Actually, it all goes back to 1980 and Reagan and Thatcher. Actually, it goes back to the "stagflation" of the 1970's that "discredited" Keynesianism (and "re-credited" 19th Century economics which political-economic philosophy has gone on to wreck things ever since as "neo-classicism" or "neoliberalism").
But, regardless, it sounds like an interesting book. It's called When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s and it's by John Ganz.
I'll put them in my 2024 Readings post when I'm finished. But I'm not done reading The Essential Erasmus or The Clockwork Universe yet. But reading them at the same time has made me think what a loathsome time it was when religion ruled our minds.
We had to create some sorts of explanations for the mystery of existence, and it's not like everything in religion would have been self-evidently stupid. A lot of morality and ethics is based on the realities of life and of participation in a society. All pleasures are passing and giving oneself over to them can be self-destructive. Selfishness and cruelty have to be suppressed or else life will really be "nasty, brutish and short." But at the end of the day, the religious explanation is a false one. Science will never explain the mystery. It's mysteries all the way down. But science is a more systematic way of trying to explain and understand things than is just making shit up. Which is what religion is.
I read Desiderius Erasmus's number-one smash-hit "The Praise of Folly" thirty years ago, and it had hovered before me having been mentioned in history books (along with Machiavelli's The Prince) since childhood. It was one of those books that apparently had a lasting impact on Western Civilization. Erasmus was described as a brilliant man and a humanist and a moderate. Someone who railed against the corruption and dogmatism of the Catholic Church while still wanting to prevent a schism within Christianity and all the violence it would inevitably create. He was the toast of Europe and both Hans Holbein and Albrecht Durer (and other artists) painted his portrait.
It turned out that I liked "Praise of Folly" but there were a couple of moments (one I remember in particular about strong, healthy looking beggars) that struck me as problematic. Just like nowadays, when assholes see a poor person receiving assistance before they've been reduced to starvation and rags, Erasmus believed that 16th Century poor people were all scammers, living it up on alms at the expense of decent folk.
There's even more of that shit in the first piece of this collection of his works. "The Handbook of the Militant Christian" was written as a guide to life at the request of the battered wife of some drunken, boorish knight. I found it to be obnoxious. Garbage from start to finish. Along with a few more jabs at poor people, Erasmus writes harshly about enslaved people as if it's self-evident that they're scum. He comes across as a hypocritical prig. In the brief biography at the beginning of the book it's mentioned that he was often financially straitened due to his love of fancy clothes and fine food. He spends the whole essay writing about the disgusting appetites of the poor and about the emptiness of the pleasures of this world but he was clearly unable (for his entire life) to live up to the standards he was constantly scolding others to aspire to.
The whole thing with the stink of religion is how it took the reality that pleasures are fleeting and that they often have consequences, and blew that up into a hatred of the world and a self-denying, self-hating rejection of life itself. In return for constantly denying oneself any taste of the good things in this one, brief life that we have, and for hating oneself for failing to do so, Erasmus (like so many other religious charlatans) offers the imaginary reward of eternal life with an imaginary God, which he describes with vague, meaningless superlatives. That so many people lived for so many centuries under this garbage delusion was just so depressing to me.
Edward Dolnicks The Clockwork Universe is about the impact of Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton (with assists from Galileo and Kepler and a few others) in the transformation of European culture from the Medieval to the modern. And reading it at the same time as Erasmus's puritanical screed only compounded my horror at the stifling, distorting, wasteful impact of religion on human thinking.
Again, ... we felt that we HAD to come up with something. And since it was invented bullshit, we probably HAD to insist that it not be questioned. Because, inevitably, the obvious failings and contradictions would blow everything asunder. It was a stage we had to go through but it's depressing nonetheless. This idea of this psychotic, angry God (who is simultaneously loving and awesome and just the best and always helping us except when He isn't and then it's our fault for failing) who punishes us with plagues and fire on Earth and who threatens eternal torment for us in Hell should we fail to live up to His impossible standards, ... what sickening vomit.
[God probably thanked Himself that He had Satan conveniently ruling over the Hell that the damned got sent to. What would He have done without Satan providing that dumping ground?]
The thing about Erasmus is that I wouldn't expect him to have risen above the superstitions that permeated the world he was born into. He actually did criticize the rote-learning and the dogmatism of many Christian educators and thinkers. He could see clearly in many ways. But by his own standards he fell short. First there was the hypocrisy of his lifelong indulgences in food and clothing. But for someone who claimed to understand the New Testament, he seemed unable to recognize that Jesus hadn't been a member of any nobility. Many of the Apostles were fishermen, which would have been the maritime equivalent of the rural peasants Erasmus so clearly despised. "Christian Charity" is supposed to be given happily, not (as would seem to have been the case with Erasmus) stingily as if all in need are potential grifters.
Obviously people were different back then. Life was much more violent and crude and therefore so were the humans who lived through it. But even for his own time, ... well, for a man of reading, to so clearly have missed the message of what he was yammering about, it's inexcusable for any age.
