I'll have to read today's diary later, but since Rod raises the DSA and what it's about, I'd like to share a really superb short piece from Zineb Riboua. She nails something slippery to the wall here, something that needed nailing. It's the current Euro-American Left in a nutshell.
That Manifest story reminds me of this recent WSJ account about tech-oriented people who use AI apps to record and transcribe every single one of their interpersonal interactions. I guess I'm a little surprised that none of them seem to be too worried about the potential drawbacks of doing this!
"Chang has also taken to recording most of her first dates, usually with Granola. She puts her phone out on the table or her chair and then once the date is through, she has the feed automatically sent to Anthropic’s Claude to report back on how she did.
"“Can I be more engaging and empathetic?” she says she might ask Claude. “What are the percentages of me talking versus them talking?”
I've never heard of anyone doing that. I'm so grateful that when I was a teenager, that technology didn't exist. I imagine it's at least part of the reason that some people are less likely to want to talk to others in public. You never know if someone might record you.
I can totally see the value in this though if I were younger. I've done enough public speaking, board meeting, etc where I would trust my own communication over Claude's. But definitely using it as a personal butler/tutor has been the biggest hack for me personally this year.
One way I'm very organized despite long work weeks, family, and side projects is by treating your life as a business. My entire time is set to a calendar and ticketed with deadlines. Meeting coming up? Set aside 7 minutes for coffee before it starts, brush hair, pull up agenda. Reading a novel? Set that as a backlog item, assign to the appropriate sprint given pages /night. I have daily trackers each hour for steps to get in, water intake, exercise, socialization.
My wife likes this too since she can edit my calendar for household tasks (e.g. make assignment to check trash can, bi-weekly laundry check) and it goes directly to my phone as a push.
Now I'm at the point where every morning I open up about 4-5 Claude butlers and have them check in my morning routine--nutrition Claude will plan out my meals, email Claude will read and forward high priority emails, language Claude will give me my vietnamese lesson for the day, project Claude will give me updates on my hobbies and what to spend my leisure time on.
My entire life is itemized on a minute to minute basis. It's genuinely the happiest and most productive I've been in years
Didn't Governor and Senator Graham of Florida, long dead, have a diary of his hour-by-hour happenings? "I took out a VHS of "On the Bounty" at 8:30 AM." "I toasted two English Muffins at 8:45 and spread Orange Marmalade over them. They were delicious." "I took a call from Governor Lawton Chiles at 9:15 and we talked about Florida politics for thirty-two minutes."
Cooking chicken feet gives me the ick, Giuseppe, but I don’t think that they’re evil. Maybe I’m evil for buying them? But my husband really enjoys them. I hope that doesn’t make him evil!
I once heard from a very conservative female, someone who had covered some of the latter Clinton stuff and had no love for him whatsoever, describe meeting him in person for the first time. She said he had an uncanny ability to charm people in milliseconds, it was almost witchcraft. Moreover, as someone predisposed to distrust him, she had her guard down and found herself spellbound by him - he made her feel like she was the only person in that crowded room, and it was seductive. For that moment, he could have asked for her number and she might have given it.
An aunt of mine had a friend who's daughter was a White House intern during Clinton's time. She said that many of the female interns would have been happy to trade places with Monica.
I’m sure it’s been said many times many ways, but the Iranians believe in stuff; Trump believes in nothing. I’m not sure which horn of that dyad is more powerful, but I doubt they’re evenly weighted by Reality or the gods.
Trump is now talking about bombing non-military targets--power plants and bridges. It is no secret that hysteria is catching, Hegseth's is particularly virulent. Rubio is now saying don't expect the war to wind down any time soon. I can't see this ending anywhere short of catastrophe.
I can. I can see the Iranian people rising up and putting the mullahs in their place. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but it’s not without precedent. The same country had a revolution in 1979. No totalitarian regime is without fatal weaknesses.
There are a few differences. The Shahs regime was not particularly ideological. Hence you didn’t have a network of highly ideological armed men like the IRGC and the Basij. These people are committed to the regime unto death as a religious proposition. They have the guns. Believe me Savak and the Iranian generals did not have that level of commitment!
I have my doubts about the level of commitment among the IRGC, too. Theological views can change on a dime, with sufficient and intelligent application of force, as we saw in England after 1660.
It does, but such totalitarianisms do not last terribly long. The Soviets hold the record. China relies on existing cultural norms. Iran’s religious establishment lords over a more heterogeneous society.
Sorry, but the Mullahs have a constiuency. Everybody hated the Shah. The seculars didn't want Khomeini but most of them hadn't got as far as seeing that the Shah kept a lid on things.
Its rather rare for that to happen in the midst of a war with an aggressive enemy, unless the government in power has so badly botched the war as to be seen as unpatriotic and betrayers of the nation. (Both the Russian revolution in 1905 and in 1917 followed this playbook -- the army backed the Bolsheviks the second time around, although the officers didn't.) Its not happening in Iran. That is wishful thinking. Certain Iraqi factions promised the Bush administration that we would be welcomed as liberators, and certain populations did welcome us, briefly, after we "won." But the more powerful factions had nothing to do with those making the promises, and the Shia were both anti-Hussein and anti-American, as well as closely connected to Iran.
Trump believes in himself and that he’s always right and it’s a very strong belief. In fact no evidence to the contrary will disabuse him of that belief.
I still watch it every year. I remember being at a sports bar in December 1980 when a bunch of us demanded to replace the basketball game on TV with Rudolph. "But we're a sports bar," said the bar keep. "And we're your customers!"
Oh gosh, I haven't thought of "Rudolph" in years! My main Christmas show memories adhere to Charlie Brown, the Grinch, and Scrooge, including the Mr Magoo cartoon version.
, if you can resist reading after this opening line, you are a stronger person than your diarist- I think reading about a laser beam coming out of someone’s-I stay positively puritanical on this site- privates is pretty resistible .
This is not surprising for anyone who's known the Effective Altruist /Less Wrong/AI skeptic community, which seems to be this group. They're massively autistic to a ridiculous degree and completely sexually degenerate. Anytime you see someone like Eliezer Yudkowski or his cronies give an interview, just remember that they, Sam Bankman Fried, Aella, and others have all had sex with each other, probably at the same time. They are very open about this.
