Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

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Typhoon
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Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

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May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
Ibrahim
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Ibrahim »

Everything is ethnography with this guy. Its like an 80's standup routine. "Americans drive like this, but Russians drive like this."

Its also weird to assume that Russians all climb politically through spycraft and sheer cunning, whereas rising to the top of an American political party is easy. I think somebody got his self-awarded degree in Russian studies from Ian Flemming novels.

Anyway I understand the appeal. Spengo needs somebody to kill a sh__load of Central Asian Muslims, and the Russians are the best candidate (except India, which is invisible to Spengler).
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by jerryberry »

Anyway I understand the appeal. Spengo needs somebody to kill a sh__load of Central Asian Muslims, and the Russians are the best candidate (except India, which is invisible to Spengler).
Shame on me for even thinking I knowing this. I seem to recall spengler proposing Indian troops in Afghanistan to ward off Pakistan from taking over. Maybe I'm remembering wrong - I'm to lazy to look.
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Miss_Faucie_Fishtits »

You're right, David does have a place for India in his geopolitical scheme of things. No, the l0l0l0l0l0l thing is that he's telling everybody that there are no conspiracies behind Unca Sugar's flop-sweat Middle East policy. Americans are really that stupid, except for the libertarians, which are retarded....'>>......

ooo...... now Stephen Green get up on the stand and twerks it........
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Huxley »

I don't much care for Spengler's dismissal of the libertarians and isolationists. The federal government assuming the power to execute American citizens without trial based on a secret decision of the president is a 100% terrifying development that all Americans who care about liberty and constitutional rights should abominate. In general, the growing paranoia among the people that Spengler sneeringly dismisses as "rubes" is in fact entirely justified by the increasingly brazen corruption and authoritarianism of a government that hardly even bothers to pretend it is bound by any law. Spengler knows a thing or two about federal incompetence and idiocy (that's what the article is about); his sanguinity about the government's arrogation of unprecedented powers is therefore puzzling.

As for isolationism: Given the how well America's intense interest in the Middle East over the past decade has worked out, I for one can contemplate the prospect of a spell of intense disinterest with a surprising degree of tranquility....
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Ibrahim »

Miss_Faucie_Fishtits wrote:You're right, David does have a place for India in his geopolitical scheme of things.
They disappear when they gunk up his birthrate/faith/cultural superiority matrix. Like most Western columnists he talks about China ten times more than India, which always seemed illogical to me.

No, the l0l0l0l0l0l thing is that he's telling everybody that there are no conspiracies behind Unca Sugar's flop-sweat Middle East policy. Americans are really that stupid, except for the libertarians, which are retarded....'>>......
As we celebrate the anniversary of the Iraq invasion its interesting to note that plenty of people did get things right on US policy in the Middle East, but most of them were old-school lefties like Lewis Lapham, not people Spengler breaks bread with.

In general you can find clever and stupid Americans (like anywhere) but 2000-2004 saw an unprecedented level of terrible ideas and appointees inflict a terrible amount of damage in a short period of time. Even the subsequent term was better, and the current administration marginally better than that. So far anyway, still time to invade Iran.

Russia's brilliant chess-master policy has been "who is the US selling weapons to? Let's sell weapons to the other side."
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Huxley »

Ibrahim wrote:
Miss_Faucie_Fishtits wrote:You're right, David does have a place for India in his geopolitical scheme of things.
They disappear when they gunk up his birthrate/faith/cultural superiority matrix. Like most Western columnists he talks about China ten times more than India, which always seemed illogical to me.
Goldman has repeatedly acknowledged that his faith/fertility/culture analysis applies mainly to societies west of the Indus - roughly speaking, the Christian, formerly Christian and emerging Christian world - plus Islam and the Jews. The minor pagan tribes of the world are also accounted for, as dead men walking, in the Spenglermanian system. Goldman has made it plain however that he thinks India and China are wholly different civilizations, operating by their own rules, and beyond the scope of his expertise and schema...
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Ibrahim »

Huxley wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:
Miss_Faucie_Fishtits wrote:You're right, David does have a place for India in his geopolitical scheme of things.
They disappear when they gunk up his birthrate/faith/cultural superiority matrix. Like most Western columnists he talks about China ten times more than India, which always seemed illogical to me.
Goldman has repeatedly acknowledged that his faith/fertility/culture analysis applies mainly to societies west of the Indus - roughly speaking, the Christian, formerly Christian and emerging Christian world - plus Islam and the Jews.
In other words exactly what I just said. Spengler's tribal bloodlines theory aside, my point is that he's only warming up to Russia as a potential Muslim-killing machine in Central Asia. There's literally no other reason for him to like them.

