"You Only Say That Because..."

No.78: October 15, 2021

Dear Friends,

Happy mid-October! After a few days of snow flurries, the sun has reappeared. It isn’t warm, exactly, but it is bright and cheery.

I do not have a great deal on my mind regarding current events this week because I’ve been researching and thinking about a presentation I’ve got coming up on Critical Theory and rhetoric. I’m sure I’ll share some of that with you at the appropriate time. I will give you this public service announcement: that guy Karl Marx was such a blowhard. And C.S. Lewis put his finger on the problems with critical theory all the way back in 1941—once you’ve read his unfinished essay, “Bulverism: Or, The Foundation of 20th Century Thought” you cannot help but see right through nearly all of the contemporary rhetoric.

In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it Bulverism. Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father—who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third—’Oh you say that because you are a man.’ ‘At that moment,’ E. Bulver assures us, ‘there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet.’

Of course you would say that: you’re white. You’re privileged. You’re threatened. You’re male. Cisgender. Heterosexual. A bigot. A fundamentalist. And so on. There is no need to argue the actual merits of differing points of view; the sole task of intellectual inquiry is to critically sift through all the socially constructed factors that molded your opponent into “becoming so silly.” Their thoughts are tainted at the source, and simply identifying that source (whiteness, privilege, etc.) is what passes for argument these days. This is the master key, I believe, for understanding, say, Twitter. Probably well-nigh 99% of Twitter is people lobbing back-and-forth: “Of course you’d say, that; you’re a [fill in the blank]. You’re a NeverTrumper. An “elitist.” A “glooooobalist.” Or, you’re white and southern and therefore a fascist. Very few people argue about the merits of a particular point of view.

Of course, Lewis points out:

Now this is obviously great fun; but it has not always been noticed that there is a bill to pay for it. There are two questions that people who say this kind of thing ought to be asked. The first is, Are all thoughts thus tainted at the source, or only some? The second is, Does the taint invalidate the tainted thought—in the sense of making it untrue—or not?

If they say that all thoughts are thus tainted, then, of course, we must remind them that Freudianism and Marxism are as much systems of thought as Christian theology or philosophical idealism. The Freudian and the Marxian are in the same boat with all the rest of us, and cannot criticize us from outside. They have sawn off the branch they were sitting on. If, on the other hand, they say that the taint need not invalidate their thinking, then neither need it invalidate ours. In which case they have saved their own branch, but also saved ours along with it.

Insightful, entertaining, and brilliant stuff. But I don’t think Lewis quite appreciated just how serious the Critical Theorists were. They simply flat-out deny the logic of this rejoinder (nowadays they just dismiss logic itself as an artifact of “white supremacy”). These people do not view themselves as being in the same boat with the rest of humanity. They fancy themselves gnostics, the “knowing ones,” those initiated into the secrets of the cosmos and the souls of men; they are “woke.” As in, “awakened” to the subtle power dynamics of all human interaction. They are “divine” emissaries, self-appointed to serve a humanity locked in the Matrix (as it were); they are saviors of the elect and judge, jury, and executioner of the reprobate.* In the case of Communism (Marx’s invention, literally fueled by what he called criticism), I mean that literally. Gulags and firing squads are the fruits of this rotten tree.

* I’m being generous here. I’m describing the true believers, but I suspect a lot of critical theory practitioners are in it for the mountains of money that gullible self-loathing white people will give them.

Gulags and firing squads, by the way, is a simple matter of historical fact. I do not bring it up to be unduly hysterical—as you are well aware, I’m allergic to the catastrophism of politics today. However, with this background in mind, today’s illiberalism—canceling people for “thought crimes” and hounding them out of their livelihoods is a very worrisome development. Left unchecked, history may well repeat.

That reminds me of a great cartoon I saw somewhere recently. A wizened old professor says:

Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it. And those who do learn from history are destined to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.

All that to say: I think vigorously resisting Critical Theory ought to be high up on our societal priority list. It needs to be checked, not unchecked. I’m not sure the origins of that turn of phrase, that something needs to be “checked.” But I like to think it comes from the realm of hockey. This virulent and poisonous manner of thinking needs a body blow against the boards.

