What Happened: July 13, 2021

The Big Story

Two new Republican candidates for office illustrate the transformations within the party and promise to be bellwethers for the fate of the post-Trump populist right. J.D. Vance, best known for the memoir Hillbilly Elegy, written about his upbringing in a poor white community in Appalachia, recently announced his run for the Republican nomination for Senate in Ohio. In Arizona, venture capitalist and former Peter Thiel employee Blake Masters is challenging current Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, the retired NASA astronaut married to former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Despite their anti-big-tech platforms, both GOP candidates have been backed by millions of dollars from PayPal founder and tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Both Vance 36, and Masters, 35, are social conservatives campaigning as critics of income inequality and corporate concentrations of power—issues that set them apart from the pre-Trump “pro business” conservative consensus. For Vance and Masters, and for the larger movement that they are attempting to lead, concern over income inequality, wages, and other issues once thought of as “liberal” reflects the belief that a “pro-family” conservative agenda is often better served by focusing on economics instead of fighting culture wars. In an ad announcing his campaign, Masters called for building “an economy where you can afford to raise a family on one single income”—an issue once championed by Democrat Elizabeth Warren. That doesn’t mean they eschew culture war altogether. Vance recently tweeted about New York City being “disgusting and violent.” But in their platforms and personas, the two represent a significant shift that is bringing some Republican politicians closer to the politics of the party’s average voters while pushing them further away from the “low taxes and loose immigration” agenda favored by many of the GOP’s traditional donors. “What a blessing it is to announce good news on television. There is so little of it. The Republican Party is getting better, much better,” Tucker Carlson said on his cable news show Monday night, giving the two candidates what may be the most valuable endorsement they could receive as representatives of the new Trumpian right, short of one from Donald Trump himself.

Read more here: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/562508-thiel-ally-blake-masters-launches-arizona-senate-bid

Today’s Back Pages: Transcendental Buffoonery

The Rest

U.S. labor unions are focusing less on standard issues around pay and working conditions and more on advocating for social issues, according to an analysis by RealClearInvestigations. The new strategy, illustrated by AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka declaring that the union “must fight for trans lives inside and outside the labor Movement,” reflects the unions’ increasing reliance on progressive white-collar professionals as union numbers have shrunk by more than half over the past four decades. “The labor watchdog Center for Union Facts found that union members shelled out about $1 billion to finance liberal nonprofits and media organizations in the past 10 years,” according to the article.
Read it here: https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/07/13/many_in_rank-and-file_object_to_unions_focus_on_woke_over_work_784299.html?mc_cid=cd472917d6

Cornel West published a scathing letter today announcing his resignation from Harvard and accusing the university of spiritual rot. The esteemed and controversial Black scholar known for his blend of Christian theology and left-wing politics had already announced earlier this year that he would be leaving Harvard to return to the faculty at Union Theological Seminary following a lengthy dispute that arose over the school’s initial decision to deny him tenure; Harvard later changed its tune and offered West tenure following public backlash, but by then, he said, it was too late. In his letter, West claims that Harvard’s decision was influenced by political considerations, including his support of Palestinian causes. West’s episode comes just weeks after the resolution of a high-profile tenure dispute between New York Times’ writer and 1619 Project lead Nikole Hannah-Jones and the University of North Carolina.

This is my candid letter of resignation to my Harvard Dean. I try to tell the unvarnished truth about the decadence in our market-driven universities! Let us bear witness against this spiritual rot! pic.twitter.com/hCLAuNSWDu

— Cornel West (@CornelWest) July 13, 2021

Inflation continued to go up in June, according to a report from the Labor Department that shows June’s consumer-price index increased 5.4% from the year before, the fastest growth rate in 13 years. The core price index, which removes food and energy prices, which have the most fluctuations, rose 4.5% from the previous year. The price hikes appear to be driven by a combination of increased demand, an indication of economic recovery, and supply bottlenecks, which are not such a positive sign.