And as for Aella, she's a piece of work all to herself. Fun fact: her dad (Matthew Slick) is the founder and president of CARM, a big Christian ministry. She and her 2 sisters all got into online sex camping, although she ended up going a bit higher by being a prostitute for rich Silicon Valley nerds. This basically allows her to insert herself in these groups despite having absolutely zero talent--if you ever hear one of her "theories" that she mentions (like the one above), it is always, without fail, a word for word repeat of what someone else has told her at a party. In personal interactions, she will refuse to engage in any conversation that isn't (a) started by her, or (b) about her or her sex life. Which seems to do just fine with the EA artists, but wouldn't work in any other social context.
She also likes to fashion herself a "Data Scientist" essentially because she just tallies up how many times per year she has sex, takes a shower (20 times /year or so), does LSD (daily at heavy doses), and so on. Remember, this is the person who is being paid sometimes 100k a month for sex by thr Silicon Valley crew.
And to top it all off, she's a libertarian, so our good Christian Defender Peter Thiel of course gave her funding to talk about ethical sex work in 2020. Fun stuff
She's claimed she has a natural biome that repels disease and odor (she doesn't think she smells anyway). So she claims that bathing would ruin her superior natural bacteria and get her sick.
She also claimed she sweats more than the average person due to a gland condition but the biome apparently counteract that
Thiel really is into all this sort of stuff. I tend to view Rod’s association with Thiel as invalidating everything he says.
There’s a nexus of evil: The tech industry + homosexuality and more extreme sexual perversion + capitalist reproductive exploitation + great wealth + hostility to Christianity + Israel and most of organised Jewry
“The puzzle is not why socialism is popular. Socialism is famously easy to message: “Take from the rich and give to the poor.” The real question is why younger Americans lack the antibodies against its natural appeal that older generations of Americans seem to have.”
This is true for Europeans as well. Maybe you need to have some experience with what Socialism actually is, was and can be. Having lived more than 5 years in Russia - shortly after Communism collapsed - I can assure you there is nothing to long for. Will never forget the poverty and the state of total collapse and corruption that was the heritage of Socialism. And that despite the wishful thinking and lies the Central Planning Authority was disseminating in Soviet Times: every year a plan that was more than hundred percent fulfilled. The biggest bogus in human history and a lunacy to long for after the facts and the evidence everybody can see.
Any immunization against socialism died when my generation learned to laugh at the preposterous excesses of ritual anti-communism. But capitalism always generates renewed interest in socialism. People who get hurt want remedies. There is a saying from the old Soviet bloc: "We knew they were lying to us about socialism, but unfortunately we found out they were telling us the truth about capitalism."
Can we please stop using Socialism and Communism as synonyms? They are very different systems-- the former generally is compatible with democratic governace and some degree of economic freedom. Contrary to the vast gaseous miasmas coming from the GOP-- more toxic than all that Canadian smoke up north-- what a number of people are getting behind these days is something like social democracy with its guarantees of economic security and necessary goods and services. There is no boomlet in people backing Communism in anything like Lenin's system, or Mao's or even Tito's. Of course I sooner expect chastity in a brothel than honesty from the MAGA-nauts.
In fairness, at the time I said that Ed Koch's New York was the only municipality in the country with a foreign policy. He left a gaggle of Russian schoolchildren visiting City Hall (you know, the one they cleansed of Thomas Jefferson's statue) weeping after a 10-minute speech detailing how horrible their country was.
I just rewatched the video of Simon and Garfunkel’s concert in Central Park, circa 1981 or 2, and was feeling nostalgic for the City of that time, and even having Ed Koch as mayor, and now you’ve harshed my mellow, Ted!
I usually think of you as a ray of sunshine, or a beam of light; well, not the latter after reading the Manifest story above, but not a harsher of mellows, Ted!
Ok, Koch was cruel in that instance (I don’t remember it, probably because I had a lot of activities going on at that time) but I’d still take him over any mayor since. (And I would take drunken Pat Moynihan over any senator since)
I just keep wondering where the parents were for all these young people - of all the stripes you mentioned. Well, I guess, I probably know - both working insane hours, sitting on their own phones and computers, no family dinners, etc. Every day, I thank God for many things - getting us out of the insanity of California, landing us in an area with solid (if fairly Liberal) Catholic schools, the fact that I chose to stay home from the beginning and never fell into the pay someone else to raise my child trap, and the fact that our son has a really solid group of friends that all play sports together. They're all delighted to be driving so they can hang out in person - they love being around each other and horsing around, even if it's playing computer games, they're either on the phone with each other - upstairs, on speaker where I can hear them - or in someone's basement and parents are home. They often have sleepovers and are just the most delightful group of boys who will chat with the parents, clean up after themselves, etc. Now that he's learning how to drive, the captive audience in the car is me and our boy talks to me and asks me questions about what I think about stuff.
I am just guessing here, but I also suspect a lot of it was naivete, lack of boundaries, and unwillingness to force kids out of their rooms and force them to interact with the family. There aren't many families outside the upper middle class where both parents are working insane hours, but families that allow tvs (back in the olden days!) and computers in kids' bedrooms are legion. Interestingly, I saw a NYT Wirecutter article the other day about the return of the "landline" (in this case, a telephone that looks like an old corded phone, but that uses Wifi). Kids can use it to call their friends, but there is no screen or texting capability.
We have our days, that's for sure! Both good and bad, but, I do confess, it's pretty good right now - took us a long time to get here - lots of tears!
I think part of it is that I've prioritized my life-long relationship with my son over lots of other things. Not in a we're best friends sense (we aren't), but, in a sense of I want a great adult relationship with him.
Hey Rod. Here's an article that combines two of your interests, space objects and Danté
"An interloper recently crashed a European Geosciences Union conference: Timothy Burbery of Marshall University was the lone English professor among 18,000 geoscientists. He is also an expert in geomythology, or the study of how pre-scientific cultures used legends and myths to explain mysterious geological events, such as volcanoes, tsunamis, and fossils. Burbery came to the conference with a wild idea: Dante Alighieri’s The Inferno wasn’t just a 14th-century epic poem and literary masterwork. It presaged the modern science of falling space rocks by 500 years.
Dante’s story of Satan’s fall has long been read as an allegory of spiritual collapse, a long, hard descent from grace. Burbery doesn’t dispute that this spiritual slide is the central metaphor the Florentine master was working with, but he suggests that Dante may have been connecting spiritual processes to physical ones—the heavens to the cosmos, the Devil to a meteorite, and that perhaps he was the first to intuit what happens when a cosmic rock strikes the Earth.
Dante was a student of geology in his time, Burbery points out, and The Inferno features many real-world geological events, such as landslides and earthquakes. Dante may have imagined the Prince of Darkness as an oblong asteroid that tunneled to the center of the Earth, kicking up the Mountain of Purgatory, creating a multi-tiered impact basin—the nine circles of Hell—and setting off a chain reaction."