The minor pagan tribes of the world are also accounted for, as dead men walking, in the Spenglermanian system. Goldman has made it plain however that he thinks India and China are wholly different civilizations, operating by their own rules, and beyond the scope of his expertise and schema...
He has no expertise on the subjects he does address. He's totally ignorant of Islamic theology, as was the author from whom he copies most of his ideas. Nor does he know anything about "pagan" cultures except that he's excited that they are dying off. Nor does he know enough about China or India to know whether or not they are subject to "different" rules. But again, not the point is this particular essay.
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Zack Morris »

Huxley wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:
Miss_Faucie_Fishtits wrote:You're right, David does have a place for India in his geopolitical scheme of things.
They disappear when they gunk up his birthrate/faith/cultural superiority matrix. Like most Western columnists he talks about China ten times more than India, which always seemed illogical to me.
Goldman has repeatedly acknowledged that his faith/fertility/culture analysis applies mainly to societies west of the Indus - roughly speaking, the Christian, formerly Christian and emerging Christian world - plus Islam and the Jews. The minor pagan tribes of the world are also accounted for, as dead men walking, in the Spenglermanian system. Goldman has made it plain however that he thinks India and China are wholly different civilizations, operating by their own rules, and beyond the scope of his expertise and schema...
So you're saying his analysis applies only to the people he is most directly obsessed with: the Judeo-Christians he *loves* and his mortal enemy, the Muslims? That must make for some penetrating insight!
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Huxley »

Ibrahim wrote:In other words exactly what I just said. Spengler's tribal bloodlines theory aside, my point is that he's only warming up to Russia as a potential Muslim-killing machine in Central Asia. There's literally no other reason for him to like them.
Where does Goldman say that he likes Russia? He calls the Russians clever, and - grouping them with the American "rubes" that he despises - paranoid.

Don't see much affection there.
Ibrahim wrote:He has no expertise on the subjects he does address.
Except economics, classical music, European history and literature, all of which he addresses extensively in his essays, not that you care.
Ibrahim wrote:He's totally ignorant of Islamic theology, as was the author from whom he copies most of his ideas. Nor does he know anything about "pagan" cultures except that he's excited that they are dying off.
He's a well-read amateur who draws on the work of experts. I happen to find his perspective illuminating. The fact that you do not is, well, fine.

We used to have this idea in the West that people of wide learning and wit might have interesting things to say even about subjects on which they have not published a dissertation. That, for example, one does not need to be a professor of linguistic anthropology to observe and comment on the well-documented fact that a large number of the world's cultures are going extinct.

I guess we're past such quaint notions, which is why journalists never write about subjects they have not been covering for years, politicians never weigh in on scientific controversies, and forum contributors never shoot their mouths off about social and political issues that are utterly outside their field of expertise.
Ibrahim wrote:Nor does he know enough about China or India to know whether or not they are subject to "different" rules.
So... Goldman does not know enough to know that he does not sufficiently understand these countries to write about them?

My, you're a tough customer!
Zack Morris wrote:So you're saying his analysis applies only to the people he is most directly obsessed with: the Judeo-Christians he *loves* and his mortal enemy, the Muslims? That must make for some penetrating insight!
Well, that's about, what - 3 billion people? Yes, only those.

Not really sure what the issue is - if you disagree with his argument, why don't you say so?
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Huxley's Excellent Post......

Post by monster_gardener »

Huxley wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:In other words exactly what I just said. Spengler's tribal bloodlines theory aside, my point is that he's only warming up to Russia as a potential Muslim-killing machine in Central Asia. There's literally no other reason for him to like them.
Where does Goldman say that he likes Russia? He calls the Russians clever, and - grouping them with the American "rubes" that he despises - paranoid.

Don't see much affection there.
Ibrahim wrote:He has no expertise on the subjects he does address.
Except economics, classical music, European history and literature, all of which he addresses extensively in his essays, not that you care.
Ibrahim wrote:He's totally ignorant of Islamic theology, as was the author from whom he copies most of his ideas. Nor does he know anything about "pagan" cultures except that he's excited that they are dying off.
He's a well-read amateur who draws on the work of experts. I happen to find his perspective illuminating. The fact that you do not is, well, fine.

