Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published Jul 17, 2024Episode Three: Now that Caesar has crossed the Rubicon, the Civil War has begun and the series gathers pace.
Vidcaps taken from the dvd collection and copyright belongs to the respective makers and channels.
Transcript
November 18, 2024
HBO’s Rome Ep. 3 “The owl in a thorn bush” – History and Story
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November 13, 2024
QotD: The 1990s
Remember The Matrix? It spawned a zillion pop-academic books with titles like The Matrix and Philosophy, and for once it wasn’t just a marketing gimmick. I doubt the filmmakers intended this — given that at least one of the Wachowski Brothers is now a trannie, I suppose their intended message was “let your freak flag fly, because that makes you Secret Jesus” — but all that Baudrillard stuff that inevitably attaches itself to a movie about virtual reality was actually kinda true.
Consider that if we really do live in a computer simulation, then everything the #wokesters are always going on about is actually true. Everything really IS a “social construction”, because “society” was literally constructed. All that stuff about “systemic racism” is true, too, because again, we’re dealing with a design. Nothing evolves organically inside The Matrix, because there’s nothing organic in there at all. It’s ALL on purpose …
… and you, #wokester, are the only one who can see it. Unlike Karl Marx, who was able to see beyond his class situation enough to say that no one can see beyond his class situation, because reasons, you, #wokester, can do it because you’re Neo. That, too, is built into the system. It’s an endless recursion … but one that entails that you, and you alone, are special, on purpose.
That, kameraden, was the 1990s. Even those movies our author mentioned — Beverly Hills Cop III, Lethal Weapons 3 and 4 — weren’t just copies of copies, they were ironic, snarky commentaries on copies of copies. See also Scream, which was a “deconstruction” of every slasher picture ever made. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em … but since both beating ’em and joining ’em entail making a sincere effort and sincerity is forbidden, all you can do is mock ’em. That’s what “deconstruction” is, one long polysyllabic mockery of the very idea of excellence. It’s the perfect philosophy for people who know themselves to be mediocre but have been told from day one that they’re special.
See also the tv show Friends, where five ludicrously attractive people and David Schwimmer all pretend to be just normal folks (who happen to live in 3,000 square foot apartments in Manhattan) — each episode is “the one that’s just like The Brady Bunch, but snarky”. Or Seinfeld, which was deliberately designed to be a grating mockery of stuff like The Odd Couple. All snarky mockeries of the very concept of sincerity.
See what I mean? That’s normal now, which is why the 90s must be dragged into an alley and shot, for Western Civ’s sake.
Severian, “Why the 90s Was the Worst Decade Ever”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-07-04.
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November 12, 2024
QotD: Roger Scruton, terroiriste
>Good wine is a “somewhere”, not an “anywhere”. It is stamped with a place and a year. Rooted, literally. The fancy French word for this is terroir, referring to the way in which environment — soil, geology, even the history of a place — is all responsible for a wine’s character. Terroir is a sense of place in a glass. Roger Scruton often referred to himself as a “terroiriste“. And this could describe his political philosophy as much as his philosophy of wine. From 2001 to 2009, Scruton wrote a wine column in the New Statesman, enabling him to smuggle into that otherwise exclusively Left-wing journal, all sorts of reactionary political ideas: about God, about fox-hunting, about beauty, about his love of the countryside.
Wine, for Scruton, was never just about the taste, never a merely aesthetic sensation. Indeed, he was extremely sniffy about all those “blind tastings” — the ones where we delight when an expert fails to spot the difference between plonk and Premiere Cru. They miss the point, says Scruton. Blind tasting, he explained, is like blind kissing — not a good way to distinguish, for example, between someone who is sexy and someone who is not. Indeed, if the experiment on Love Island is anything to go by, it’s not even a good way to distinguish who your own girlfriend is.
