In times that are darkly troubled, I hope I do not drive away too many readers by announcing that this week’s theme is apocalypse, the end of the world, or at least the expectation of it. The people who can no longer bear to look at the news are like the people who cover their eyes at scenes of movie violence, and I have considerable sympathy for them, but I cannot ignore the fact that there is a widespread mood of approaching doom, and a feeling of despair, the feeling that there is no longer any hope for America, if not for the world.
Wow, you go with unerring instinct right to the heart of the matter. It is always possible that we're blind, that we're caught in a conspiracy theory of our own. That's true of any opinion we have about anything. But to say that that means we can't judge lands us in complete relativism, which, to be sure, seemed to be the upshot of a good deal of post-structuralist theory back in the day. We have to judge--we have a responsibility to judge and not play Pontius Pilate. If people support Trump now, they are responsible for that decision. It's not the same as it was a year and a half ago. And to support Trump now means to support the destruction and suffering he has caused. At that point, I don't care if they honestly think they are right. They are part of the destruction and must be opposed. If they go even further and support an insurrection, then there is no doubt. We cannot excuse treason on the grounds of "Well, I may be wrong." And as they are responsible for their decision, I am responsible for mine. To say they have joined the forces of evil is an interpretation, but I have to stand by it, trying to be as objective as I can. Liberal guilt does not help. But not to be merely defensive--you have put your finger on the hardest problem of all. Paranoia is always possible. We can always be wrong. There is no way around that problem, not even for a Blake. People desperately want something outside, an objective reality and not just my mind's or imagination's construct. Otherwise, it's a war of interpretations. The reason some students, usually male, don't like English. But unfortunately, interpretation is all we've got. The best we can do is learn a difficult balance between skepticism and a necessary trust or faith. Sorry for the preaching. Thanks for being willing to think so hard, and take me with you.
Richard, thank you for the kind words but also for the penetrating comment, which does indeed locate a serious challenge, not just for me but I think in the future for many people. The question will be how to tell true revelation and judgment from one more conspiracy theory. How to think about that 36%? In the past, the liberal attitude was to understand MAGA as motivated by economic grievance, with all the racism and cruelty as secondary products of that grievance. Of course the grievance still exists, but can it justify MAGA's continuing to endorse the devastation, hatred, and corruption of the past year and a half? I don't think it's left-wing conspiracy thinking to ask that question. As a Black woman put it in The Guardian today, white working class grievance does not justify ripping the entire country down, especially since the white working class hasn't remotely suffered as much as the Black community. In her view, economic grievance has always been a pretext to disguise the real motive, which is racism. That's why, she says, the white working class still favors Trump despite knowing by now that he doesn't care about their economic plight. He still gratifies them by favoring their racism. I'm not saying I believe that, but I admit it's become a more powerful argument than it used to be. How will we decide? I guess by seeing how Trump voters behave in the future. I think it's entirely possible that Trump and Hegseth will try to mount a military coup, a successful Jan. 6. How will Trump voters respond? I don't really know. All of this may or may not address your real concerns, so please feel free to make a follow-up comment. And thanks again for your enthusiastic engagement.
Richard, thank you for the kind words but also for the penetrating comment, which does indeed locate a serious challenge, not just for me but I think in the future for many people. The question will be how to tell true revelation and judgment from one more conspiracy theory. How to think about that 36%? In the past, the liberal attitude was to understand MAGA as motivated by economic grievance, with all the racism and cruelty as secondary products of that grievance. Of course the grievance still exists, but can it justify MAGA's continuing to endorse the devastation, hatred, and corruption of the past year and a half? I don't think it's left-wing conspiracy thinking to ask that question. As a Black woman put it in The Guardian today, white working class grievance does not justify ripping the entire country down, especially since the white working class hasn't remotely suffered as much as the Black community. In her view, economic grievance has always been a pretext to disguise the real motive, which is racism. That's why, she says, the white working class still favors Trump despite knowing by now that he doesn't care about their economic plight. He still gratifies them by favoring their racism. I'm not saying I believe that, but I admit it's become a more powerful argument than it used to be. How will we decide? I guess by seeing how Trump voters behave in the future. I think it's entirely possible that Trump and Hegseth will try to mount a military coup, a successful Jan. 6. How will Trump voters respond? I don't really know. All of this may or may not address your real concerns, so please feel free to make a follow-up comment. And thanks again for your enthusiastic engagement.
