TRUE BELIEVERS:

Trump’s Secret Weapon Has Always Been Status Anxiety: In a phone-powered age of diminishing social capital and growing identitarianism, the president knew just which fears to activate to get him back into the White House. (Alan Elrod, Jan 30, 2025, The bulwark)

The economic anxiety thesis is too easily contradicted by economic reality, which we have fairly reliable and objective ways of mapping and assessing. More useful for understanding what motivates Trump’s base would be a relative measure—one that could conceivably affect people in a variety of economic circumstances. The best starting point, as some observers have been arguing for years, is status anxiety.

That’s because while “status” comprises a number of signs of economic success—homes, jobs, bank accounts—it goes beyond them to include important intangibles. As Alain de Botton put it in a 2008 book on the subject, status also has to do with “a sense of being cared for and thought valuable.” And that kind of judgment is one we can only arrive at through comparison with others. He continues: “We see ourselves as fortunate only when we have as much as or more than those we have grown up with, work alongside, have as friends, or identify with in the public realm.”

This is the perfect pathology for citizens of a democracy: If merit, not rank, determines social value and achievement, as is meant to be the case in our country, then your average person will be confronted every day with the question of why they haven’t experienced greater success—a toxic recipe for self-righteousness, shame, anxiety, and self-consciousness. Especially when, thanks to our deranged media environment, the apparent success of others—including those we consider undeserving—is constantly in view. Why should they be so lucky, we might ask ourselves. Why isn’t my life like theirs? Why should I have to change my behavior to accommodate them? Why don’t people respect or value me?

As Anne Applebaum puts it in Twilight of Democracy, “When people have rejected aristocracy, no longer believe that leadership is inherited at birth, no longer assume that the ruling class is endorsed by God, the argument about who gets to rule—who is the elite—is never over.”

The central role that status anxiety played in Trump’s most recent electoral success is attested in data gathered during the run-up to last fall’s election. For instance, a July 2024 survey from the Young Men Research Initiative and YouGov showed that men aged 18 to 29 who agreed with the statement “I do not feel financially stable”—that is, men experiencing acute economic anxiety—favored Harris by 10 points. Meanwhile, those who agreed with the statement “society looks down on men who are masculine” leaned +32 for Trump. A September 2024 CNN poll found 56 percent of respondents who voted for Trump feel that “growing diversity is threatening American culture.”

Status anxiety was also a key driver of Trump’s support in his first election. In 2016, survey analysis from the Public Religion Research Institute showed that “white working-class voters who say they often feel like a stranger in their own land and who believe the U.S. needs protecting against foreign influence were 3.5 times more likely to favor Trump than those who did not share these concerns.”

The inflection status anxiety gives to political issues like civil rights, wealth inequality, and cultural acceptance allows them to be separated from material needs that could be clearly quantified; they become instead a matter of competition between groups over position in society.

Shorter version, Eric Hoffer: “The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”

ALL THE NEW ENEMIES ARE THE OLD ENEMIES:

The Open Society and Its New Enemies: What Karl Popper’s classic can teach us about the threats facing democracies today. (Matt Johnson, 29 Jan 2025, Quillette)

“In his criticism of democracy, and in his story of the rise of the tyrant,” Popper wrote, “Plato raises implicitly the following question: What if it is the will of the people that they should not rule, but a tyrant instead?” Popper took this “paradox of freedom” seriously, and he didn’t have any illusions about democracy. He recognised that some democratically elected rulers will be demagogic, incompetent, and even authoritarian. In fact, he believed that this outcome ought to be expected in a democracy. This is why he presented a “theory of democratic control” to address this concern: “The theory I have in mind is one which does not proceed, as it were, from a doctrine of the intrinsic goodness or righteousness of a majority rule, but rather from the baseness of tyranny; or more precisely, it rests upon the decision, or upon the adoption of the proposal, to avoid and to resist tyranny.” He continued:

This principle does not imply that we can ever develop institutions of this kind which are faultless or foolproof, or which ensure that the policies adopted by a democratic government will be right or good or wise—or even necessarily better or wiser than the policies adopted by a benevolent tyrant. … What may be said, however, to be implied in the adoption of the democratic principle is the conviction that the acceptance of even a bad policy in a democracy (as long as we can work for a peaceful change) is preferable to the submission to a tyranny, however wise or benevolent.

Popper argued that the first responsibility of a democratic system is avoiding bad outcomes—not engineering some prefabricated utopian future. Responsible leaders must confront the “greatest and most urgent evils of society, rather than searching for, and fighting for, its greatest ultimate good.” According to Popper, the primary goal of democratic governments should be to “create, develop, and protect political institutions for the avoidance of tyranny.”

Popper argued that the “one really important thing about democracy” is the “restriction and balance of power.” He observed that democracy “provides an invaluable battleground for any reasonable reform, since it permits reform without violence.” Liberal democracy is a political “battleground” because it is explicitly unconcerned with ultimate ends—it doesn’t exist to lay the foundation for a utopian workers’ state, a racially pure nationalist ethnostate, or any other teleological fantasy. Nor does it exist to save citizens’ souls and shepherd them into some otherworldly utopia in the afterlife. Liberal democracy isn’t meant to give people’s lives meaning—it’s meant to create the conditions that allow diverse citizens to pursue lives of meaning as they see fit, as long as they don’t prevent others from doing so.