We used to have this idea in the West that people of wide learning and wit might have interesting things to say even about subjects on which they have not published a dissertation. That, for example, one does not need to be a professor of linguistic anthropology to observe and comment on the well-documented fact that a large number of the world's cultures are going extinct.

I guess we're past such quaint notions, which is why journalists never write about subjects they have not been covering for years, politicians never weigh in on scientific controversies, and forum contributors never shoot their mouths off about social and political issues that are utterly outside their field of expertise.
Ibrahim wrote:Nor does he know enough about China or India to know whether or not they are subject to "different" rules.
So... Goldman does not know enough to know that he does not sufficiently understand these countries to write about them?

My, you're a tough customer!
Zack Morris wrote:So you're saying his analysis applies only to the people he is most directly obsessed with: the Judeo-Christians he *loves* and his mortal enemy, the Muslims? That must make for some penetrating insight!
Well, that's about, what - 3 billion people? Yes, only those.

Not really sure what the issue is - if you disagree with his argument, why don't you say so?
Thank YOU VERY MUCH for your post, Huxley.

EXCELLENT!

Seconded.
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Ibrahim »

Huxley wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:In other words exactly what I just said. Spengler's tribal bloodlines theory aside, my point is that he's only warming up to Russia as a potential Muslim-killing machine in Central Asia. There's literally no other reason for him to like them.
Where does Goldman say that he likes Russia? He calls the Russians clever, and - grouping them with the American "rubes" that he despises - paranoid.

Don't see much affection there.
So is the essay favorable to Russia or unfavorable to Russia?



Ibrahim wrote:He has no expertise on the subjects he does address.
Except economics, classical music, European history and literature,
I'll give you classical music an economics. His historical "expertise" is highly suspect, and usually in service of his political agenda. He also seems familiar with a few specific periods which he tries to tie everything into (e.g. 30 Years' War).


Ibrahim wrote:He's totally ignorant of Islamic theology, as was the author from whom he copies most of his ideas. Nor does he know anything about "pagan" cultures except that he's excited that they are dying off.
He's a well-read amateur who draws on the work of experts.


I don't happen to believe that he is, and many of the people he's cited on e.g. Islamic subjects are famously anti-Muslim pop-authors cashing in on post-9/11 paranoia. Not that you have to be an expert to have an opinion on something, but he claims a certain level of expertise, and many of the conclusions he draws are morally heinous so it seems fair to question his expertise and credibility somewhat.

Anyway I'm not saying that he shouldn't write or that other people shouldn't read him, I'm saying I disagree with his writing and find many flaws with it. Which is part of the game is it not?




Ibrahim wrote:Nor does he know enough about China or India to know whether or not they are subject to "different" rules.
So... Goldman does not know enough to know that he does not sufficiently understand these countries to write about them?

My, you're a tough customer!
Not quite. He's created some kind of model of civilization based on Rosenzweig, and because India and China don't fit neatly into it he claims that their cultures are too incompatible to apply his model to. Now that seems more than a little convenient to me, and why shouldn't his model work in the context of, say, India if it allegedly works in Pakistan? Its all too cute.


Getting back to Russia, I think his occasional interest in Russia is based on how it can serve his other interests.
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

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Ibrahim wrote:So is the essay favorable to Russia or unfavorable to Russia?
Why does it have to be favorable or unfavorable? It's neither. It's a diagnosis. If the doctor says you have cancer, does that mean he's pro-cancer?

The real point of essay is that American stupidity and blundering - to which Goldman is definitely unfavorable - generates paranoid reactions.
Ibrahim wrote:His historical "expertise" is highly suspect, and usually in service of his political agenda.
I'd say that as a pundit, and not a professional historian, Goldman comes off pretty well compared to just about anyone writing in English today. That said, when I want to study history, I read a history book. Obviously.
Ibrahim wrote:Anyway I'm not saying that he shouldn't write or that other people shouldn't read him, I'm saying I disagree with his writing and find many flaws with it. Which is part of the game is it not?
Indeed.
Ibrahim wrote:Not quite. He's created some kind of model of civilization based on Rosenzweig, and because India and China don't fit neatly into it he claims that their cultures are too incompatible to apply his model to. Now that seems more than a little convenient to me, and why shouldn't his model work in the context of, say, India if it allegedly works in Pakistan? Its all too cute.
Well, the model is based on an analysis of the Abrahamic religions. Thus it only really applies to the followers of those faiths and the civilizations they spawned. That's a good 3 billion people however. I think we can agree that Goldman would be overreaching a bit if he tried for a grand unified model that encompassed all of humanity.