That’s because sexual chemistry, like wine, is a great deal more than some momentary sensation on the lips. It’s a great deal more than a message sent by taste receptors to the brain. It is all about the terroir. And this is not just a comment about wine but about aesthetic experience in general. When we encounter a work of art, we bring a whole hinterland of knowledge that makes sense of that specific experience and gives it its character as art. Music is more than a vibration of the air and its reception by the ear and the brain. So too with wine and taste.
Giles Fraser, “Raise your glass to Roger Scruton, the terroiriste“, UnHerd, 2020-01-15.
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November 5, 2024
“… in an effort at harm reduction, I selected the proven authoritarian over the aspiring totalitarian”
In the National Post, J.D. Tuccille explains why he voted for “literally Hitler” instead of “the historic first woman president” in today’s US election:
“Polling Place Vote Here” by Scott Beale is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 
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For me and millions of other Americans, the 2024 U.S. election is already effectively over. Like most Arizonans, I mailed in my ballot and it awaits the count. Now, I suffer through the remaining days of hectoring political ads and finger-waggers nagging me about how I should have voted. This country doesn’t lack strong opinions about two of the worst candidates to ever grace a presidential race. Unfortunately, I felt obliged to vote for one of them, and in an effort at harm reduction, I selected the proven authoritarian over the aspiring totalitarian; I marked my ballot for Donald Trump.
There’s no doubt that Trump is a thin-skinned narcissist. Legendarily intolerant of criticism or even disagreement, he wants broadcast licenses pulled from news networks that he thinks have been mean to him and called for government to crack down on cable operations that aren’t actually subject to government regulation. The man needs perspective as much as he needs a social studies class.
This is, many Democrats and their media supporters will eagerly tell you, evidence of “fascism“. But, as John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, told The New York Times, “Trump isn’t capable of philosophical thought”. Trump’s authoritarianism isn’t an ideology; it’s a personality disorder.
That should be enough to disqualify a candidate for president. You’d think that, in a nation of 330 million people, if one major party chooses to run a profoundly problematic and authoritarian nominee for president, the other could find somebody more qualified. But you’d be wrong. In Kamala Harris, Democrats picked a vacuous sociopath uninterested in policy, but willing to serve as a vehicle for those around her who have tried their hands at totalitarian speech controls, and who are increasingly hostile to Israel, the only majority-Jewish state on the planet, and to Jews as a people.
In 2021, The Washington Post reported that former staffers for Vice President Harris complained she “would refuse to wade into briefing materials prepared by staff members, then berate employees when she appeared unprepared”. That failure to prepare for responsibilities and public appearances feeds her propensity for word salads, leaving the impression she’s reciting the results of a dropped Scrabble board.
In a Biden-Harris administration already lacking for adult supervision — President Joe Biden’s failing mental faculties are now a matter of record, as is his inability to make decisions — that suggests a potential President Harris would have no firmer hand on the wheel. That would leave the relatively faceless minions around her free to continue to exercise their instincts. And their instincts are terrible.
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November 3, 2024
The end of the “cheap streaming era” is at hand
Ted Gioia explains why your streaming services are going to be jacking up their prices — if they haven’t already done so:
I got a request to explain why streaming subscription prices are so damned high — and getting higher.
This came in response to a chart I shared two days ago:
And it’s not just Disney.
All the streaming platforms are jacking up prices. I still subscribe to five different streaming services—down from six previously. Every one of them raised prices this year, and always by more than the inflation rate.
Here’s what Spotify is doing:
What’s going on? And will it continue?
I recently described this as an “endgame strategy” — but that might be confusing to readers.
Endgame is a term drawn from chess, where it refers to a body of wisdom about the final moves on the board. But business is like chess, so I frequently analyzed endgame situations back in my days at the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey.
I now see these endgame strategies getting implemented in various media, entertainment, and streaming businesses. But almost nobody inside those businesses wants to talk about it.
So let me lay it out for you.
