron.
The derangement is all yours and his supporters, who Trump is, is all too obvious from Trump's own words and actions.
Dr. Hart, I know how Trump and Maga are very dangerous to democracy. But, I really would know what you think about the authorianism of Kamala (for example, she use yours powers of criminal execution to persecute a journalist, David Daleiden, that exposed the involvement of Planned Parenthood in illegal trafficking of fetuses - she used yours powers to pursued this journalist); and if she win, unfortunately the lobby of abortion going to grow. Moreover, she statated that Church hospitals did not have the right of deny abortion - which an assault to liberty. But, anyway, Trump is a abortist as well (he remove pro-life plataform fo Republican Party) and an authoritarian. However, I really don't think that Kamala is very less dangerous than Trump - could be less worse; but, even that, is bad. (RFK Junior would be less worse than Trump, Kamala and Biden).
And I think that democratic voters is not less dangerous than the republican and Maga voters, because they try to murder three times the oposite candidate. It's for all these reasons that I really don't believe that democratic and liberals are very less democratic and dangerous than conservatives. In fact, in a study, were demonstrated that liberals are more authoritharians than conservatives because they think that your ideology is not authoritarian; in effect, they tend not to see that your attitudes are authoritharian.
Hoo boy.
No kidding.
The reason Kamala Harris is so unappealing to black men is she put so many of them in prison while protecting the police. Say what you will about Trump (who was convicted in civil court for being a racist), at least he never put any black men in prison.
No, he just called for the execution of five innocent men and still refuses to apologize.
Kamala lost the trust of many black men by endorsing and implementing racist laws and policing strategies, which makes her, at some level, a race traitor. Black men don't expect an old white man to be the paragon of racial justice. They do expect it from one of their own.
Can we just PLEASE apply a consistent standard of rigor where it matters most?
Trump's record of harm against Black Americans:
1. He rescinded Obama-era DOJ guidelines design with the express intent of both reducing racial profiling and increasing the use of de-escalation tactics in lieu of lethal or violent force.
2. The DOJ under Trump rolled back Obama era so-called consent decrees, which were these like oversight things imposed upon police departments within the US that had a record of abuse, discrimination, and corruption. These consent measures were imposed in an attempt to increase accountability where racial police brutality had been rampant, particularly in places like Ferguson and Baltimore.
3. There's something called the 1033 Program, whereby surplus military equipment from the DoD is basically just given to police departments around the country, equipping them with high powered rifles, amored vehicles, increased access to surplus ammunition, etc; this was inhibited to varying degrees under Obama. Donald Trump discarded those Obama-era inhibitions, contributing to the already rapidly increasing militarization of this country's local police forces as it's been seen in recent decades. This increase in control over an access two more and more effective forces of violence has always, for this entire country's history including now, correlated positively with state-sponsored, often deadly violence against black Americans. Just take a look at the use of flash bangs, smoke grenades, and rubber pellets during the 2020 George Floyd protests.
To imagine that none of this results in increased jailing, or even death, for black people in America is just to be wrong. I'm sorry, but this is the truth.
The mental gymnasts DBH flushes out simply by telling the truth never cease to amaze me.
Well, I'm simply not reduced to childish political tribalism. In one side, we have Donald Trump guilty for 6 january in an attack to democracy, the xenophobic attack against the haitian people - I'm brazilian, and in my country we had a greate immigration of haitians in 2011; I know then, and they a very work, decente and civilized peope; attacks of Trump and idiots conservatives against them is sheer xenophobia and moron. I could list another various examples of degeneration of Trump and Maga. However, I can see that the another side is very dangerous - like I said earlier in my comments -, for example, the attempt of assassination of Trump, the persecution of pro-life activists and the statement that the liberty of Catholic Church Hospitals in refuse to perform abortions is wrong. And, again, I may list another various degradations of Kamala and liberals. So, when something say that the liberals and Kamala have problems is to you mental gymnasts? Well, supose that a conservative just see the problems in the liberal side and in Kamala; but, they deny - and in fact they really all the time do it that - that Trump is dangerous, that he is guilty of the attack in january 6, that he is xenophoby. Well, wouldn't that be mental gymnastics? And if you goes and list all that things that Trump made, and Maga and conservatives call you communist and say you're doing mental gymnastics, does you would think that this is a alienation and a dogmatic? I think you would agree that yes, is a dogmatic and alienated attitude towards who is Trump and what he made. And this is how many conservatives and Maga act. But, now, suppose that some person say various things dangerous in liberal side, show that they have many problems to, and he is called fascist and that he would do it mental gymnastics, wouldn't be the same attitude of this idiots conservatives? So, I think is very worth agree to disagree and transcends this idiot polarization and try to investigate the facts. Another important thing is that if a person believe that Kamala is less worse, that doesn't mean that this person is liberal or that he or she supports Kamala; and that is the same thing with Trump. The politics of this country are resembling the third world politics of Brazil: in one side, we have a kind of Messiah that will save America, and another side we have the personification of democracy; depending on who a person votes for, he or she will be considered a fascist or a communist for the other side; in the end of the day, the otherness is lost. And, by the way, I think that tthings will get much worse no matter who win the election. And finally, I really respect all that Hart says about the politics - even I think some things does not correspond to reallity -, especially the lack of compassion with poor (that is something I witness in my country, where neither left neither right thinking that they are important), because his concern how things go around is very factual, and, in fact, if Trump win I really thing that, for instance, xenophobia will grow and polarization going to be more worst.