Now, I should obviously include here a clarifying note. Nothing in what I’ve said is some kind of endorsement of injustice or an argument against critically examining underlying presuppositions or material factors in societal arrangements. It is not a denial that racism exists, and that it sometimes (even often!) manifests itself in structural and institutional ways.

What I am saying is that “Critical Theory,” which is a very specific school of thought with a crystal-clear pedigree in the Marxist ideological stream (people who deny this are just gaslighting you—part of the Marxist program is to make their ideology seem like “ordinary common sense”) is something that will not—and cannot—bring about real justice. That’s probably an article for another time, but utopians never achieve heaven on earth; they bring about hell on earth. The Marxist utopian dream brings dystopia every single time. And that’s a pretty bad advertisement for a movement claiming to have as its central raison d’etre the liberation of the poor and downtrodden. I mean, really, all they seem to do is just swell the ranks of the poor and downtrodden while the gnostic elites enjoy the spoils.

That strikes me as an unfocused newsletter. I hope you stuck with me anyway. The day is getting late and I could go any number of directions. I won’t make that mistake. Just remember the fictional “Ezekiel Bulver” and Bulverism. And never, ever, ever say, “Oh, You only say that because you’re […].” It’s not a substitute for an argument on the merits. It’s an unfalsifiable power play used by people who believe everything is about power. It’s not.

Miscellany

• Your reminder that Americans and allies stuck in Afghanistan. You can help private efforts—led by retired Special Operators—to rescue them by going here.

• I’m going to nerd out for a second. Last week I told you that after 30 years I was finally going to see Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez performed live. It was everything I hoped it would be. I knew going in that guitarist Rafael Aguirre was the real deal, but wow, did he deliver. I am kind of an aficionado of the piece and the guitarists who play it and/or have recorded it. This was the finest performance I’ve ever heard, recorded or otherwise. I later discovered that Aguirre made his symphonic debut at age 16 by performing… right: the Concierto de Aranjuez. He’s done this a bit.

  For guitar nerds: not a hammer-on, pull-off, or slur to be found in the dazzling runs in the first and third movements. His right hand plucked every note, but here’s the thing: Angel Romero did that, but his runs were so staccato. Aguirre did this and it sounded like a hot knife through hot butter. I couldn’t believe how legato he made it sound.

  The untrained eye cannot possibly conceive how monstrously difficult the piece is. He made it look so easy. I was constantly shaking my head. Subtly, so as to not be a distraction to others.

  I truly fell in love when he got to the Adagio’s first cadenza. That’s the part where the orchestra just stops and the guitar is on its own. He Took. His. Time. So many guitarists rush along. Rafael just took his time, and got incredible tone out of his instrument because of it. That’s the impressive thing: the guitarists who play the piece can be divided (roughly) in two groups: the “technicians” and the “artists.” Technicians play it perfectly. But there’s no passion. (I’m talking about John Williams, of course—I take it back. His crescendo at the end of the Adagio is an absolute crime against art. Put him against the wall! — Okay, don’t do that. I’m kidding! Well, sort of: it’s a crime, but an allowable one in a free society.) “Artists” get the passions involved. The gold standard is Christopher Parkening’s classic recording, which is so tonally sublime that in some quarters people spread rumors of him overdubbing in a studio rather than recording live. Rafael Aguirre did both technical perfection and passion. He did it perfectly. It was amazing. And, of course, since we’re talking about the Concierto, it was moving.

  The real star of the show, though—and this completely blew me away because it was not my expectation—was the Billings Symphony Orchestra. An orchestra can kill the Aranjuez so easily; but I am proud to say that my hometown crew delivered an incredible performance. I could not believe my ears. What a piece; what a show; what an experience. So grateful I got to see it.

• So now, I’ll send you off by linking Parkening’s aforementioned astonishing performance of the Adagio movement of the Concierto de Aranjuez. (I know, same piece two weeks in a row. Lame. But this one is really worth it: trust me!)