The Entertainment Industry Is Adopting an Endgame Mindset
You pursue an “endgame” strategy when demand for your business hits a wall, and it’s hard to attract new customers. The most typical endgame strategy is to cut back investment into new products and services, while raising prices sharply.
You’re willing to accept some loss of customers, because you’re now squeezing more profit-per-user out of your remaining consumers — who stick with you out of loyalty or habit or inertia.
These are your sheep, ready to be shorn.
Profit per customer is now the key metric driving your business. It’s more important than innovation or growth or artistry or any of those old fashioned ideas.
That’s why, for example, Netflix won’t share data on the number of subscribers anymore. They claim this is no longer relevant to their business model — and they aren’t lying.
Price increases are now the engine of their business.
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November 1, 2024
End of typical US political discussion – “I can’t even talk to you about this stuff — you’re so irrational!”
Chris Bray on the widespread phenomenon of progressives who “can’t even” their way out of political discussions that don’t confirm their priors:
In a long thread on his many discussions over the last year with Trump and Harris supporters, a Daily Wire editor drops this contrast down in the middle:
I live in a deep blue zone, and I have these vibes-and-racism conversations several times a week. I learned today, face-to-face, that Donald Trump hates everyone who isn’t white. I mean, he despises them. All of them. These conversations go like this:
A: Trump is SUCH a fucking racist, man, he hates everyone who isn’t white, how can you even support someone like that?
B: Why is he racist?
A: Are you being serious right now? C’mon, man!
B: No, but why is he racist?
A: I can’t believe you’re defending him!
B: Okay, look: Donald Trump has already been the president for four years. What would you say were the top three racist policies he implemented?
A: You know what, I’m done with this discussion.
B: I’d settle for one really good one. What big racist policy did he implement?
A: I can’t even talk to you about this stuff — you’re so irrational!
Over and over and over and over again, these conversations hit the “I can’t even talk to you about this stuff” moment, the hard shutdown.
- What evidence can you offer for that view?
- [cognitive program shuts down]
Certain trigger terms warn you that the shutdown is moments away: conspiracy theory, disinformation, “what are you even talking about?” This personal observation about social interaction applies equally well to CNN panel discussions, by the way.
I’ve written before that I had a conversation just after the 2016 election in which I was asked how I could support someone who was going to put my own friends and family in the camps, man, he’s gonna put us in the fucking camps!
Eight years later, and after four years of a Trump presidency in which no one went to the camps, Trump can’t be allowed to return to the White House because, guess what, he’ll send us all to the camps:
October 31, 2024
The US federal election goes into garbage time
Lauren Smith on the latest attempt by Joe Biden to suck the oxygen out of the room (Kamala Harris was also speaking while Biden’s “gaffe” grabbed the media’s full attention):
US president Joe Biden has re-emerged from wherever he was being hidden to hand Donald Trump an incredible, accidental boost. In a rare public appearance, he branded Trump’s supporters “garbage“.
For some reason, the president decided to wade into the row over a joke made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden last weekend. Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”, sparking some confected outrage among those pretending not to know he was joking. In response, while speaking to Hispanic advocacy group Voto Latino, Biden said: “The only garbage I see floating out here is [Trump’s] supporters”.
The Republicans have understandably seized on the remark. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, slammed it as “disgusting”. Florida senator Marco Rubio repeated the smear to Trump supporters at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania last night, to furious boos from the crowd.
The White House then rushed to try to retract the comments. Today, in a statement on X, Biden claimed that he was actually talking about the “hateful rhetoric” being “spewed” at the rally, not about Trump’s supporters themselves. That, he says, is “all I meant to say”.
But that is plainly not what he said. And everyone can guess it’s probably not what he meant, either. As Trump pointed out at the Allentown rally yesterday, Biden’s “garbage” gaffe is highly reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s infamous “deplorables” outburst. During her 2016 presidential campaign, she described “half” of Trump’s supporters as “racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamophobic”, saying they all belonged in a “basket of deplorables”. It was a blunder that many, including Clinton herself, believe cost her the election.