Pace and Bene.
telling?
Perhaps, but not of anything remotely unsavoury or discreditable
In the context of the draconian laws that are killing women in some US states, it sure as hell is.
You’ve confused yourself, and now me; is this “pro-life movement” in the room with us currently?
This experience has been a big net negative to my morning. Wish I would have spent my 20 minutes reading Darconville’s Cat instead of these comments
It seems that posts about the Donald “Avoiding STDs was my own Vietnam” Trump elicit as many replies as DBH’s best theological and philosophical insights. I don’t think that the lover of pornstars and business fraudster deserves even the slightest bit of attention from our dear host, but I understand that in these dark times he cannot stay silent.
But US politics and the future of humanity are minor matters. The most important news from today’s article is that the future of this Substack and its upstanding community is all but secured. Now that young Partick has stepped in as his father's collaborator, we can rest content in knowing that long after DBH has retired as a beekeeper in Sussex, his son and future grandchildren will continue to educate our offspring on this website on all issues theological, philosophical, musical, literary, and baseball.
I liked the Sherlock Holmes reference.
Reference?! You mean to tell me you have never gone around London in an Iverness cape and a deerstalker hat solving crimes and thwarting evil professors?
I have generally avoided the deerstalker.
We'd have loved to have had you back in the UK ...
Why, thank-you.
“To me, these attempts to ground private awareness in something somehow prior to consciousness or to treat subjectivity as the posterior result of some kind of objectivity are all still rather on the order of saying that a room full of mirrors sees itself simply through the accumulated force of all its specular recapitulations. Consciousness comes first or it comes not at all.” From All Things…
Thanks for that thought. Captures I think so much of this book!
The spirit of The Beatles is truly alive in the shape of a Korean foursome named HOA. Just thought I'd let you know. Light the Beacons!
Hmmm.
I would love to see you translate the Daodejing.
Somewhat related, at least in the vague category of "Eastern", I recently finished All Things Are Full of Gods, which I truly loved. I know you have spoken about a deep appreciation for Vedantic work on consciousness, more specifically the qualified nondualist variety of Ramanuja.
I was wondering if you had ever been interested in or compared the Vedantic work to the Kashmir Saivite/Trika works, like Abhinavagupta. So much of All Things made me think of the Trika system.
Were circumstances to permit you to cross the great divide and come to England, America’s loss would very much be our gain.
After all, I can stream Orioles games and watch them earlier in the day.
Closer to the true holy land of Éire as well
That would be Patrick’s ideal landing place.
There is always Lindisfarne.
I had wondered if you held any admiration -- however slight -- for the Gospel of Thomas. The epigraph to your translation of the New Testament is quite lovely, I think. And it is perhaps not the only bit of gnomic brilliance in that text (though I confess, it's been years since I read it straight through).
But I wanted to ask you if you have any resources you like for studying Coptic. I'm working on a side project that will require it (and probably Syriac), but I don't know it at all. I read Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, so I'm fairly used to the particular habits necessary for studying ancient languages.
I’m drawn to the Christ of Matthew and Luke, who is moved by pity and moral indignation, who loves the poor, and who forgives sins. I don’t see that in the Christ of Thomas. But my views may evolve.
As for learning Coptic, get the volumes by Bentley Layton and Thomas Lambdin.
Perhaps this explains why I like Thomas so much—I'm drawn to the Christ of Mark. I like cryptic weirdos. (I also prefer Zhuangzi to Laozi.)
Everyone prefers Zhuangzi. But christ in Mark never tells his disciples to avoid giving alms, as he does in Thomas.
He also says to give your money to someone from whom you will never get it back.
A moral counsel or an ascetic discipline?
Presumably the pericope about alms is related to Mark 2 & Matthew 6:1-2. Elsewhere in Thomas Christ unambiguously champions the poor.
Why do you say so,I love them both, though I'd prefer plotinuz and plato to aristole and proclus(thought both great) as I'd prefer Gaudapada, Shankara, vivekanada to Ramanujra(thou great)
What would be the distinction between Lao Tzu and Zhangzu other than him writing so much more ? that causes the preferring
Zhuangzi is amusing and wild. The Daodejing is more on the didactic side.
that is true , ''the sage is one who reaches the nothing of nothing'' has more mystical flare than ''the sage is one who follows the way'' at times
I was empathetically sad to think of you shedding yourself of the U.S. because of the present state of affairs (the thought had crossed my mind also but only fleetingly). Bonhoeffer’s internal conflict over leaving Germany and ultimately deciding to return came to mind, however. It really brings to the forefront any concept of national pride. Not the ignorant fools embracing US at the expense of the other, but the ideals of what this country should/could be. What responsibility, if any, do we have to “stick it out”, even to our own demise?