I struggle to understand the person who does not regard this spectacle with revulsion. Clearly, many such people exist.
But it is a sort of block-headed nihilism (hedonism, really, I suppose) that I just cannot imagine holding with even the slightest shred of self-respect.
"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux
There's something almost too on-point with the techbro alt-right embrace of stoicism ('broicism'), given stoicism is a formula for living happy in unfreedom, a philosophy for contentedness under tyranny.
A philosophy of self-improvement for when social improvement is beyond recall.
I think as a society, we have clearly failed in that the sort of person who would suggest, "what if a UFC fight on the white house lawn?" does not know to hide that idea for shame at the withering contempt of society.
Your university is going to hire these guys to use AI to get rid of ‘inefficient’ departments like History and English. Cheaper than McKinsey but just as bad.
"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux
"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux
Asheesh Kapur Siddique
It seems overnight the White House has been replaced by a Monster Energy Drink branded UFC cage
It's also, of course, a striking testimony to how the American right has changed - stoicism is also somewhat alien to the vision of social change through de Tocquevillian voluntary association and civic mindedness that was central to conservative thinking - the 'Little Platoons' of Edmund Burke.
Don't mistake me here, I think there's quite a bit of value in stoic thought - often the world is outside of our individual control.
Nevertheless it feels like a striking product of the decline of our small-r republican culture, a giving up on politics as a means of positive change.