I've got an advanced maths book that looks at Dante's Inferno. I think it was something to do with it referring to transfinite numbers. I'll see if I can dig it out.
Well, he would, wouldn't he? The New Left was strictly home-grown. They spoke well of Cuba, and a few visited, but Cuba couldn't have created or generated it. SDS was initiated by some old working class anti-communist socialists called League for Industrial Democracy that went back to Upton Sinclair and the like.
I guess you didn't read the 100 page report, or you wouldn't have written such.
Rubio documented it all, and explained that Revolutionary Communism, such as the New Left radicals of the 60s and which permeate leftism today, is a product of Cuba, as opposed to Moscow. The anti-colonial aspects are products of Castro.
The old Left, the Moscow oriented Communists, were focused on more closely on the workers and class conflict. Identity politics, racial resentment, etc. more closely aligns with Havana.
The dubious phrase is "documented it all." One hundred pages adds up to a lot of verbiage, but a good propaganda puff piece can spout a lot of dubious "facts" and then string them together to form a plausible conclusion. If you asked me, how do I know to trust published sources I do trust, its partly studying the footnotes, and seeing where they got it from, then evaluating how reliable those sources are, and comparing it to several other sources and thinking about where they don't corroborate each other. An innocuous example: David McCullough's bio of John Adams poses that he was at odds with the Sons of Liberty for defending the British soldiers charged after the Boston Massacre. But when Nina Sankovitch wrote "American Rebels," she found documentary evidence that the soldiers first contacted Joshua Quincy, who brought it to a meeting of the Sons of Liberty, who decided that it would be salutary to demonstrate that the colony of Massachusetts could give the soldiers a fair trial. The latter was better documented, the former was what you get from common assumption without digging deeper. (I have to start a second box or my screen will be bouncing.)
I have not perused Rubio's entire report in detail. But I lived through that era, read a good deal of historical work about it, and have a considerable base of information to start with. The New Left was, by origin decidedly anti-communist. It came out of the Red Scare, turning left while quite clear that the USSR was not anything they wanted to be associated with. Did Cuba have an appeal to some, and over the years to quite a few more? Absolutely. For one thing, Castro led a genuinely popular uprising against a brutal and callous personal dictatorship. It took a while for his ego to wreck his sense of what was going on and what he could deliver, and then to react against anyone who questioned him. Cuba was in no position to CREATE a movement in the USA. When portions of the New Left turned to communism at all, it was more often the Mao Zedong line, which was increasingly hostile to Cuba, particularly after China backed the same forces as the CIA in Congo and Angola, also aligned with the South Africa Defense Forces. Havana does not align with identity politics and racial resentments at all. It does align more with peasant revolt than with factory workers going on strike -- agrarian revolution.
Now, as to Rubio: He is a conservative Republican politician who has made his peace with Trump, who is the son of anti-Castro Cuban exiles. He is facing off with a Democratic Party that has an unhealthy component of former New Left activists and their grandchildren. So, its convenient for him, and an emotionally easy exercise for him, to spend the taxpayers' money putting out a propaganda puff piece that accords perfectly with his own ambitions and biases. I would take a closer look if he had put together a committee of between seven and fifteen widely respected historians, and asked them all to take a detailed look at this question. But, he would already have an idea of their past publication, and he would know he wasn't going to get his heart's desire from anyone who paid close attention to the facts on the ground.
I am genuinely concerned that Trump, out of deep frustration and embarrassment at the inability of the US to dominate Iran and control the Strait, will use a tactical nuke on Iran. I would only pray to God that the officers would refuse that order.
Same goes for Putin in Ukraine, but even more so. If he doesn’t manage to dramatically turn the tide against Ukraine, if they keep managing to strike deep into Russia and damage the oligarchy, it could become a true existential crisis for Putin, who might find himself in prison or falling from a Moscow window.
Two nuclear armed nuts, who have built a fantasy world around them, cornered. Pretty dangerous.
Russia has suffered massive casualties, of more than 400,000 dead troops (!) in just over 4 years. Moscow and St. Petersburg are under threat of drone attacks. The Russian army is running out of conscripts. Of course we have to be concerned that Putin could be tempted to use nukes. One doesn’t have to be a Putin hater to hope that he doesn’t use nukes against the Ukrainians.
The man is a warmongering and murdering dictator. Admiration for such a man is as morally squalid as the old Left's admiration for Castro and Che Guevarra.
Russia's survival ( at least in any time frame we ought care about) is assured-- if the nukes sleep in their silos of course. There was no alternate future where Ukraine marches on Moscow.
Not at all. I think NATO and “the West” bear a great deal of responsibility for baiting him into this war.
He’s a paranoid nut, though, who sees himself as the embodiment of Russia. He’s a true believer, and he’s deeply paranoid and that’s what makes him more dangerous than the tin pot dictator who would jump a plane to Havana in the middle of the night.
If Ukraine, what he and many Russians see as the religious-cultural soul of Russia, like the Alamo to Texans, but more so, starts slipping away along with his own power, he might do something drastic.
His actions have actually worsened Russia's position. Sweden and Finland have abandoned neutrality and joined NATO, and Russia has been forced into an inferior position in an arrangement with China.
I recall how certain everyone, including me, was that Russia would sweep into Kiev within a week of the invasion. Ironically, the weapon which kept that from happening were the Javelins, which Trump used to try to gain leverage with Zelensky to get dirt on Hunter Biden, which led to his first impeachment.
Nothing like real experience with socialism to inoculate you against it. The House of Terror in Budapest should be a required experience. Socialism is evil and never gives what it promises. It only leads to ruin, sorrow, and death.
Solzhenitsyn said that LIES always lead to mass murder.
That's because if people refuse to repeat the falsehoods the Powers are pushing, eventually the lies can only be perpetuated by force. The Powers will have to annihilate the refuseniks.
Remember Orwell's line: Eventually the Party would declare that two and two make five, and you would believe it.
Most people who leave Communist countries tend to be strongly anti Communist. However I’ve met people from Eastern Europe , specifically Russia and Poland who weren’t. They were unusual in that I think both came from Party families. Interestingly one was a refugee from the 68 anti Semitic Polish purge. You would think that would have taught the person something . It’s amazing what people don’t learn.
It’s polyvalent. Some like the benefits and others see it as a religion. For some it is both. Most who lived it hate it, but over time their descendants forget, which is why they must be taken to the House of Terror and learn the truth.
You’re not going to get a Victory plan to win the war with Iran from Trump/Hegseth because there isn’t one and they can’t makeup anything believable to sell you.