Michael — thank you, this is generous, and you named the real question better than I did: true revelation versus one more conspiracy theory. Let me press where it's least comfortable, which is on us, not them.
Your whole diagnosis rests on the shadow — that they won't look at what they are. But the shadow's signature is that it's invisible from the inside. Self-deception doesn't feel like self-deception; it feels like clarity, like finally seeing. So the honest test isn't whether MAGA looks possessed to us — it always will — but whether we can entertain that we might be the ones caught in the apocalyptic frame, mistaking our own projection for revelation. If the answer is "obviously not, the evidence is overwhelming," that's precisely what it would feel like either way.
And notice the form of the Guardian argument you found newly powerful: "the stated grievance is a pretext; the real motive is racism." That's the exact structure of "the stated concern is fraud; the real motive is white panic" — and of QAnon. Hidden true motive behind stated reason is the engine of every conspiracy theory, ours included. "TDS" and "it's really just racism" are the same machine, pointed in opposite directions.
I'm not saying the danger is unreal — you may be right about Hegseth, and I'm not sanguine. I'm saying the one move your own Frye and Jung demand is the one the essay never makes: turn the mirror around. You did, for a second — "I'm not saying I believe that." That hedge is the whole ballgame. What happens if we hold that thought a beat longer, on outselves?
Michael — a rich and moving piece, and I write as an admirer. You draw the essential line: the paranoid apocalypse that exults in the war of the good against the demonic, and the revelatory one that, in Frye's phrase, is "the way the world looks after the ego has disappeared." My question is whether the essay can keep itself on the right side of its own line.
You tell us the nationalists' external enemies are "only projections" of a shadow they won't own. But Jung's counsel was that the mature act is to withdraw one's *own* projections — not to relocate the shadow into 36% of one's countrymen. And Blake's Orc, as Frye taught us in *Fearful Symmetry*, always mistakes himself for Los: righteous energy certain of its own light, which is exactly how it hardens into the Urizen it fought. That may be why the vision "could have been written last week" — and last century.
So, sincerely: is there a point — for HCR, for me, for any of us who refuse to look away — where the revelation can no longer be doubted, where disagreement is filed in advance as denial? And once it can't be doubted, is it still apokálypsis — or the beast we set out to expose, 'that was, and is not, and yet is'?
Wow, you go with unerring instinct right to the heart of the matter. It is always possible that we're blind, that we're caught in a conspiracy theory of our own. That's true of any opinion we have about anything. But to say that that means we can't judge lands us in complete relativism, which, to be sure, seemed to be the upshot of a good deal of post-structuralist theory back in the day. We have to judge--we have a responsibility to judge and not play Pontius Pilate. If people support Trump now, they are responsible for that decision. It's not the same as it was a year and a half ago. And to support Trump now means to support the destruction and suffering he has caused. At that point, I don't care if they honestly think they are right. They are part of the destruction and must be opposed. If they go even further and support an insurrection, then there is no doubt. We cannot excuse treason on the grounds of "Well, I may be wrong." And as they are responsible for their decision, I am responsible for mine. To say they have joined the forces of evil is an interpretation, but I have to stand by it, trying to be as objective as I can. Liberal guilt does not help. But not to be merely defensive--you have put your finger on the hardest problem of all. Paranoia is always possible. We can always be wrong. There is no way around that problem, not even for a Blake. People desperately want something outside, an objective reality and not just my mind's or imagination's construct. Otherwise, it's a war of interpretations. The reason some students, usually male, don't like English. But unfortunately, interpretation is all we've got. The best we can do is learn a difficult balance between skepticism and a necessary trust or faith. Sorry for the preaching. Thanks for being willing to think so hard, and take me with you.
