Had to deliver a eulogy over the weekend. Getting back into the ordinary rhythm of life, but don’t have much to offer today.
Perhaps you’d like to read a (long) short story of mine over on Outside Art? It’s about a bird and maybe the end of the world.
Also, some notes on the last update:
Yes, yes, I’m aware that the congeries of ideas and policies which in the nineteenth century constituted an attitude of economic liberalism now form the basis of what Americans call economic conservatism. The neoteric becomes the traditional. Which makes me wonder—how much talk of neoliberalism is going on within conservative discourse, and which of its aspects are focused on?
In a bourgeoisie democracy, social liberals will always have social conservatives at a disadvantage. The momentum of perpetual technical progress impels the former ever onward, and their ideas and convictions can’t but seem natural in the light of a crystallizing new paradigm. On the other hand, social conservatives must always play a defensive game, and are inexorably dragged forward whether they want to be or not. In 2004, only 36% of Republicans agreed with the statement “homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society.” Having lost the fight against the gay rights movement over the next decade, many of them came came to believe it’s okay after all (and probably it was the other way around in many or most cases). At any rate, a poll from earlier this year found that 49% of Republicans are in favor of gay marriage.1
Social conservatives drew a line in the sand and demanded that society not cross it. The line was crossed. They took a few reluctant paces forward and drew another line. This process has been repeating itself generation after generation—and until we come up on the next historical inflection point, it can only ever accelerate.
Someone pointed out to me that if the mass of American social conservatives realize they’ve been boondoggled into throwing their support behind partisans of an economic philosophy whose practical application actively and invariably undermines the traditional values they old dear (while tending to make life more precarious and difficult for those of them who aren’t securely in or above the upper-middle class), the natural shift will be from a posture of conservatism to one of fascism—or something like it. Very probably.
Sixteen percent may not seem like a massive increase, but consider the difference between the questions being asked. (Somehow I’m having a hard time finding “support for same-sex marriage among partisan lines” poll results from the early 2000s.)