Jim Treacher investigates what he calls “the Case of the Planted Apostrophe” as the bulk of the legacy media rallied to try to cover up, mitigate, or explain away Biden’s “garbage” comment:
I think I heard something about MSNBC intercutting footage from the ’39 rally with the Trump rally? I haven’t watched that network since they fired Olbermann, but it sounds like something they’d do.
Little did they all know what a gift they were about to be handed. One of the speakers at the rally was comedian and Kill Tony podcast host Tony Hinchcliffe, and everybody lost their minds about this joke:
Perfect. The headline wrote itself: TRUMP RALLY BASHES PUERTO RICANS!!!
If Trump wanted to convince everyone he’s not a bigot, Hinchcliffe certainly didn’t do him any favors. Even though, as a few lonesome bloggers shouted into the wilderness, it was a joke.1
The entire journalism industry then spent 48 solid hours pouncing and seizing on Hinchcliffe’s unfortunate wisecrack. “See? Do you see how racist they are? They’re just so … so … racist!!”
Oh, they were so happy.
But they forgot one thing: Grandpa Joe is still around.
And he wants to help.
Emphasis mine:
The Puerto Rican that I know, or Puerto Rico where I’m, in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable.
Oops.
Yes, Joe Biden just called Trump supporters “garbage”. It’s the only clear sentence in that whole paragraph of gibberish.
There are maybe six million Puerto Ricans in America. In 2020, there were something like 75 million Trump voters. I’m no mathematician, but that’s a lot more. If alienating the first group is bad, then alienating the second group is much, much worse.
No matter how much Joe Scarborough hates them.
If a dumb joke by a podcast host matters, then so does the sitting president of the United States telling tens of millions of voters that they’re “garbage”.
1. The journos are now digging into Hinchcliffe’s voting history. They’re investigating a comedian for telling a joke. And they wonder why we hate them.
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October 30, 2024
Less than a week of increasingly desperate measures left to go …
I’m referring to the antics of the major US political parties as the formal date of the US election heaves into sight. On the one hand, Theophilus Chilton characterizes the Democrats as “cornered animals”:
“Polling Place Vote Here” by Scott Beale is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 .
With just about a week left before Election Day, things have definitely been heating up. At this point, it’s pretty apparent that all of the indicators are in Trump’s favour — and this is driving the Democrats absolutely nuts (even more than they usually are). A month ago, one could have definitely made the case that Kamala Harris had a good chance of winning. Now, that seems pretty far-fetched outside of the Democrats figuring out a way to fraud the vote so hard that they can overcome their ever-worsening situation in basically every swing state. As we enter this final week, Trump definitely has the momentum and is conducting an upbeat, optimistic campaign. Meanwhile, Kamala and her surrogates seem palpably despondent, screaming at their microphones and rolling out one ill-conceived “October surprise” after another at an increasingly frenetic pace.
That this is the case seems to find a lot of varying data points to support it. Public-facing polling is always subject to a healthy dose of skepticism (“… gonna need to see some internals there, bub”), but even that seems to have moved in the direction of a possible outright Trumpian popular vote victory. It’s obvious where both campaigns’ internal polling is trending, as Trump heads to states like New Mexico and Virginia to expand the slate of contested states while Kamala does damage control in bright Blue urban centres where her party’s early voting numbers have collapsed. Republicans have been overperforming bigly in every swing state’s early voting. Newspapers like the Washington Post and techbros like Jeff Bezos (with access to tons of relevant Big Data) are starting to make nice with Trump because their information is pointing them in that direction. At a demotic level, Trump supporters appear loud and energised in all sorts of places where Trump support has not been traditionally robust, while Kamala’s supporters seem dejected and subdued — when they’re not angrily screaming at small children. On and on, the “non-traditional” indicators keep pointing in the same direction.