Every escalation Trump tries will simply be countered by identical destruction of the rest of the gulf’s infrastructure. Keep it up and the strait won’t matter as there won’t be any way to export oil or anything else. The Saudis paid good money to buy Trump and this was probably not what they wanted, they might be able to shut him down.
Hegseth’s corruption of the military indicates that they are on board with committing war crimes, bombing of civilian targets is not allowed and desalination plants are prohibited, so it is clear that they have no impediments to further escalations as pastor Doug Wilson seems to be giving him moral directions. God is on his side.
Iran has been around for thousands of years and has been resisting American sanctions for decades. They have been planning for this inevitability, republicans have been starting wars there for over 30 years. They are not going anywhere.
The “best” solution is if Trump just walks away and pretends he never started a war, doesn’t know anything about a war and if there was a war it was someone else that started it, probably Vance when he was out playing golf. Just leave a big mess for everyone else to deal with. That is what he always does when confronted with failure. Probably go and attack Cuba to make himself feel better.
Yup. But Trump does not see it that way so everyone else gets taken along for the ride until something happens to break his fantasy. That’s the problem. How much more damage can he do before that happens? He has over two years left. Care to make a prediction?
On Russia- Don’t forget that Hannah Arendt said that social atomization was by far the biggest cause of the rise of totalitarianism in both Germany and Russia-
Well Hannah Arendt undoubtedly knew more about Germany than Russia but the notion social atomization was by far the biggest cause of the rise of totalitarianism in Russia doesn’t even make sense.Russia was a long term explosion waiting to happen. Critical in the fall was an utterly inept, clueless Tsar, the defeat in the Japan War and World War 1 . The edifice was collapsing and it’s the totalitarians, specifically the Bolsheviks who were able to pick up the ruins.Why? I don’t think it was because of sexual decadence or Rasputin or Novel with Cocaine. From what I can figure out people had understandably had it with the Tsarist regime. Unfortunately it was the Bolsheviks who were able to pick up the pieces, in part because they had the will.
Now Doestoevsky in particular in The Possessed ,deals with the progressive delegitimization of the old order of Tsarism and Orthodoxy . Yes it’s the rejection of Russias sacred order . Gogol and post mock execution Doestoevsky found this deplorable . I sympathize but it was a bare ruined choir or a moth eaten rug at that point.
I would only add to your wise post that the Bolsheviks and the Nazis had a ruthless will to power that their opposition did not. Social atomization is way down the list.
Re: Don’t forget that Hannah Arendt said that social atomization was by far the biggest cause of the rise of totalitarianism in both Germany and Russia
I have trouble seeing how social atomization in and of itself could "cause" totalitarianism. Enable it as a background condition, yes. But as a causative factor? Huh?
As a background, yes. I can see the “ atomized individual “ who’s seeking connection ( and atomized individuals don’t necessarily seek or want connection) being open to various forms of conversion including religions and political parties. In a society where everyone is content with the way things are, radicalism doesn’t flourish. In the rise of Nazism this is probably relevant if secondary. In Russia you had a much different situation. It was a multi ethnic empire which effectively contained captive nations that left to their own devices wanted out.An intellegensia that rejected the existing system, quite rightly. A vast uneducated peasantry ill served by the system. A state backed church that served as a propaganda arm of that state. Once a couple matches hit the kindling it was ready to burn and to have someone pickup the ruins. Were there socially atomized decadents? You bet. Did that have much to do with the Bolsheviks prevailing in the Russian Civil War? No.
I'll have to read today's diary later, but since Rod raises the DSA and what it's about, I'd like to share a really superb short piece from Zineb Riboua. She nails something slippery to the wall here, something that needed nailing. It's the current Euro-American Left in a nutshell.
Riboua’s worth following.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-207786147
Thanks for this! Very interesting and nails the issue to the wall.
That Manifest story reminds me of this recent WSJ account about tech-oriented people who use AI apps to record and transcribe every single one of their interpersonal interactions. I guess I'm a little surprised that none of them seem to be too worried about the potential drawbacks of doing this!
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/workplace/ai-recording-apps-wearables-granola-39727559?st=w8CGwN&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
"Chang has also taken to recording most of her first dates, usually with Granola. She puts her phone out on the table or her chair and then once the date is through, she has the feed automatically sent to Anthropic’s Claude to report back on how she did.
"“Can I be more engaging and empathetic?” she says she might ask Claude. “What are the percentages of me talking versus them talking?”
What is WRONG with these people?!
Let’s ask Claude, Laura!
Too funny! I wouldn't even know how - do you just shout questions at the computer like Alexa?
I don’t know either, Laura; I’m none too sure how to talk to Alexa!
Or is it like our mamas always taught us—by asking nicely?
Pretty please, with a cherry on top?
Claude likey!
If I went on a date and the girl wanted to record everything we said and did, I would leave immediately.
This shows you are a normal, functioning adult!
I've never heard of anyone doing that. I'm so grateful that when I was a teenager, that technology didn't exist. I imagine it's at least part of the reason that some people are less likely to want to talk to others in public. You never know if someone might record you.
It’s just awful, isn’t it?
Very wise, Joshua!
If she doesn't tell you she's doing it, would that be criminal? It can't be entirely legal, surely?
I can totally see the value in this though if I were younger. I've done enough public speaking, board meeting, etc where I would trust my own communication over Claude's. But definitely using it as a personal butler/tutor has been the biggest hack for me personally this year.
One way I'm very organized despite long work weeks, family, and side projects is by treating your life as a business. My entire time is set to a calendar and ticketed with deadlines. Meeting coming up? Set aside 7 minutes for coffee before it starts, brush hair, pull up agenda. Reading a novel? Set that as a backlog item, assign to the appropriate sprint given pages /night. I have daily trackers each hour for steps to get in, water intake, exercise, socialization.
My wife likes this too since she can edit my calendar for household tasks (e.g. make assignment to check trash can, bi-weekly laundry check) and it goes directly to my phone as a push.
Now I'm at the point where every morning I open up about 4-5 Claude butlers and have them check in my morning routine--nutrition Claude will plan out my meals, email Claude will read and forward high priority emails, language Claude will give me my vietnamese lesson for the day, project Claude will give me updates on my hobbies and what to spend my leisure time on.
My entire life is itemized on a minute to minute basis. It's genuinely the happiest and most productive I've been in years
This sounds utterly depressing. That doesn't sound like living to me, but, we don't agree on much.
I would hate to just be a ticket on someone else's optimized schedule, I wouldn't feel like a human being.
Do you have to schedule time to attend to your daughter? Honestly, poor thing.