True, Goldman's ideas are somewhat crude and simplified maps of an infinitely complex reality. That is the problem with all ideas.
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Ibrahim »

Huxley wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:So is the essay favorable to Russia or unfavorable to Russia?
Why does it have to be favorable or unfavorable? It's neither. It's a diagnosis. If the doctor says you have cancer, does that mean he's pro-cancer?

The real point of essay is that American stupidity and blundering - to which Goldman is definitely unfavorable - generates paranoid reactions.

It seems favorable to Russia to me. My doctor can diagnose me as having cancer or needing to exercise more. Both are critiques but I consider one more favorable than the other.





I'd say that as a pundit, and not a professional historian, Goldman comes off pretty well compared to just about anyone writing in English today.
Needless to say I strongly disagree.


Ibrahim wrote:Not quite. He's created some kind of model of civilization based on Rosenzweig, and because India and China don't fit neatly into it he claims that their cultures are too incompatible to apply his model to. Now that seems more than a little convenient to me, and why shouldn't his model work in the context of, say, India if it allegedly works in Pakistan? Its all too cute.
Well, the model is based on an analysis of the Abrahamic religions.
A flawed analysis based on Rosenzweig.
Thus it only really applies to the followers of those faiths and the civilizations they spawned.
A flawed assumption, considering the vast influences of other cultures and religions on Western, Jewish, and Islamic civilizations.

That's a good 3 billion people however. I think we can agree that Goldman would be overreaching a bit if he tried for a grand unified model that encompassed all of humanity.
He's already overreaching, why not go all the way?

True, Goldman's ideas are somewhat crude and simplified maps of an infinitely complex reality. That is the problem with all ideas.
The problem with his system is that it only exists to justify a political program.
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Huxley »

Ibrahim wrote:
Huxley wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:So is the essay favorable to Russia or unfavorable to Russia?
Why does it have to be favorable or unfavorable? It's neither. It's a diagnosis. If the doctor says you have cancer, does that mean he's pro-cancer?

The real point of essay is that American stupidity and blundering - to which Goldman is definitely unfavorable - generates paranoid reactions.

It seems favorable to Russia to me. My doctor can diagnose me as having cancer or needing to exercise more. Both are critiques but I consider one more favorable than the other.
?

A diagnosis is not a critique. Do you think a cancer diagnosis implies that your doctor doesn't like you, or that he has a pro-cancer bias?

I think you get tripped up in assuming that an observation or prediction is an expression of preference.
Ibrahim wrote:
I'd say that as a pundit, and not a professional historian, Goldman comes off pretty well compared to just about anyone writing in English today.
Needless to say I strongly disagree.
I am curious to know what other English-language pundits you read who have a deeper and broader grasp of history. Not being snarky here, I am genuinely interested in expanding my horizons.
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Ibrahim »

Huxley wrote:I think you get tripped up in assuming that an observation or prediction is an expression of preference.
I think it often is, though not necessarily though.


I am curious to know what other English-language pundits you read who have a deeper and broader grasp of history. Not being snarky here, I am genuinely interested in expanding my horizons.
Here is a good objective example: Christopher Hitchens. I thought he was far more educated on any number of subjects than the average pundit, and much moreso than Spengler, though I still think Hitchens was an a__hole who was wrong about everything important.

Then you've got old guard lefties like Lewis Lapham or Gore Vidal who hold/held a command of American history that dwarfed any other commentator and many professional historians.
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Hitchens the AHole vs Thanks for Endorsing Waterboarding....

Post by monster_gardener »

Ibrahim wrote:
Huxley wrote:I think you get tripped up in assuming that an observation or prediction is an expression of preference.
I think it often is, though not necessarily though.


I am curious to know what other English-language pundits you read who have a deeper and broader grasp of history. Not being snarky here, I am genuinely interested in expanding my horizons.
Here is a good objective example: Christopher Hitchens. I thought he was far more educated on any number of subjects than the average pundit, and much moreso than Spengler, though I still think Hitchens was an a__hole who was wrong about everything important.