At this point, it’s pretty obvious that there is a preference cascade that is moving in Trump’s direction.
Now, if we were dealing with normal people, getting the kind of feedback that an electoral loss like this represents would cause the Left to step back and reassess what they’re doing. They’d take a moment to “look in the mirror”, so to speak. But understand that we are not dealing with normal people. Losing elections (or at least losing the actual voting, the “election” is a different matter altogether) does not send them the same message it sends to everyone else. Instead of introspection, it merely generates anger. It tells them that they need to screech harder, steal harder, and smash harder. After all, these people are on the Right Side of History and anyone who opposes them is a “fascist” and a Nazi (their actual closing argument this week, by the way). And as we all know, heroes like Indiana Jones punch Nazis. If the election is lost, it’s not because the Democrats ran an absolutely clueless, tone-deaf campaign that basically only appealed to wine aunts, gay men, and twenty-something sluts. It’s because Trump is a Russian asset and his supporters accessed a secret reservoir of racism, sexism, and transphobia like it was some kind of evil superpower that allowed them to scurrilously subvert the Good People in America. In other words, the Left will only double down on their own intrinsic madness.
I mean, this isn’t just a theory — we’re already starting to see this pattern of behaviour take place even though Harris hasn’t even lost yet. Celebrities are already starting up with their bidecadal threats to leave the country if their candidate loses. Keith Olbermann wants Elon Musk to be arrested and lose all of his government contracts for the crime of not suppressing oppositional speech on X like it used to be censored back in the old days. The ever-amusing Will Stancil is gloompilling and appears to be on the verge of either suicide or a murder spree. These people are not well. Not at all.
On the other hand, Trump is not only Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin re-incarnated with his red-hatted brownshirts terrorizing the land … he’s literally the Devil:
My current prediction — based on the average of the Trump v Harris opinion polls at Real Clear Politics — is that President Trump will win both the popular vote and the Electoral College in the 2024 election. This prediction is not only based on President Trump now effectively tying with Vice-President Harris in the average of polls, but even more on that VP Harris has never polled as well as Secretary Clinton did at the relevant points in the 2016 campaign.
What reading this Substack Note brought out very clearly was how very different this US Presidential election seems to folk on the two sides of a deeply politically polarised polity.
On the VP Harris side, the salient view is some version of “how can you even consider voting for That Man!?” This is usually attached to a whole list of sins and other claims, of varying accuracy. This is the Trump-The-Devil view. The election is all about Trump and how appalling he is, both as a person and as a political figure. Sure there are other issues (e.g. climate change, abortion) but the lead and focus is how awful Trump is.
To deal with the reality that President Trump has already been President, there is regularly extra focus on his personal Devilness plus various claims about how a second Trump Presidency would be so much worse, for whatever reasons.
Back in the 2016 campaign, it was noted that Trump’s supporters treated what he said seriously but not literally, while his opponents treated his words literally but not seriously. That is, his opponents focused on Trump’s erratic connection to accuracy in his statements but did not take the political pressure points he mobilised anywhere near as seriously. Those were simply ignored and/or dropped into “the bigotry, so ignore” box. Conversely, his supporters were being mobilised by precisely those political pressure points.
The focus on President Trump’s willingness to say things for their rhetorical effect rather than their accuracy loses some of its moral high ground, given how willing President Trump’s opponents have been willing to make statements about him for rhetorical effect, rather than accuracy.
October 26, 2024
Thank goodness somebody finally had the courage to say that Trump is a fascist
I mean it’s been obvious since his supporters have been goose-stepping around the Reichstag the White House in their brown shirts, red armbands, and constant chanting of the “Horst Wessel Lied“. How have the mainstream media managed to avoid seeing the clear inspiration of Trump’s Kampf and reporting it to credulous flyover state cretins Americans?