Richard, thank you for the kind words but also for the penetrating comment, which does indeed locate a serious challenge, not just for me but I think in the future for many people. The question will be how to tell true revelation and judgment from one more conspiracy theory. How to think about that 36%? In the past, the liberal attitude was to understand MAGA as motivated by economic grievance, with all the racism and cruelty as secondary products of that grievance. Of course the grievance still exists, but can it justify MAGA's continuing to endorse the devastation, hatred, and corruption of the past year and a half? I don't think it's left-wing conspiracy thinking to ask that question. As a Black woman put it in The Guardian today, white working class grievance does not justify ripping the entire country down, especially since the white working class hasn't remotely suffered as much as the Black community. In her view, economic grievance has always been a pretext to disguise the real motive, which is racism. That's why, she says, the white working class still favors Trump despite knowing by now that he doesn't care about their economic plight. He still gratifies them by favoring their racism. I'm not saying I believe that, but I admit it's become a more powerful argument than it used to be. How will we decide? I guess by seeing how Trump voters behave in the future. I think it's entirely possible that Trump and Hegseth will try to mount a military coup, a successful Jan. 6. How will Trump voters respond? I don't really know. All of this may or may not address your real concerns, so please feel free to make a follow-up comment. And thanks again for your enthusiastic engagement.
Richard, thank you for the kind words but also for the penetrating comment, which does indeed locate a serious challenge, not just for me but I think in the future for many people. The question will be how to tell true revelation and judgment from one more conspiracy theory. How to think about that 36%? In the past, the liberal attitude was to understand MAGA as motivated by economic grievance, with all the racism and cruelty as secondary products of that grievance. Of course the grievance still exists, but can it justify MAGA's continuing to endorse the devastation, hatred, and corruption of the past year and a half? I don't think it's left-wing conspiracy thinking to ask that question. As a Black woman put it in The Guardian today, white working class grievance does not justify ripping the entire country down, especially since the white working class hasn't remotely suffered as much as the Black community. In her view, economic grievance has always been a pretext to disguise the real motive, which is racism. That's why, she says, the white working class still favors Trump despite knowing by now that he doesn't care about their economic plight. He still gratifies them by favoring their racism. I'm not saying I believe that, but I admit it's become a more powerful argument than it used to be. How will we decide? I guess by seeing how Trump voters behave in the future. I think it's entirely possible that Trump and Hegseth will try to mount a military coup, a successful Jan. 6. How will Trump voters respond? I don't really know. All of this may or may not address your real concerns, so please feel free to make a follow-up comment. And thanks again for your enthusiastic engagement.
Michael — thank you, this is generous, and you named the real question better than I did: true revelation versus one more conspiracy theory. Let me press where it's least comfortable, which is on us, not them.
Your whole diagnosis rests on the shadow — that they won't look at what they are. But the shadow's signature is that it's invisible from the inside. Self-deception doesn't feel like self-deception; it feels like clarity, like finally seeing. So the honest test isn't whether MAGA looks possessed to us — it always will — but whether we can entertain that we might be the ones caught in the apocalyptic frame, mistaking our own projection for revelation. If the answer is "obviously not, the evidence is overwhelming," that's precisely what it would feel like either way.
And notice the form of the Guardian argument you found newly powerful: "the stated grievance is a pretext; the real motive is racism." That's the exact structure of "the stated concern is fraud; the real motive is white panic" — and of QAnon. Hidden true motive behind stated reason is the engine of every conspiracy theory, ours included. "TDS" and "it's really just racism" are the same machine, pointed in opposite directions.
I'm not saying the danger is unreal — you may be right about Hegseth, and I'm not sanguine. I'm saying the one move your own Frye and Jung demand is the one the essay never makes: turn the mirror around. You did, for a second — "I'm not saying I believe that." That hedge is the whole ballgame. What happens if we hold that thought a beat longer, on outselves?
Michael — a rich and moving piece, and I write as an admirer. You draw the essential line: the paranoid apocalypse that exults in the war of the good against the demonic, and the revelatory one that, in Frye's phrase, is "the way the world looks after the ego has disappeared." My question is whether the essay can keep itself on the right side of its own line.
You tell us the nationalists' external enemies are "only projections" of a shadow they won't own. But Jung's counsel was that the mature act is to withdraw one's *own* projections — not to relocate the shadow into 36% of one's countrymen. And Blake's Orc, as Frye taught us in *Fearful Symmetry*, always mistakes himself for Los: righteous energy certain of its own light, which is exactly how it hardens into the Urizen it fought. That may be why the vision "could have been written last week" — and last century.
So, sincerely: is there a point — for HCR, for me, for any of us who refuse to look away — where the revelation can no longer be doubted, where disagreement is filed in advance as denial? And once it can't be doubted, is it still apokálypsis — or the beast we set out to expose, 'that was, and is not, and yet is'?