Then you've got old guard lefties like Lewis Lapham or Gore Vidal who hold/held a command of American history that dwarfed any other commentator and many professional historians.
Thank You Very Much for your post, Ibrahim.
Hitchens was an a__hole who was wrong about everything important.
In that case water-boarding terrorists like the vile Khalid Sheik Mohammed is unimportant......... ;) :twisted:

A surprising position given IIRC the number of posts complaining about things like this.....

FWIW Hitchens was brave enough to undergo water-boarding and then denounce it as "torture" despite conservatives who had come to like & support Hitchens post 911 for his denunciations of Islam often tended to support water-boarding of creeps like Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his Al Queda buddies.......

Sounds like Christopher Hitchens had both physical and moral courage......

Both to endure water-boarding.........

And take a position unpopular with some of his supporters......

I'm sorry he is gone............ Despite disagreements I had with him..........

But again, thanks for the endorsement of the Sean Hannity Position on Water-boarding...... ;) :twisted:

Disclaimer: Not all Muslims are terrorists like Khalid Sheik Mohammed. No implication otherwise is made....

And not all Westerners are as brave and honest as Christopher Hitchens.
IMO Christopher Hitchens for all his flaws was a cut above most humans in general................
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Huxley »

Ibrahim wrote:
I am curious to know what other English-language pundits you read who have a deeper and broader grasp of history. Not being snarky here, I am genuinely interested in expanding my horizons.
Here is a good objective example: Christopher Hitchens. I thought he was far more educated on any number of subjects than the average pundit, and much moreso than Spengler, though I still think Hitchens was an a__hole who was wrong about everything important.

Then you've got old guard lefties like Lewis Lapham or Gore Vidal who hold/held a command of American history that dwarfed any other commentator and many professional historians.
Interesting. Thanks. Though it is telling that two of the three writers you mention are dead, is it not?

I agree that Christopher Hitchens, whatever one thinks of his opinions, had a remarkably well-furnished mind - for a pundit. His brother Peter Hitchens, who is still alive and quite well-known in Britain, is similarly impressive. I always find his commentary interesting and provocative, despite his focus on Britain (I'm American). You might like him. For one thing, he was a forceful opponent of the Iraq War.

I'm not familiar with Lewis Lapham but will start reading him. I see he still writes in Lapham's Quarterly. Thanks for the reference.
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by YMix »

Ibrahim wrote:Then you've got old guard lefties like Lewis Lapham or Gore Vidal who hold/held a command of American history that dwarfed any other commentator and many professional historians.
Dude, Gore Vidal was not a leftist. He was probably seen as a leftist for being anti-anti-Communist.
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Apollonius »

Back in the eighties and nineties I looked forward to Lapham's essays in Harper's with much more enthusiasm (and agreement) than I've ever had with David P. Goldman's.


A few months ago I posted this on another forum:



The last Renaissance man - Ron Rosenbaum, Smithsonian Magazine, November 2012
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-cult ... 43751.html

Lapham, the legendary former editor of Harper's, who, beginning in the 1970s, helped change the face of American nonfiction, has a new mission: taking on the Great Paradox of the digital age.


With his erudite Quarterly, the legendary Harper’s editor aims for an antidote to digital-age ignorance.



The counter­revolution has its embattled forward outpost on a genteel New York street called Irving Place, home to Lapham’s Quarterly. The street is named after Washington Irving, the 19th-century American author best known for creating the Headless Horseman in his short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The cavalry charge that Lewis Lapham is now leading could be said to be one against headlessness—against the historically illiterate, heedless hordesmen of the digital revolution ignorant of our intellectual heritage; against the “Internet intellectuals” and hucksters of the purportedly utopian digital future who are decapitating our culture, trading in the ideas of some 3,000 years of civilization for...BuzzFeed.

Lapham, the legendary former editor of Harper’s, who, beginning in the 1970s, helped change the face of American nonfiction, has a new mission: taking on the Great Paradox of the digital age. Suddenly thanks to Google Books, JSTOR and the like, all the great thinkers of all the civilizations past and present are one or two clicks away. The great library of Alexandria, nexus of all the learning of the ancient world that burned to the ground, has risen from the ashes online. And yet—here is the paradox—the wisdom of the ages is in some ways more distant and difficult to find than ever, buried like lost treasure beneath a fathomless ocean of online ignorance and trivia that makes what is worthy and timeless more inaccessible than ever. There has been no great librarian of Alexandria, no accessible finder’s guide, until Lapham created his quarterly five years ago with the quixotic mission of serving as a highly selective search engine for the wisdom of the past.