This week Kamala Harris described Donald Trump as a “fascist” who seeks “unchecked power”. Conservative commentators have expressed outrage at this absurd strategy, one which will doubtless backfire. And yet they appear to have forgotten that Trump has repeatedly referred to Harris as a “fascist” and, one on occasion, called her a “Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist”.
We have grown accustomed to the tactics of social media, the online crèche where those who bawl the loudest are rewarded with treats. What has become known as “Godwin’s Law” states that the longer an online discussion continues, the higher the probability that a comparison with the Nazis or Hitler will take place. Even Godwin has succumb to Godwin’s Law, penning an article for the Washington Post last December with the headline: “Yes, it’s okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don’t let me stop you.”
If this election is going to be reduced to each candidate shouting “fascist” at the other, we may as well give up hope. I have never been more convinced of the growing infantilism of political discourse than in the last few weeks, or that the US is now divided – perhaps irreparably – between two groups who see the world in entirely incommensurable ways. With sensible discussion now seemingly impossible, the election has descended into a battle of memes.
Harris’s campaign team, for instance, gleefully embraced the “Brat” identity bestowed upon their candidate by Charli XCX. I must confess that I have no idea who Charli XCX might be. Her surname in Roman numerals means 100 – 10 + 10, so I can only assume she’s a classical scholar making a sardonic point about the philosophical principle of eternal recurrence.
Likewise, Trump’s now infamous reference to the eating of cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, has been remixed multiple times and shared more widely than any campaign statement. All of which is very funny, but one might be forgiven for yearning that the election of the leader of the free world should be a generally humourless affair. International conflicts are not best resolved through a series of “yo momma” jokes.
This week I wrote a piece for the Washington Post about George Orwell’s essays, and the lessons that might still be gleaned from them. Specifically, I pointed out that Orwell continually cautioned against tribal thinking, and is still despised today in certain left-wing circles for reminding his readers that authoritarianism can occur on both sides of the political aisle. I quoted Orwell’s essay “Notes on Nationalism” (1945), in which he identified “the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” I also quoted his dismay that the word “fascist” is so commonly misused. The piece can be read here.
I don’t often read the comments under my articles (except for here on Substack, of course), but I was interested to see how the overwhelmingly Democrat-supporting readership of the Washington Post might react. The comments are extremely revealing, given that most of those wading in seem determined to prove my point. I have rarely seen such unthinking and flagrant tribalism on display. Apparently, Trump is a literal “fascist”, and Orwell would have been the first to identify him as such. Orwell, of course, took up arms against actual fascists in Spain and was shot in the throat for his troubles. Would these commentators argue that if Orwell were alive today he would have packed up his gun and headed for the US in the run-up to this election? If not, why not?
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October 24, 2024
Did the Media Lose the Vietnam War?
Real Time History
Published Jun 21, 2024In late April 1975, dramatic images from Saigon are beamed across the world. North Vietnamese troops proclaimed final victory. Just how did the US lose the Vietnam War?
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October 19, 2024
Trope Talk: Train Fights!
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published Jun 28, 2024Everyone pack your bags, do your hand-stretches and file this one under “trope talks that could easily be bingo cards”! Today let’s talk about that oh-so-spectacular staple of setpieces, the marvelous Train Fight!
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October 10, 2024
HBO’s Rome – Ep. 2 “How Titus Pullo brought down the Republic” – History and Story
Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published Jun 26, 2024A look at episode 2 of the first series/season of HBO’s Rome drama. Once again we talk about the actual history and how the characters, events and institutions are presented in the series. This time this includes Antony becoming tribune of the plebs, as well as a meeting of the Senate and Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon.
Vidcaps taken from the dvd edition, so copyright belongs to HBO.
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October 4, 2024
Star Trek – “From Quoting Shakespeare to Diversity Woman’s Hour”
Every week, Substack helpfully compiles a list of posts that might be of interest to me, like this one by Isaac Young, discusses the fading phenomenon of Star Trek. (Disclaimer: I was a huge fan of the original TV series, but stopped watching the various Star Trek TV shows late in the Next Generation era and haven’t seen much after that … this essay covers parts of the canon that are largely terra incognita for me.)