“Institutions are like fortresses,” Popper wrote. “They must be well designed and manned.” Democracy is always vulnerable because institutions are only as strong as the people who maintain them. And this maintenance doesn’t always come naturally, as leaders and citizens must set aside their tribal loyalties to respect impersonal rules and norms that privilege the health of democracy over their narrow parochial interests.

The objection of the ethnonationalists–like Donald, Bibi, Orban, Putin, Xi, etc.–is to republican liberty: the idea that every citizen should participate in governance and that every lawadopted should apply to all univeresally, which is the entirety of liberalism. Conservatism seeks to conserve liberalism.

BE MORE LIBERTARIAN:

From Anti-Communist Crusader to Authoritarian Copycat (John Mac Ghlionn, Jan 27, 2025, Discourse)

Only the most deluded of individuals could deny that the 54-year-old inherited an economy on the edge of ruin. In his first year, he implemented austerity measures and slashed government spending, cutting through Argentina’s bloated bureaucracy. His dollarization plan, while controversial, brought a semblance of stability to a currency afflicted with hyperinflation.

These are no small feats. His economic turnaround has earned him the respect of millions, both in Argentina and abroad. In a country where decades of corruption, reckless spending and mismanagement had left its people battered by runaway inflation and crippling debt, disillusionment ran deep. Successive leaders promised change but delivered little, as the gap between the rich and poor widened and basic essentials became luxuries for many. The economy was like the Titanic, already taking on water, and Milei stepped in just before it struck the iceberg. His bold, unorthodox approach seemed to offer a lifeline to a nation desperate for something—anything—different.

To stop the analysis there, however, would be intellectually dishonest. His success in economic reform does not absolve him of his deeply troubling authoritarian tendencies. […]

Just as Xi’s Great Firewall stifles dissent and controls information flow, Milei’s administration has rolled out measures designed to choke transparency and limit public access to critical information, with Decree 780/2024 standing out as a particularly egregious example. This decree grants the government sweeping oversight over media content under the guise of protecting public order and national security. It empowers authorities to monitor and penalize journalists for reporting that is deemed “subversive,” an ambiguously defined term that leaves ample room for subjective interpretation. Under the decree, headlines critical of the administration can be flagged as destabilizing or harmful, leading to fines, forced retractions or even criminal charges against journalists and media outlets.

BIZARRO HOPPER:

The Secret Painter by Joe Tucker review – art for art’s sake (Andrew Martin, 27 Jan 2025, The Guardian)

“The Secret Painter” here is Joe Tucker’s uncle Eric, apparently the most unaesthetic of men, inhabiting the most unaesthetic of places, the industrial town of Warrington, Lancashire. He kept his trousers up with a rope; his habitual bomber jacket was patched with sticky tape, as was the cracked rear window of his car. He worked as a labourer and his regular haunts were Warrington pubs, the rougher the better, and the local Betfred.

But when Eric Tucker died, aged 86, in 2018, more than 500 paintings were found in the small council house he had long shared with his mother. The works, of the highest quality, depicted mid-20th-century working-class northern life. Many showed blurry, smoke-filled pub interiors, beautifully composed and full of slightly grotesque figures, typically side-on to show their strange profiles. They often look pale (except for red noses) and pensive, but they all have one another, and here is the first of many paradoxes about Eric Tucker.

He depicted scenes of sociability yet he himself was an uncommunicative loner with few close friends.

A GREAT LISTEN:

Lux Radio Theater 44 01 24 Casablanca

Host Cecil B. DeMille introduces Alan Ladd and Hedy Lamarr as the stars of the Lux production of Casablanca, about the leader of the Nazi resistance and his wife who seek to escape the Nazis with an exit visa held by the owner of a cafe.

Show notes

“DON’T SAY ABOUT BEAR” (profanity alert):

A Killing in Saskatchewan (Tom Davis, Jan 7, 2025, Sports Classics Daily)

The run, in a 14-foot fishing boat pushed by a 25-horse motor, took the better part of two hours. Measured by the human experience of time, it was interminable. The main body of Black Lake feels oceanic, its iron seas plunging to fathomless depths, its illimitable reach stretching so far it seems to swallow the sky. There are no landmarks; there is nothing to reckon by. There is only the drone of the motor, the slap of the water on the hull, the boreal chill of the rushing air. Time passes, yes, but without any sense of distance being closed. It is as if you are crossing the void.

Then, at last, a bump appears on the horizon. Indistinct at first, unidentifiable, it slowly resolves into a fist of lichen-painted rock surmounted by jagged firs and spruces, their rough trunks thrusting at impossible angles toward the pale light of the sun. It is like watching the approach of a ghost ship, a derelict man of war, and for reasons that are as mysterious as those depths, it sends an icy shudder of apprehension down your spine.