[...]


Lapham has no love for what web culture is doing. He laments Google for inadvertent censorship in the way search engine optimization indiscrim­inately buries what is of value beneath millions of search results of crap. Even if that was not the purpose, it’s been the result, he avers.

“And that aspect of the Internet I think is going to get worse.”



There's room for criticism of Lapham too.

For one thing, unlike 'Spengler', he was always too open-minded to have an agenda:



http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... ingle.html


From the critique in Slate:

Reviewing a Lapham book for the Wall Street Journal in 1988, David Brooks described Lapham as he once was, a "freethinker, free to the point of formless and self-contradictory. Sometimes he sounds like Abbie Hoffman, and other times like Milton Friedman; sometimes like Allan Bloom, other times like the lead guitarist of Iron Maiden."

Although Brooks is knocking Lapham, he inadvertently captures the multiple-personality disorder that made him an interesting editor. Lapham's magazine once contained multitudes, and so did he. But not anymore.



There's a lot of truth in that. As the article says, Lapham, at least during his tenure at Harper's, was more of provacateur than a man with a schema.


Additional criticisms, or maybe I should just call them observations, that I would level at Lapham are:


1) He tends not to critique other cultures besides the West. During his tenure at Harper's I don't remember him discussing China or Russia very often, much less Islam. He's totally immersed in reacting to modern Western culture.


2) Over the years he's become even more jaded than the rest of us older folks. His pieces in Harpers tended towards cynicism, but these days I'm not entirely sure if he believes that we can salvage what's left of civilization. His Lapham's Quarterly is an attempt to try to get us to remember what we have lost.





His recent efforts certainly do include interest in other authors who address the history of different lands and peoples:



Muslim pirates sold a million Europeans as slaves - Adrian Tinniswood interviewed by Lewis Lapham, The World in Time, 11 March 2011
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-2 ... apham.html

... Okeley had a lot to fear. Christians were sometimes tortured to force a conversion to Islam, males could be raped, and punishment was appalling. One slave had his arms and legs broken with a sledgehammer, another was thrown from a high wall onto a meat hook and left to die, while another was dragged naked through the streets, his ankles tied to a horse’s tail.

In the 17th century, more than a million Europeans were sold into slavery on the Barbary Coast. Okeley was one of the very few who, after years in captivity, managed to escape and make it back to England.

I spoke with Adrian Tinniswood, author of “Pirates of Barbary,” on the following topics:

1. Christians vs. Muslims

2. Capturing Slaves

3. State-Funded Crime

4. Pirate Terror

5. Paying Tribute



Sultan’s flunkies taught infidel envoys to grovel - James Mather interviewed by Lewis Lapham, The World in Time, 7 July 2011
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-0 ... apham.html

... Forty eunuchs dressed in satin and gold surrounded the great man on his throne. Two porters locked onto the ambassador’s arms, propelled him to the middle of the room, and forced him into a bow so low his forehead hit the ground.

Nothing less was expected. One recalcitrant Dutch official, who gave a “rash” answer to the Grand Vizier, received 184 blows on his feet, which nearly crippled him for life.

And when the French ambassador protested the court’s lack of respect for him, he was beaten up and imprisoned. The vizier described him contemptuously as an infidel: “A hogge, a dogge, a turde eater.”

I spoke with James Mather, author of “Pashas: Traders and Travellers in the Islamic World,” on the following topics:

1. Spices and Silks

2. The Levant Company

3. Souks and Khans

4. Christians Vs. Muslims

5. Aspirational Luxuries



Caliph’s wife made VIPs kiss monkey’s hand - Benson Bobrick interviewed by Lewis Lapham, The World in Time, 28 September 2012
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-2 ... -hand.html

... When he ascended the throne in 786 A.D., Caliph Harun al-Rashid oversaw an Islamic empire stretching from the Atlantic to India, and his court in Baghdad was suitably magnificent.

Harun married six times and fathered 25 children with his wives and concubines, but he never put aside Zubaidah, his first consort.

She built herself a palace of ivory and gold, had a large bodyguard of Koran-reciting slave girls and often wore so many jewels she needed aides to hold her up.

Zubaidah had a favorite pet monkey: It was dressed in a cavalry uniform and had 30 servants to attend to every need. Anyone wishing to speak with the Caliph’s wife -- generals included -- had to kiss the monkey’s hand.