Didn't Governor and Senator Graham of Florida, long dead, have a diary of his hour-by-hour happenings? "I took out a VHS of "On the Bounty" at 8:30 AM." "I toasted two English Muffins at 8:45 and spread Orange Marmalade over them. They were delicious." "I took a call from Governor Lawton Chiles at 9:15 and we talked about Florida politics for thirty-two minutes."
Rationalists and Effective Altruists give me the ick. And since ick is my most accurate moral sense, I'm 99.9% sure they are evil
Cooking chicken feet gives me the ick, Giuseppe, but I don’t think that they’re evil. Maybe I’m evil for buying them? But my husband really enjoys them. I hope that doesn’t make him evil!
Oh well don't you know that chicken feet are used in witchcraft?
I did not! They are so gross to handle though that I’m not surprised.
They make a very silky stock because they are so gelatinous. But still: ick!
I have eating chicken feet. They are evil. Therefore your husband is evil. :)
Sort of like- Vegetarians are wonderful. Hitler was a vegetarian. Hitler must have been wonderful.
You forgot the part where he liked dogs.
Thanks for the reminder. Of course, he had his last dog shot so he wouldn't be interrogated by the KGB.
“He’s a witch!”
Ah, dim sum, eh?
They're really the worst. Not just wrong in the philosophical sense but truly vile, weird little people
Bill Clinton had that "share your vulnerability" thing, and the reciprocal "I feel your pain."
It's a seduction technique and I never understood why it works on any woman over the age of twenty.
And yet, it does work. On a mass scale too.
Such a suspicious loner soul am I.
It works because it should. If someone is faking it, that’s the problem.
I once heard from a very conservative female, someone who had covered some of the latter Clinton stuff and had no love for him whatsoever, describe meeting him in person for the first time. She said he had an uncanny ability to charm people in milliseconds, it was almost witchcraft. Moreover, as someone predisposed to distrust him, she had her guard down and found herself spellbound by him - he made her feel like she was the only person in that crowded room, and it was seductive. For that moment, he could have asked for her number and she might have given it.
The whole experience was unsettling to her.
An aunt of mine had a friend who's daughter was a White House intern during Clinton's time. She said that many of the female interns would have been happy to trade places with Monica.
If someone holds his secrets cheap, so he will hold yours.
I’m sure it’s been said many times many ways, but the Iranians believe in stuff; Trump believes in nothing. I’m not sure which horn of that dyad is more powerful, but I doubt they’re evenly weighted by Reality or the gods.
Trump is now talking about bombing non-military targets--power plants and bridges. It is no secret that hysteria is catching, Hegseth's is particularly virulent. Rubio is now saying don't expect the war to wind down any time soon. I can't see this ending anywhere short of catastrophe.
I can. I can see the Iranian people rising up and putting the mullahs in their place. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but it’s not without precedent. The same country had a revolution in 1979. No totalitarian regime is without fatal weaknesses.
There are a few differences. The Shahs regime was not particularly ideological. Hence you didn’t have a network of highly ideological armed men like the IRGC and the Basij. These people are committed to the regime unto death as a religious proposition. They have the guns. Believe me Savak and the Iranian generals did not have that level of commitment!
I have my doubts about the level of commitment among the IRGC, too. Theological views can change on a dime, with sufficient and intelligent application of force, as we saw in England after 1660.
Yes but notice it still stands.
It does, but such totalitarianisms do not last terribly long. The Soviets hold the record. China relies on existing cultural norms. Iran’s religious establishment lords over a more heterogeneous society.
unlike in England in 1660
Like Elton John, John!
Sorry, but the Mullahs have a constiuency. Everybody hated the Shah. The seculars didn't want Khomeini but most of them hadn't got as far as seeing that the Shah kept a lid on things.
We’ll see. I’m not sure legitimacy survives the beating Trump is delivering to them.
You don't understand at all. Legitimacy is ENHANCED by the beating Trump is delivering to them.
John Lukacs wrote of the Blitz, people aren't meat. Pounding toughens them.
Not always. And I suspect this might end up being one if those times when the beating erodes legitimacy.
The regime of only last winter had brutally repressed massive popular protests. I doubt that’s been forgotten.
Its rather rare for that to happen in the midst of a war with an aggressive enemy, unless the government in power has so badly botched the war as to be seen as unpatriotic and betrayers of the nation. (Both the Russian revolution in 1905 and in 1917 followed this playbook -- the army backed the Bolsheviks the second time around, although the officers didn't.) Its not happening in Iran. That is wishful thinking. Certain Iraqi factions promised the Bush administration that we would be welcomed as liberators, and certain populations did welcome us, briefly, after we "won." But the more powerful factions had nothing to do with those making the promises, and the Shia were both anti-Hussein and anti-American, as well as closely connected to Iran.
Trump believes in himself and that he’s always right and it’s a very strong belief. In fact no evidence to the contrary will disabuse him of that belief.
I tend to think Trump is weak in believing in himself. That’s why he needs to name everything for himself.
I like your lead-in, Crosstie; it sounds vaguely familiar.😏
Earlier I was going to say thanks for getting a Christmas carol stuck in my head in July, lol.
"Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas" by Sam the Snowman on "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."
Loved that show as a kid!
I still watch it every year. I remember being at a sports bar in December 1980 when a bunch of us demanded to replace the basketball game on TV with Rudolph. "But we're a sports bar," said the bar keep. "And we're your customers!"
Oh gosh, I haven't thought of "Rudolph" in years! My main Christmas show memories adhere to Charlie Brown, the Grinch, and Scrooge, including the Mr Magoo cartoon version.
, if you can resist reading after this opening line, you are a stronger person than your diarist- I think reading about a laser beam coming out of someone’s-I stay positively puritanical on this site- privates is pretty resistible .
This is not surprising for anyone who's known the Effective Altruist /Less Wrong/AI skeptic community, which seems to be this group. They're massively autistic to a ridiculous degree and completely sexually degenerate. Anytime you see someone like Eliezer Yudkowski or his cronies give an interview, just remember that they, Sam Bankman Fried, Aella, and others have all had sex with each other, probably at the same time. They are very open about this.
And as for Aella, she's a piece of work all to herself. Fun fact: her dad (Matthew Slick) is the founder and president of CARM, a big Christian ministry. She and her 2 sisters all got into online sex camping, although she ended up going a bit higher by being a prostitute for rich Silicon Valley nerds. This basically allows her to insert herself in these groups despite having absolutely zero talent--if you ever hear one of her "theories" that she mentions (like the one above), it is always, without fail, a word for word repeat of what someone else has told her at a party. In personal interactions, she will refuse to engage in any conversation that isn't (a) started by her, or (b) about her or her sex life. Which seems to do just fine with the EA artists, but wouldn't work in any other social context.