In order to understand what a thing is, I believe you must first understand how it dies. Endings are the most important part of a story because they are the culmination of everything that came before. They dictate the legacy and the memory. It is through the ending that we can finally put the body of work in its proper context. What is Romeo and Juliet if we cut the final act out, and can you really understand the play if you stop just before their suicide? So therefore, in order to understand this franchise, I have to begin this essay with Star Trek‘s suicide.
Whatever we make of the heroism of James T. Kirk, the high-minded principles of Jean-Luc Picard, and the reactionary realism of Benjamin Sisko, we have to come to grips with the tragic reality that those things did not last. They were discarded for feminism, queerness, and diversity. And what do those things mean? Modern Star Trek has been quite clear about that. It’s about emasculated men and raging girlbosses. It’s about celebrating every sexual appetite except the one that produces functional families. It’s about fetishizing racial revenge and elevating mediocrity at the expense of excellence.
You’ll find Star Trek has never been more vulgar, more profane, more debauched. It’s small-minded in everything from the cast to production values to the storytelling. It’s about lecturing to the untouchables about their privilege and holding victimhood as the highest virtue. All those tiny elements which we ignored or snickered at in previous shows became the substance of their successors, while those parts we loved about Star Trek — the parts that made it great — were left behind or turned into nostalgia-bait.
The awkward reality of being a normal person from twenty years ago is that every franchise and IP has stabbed you in the back — viciously. And yet despite this, I still harbor a great love for the films and tv series of yesteryear. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be writing this essay. It is out of a great sense of love and admiration that I am dedicating this piece, and that is how I want readers to understand my review. I’m not here to tell you Star Trek was evil or anything like that. I’m here to tell you that Star Trek was great — brilliant even, but the rot was there from the beginning.
Looking back, what should I say was the core of Star Trek? Or rather, what was the nature of Star Trek? Was it in those ephemeral elements which turned out to only be in passing? Or was it those elements which had been there from the beginning, and are only now being noticed, like flesh peeling away to reveal the bones of a rotting corpse? And to continue this metaphor, what should I make of this bloated, festering body when its soul has clearly long departed?
But how can I judge old Trek for the new? How can I possibly analyze this franchise with this lens when it has clearly fallen to ideologically captured writers? Surely this once beloved series will course correct once Hollywood hears all the negative feedback from fans.
I don’t know who still believes that anymore, but I feel obligated to address this criticism for that one person who still doesn’t understand how we got here. The world didn’t suddenly turn crazy in 2016. Wokeness is not an aberration or an anomaly, but the logical endpoint of liberalism. It is egalitarianism, personal freedom, and materialism taken to their natural conclusions. It is Star Trek‘s values as they actually operate in the real world.
I can look at franchise, see it as a product of the Left, and reliably chart its degeneration through understanding those values and their decline. Star Trek isn’t bad because it fell to a bad writer’s room or predatory corporate interests. It’s bad because we’re currently in a culture-wide crisis that is affecting every form of media entertainment.
If there is one thing I want to get across in this essay, it’s that what we’re witnessing is the real Star Trek as it springs from its stated values. This is the most honest the series has ever been. Once you strip away the Shakespeare, the heroic characters, the sci-fi concepts, the witty banter, and all the moral framing, this rot is what you’ll find underneath. It’s always been there. The bad news is that Star Trek as the political propaganda it has always been is quite ugly. The good news is that those things which made Star Trek great, those things which reached for the good, the true, and the beautiful—those things are eternal. And they aren’t going to die with Star Trek.
