15 Comments
Jan 25, 2023Liked by Second City Bureaucrat

Talcott is telling us to “have a normal one, mang”.

Lol at his using quotes on “other people’s money.”

I’ve just finished Burckhardt’s lectures on Greek Culture, and your post reminded me that eventually the Greeks oriented themselves away from the polis - it no longer served its purpose. (This seemed to have been less due to empire, or Strobe’s “globalization,” than general corruption.) Talcott and Talbot are providing the empty exhortations to “duty” that were used to needle people to get what they wanted. Sadly it seems your two protagonists only desire moral righteousness. They could have at least been looting the place like our noble elites today.

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author

Burckhardt attributes Hellenism to corruption?

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Jan 26, 2023Liked by Second City Bureaucrat

I was referring to the "turning away from the polis" -- Burckhardt doesn't necessarily attribute that to corruption; that's more my reddit-tier analysis after reading the book once. Burckhardt talks about how the polis lost its central meaning for people (e.g., philosophers withdrawing, people not respecting institutions). There were continued appeals to loyalty, mostly for self-interested motives, but they had lost their meaning in part due to the overall corruption. Your two characters seem to be making those appeals to a dead polis, but for the rather pathetic reason that they still firmly believe in the cult of the polis rather than trying to get one over on us. Are we lead by naive fools?

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Jan 26, 2023Liked by Second City Bureaucrat

The book is great btw

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author

The issue around loyalty sounds relevant. I've read excerpts but never the entire thing. His renaissance book is also very good.

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Hence the cries to "stop politicizing everything" which means nothing can be politicized at all.

Shut up and grill.

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Great piece. Thanks for writing. Fail to understand why parsons didn’t take the McCarthyites (and to a lesser extent Birchers) at their word -- they just didn’t like communists -- of which there were many in the US civil service. That’s it, why his need to analyze further?

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Parsons was fine with them not liking Communists. It was their tendency to call people like Parsons and America's leadership Communists that he didn't like. Thus he needed to explain to them why their interpretation of the ideas and behavior of the leadership caste as Communist were wrong.

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Moldbug's small-c communist applies a little too well though.

Would that they had taken the critiques more to heart.

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"Globalism today means forced socioeconomic integration with the world in the forms of forced integration of American and foreign labor populations, and forced business competition with foreign markets not beholden to American regulatory obligations.

Another problem with globalism is that forced integration interferes with the dominance of traditional domestic cultures and morals, which reduces the social capital of communities that depend upon domestic cultures and morals for stability."

Clean this up a little and get it on a pamphlet.

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What are your thoughts on gay peopel?

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author

Could you please be more specific? I don't have any generalized thoughts about gay people.

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Aka what rights and freedoms we will get in your ideal society?

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author

People who choose to identify with other people on the basis of their sexual preferences would enjoy the same freedoms as everyone else.

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Ok

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