Sundry Notes, November

Trump & Napoleon, "At your age," a reliable curator, the desire for war, and more.

I.

Another essay of mine was just published at A Beautiful Resistance. It’s called “The Second Time As Farce,” and it’s about Trump and Bonapartism:

Both Napoleons did remarkably similar things in remarkably similar conditions — even if the specifics were quite different. Even more important is how they both seemed almost to be summoned by the chaos that preceded them, filling a necessary role created by all the contradictions of the new capitalist/liberal order.

The best way to explain what I mean by this is to borrow the phrase my friend Alley Valkyrie is fond of using about every apparent “contradiction” within liberal democracy: “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.” In other words, the problems that seem to keep the capitalist liberal order from making good on its claims can never be resolved because it needs them in order to exist.

Consider the way liberal/progressive sorts tend to think about issues like homelessness. From their perspective, there wouldn’t be homeless people if the system were working correctly, and therefore homelessness is a “bug” that just needs to be fixed in the system’s code. The problem, though, is that you cannot have a market for housing (the system we have now, “private property”) without creating artificial or actual scarcity. In other words, the system needs to create homelessness in order to exist.

It’s the same with jobs. Full employment would be a nightmare situation for capitalism. If everyone who wanted a job could get one, then owners would have to raise wages extremely high to entice people to switch jobs. But then, those escalating higher wages would destroy all potential profit that the owner might otherwise have derived and quickly put him out of business.

And yet another example: racial and gender inequality. Progressives, especially now, see racism and sexism as barriers to the full implementation of equality that democracy stands for. All the “woke” social justice identitarianism that plagues and cripples the left now is essentially an attempt to fix these inequalities so that capitalism and democracy function better. But this is an impossible goal, because capitalism will constantly generate these inequalities. Worse, it must create these separate and unequal social categories, otherwise it couldn’t sustain the exploitation of labor.

Again, all these things that progressive try to fix are features of capitalism, not bugs. Capitalism must create homelessness and unemployment and social inequality to actually function. Of course, this seems to go against what liberal democracy — with all its delusions about equality, human rights, and being a better system than every other possible one — appears and claims to be. And there’s no better example of a political party that represents this delusion than the Democratic Party in the United States.

You can read the whole essay here.

II.

I’m getting older. Well, we all are, of course, but I’ve had a specific reason to notice the progression of years.

I may have torn my right rotator cuff, the bundle of tendons and muscles that stabilize the shoulder in its various (and especially overhead) movements. I’ll find out next week after an ultrasound whether I need surgery for it, but in the meantime I’ve already started physiotherapy for it.

How it happened is not precisely clear. I may have done this to myself while digging a new garden plot earlier in the year. Or it could be bad form at the gym. Or years of bad posture from being overweight when I was younger. Or a combination of all of that, plus the normal degeneration of tendons due to old age.

That last part became a bit poignant when my phsyiotherapist (in French, they’re called kinésithérapeutes or just “kiné” for short) explained how my posture may have led to the injury. He then showed me exactly how far forward my shoulders and neck are from what they should be, and I asked him how long it would take — and what excercises I should focus on — to fix this posture.

“À votre âge?” he said — “non, ce n’est pas possible.”

It’s not quite nice to hear from a medical professional that I’m too old to stand up correctly. But after telling my friend who’s also my gym coach, she laughed and said, “it’s not like you’re not going to try anyway.”

And she’s right, of course. After missing several days of lifting because of the shoulder pain, I went back and did all the lifts that didn’t require the rotator cuff as a stabilizing aspect. This sadly meant no deadlifts, squats, kettlebell swings, and a few cable pulls, but there’s plenty else I can do.

Again, I find out next week if I’ll need surgery for it. Funny, though — I’m noticing I’m quite indifferent to the result of this. If I need the surgery, I’ll certain get it (despite the average six months of recovery required) And if I instead need to just change most of what I do at the gym, I’ll do that. Either way, none of this will actually stop me, age be damned.

III.

I really cannot keep up with all the interesting writing being done, nor with any of the news stories meriting my attention. None of you can, either, I’m sure.

And you, like me, probably therefore are always looking for reliable curators to collect interesting things for you.

I have a recommendation for one these curators you might not have encountered yet. His name is

Vincent Kelley

, and he writes

Handful of Earth

. His “weekly groundings” series is especially useful, and I highly suggest you add it to your list of reliable curators.

IV.

Speaking of reliable curators, The Guardian is absolutely not.

I’m sure you already knew this. I certainly did. But for some reason I still occasionally read it out of laziness.

Yesterday, I saw several stories about Russia’s “escalation” of the war in Ukraine — the launching of new nuclear-capable missile —that made absolutely no reference whatsoever to the event for which it was a response.

You probably already know this. Or maybe you don’t, since it seems quite a few news outlets (not just The Guardian) want you to forget this. The US authorized Ukraine to use of US-provided missiles and also US land mines on Russian terrority. Then, directly in response, Putin used Russia’s new missile — empty of any kind of nuclear material — on Ukraine.

But very, very few of the stories actually mention the US action, only Russia’s retaliation.

There’s quite a lot of stuff to sort out here. First of all, the fact that the US authorized these uses during a lame duck (well, really, drooling-out-of-his-mouth-and-barely-sitting-up-unassisted) presidency means someone else made the decision, not Biden. This also means whoever made this decision is trying to set up a situation that will make Trump’s vow to end the conflict harder.

And especially, the lock step narrative of the media that Russia “escalated” the situation without reference to the US’s escalation means that certain powers really don’t want to see an end to that war — they want it to spread.

Like, literally — they fucking want war.

This makes me seethe, and I should probably not write more about what I feel about this and what I suspect the motives really are. But for now, I’d suggest giving particular attention to how these stories change so quickly, and why these changes seem so important to certain powers.

V.

I apologize for the shortness of this month’s Sundry Notes and the relative scarcity of essays this month. Besides dealing with aforementioned shoulder problem, I’ve been delightfully busy with the new publishing venture I mentioned previously, Sul Books.

We just signed several new book contracts (really, my favorite part of my job!), and I’ve been spending a lot of time finishing up in-progress book projects for upcoming releases. We’ll have an official announcement about part of 2025’s publishing schedule in a few days, and I’m thrilled about all of them.

We’re also looking for even more. If you have a book you’ve been working on, or have written, that you want me to consider for publication, the submission process is here.

And in related publishing news, we’re about to announce our final sale of 2024 (the course sale also continues, by the way). I’ll post that here when it’s announced.

Be well, all of you. :)

—Rhyd