October 3, 2024
Refuting one old myth about “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre”
In the visible portion of a pay-walled post, Andrew Doyle explains why we should stop using the hoary old anti-free speech cliché that was refuted nearly 50 years ago by the US Supreme Court:
There are few people who are courageous enough to openly admit that they oppose freedom of speech, and so we would be forgiven for thinking that the authoritarian mindset is rare. In truth, those who believe that censorship can be justified typically resort to a set of hackneyed and specious arguments. It doesn’t seem to matter how often these misconceptions are conclusively rebutted, they continue to be trotted out with depressing regularity.
Take yesterday’s Vice Presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz, in which one of these very misconceptions was parroted once again. This is how it happened:
JD Vance: You guys attack us for not believing in democracy. The most sacred right under the United States democracy is the First Amendment. You yourself have said there’s no First Amendment right to misinformation. Kamala Harris wants to …
Tim Walz: Or threatening, or hate speech …
JD Vance: … use the power of government and big tech to silence people from speaking their minds. That is a threat to democracy that will long outlive this present political moment. I would like Democrats and Republicans to both reject censorship. Let’s persuade one another. Let’s argue about ideas, and then let’s come together afterwards.
Tim Walz: You can’t yell fire in a crowded theatre. That’s the test. That’s the Supreme Court test.
The cliché that “you can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre” originates in the 1917 United States Supreme Court ruling against Charles Schenck, a socialist who had issued a broadside calling for young men to refuse military conscription and was convicted under the Espionage Act. These were the circumstances under which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the statement: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting ‘Fire!’ in a theatre and causing a panic”. Note that the word “falsely” is invariably dropped when quoted by advocates for censorship.
Leaving that telling little edit aside, it should be remembered that this was never a legally binding statement. Walz maintains that this is “the Supreme Court test”, but Holmes merely used the analogy to justify upholding Schenck’s prosecution. In fact, the decision of the court in Schenck v. United States was overruled in 1969.
Do I need to say that I didn’t watch the debate? I don’t even watch the debates when I actually have a vote to cast, so I’m going on highly selective sources to at least pretend to care about the VP debate. I do like a waspish line on almost any politician, so Bridget Phetasy’s description gave me a mental image of the event that seems highly truthy: “The vibe of this debate is adult confronting the coach who molested him”. J.D. Tuccille has more:
To illustrate the contrast between the recent presidential debate and this week’s vice-presidential match, I’ll say that I dread either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris taking office as president, but I fear the policies of veep hopefuls J.D. Vance and Tim Walz. At the top of both party’s tickets are individuals of uncertain competence and shaky basic decency, while their sidekicks come off as the designated adults, ready to step in if the winning presidential candidate falters, and more than excited to implement their chosen programs, God help us. That said, Vance had a much better night than Walz.
From the very beginning, J.D. Vance gave us a glimpse of what Trump might be like minus a personality disorder and with focus. He looked cool and collected, with his arguments organized in his head. He was also able to quickly pivot to address — or dodge (this is politics, after all) — the CBS moderators’ questions.
By contrast, Walz appeared like he was sweat-soaking his notes into illegibility as he tried to remember which part of the previous night’s memorized cram session he should spit out. He eventually regained some of his footing, though he generally seemed nervous and unprepared.
“The vibe of this debate is adult confronting the coach who molested him,” quipped podcaster and writer Bridget Phetasy, who isn’t known for being merciful.
The Democrat’s discomfort probably came to a head when he was asked to explain why he long claimed to have been in Hong Kong in 1989, with front-row seats to the Tiananmen Square massacre, when news reports and photographic evidence showed he was at home in Nebraska. Much hemming, hawing and references to a small-town upbringing ensued, which was painful to watch. The closest he came to admitting he lied was conceding, “I’m a knucklehead at times” and that he “misspoke.”
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September 22, 2024
History and story in HBO’s Rome – S1E1 “The Lost Eagle”
Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published Jun 12, 2024Starting a series looking at the HBO/BBC co production drama series ROME. We will look at how they chose to tell the story, at what they changed and where they stuck closer to the history.
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