Rioting and looting are escalating in South Africa as the country experiences its worst violence in years. At least 45 people and as many as 70 have died since the disturbances began last week, sparked by the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma on corruption charges. The military and police have both been activated to quell the disorder. Massive crowds have gathered in multiple cities across the country, leading to clashes with government security forces and private armed groups. Reports says 1,300 people have been arrested.
Read it here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/13/troops-deployed-in-south-africa-amid-violence-rarely-seen-in-the-history-of-our-democracy

Republicans in Texas voted overwhelmingly Tuesday afternoon to make Democratic members of the state legislature, who were in absentia at the time of the vote, subject to arrest. The standoff started when some 50 Texas Democrats chartered a private plane and fled the state en masse on Monday, flying to Washington, D.C., to block a vote on a Republican bill that would increase voting restrictions.

The Associated Press reports that no one involved in the Jan. 6 Capital Riots has so far been charged with sedition or treason, the latter being “the gravest of crimes a citizen can face,” according to the article. For most of its long history, the Associated Press has been associated with a dry “just the facts” style, which makes it notable that the author of this article makes a show of his disappointment in the lack of sedition and treason charges.
See for yourself: https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-government-and-politics-capitol-siege-61007f50fb3ebe15a07982112f05730c

One of the men arrested for his alleged involvement in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse worked with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as an informant, the agency acknowledged in a memo released Monday. Members of the squad that carried out the hit on Moïse were captured on video identifying themselves as DEA agents before entering his home. Other suspects involved in the case were also informants for the FBI, according to a CNN report. Haitian authorities say that they believe the plot was organized by 63-year-old Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian doctor with ties to the United States who has been publicly seeking a role in Haitian politics since at least 2011.

In a White House summit Monday to address surging crime rates across the country, President Biden told attendees to tap into the $1.9 trillion in COVID-19 relief money to fund efforts that he specified should include hiring more police. The meeting was attended by New York’s likely next mayor Eric Adams and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser as well as a top law enforcement official from Chicago.

Long Island’s Jacob Steinmetz, a right-handed pitcher with a 97 mph fastball, just became the first Orthodox Jewish player drafted by a Major League Baseball team. Steinmetz, who at 17 stands 6-foot-6, 224 pounds, was picked 77th overall by the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday. In an interview with the New York Post, Steinmetz described an accommodation he has reached with his Creator that allows him to play ball on Jewish holidays, including the Sabbath, but requires that he walk to the games on those days.
Read it here: https://nypost.com/2021/07/11/orthodox-jewish-pitcher-expected-to-be-picked-in-mlb-draft/

The Back Pages

Transcendental Buffoonery

Today’s Back Pages comes from Zohar Atkins, a rabbi and poet who brings both his rabbinic wisdom and considerable erudition to his Substack called “What Is Called Thinking,” in which Atkins casually surveys the deep questions of philosophy.

Irony is an ancient term. Quintilian defines it as saying one thing and meaning another.

Paul de Man wrote an essay named after Kierkegaard’s essay, “The Concept of Irony.” In it he says, the title is ironic because irony is not a concept, meaning it can’t be defined. Irony is something we arrive at indirectly. In the essay he claims that the great Romantic writer, Schlegel, offers us an experience of irony in his use of the phrase “transcendental buffoonery.”

The phrase “transcendental buffoonery” is funny and maybe ironic because it yokes the high and the low. We don’t typically imagine the transcendent to be jocular. But behind the joke is a deeper insight, an idea that the cosmos is intrinsically funny, that the structure of language and perception are intrinsically formed like a trip-wire over which we can’t but fall. The logos is the word made flesh but it’s also pie in the face.

Georg Lukács writes, “Irony is the highest freedom that can be achieved in a world without God.” That is, irony plays the role in modern life that religion and spirituality used to play. It’s a trace of the ineffable. This diagnosis is both sad and interesting, suggesting that the adaptation of an ironic posture—typically considered defensive—is in fact a posture of devotion in a disenchanted age. It also suggests that the religious seeker may have to travel an ironic path to arrive at faith.

Because irony is ambiguous, we can never settle on whether it leads us to making a mockery of the divine or divinizing the joke. And that’s the joke. Amen.

More of Atkins’ work can be found here: https://whatiscalledthinking.substack.com/