I spoke with Benson Bobrick, author of “The Caliph’s Splendor: Islam and the West in the Golden Age of Baghdad,” on the following topics:

1. Harun al-Rashid

2. Islamic Armies

3. Baghdad Shines

4. Wives & Concubines

5. Knowledge Saved
Last edited by Apollonius on Sun Mar 24, 2013 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Apollonius
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Apollonius »

Here is Lewis Lapham himself on a completely different subject, and one much more dear to my heart:



Raiding consciousness: Why the war on drugs is a war on human nature - Lewis Lapham, Lapham's Quarterly, Winter 2012
http://warincontext.org/2012/12/09/lewi ... ity-state/

The question that tempts mankind to the use of substances controlled and uncontrolled is next of kin to Hamlet’s: to be, or not to be, someone or somewhere else. Escape from a grievous circumstance or the shambles of an unwanted self, the hope of finding at a higher altitude a new beginning or a better deal. Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars; give me leave to drown my sorrow in a quart of gin; wine, dear boy, and truth.

That the consummations of the wish to shuffle off the mortal coil are as old as the world itself was the message brought by Abraham Lincoln to an Illinois temperance society in 1842. “I have not inquired at what period of time the use of intoxicating liquors commenced,” he said, “nor is it important to know.” It is sufficient to know that on first opening our eyes “upon the stage of existence,” we found “intoxicating liquor recognized by everybody, used by everybody, repudiated by nobody.”


The state of intoxication is a house with many mansions. Fourteen centuries before the birth of Christ, the Rigveda finds Hindu priests chanting hymns to a “drop of soma,” the wise and wisdom-loving plant from which was drawn juices distilled in sheep’s wool that “make us see far; make us richer, better.” Philosophers in ancient Greece rejoiced in the literal meaning of the word symposium, a “drinking together.” The Roman Stoic Seneca recommends the judicious embrace of Bacchus as a liberation of the mind “from its slavery to cares, emancipates it, invigorates it, and emboldens it for all its undertakings.”

Omar Khayyam, twelfth-century Persian mathematician and astronomer, drinks wine “because it is my solace,” allowing him to “divorce absolutely reason and religion.” Martin Luther, early father of the Protestant Reformation, in 1530 exhorts the faithful to “drink, and right freely,” because it is the devil who tells them not to. “One must always do what Satan forbids. What other cause do you think that I have for drinking so much strong drink, talking so freely, and making merry so often, except that I wish to mock and harass the devil who is wont to mock and harass me.”

Dr. Samuel Johnson, child of the Enlightenment, requires wine only when alone, “to get rid of myself — to send myself away.” The French poet Charles Baudelaire, prodigal son of the Industrial Revolution, is less careful with his time. “One should always be drunk. That’s the great thing, the only question. Drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please.”

My grandfather, Roger Lapham (1883–1966), was similarly disposed, his house in San Francisco the stage of existence upon which, at the age of seven in 1942, I first opened my eyes to the practice as old as the world itself. At the Christmas family gathering that year, Grandfather deemed any and all children present who were old enough to walk instead of toddle therefore old enough to sing a carol, recite a poem, and drink a cup of kindness made with brandy, cinnamon, and apples. To raise the spirit, welcome the arrival of our newborn Lord and Savior. Joy to the world, peace on earth, goodwill toward men.


[...]


So again with the war that America has been waging for the last 100 years against the use of drugs deemed to be illegal. The war cannot be won, but in the meantime, at a cost of $20 billion a year, it facilitates the transformation of what was once a freedom-loving republic into a freedom-fearing national security state.

The policies of zero tolerance equip local and federal law-enforcement with increasingly autocratic powers of coercion and surveillance (the right to invade anybody’s privacy, bend the rules of evidence, search barns, stop motorists, inspect bank records, tap phones) and spread the stain of moral pestilence to ever larger numbers of people assumed to be infected with reefer madness — anarchists and cheap Chinese labor at the turn of the twentieth century, known homosexuals and suspected Communists in the 1920s, hippies and anti-Vietnam War protestors in the 1960s, nowadays young black men sentenced to long-term imprisonment for possession of a few grams of short-term disembodiment.