She also likes to fashion herself a "Data Scientist" essentially because she just tallies up how many times per year she has sex, takes a shower (20 times /year or so), does LSD (daily at heavy doses), and so on. Remember, this is the person who is being paid sometimes 100k a month for sex by thr Silicon Valley crew.
And to top it all off, she's a libertarian, so our good Christian Defender Peter Thiel of course gave her funding to talk about ethical sex work in 2020. Fun stuff
“she just tallies up how many times per year she has sex, takes a shower (20 times /year or so)“
Surely the latter affects the former. Gross 🤢
Maybe she sponge bathes?
That costs extra.
That requires an app, an account, and a subscription.
And a sponge I guess.
You have to upgrade to the premium subscription for that.
You are wasting your comedic talents here Lollie!
You should be an opening act in Vegas!
Aw, shucks, Joe, I’m blushing. Maybe a cool sponge will calm me down?
As Archie Bunker used to say, "Stifle, Lollie!!!"
Just kidding. But not a very pleasant topic- bathing habits of deranged elites :)
Laura,
Don’t stifle our Lollie, she has been on a roll for a least a week, maybe more!
We could talk about the “enema mania” that took place in 18th century France, Laura.
It was a fleeting craze.
She's claimed she has a natural biome that repels disease and odor (she doesn't think she smells anyway). So she claims that bathing would ruin her superior natural bacteria and get her sick.
She also claimed she sweats more than the average person due to a gland condition but the biome apparently counteract that
Thiel really is into all this sort of stuff. I tend to view Rod’s association with Thiel as invalidating everything he says.
There’s a nexus of evil: The tech industry + homosexuality and more extreme sexual perversion + capitalist reproductive exploitation + great wealth + hostility to Christianity + Israel and most of organised Jewry
“The puzzle is not why socialism is popular. Socialism is famously easy to message: “Take from the rich and give to the poor.” The real question is why younger Americans lack the antibodies against its natural appeal that older generations of Americans seem to have.”
This is true for Europeans as well. Maybe you need to have some experience with what Socialism actually is, was and can be. Having lived more than 5 years in Russia - shortly after Communism collapsed - I can assure you there is nothing to long for. Will never forget the poverty and the state of total collapse and corruption that was the heritage of Socialism. And that despite the wishful thinking and lies the Central Planning Authority was disseminating in Soviet Times: every year a plan that was more than hundred percent fulfilled. The biggest bogus in human history and a lunacy to long for after the facts and the evidence everybody can see.
Any immunization against socialism died when my generation learned to laugh at the preposterous excesses of ritual anti-communism. But capitalism always generates renewed interest in socialism. People who get hurt want remedies. There is a saying from the old Soviet bloc: "We knew they were lying to us about socialism, but unfortunately we found out they were telling us the truth about capitalism."
This exactly. I also lived in Russia in the 1990s and saw all the things you describe and more.
Can we please stop using Socialism and Communism as synonyms? They are very different systems-- the former generally is compatible with democratic governace and some degree of economic freedom. Contrary to the vast gaseous miasmas coming from the GOP-- more toxic than all that Canadian smoke up north-- what a number of people are getting behind these days is something like social democracy with its guarantees of economic security and necessary goods and services. There is no boomlet in people backing Communism in anything like Lenin's system, or Mao's or even Tito's. Of course I sooner expect chastity in a brothel than honesty from the MAGA-nauts.
In fairness, at the time I said that Ed Koch's New York was the only municipality in the country with a foreign policy. He left a gaggle of Russian schoolchildren visiting City Hall (you know, the one they cleansed of Thomas Jefferson's statue) weeping after a 10-minute speech detailing how horrible their country was.
Explain this one, Ted.
It happened, Lollie. Ed picked on schoolkids. This was at the height of Save Soviet Jews--and Win Valuable Prizes!
I just rewatched the video of Simon and Garfunkel’s concert in Central Park, circa 1981 or 2, and was feeling nostalgic for the City of that time, and even having Ed Koch as mayor, and now you’ve harshed my mellow, Ted!
My specialty.
I usually think of you as a ray of sunshine, or a beam of light; well, not the latter after reading the Manifest story above, but not a harsher of mellows, Ted!
"or a beam of light"
Sometimes X-Rays; sometimes gamma rays, and always dangerous to mess with or subbathe in.
A harsh marshmallow mellow.
Ok, Koch was cruel in that instance (I don’t remember it, probably because I had a lot of activities going on at that time) but I’d still take him over any mayor since. (And I would take drunken Pat Moynihan over any senator since)
I miss Ed Koch, MEG—there, I said it!
Over Rudy?
TODAY'S FIRST PRIZE WINNER
If your mayor is talking about foreign policy, the trash is probably not going to be picked up.
Boston sort of had a foreign policy for decades until the Irish decamped to the suburbs. Boston pubs were known to funnel money to the IRA.
So very glad you've come home!
I just keep wondering where the parents were for all these young people - of all the stripes you mentioned. Well, I guess, I probably know - both working insane hours, sitting on their own phones and computers, no family dinners, etc. Every day, I thank God for many things - getting us out of the insanity of California, landing us in an area with solid (if fairly Liberal) Catholic schools, the fact that I chose to stay home from the beginning and never fell into the pay someone else to raise my child trap, and the fact that our son has a really solid group of friends that all play sports together. They're all delighted to be driving so they can hang out in person - they love being around each other and horsing around, even if it's playing computer games, they're either on the phone with each other - upstairs, on speaker where I can hear them - or in someone's basement and parents are home. They often have sleepovers and are just the most delightful group of boys who will chat with the parents, clean up after themselves, etc. Now that he's learning how to drive, the captive audience in the car is me and our boy talks to me and asks me questions about what I think about stuff.
God, I am truly BLESSED!
I am just guessing here, but I also suspect a lot of it was naivete, lack of boundaries, and unwillingness to force kids out of their rooms and force them to interact with the family. There aren't many families outside the upper middle class where both parents are working insane hours, but families that allow tvs (back in the olden days!) and computers in kids' bedrooms are legion. Interestingly, I saw a NYT Wirecutter article the other day about the return of the "landline" (in this case, a telephone that looks like an old corded phone, but that uses Wifi). Kids can use it to call their friends, but there is no screen or texting capability.
Sounds like a demiparadise.