But then another island looms, and another and another. Suddenly the world feels familiar again, space and time reconnected and made congruent. The vague fears ebb, the expectant, anticipatory thrill of the day’s fishing welling up to replace them. You’re almost there.

That morning it was overcast. A cool mist hung in the air, not falling so much as simply condensing, like breath on glass. My father, Harlan, was my fishing partner; our guide was a stolid and inscrutable Chipewyan named Moise, a man who, in the absence of a direct question, might go hours without uttering a word. We rounded a bouldery, reed-stippled point and saw, in the middle of one of the Cree’s lake-like widenings, another boat from Morberg’s. It was circling something in the water, something moving, swimming, alive.

A bear.

Coming closer, we could make out the broad dome of its skull, the tan, doglike muzzle, the erect, almost cartoonish ears. The occupants of the other boat, a pair of jowly retirees from Duluth named Bill and Clarence, were blithely snapping away with their Instamatics; their guide, a lean, self-satisfied Chipewyan who was Moise’s polar opposite — the Wolf, I’ll call him — stood in the stem with the outboard’s tiller in his hand, hazing the bear, keeping it in open water. It did not appear especially large, as bears go, but it was large enough.

As our boat came alongside, the two guides began to converse excitedly. Even the stoic Moise was unusually animated. I thought nothing of it, at first. But then something in their tone brought me up short, and I realized, with a kind of awful, epiphanic clarity, that this was not merely a photo opportunity for us “sports,” like easing up to a loon carrying its chicks on its back. The guides saw the bear as a windfall. The old imperatives — atavistic, tribal — were still in force.

I turned to Dad and said, “They’re going to kill it.”

WE ALL WANT TO BE SPECIAL:

Excessive Worry About Health Could be Signs of Illness Anxiety Disorder (Sean Mowbray, Jan 20, 2025, Discover)

Those with illness anxiety disorder will often have trouble finding reassurance in a reasonable way, which can drive “repetitive behaviors or escalating strategies to try to relieve that,” says David Smithson, outreach manager with Anxiety UK.

This can lead to frequent visits to the doctor and recurrent medical testing to gain that reassurance. It can also lead to behaviors that can be harmful to health, such as social isolation, substance misuse, and can lead to other mental health issues such as depression.

“People become preoccupied with that, in some cases, and worry about the slightest suggestion or hint of one of those symptoms being present in their body,” says Smithson. “If you suspect you’ve got a serious life-threatening illness, it can become very debilitating and can be extremely concerning to you as an individual.”

See under Long Covid

I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER…:

Researchers design mind-blowing construction material to replace steel: ‘This technology holds a lot of promise’ (Simon Sage, January 20, 2025, The Cool Down)

Researchers at the University of Maine have managed to 3D print an organic building material with the strength of steel. […]

The nice thing about this set-up is that these panels can be printed in bulk off-site and get shipped to the construction area. Since there are already channels in the floor for electrical and plumbing, the only other thing that needs to be applied by hand is soundproofing and floor covering.

…when the Right insisted 3-D printyers would never be more than glorified Play-doh Factories….

SUICIDE BOMBING:

What has the IDF done to Gaza — and to itself? (John Ware, 1/15/25, The Article)

15 months later, his ex-defence minister Moshe Ya’alon, also once IDF Chief of Staff, said that Israel no longer had “the most moral army in the world.” Claiming to speak “on behalf of commanders who serve in northern Gaza” Ya’alon said: “War crimes are being committed here.”

The IDF denied this. What the IDF has, however acknowledged is that from the start of the war, it changed its rules of engagement.

As a consequence, one of the deadliest wars for children in the history of modern warfare was unleashed.

A recent New York Times investigation says that in the war’s first seven weeks, the IDF fired 30,000 munitions into Gaza. At 1 p.m. on Oct. 7, standard rules minimising civilian deaths were loosened.

By 30 November the Gaza Media Office said some 6150 children had been killed. The GMO is, of course, Hamas run. Even so, that estimate may turn out to have been conservative.

Based on a sample of 8119 deaths over five months which the UN claims to have independently audited, 44% were found to be children, with those aged 5 to 9 representing the single biggest age category. By that metric, it’s possible that some 6600 children were killed in the first seven weeks.

Amongst soldiers and officials quoted by the New York Times were those involved in the targeting. They told the paper that loosening the IDF’s rules to minimise collateral deaths meant a doubling of the allowable civilian to target death ratio: from a maximum of ten civilian deaths per target, to 20; for high value targets, up to 100 civilian deaths per strike. Even then, the paper said, the method to calculate the risks were “simplistic.”

IDF critics argue a target ratio of 100 to 1 would never have been contemplated by NATO forces in the 9/11 wars.

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS QUALITY:

Writers voice anxiety about using AI. Readers don’t seem to care (Tiernan Ray, Jan. 15, 2025, ZD Net)

“Throughout the study, writers expressed concerns about audiences’ reactions to their use of AI assistance for their writing,” the authors note.

However, the survey results indicate readers didn’t find that much difference in the writing samples. “By contrast, readers in our study held a more positive view toward the use of AI writing assistance,” the study notes.