What do I know? I know that I wouldn't vote for either of Biden or Trump. Trump is a corrupt, racist, murderous asshole who has allied himself with even more dangerous, right-wing groups, like the evangelicals and the Heritage Foundation. He probably will implement some sort of fascist political order if elected. But where on earth did he get the power to impose a fascist regime in the USA, which is supposed to have a system of "checks and balances" to stymie legislative or executive overreach and defend minority rights? (I was pointing out since 2012 that the USA's political-legal system adequately prevents a government from doing things FOR US-Americans, such as provide public healthcare, while still allowing them to do things TO them, such as assassinate them overseas, spy on them, or otherwise abuse them.)
The other day I was somewhere that was playing horrible propaganda service "CNN" and they were reporting on Russian missiles hitting a hospital in Ukraine and making all the appropriate noises about how terrible it all was.
The deliberate suppression of Israel's deliberate, systematic destruction of Gaza's healthcare system on the part of hacks like CNN and the CBC ad nauseum made me, well, nauseous.
Caitlin Johnstone noticed it too: "Oh, Looks Like Bombing Hospitals Is Bad Again"
Kyiv and its western allies are saying the children’s hospital was hit by Russia, while Moscow says the hospital was hit by a Ukrainian air defense missile during Russia’s attack. All that’s clear as of this writing is that the hospital was bombed either as a direct or indirect result of the Russian missile strikes, and that western leaders are responding very, very differently to this news than they have been to deliberate Israeli attacks on hospitals throughout the Gaza Strip.
...
“This is abhorrent. Striking a children’s hospital — and the innocent children inside — cannot be justified,” tweeted Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, adding, “My heart goes out to the families who are grieving — and Canada’s commitment to Ukraine remains as strong as ever.”
...
Since October 7 there have been hundreds of documented IDF attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system, which according to the UN has been mostly destroyed by this onslaught.
Oxford University professor Nick Maynard has accused the IDF of “systematically targeting healthcare facilities, healthcare personnel and really dismantling the whole healthcare system” in Gaza after spending time working there during Israel’s bombardment of the enclave.
,,,
Where was all the outrage about all this? Where were all the statements from western officials about how “abhorrent” it is to attack those hospitals? Where were all the western news media headlines explicitly naming Israel as the perpetrator of those attacks, like they’ve been doing with Russia? Nowhere to be found.
This is because western empire managers do not actually believe that there is anything “abhorrent” or “horrific” about attacking a hospital — at least not one which provides services to Palestinians or other populations who are not favored by the western empire.
Some are saying it was an errant Ukrainian anti-missile projectile. Regardless, the USA provoked the war in Ukraine and it is subsidizing the genocide in Gaza and the Western mainstream media is playing its part to brainwash us instead of informing us.
This morning the CBC News website featured this story: "Trudeau heads for the hotseat at NATO summit as allies question Canada's defence commitments." It was accompanied by three other stories all of them about Canada's failures to meet the 2% of GDP spending on war and criticisms from foreigners of this failure.
Nothing from anybody calling for Canada to leave NATO. Nothing from anyone criticizing the dangers of NATO and the wasted resources on weapons of war.
This is how the CBC slants opinion. The same way that it maintains acquiescence to Israel's genocide of the Palestinians by simply failing to report on it for days at a time. And when it does report about that story it tends to be slanted to Israel's side.
The bosses at the CBC have a particular agenda they're trying to advance and it's not hard to see what it is.
Trump is a ridiculous liar. Hillary Clinton lost to him in the Electoral College because her own record, her beliefs, and her unprovoked abuse on the grassroots of her own party discouraged voters from bothering to come out. In the face of Trump's numerous, stupid, brazen lies, Joe Biden could only offer rebuttals (delivered with actual physical and mental exhaustion) and was overwhelmed by his own visible struggles with his developing senility.
And, the whole time, hardly any mainstream commentator reminds us of the million dead Iraqis, the millions of refugees from the Middle East, the agonies of Libya and Yemen and Syria. The genocide in Gaza. The starvation sanctions in Venezuela. All the inhuman filth that both these monsters oversee.
After fourteen years the UK Conservatives deservedly fall from power. Keir Starmer's UK Labour Party wins by default. But Keir Starmer and his partners are all braindead neo-liberal shitheads who are dedicated to serving the sociopathic desires of the oligarch class and so Starmer will now begin to shit his pants in public and being genuinely mystified when people start to complain about the smell.
The anti-genocide encampment at the University of Toronto was dismantled following a successful injunction against it. Noteworthy is the fact that the judge said that the U of T governing council and its zionist allies absolutely failed to prove their calumnies against the protesters being violent anti-semites. Dear U of T president and fellow scum: You're the ones supporting the mass murder of innocent civilians, through terrorism, torture, assassination, bombing and starvation. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.
Finally, the CBC is a disgrace.
Canada's antiquated First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system allowed the federal Conservatives under the racist degenerate imbecile Pierre Poilevre to eke out a narrow win in the former Liberal stronghold of Toronto St. Paul's. (Around 65% of those who voted voted Liberal, NDP, or Green. I'm sure few of them are happy with there being another MP for the Corrupt Shit-Head Party of Canada in the House of Commons.)