We have our days, that's for sure! Both good and bad, but, I do confess, it's pretty good right now - took us a long time to get here - lots of tears!
I think part of it is that I've prioritized my life-long relationship with my son over lots of other things. Not in a we're best friends sense (we aren't), but, in a sense of I want a great adult relationship with him.
Hey Rod. Here's an article that combines two of your interests, space objects and Danté
"An interloper recently crashed a European Geosciences Union conference: Timothy Burbery of Marshall University was the lone English professor among 18,000 geoscientists. He is also an expert in geomythology, or the study of how pre-scientific cultures used legends and myths to explain mysterious geological events, such as volcanoes, tsunamis, and fossils. Burbery came to the conference with a wild idea: Dante Alighieri’s The Inferno wasn’t just a 14th-century epic poem and literary masterwork. It presaged the modern science of falling space rocks by 500 years.
Dante’s story of Satan’s fall has long been read as an allegory of spiritual collapse, a long, hard descent from grace. Burbery doesn’t dispute that this spiritual slide is the central metaphor the Florentine master was working with, but he suggests that Dante may have been connecting spiritual processes to physical ones—the heavens to the cosmos, the Devil to a meteorite, and that perhaps he was the first to intuit what happens when a cosmic rock strikes the Earth.
Dante was a student of geology in his time, Burbery points out, and The Inferno features many real-world geological events, such as landslides and earthquakes. Dante may have imagined the Prince of Darkness as an oblong asteroid that tunneled to the center of the Earth, kicking up the Mountain of Purgatory, creating a multi-tiered impact basin—the nine circles of Hell—and setting off a chain reaction."
https://nautil.us/can-dantes-inferno-tell-us-something-about-space-rocks-1282127
WT*
I've got an advanced maths book that looks at Dante's Inferno. I think it was something to do with it referring to transfinite numbers. I'll see if I can dig it out.
So Josh, the self-described gooner, explained to the gathered nerds how to better socialize. The absurdity of that speaks for itself.
At least Nickki Glaser wasn't giving life advice.
There does seem to be a lot of aberrant behavior out there. I honestly don't know if it's still fringe or becoming the norm.
At a minimum, we should not be afraid to call it out when we see it.
It remains to be seen whether enough Democrats call out the crazies within their ranks. So far, they seem afraid.
.
The more it's discussed, the more normal it becomes.
Rubio's State Department recently published a paper on Cuba's role in creating the New Left for 60+ years. Here is the link
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Cuba-Report.pdf
It is very interesting to say the least.
Well, he would, wouldn't he? The New Left was strictly home-grown. They spoke well of Cuba, and a few visited, but Cuba couldn't have created or generated it. SDS was initiated by some old working class anti-communist socialists called League for Industrial Democracy that went back to Upton Sinclair and the like.
I guess you didn't read the 100 page report, or you wouldn't have written such.
Rubio documented it all, and explained that Revolutionary Communism, such as the New Left radicals of the 60s and which permeate leftism today, is a product of Cuba, as opposed to Moscow. The anti-colonial aspects are products of Castro.
The old Left, the Moscow oriented Communists, were focused on more closely on the workers and class conflict. Identity politics, racial resentment, etc. more closely aligns with Havana.
The dubious phrase is "documented it all." One hundred pages adds up to a lot of verbiage, but a good propaganda puff piece can spout a lot of dubious "facts" and then string them together to form a plausible conclusion. If you asked me, how do I know to trust published sources I do trust, its partly studying the footnotes, and seeing where they got it from, then evaluating how reliable those sources are, and comparing it to several other sources and thinking about where they don't corroborate each other. An innocuous example: David McCullough's bio of John Adams poses that he was at odds with the Sons of Liberty for defending the British soldiers charged after the Boston Massacre. But when Nina Sankovitch wrote "American Rebels," she found documentary evidence that the soldiers first contacted Joshua Quincy, who brought it to a meeting of the Sons of Liberty, who decided that it would be salutary to demonstrate that the colony of Massachusetts could give the soldiers a fair trial. The latter was better documented, the former was what you get from common assumption without digging deeper. (I have to start a second box or my screen will be bouncing.)
I have not perused Rubio's entire report in detail. But I lived through that era, read a good deal of historical work about it, and have a considerable base of information to start with. The New Left was, by origin decidedly anti-communist. It came out of the Red Scare, turning left while quite clear that the USSR was not anything they wanted to be associated with. Did Cuba have an appeal to some, and over the years to quite a few more? Absolutely. For one thing, Castro led a genuinely popular uprising against a brutal and callous personal dictatorship. It took a while for his ego to wreck his sense of what was going on and what he could deliver, and then to react against anyone who questioned him. Cuba was in no position to CREATE a movement in the USA. When portions of the New Left turned to communism at all, it was more often the Mao Zedong line, which was increasingly hostile to Cuba, particularly after China backed the same forces as the CIA in Congo and Angola, also aligned with the South Africa Defense Forces. Havana does not align with identity politics and racial resentments at all. It does align more with peasant revolt than with factory workers going on strike -- agrarian revolution.
Now, as to Rubio: He is a conservative Republican politician who has made his peace with Trump, who is the son of anti-Castro Cuban exiles. He is facing off with a Democratic Party that has an unhealthy component of former New Left activists and their grandchildren. So, its convenient for him, and an emotionally easy exercise for him, to spend the taxpayers' money putting out a propaganda puff piece that accords perfectly with his own ambitions and biases. I would take a closer look if he had put together a committee of between seven and fifteen widely respected historians, and asked them all to take a detailed look at this question. But, he would already have an idea of their past publication, and he would know he wasn't going to get his heart's desire from anyone who paid close attention to the facts on the ground.
I am genuinely concerned that Trump, out of deep frustration and embarrassment at the inability of the US to dominate Iran and control the Strait, will use a tactical nuke on Iran. I would only pray to God that the officers would refuse that order.
Same goes for Putin in Ukraine, but even more so. If he doesn’t manage to dramatically turn the tide against Ukraine, if they keep managing to strike deep into Russia and damage the oligarchy, it could become a true existential crisis for Putin, who might find himself in prison or falling from a Moscow window.
Two nuclear armed nuts, who have built a fantasy world around them, cornered. Pretty dangerous.
Evidently you subscribe to Bill Browder's and the neocons' opinion of Putin.
I tend to think he's a patriot whose #1 concern is Russia's survival, not his own.
I could be wrong. But consider the vested interests of some of the most virulent Putin-haters. Color me skeptical of their assessments.