If what was at issue was a concern for people trapped in the jail cells of addiction, the keepers of the nation’s conscience would be better advised to address the conditions — poverty, lack of opportunity and education, racial discrimination — from which drugs provide an illusory means of escape. That they are not so advised stands as proven by their fond endorsement of the more expensive ventures into the realms of virtual reality. Our pharmaceutical industries produce a cornucopia of prescription drugs — eye-opening, stupefying, mood-swinging, game-changing, anxiety-alleviating, performance-enhancing — currently at a global market-value of more than $300 billion.

Add the time-honored demand for alcohol, the modernist taste for cocaine, and the uses, as both stimulant and narcotic, of tobacco, coffee, sugar, and pornography, and the annual mustering of consummations devoutly to be wished comes to the cost of more than $1.5 trillion. The taking arms against a sea of troubles is an expenditure that dwarfs the appropriation for the military budget.

Given the American antecedents both metaphysical and commercial — Thomas Paine drank, “and right freely”; in 1910, the federal government received 71% of its internal revenue from taxes paid on the sale and manufacture of alcohol — it is little wonder that the sons of liberty now lead the world in the consumption of better living through chemistry. The new and improved forms of self-invention fit the question — to be, or not to be — to any and all occasions.

For the aging Wall Street speculator stepping out for an evening to squander his investment in Viagra. For the damsel in distress shopping around for a nose like the one seen advertised in a painting by Botticelli. For the distracted child depending on a therapeutic jolt of Adderall to learn to read the Constitution. For the stationary herds of industrial-strength cows so heavily doped with bovine growth hormone that they require massive infusions of antibiotic to survive the otherwise lethal atmospheres of their breeding pens. Visionary risk-takers, one and all, willing to chance what dreams may come on the way West to an all-night pharmacy.

The war against human nature strengthens the fear of one’s fellow man. The red, white, and blue pills sell the hope of heaven made with artificial sweeteners.
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Enki
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Enki »

I know this is a hijack, but I really loathe the totally and completely incorrect narrative that doing drugs is about 'escapism'. Every action we undertake is about experience. We try to accomplish things in order to achieve an experience.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
-Alexander Hamilton
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Apollonius
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Apollonius »

So do I. In fact, I gotten many of my best ideas while stoned. I accomplish more too. More motivated and cheerful. Not saying you should be performing brain surgery or driving while stoned. It's good for picking weeds.




Relating the drug wars to cross-cultural studies, the most discouraging thing is that it isn't just America that pursues it with such zeal. Look at the Chinese, or for that matter just about anywhere else in the world. In most non-Western countries punishments are even more draconian than in America.




As far as I'm concerned, all agents of the drug wars are condemned to eternal hellfire.
Ibrahim
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Re: Spenglerman rediscovers Russophilia

Post by Ibrahim »

YMix wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:Then you've got old guard lefties like Lewis Lapham or Gore Vidal who hold/held a command of American history that dwarfed any other commentator and many professional historians.
Dude, Gore Vidal was not a leftist. He was probably seen as a leftist for being anti-anti-Communist.
Kind of an Ivy League blue-blood leftist, but compared to the populist anti-intellectualism of the current right wing in America I can't think of another way to categorize him. Also, Buckley threatened to punch him in the face, which has got to count for something.

Huxley wrote:Interesting. Thanks. Though it is telling that two of the three writers you mention are dead, is it not?

I agree that Christopher Hitchens, whatever one thinks of his opinions, had a remarkably well-furnished mind - for a pundit. His brother Peter Hitchens, who is still alive and quite well-known in Britain, is similarly impressive. I always find his commentary interesting and provocative, despite his focus on Britain (I'm American). You might like him. For one thing, he was a forceful opponent of the Iraq War.

I'm not familiar with Lewis Lapham but will start reading him. I see he still writes in Lapham's Quarterly. Thanks for the reference.
Yes, I suppose two of them are dead, though there is still a large body of work there. I know that the Hitchens brothers were barely on speaking terms, and I'm not familiar with Peter Hitchens' writings except that he's an ex-atheist and Christian apologist now. I saw an except from his book in something (Harper's?) and it was as well written as the average Oxford Brit prose. Nothing to scoof at anyway, even if I'm not the target audience for Christian apologetics.

Lapham's Quarterly in an odd format, but Lapham's writing holds up. He's just slightly too fond of the forced historical analogy. Ever essay has one of these comparisons to round off the introduction. "From the Patrician orgies of ancient Rome to today's Beltway cocktail circuit...." Something like that, every time.
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