Russia has suffered massive casualties, of more than 400,000 dead troops (!) in just over 4 years. Moscow and St. Petersburg are under threat of drone attacks. The Russian army is running out of conscripts. Of course we have to be concerned that Putin could be tempted to use nukes. One doesn’t have to be a Putin hater to hope that he doesn’t use nukes against the Ukrainians.
The man is a warmongering and murdering dictator. Admiration for such a man is as morally squalid as the old Left's admiration for Castro and Che Guevarra.
Russia's survival ( at least in any time frame we ought care about) is assured-- if the nukes sleep in their silos of course. There was no alternate future where Ukraine marches on Moscow.
Not at all. I think NATO and “the West” bear a great deal of responsibility for baiting him into this war.
He’s a paranoid nut, though, who sees himself as the embodiment of Russia. He’s a true believer, and he’s deeply paranoid and that’s what makes him more dangerous than the tin pot dictator who would jump a plane to Havana in the middle of the night.
If Ukraine, what he and many Russians see as the religious-cultural soul of Russia, like the Alamo to Texans, but more so, starts slipping away along with his own power, he might do something drastic.
His actions have actually worsened Russia's position. Sweden and Finland have abandoned neutrality and joined NATO, and Russia has been forced into an inferior position in an arrangement with China.
Absolutely. This has been a real self own.
I recall how certain everyone, including me, was that Russia would sweep into Kiev within a week of the invasion. Ironically, the weapon which kept that from happening were the Javelins, which Trump used to try to gain leverage with Zelensky to get dirt on Hunter Biden, which led to his first impeachment.
Nothing like real experience with socialism to inoculate you against it. The House of Terror in Budapest should be a required experience. Socialism is evil and never gives what it promises. It only leads to ruin, sorrow, and death.
Solzhenitsyn said that LIES always lead to mass murder.
That's because if people refuse to repeat the falsehoods the Powers are pushing, eventually the lies can only be perpetuated by force. The Powers will have to annihilate the refuseniks.
Remember Orwell's line: Eventually the Party would declare that two and two make five, and you would believe it.
I wish it was true that the experience of real world socialism inculcates people against it. Unfortunately it’s not always true.
I don’t see Cubans in the US pining for socialism, at least not those who lived there. “I kill a communist for free”-Tony Montana.
Most people who leave Communist countries tend to be strongly anti Communist. However I’ve met people from Eastern Europe , specifically Russia and Poland who weren’t. They were unusual in that I think both came from Party families. Interestingly one was a refugee from the 68 anti Semitic Polish purge. You would think that would have taught the person something . It’s amazing what people don’t learn.
Those who benefit from it miss it. Sanders loved it and still does. He’s a true believer, it’s his religion.
When it’s your religion you don’t necessarily need to benefit from because it is true.
It’s polyvalent. Some like the benefits and others see it as a religion. For some it is both. Most who lived it hate it, but over time their descendants forget, which is why they must be taken to the House of Terror and learn the truth.
Excursions
You’re not going to get a Victory plan to win the war with Iran from Trump/Hegseth because there isn’t one and they can’t makeup anything believable to sell you.
Every escalation Trump tries will simply be countered by identical destruction of the rest of the gulf’s infrastructure. Keep it up and the strait won’t matter as there won’t be any way to export oil or anything else. The Saudis paid good money to buy Trump and this was probably not what they wanted, they might be able to shut him down.
Hegseth’s corruption of the military indicates that they are on board with committing war crimes, bombing of civilian targets is not allowed and desalination plants are prohibited, so it is clear that they have no impediments to further escalations as pastor Doug Wilson seems to be giving him moral directions. God is on his side.
Iran has been around for thousands of years and has been resisting American sanctions for decades. They have been planning for this inevitability, republicans have been starting wars there for over 30 years. They are not going anywhere.
The “best” solution is if Trump just walks away and pretends he never started a war, doesn’t know anything about a war and if there was a war it was someone else that started it, probably Vance when he was out playing golf. Just leave a big mess for everyone else to deal with. That is what he always does when confronted with failure. Probably go and attack Cuba to make himself feel better.
This is what will happen regardless. The sooner things end, the sooner we stop wasting billions on a pointless war.
Yup. But Trump does not see it that way so everyone else gets taken along for the ride until something happens to break his fantasy. That’s the problem. How much more damage can he do before that happens? He has over two years left. Care to make a prediction?
Yep. How much more damage? Your guess is as good as mine.
On Russia- Don’t forget that Hannah Arendt said that social atomization was by far the biggest cause of the rise of totalitarianism in both Germany and Russia-
Well Hannah Arendt undoubtedly knew more about Germany than Russia but the notion social atomization was by far the biggest cause of the rise of totalitarianism in Russia doesn’t even make sense.Russia was a long term explosion waiting to happen. Critical in the fall was an utterly inept, clueless Tsar, the defeat in the Japan War and World War 1 . The edifice was collapsing and it’s the totalitarians, specifically the Bolsheviks who were able to pick up the ruins.Why? I don’t think it was because of sexual decadence or Rasputin or Novel with Cocaine. From what I can figure out people had understandably had it with the Tsarist regime. Unfortunately it was the Bolsheviks who were able to pick up the pieces, in part because they had the will.
Now Doestoevsky in particular in The Possessed ,deals with the progressive delegitimization of the old order of Tsarism and Orthodoxy . Yes it’s the rejection of Russias sacred order . Gogol and post mock execution Doestoevsky found this deplorable . I sympathize but it was a bare ruined choir or a moth eaten rug at that point.
I would only add to your wise post that the Bolsheviks and the Nazis had a ruthless will to power that their opposition did not. Social atomization is way down the list.
Re: Don’t forget that Hannah Arendt said that social atomization was by far the biggest cause of the rise of totalitarianism in both Germany and Russia
I have trouble seeing how social atomization in and of itself could "cause" totalitarianism. Enable it as a background condition, yes. But as a causative factor? Huh?
As a background, yes. I can see the “ atomized individual “ who’s seeking connection ( and atomized individuals don’t necessarily seek or want connection) being open to various forms of conversion including religions and political parties. In a society where everyone is content with the way things are, radicalism doesn’t flourish. In the rise of Nazism this is probably relevant if secondary. In Russia you had a much different situation. It was a multi ethnic empire which effectively contained captive nations that left to their own devices wanted out.An intellegensia that rejected the existing system, quite rightly. A vast uneducated peasantry ill served by the system. A state backed church that served as a propaganda arm of that state. Once a couple matches hit the kindling it was ready to burn and to have someone pickup the ruins. Were there socially atomized decadents? You bet. Did that have much to do with the Bolsheviks prevailing in the Russian Civil War? No.