Monthly Muse: 10/2023
Recapitulation, contemplation, provocation
Monthly Musings are published during the last week of every month. In each Monthly Muse, I recap content from the past month of Handful of Earth, offer some freewheeling reflections, and share a quote or passage that I’ve found especially thought-provoking.
Here’s the October 2023 Monthly Muse.
Recapitulation: Published this month on Handful of Earth
Contemplation
As consistent readers of Handful of Earth know, much of my writing either directly or indirectly touches on the topic of realignment. Last week’s Weekly Grounding, in fact, opened with the theme of domestic political realignment. Previously, I’ve touched on social realignments driven by shifting class relations in the United States, as well as global technological realignments between the United States and China.
Despite the undeniable significance of these realignments, the events of the past month have illustrated a counteracting force: the tremendous staying power of certain old alignments.
I must admit that I have been surprised—and at times even shocked—at the vengeance with which many otherwise critical thinkers have come to the defense of Israel in its war on Gaza. In case you missed my commentary on this issue, see Weekly Grounding #22, “The ‘Free Speech’ Right Embraces Cancel Culture,” Weekly Grounding #23, and Weekly Grounding #24.
The ease with which so many commentators have dusted off the tropes of Muslim barbarians and the necessity of military action to defend “American interests” should illicit nothing but disgust from those old enough to remember the lies and hysteria leading up to the Iraq War. Just as troubling is the trend to dismiss the Palestinian struggle as a “woke” project to undermine “Western values.” One typical example is the following tweet by
of :
For someone ostensibly concerned with “reality,” Wright’s inability to confront the basic facts of the conflict is stunning. One also wonders if he’s including the plan to commit genocide as one of his cherished “Western values.”
Just as the contemporary left has discredited itself through its well-documented identitarian flight from reality, the “new conservatism’s” abject failure to face reality in Gaza seriously undermines its credibility. It also demonstrates that—as much as new alignments have reshaped American politics in recent years—certain old alignments appear as strong as ever.
Back in 2018, I wrote a piece entitled, “The Left is the New Right, the Right is the Old Right,” for Orchestrated Pulse. In subsequent years, I have wondered if I misrepresented the contemporary right. Perhaps the left and the right have more or less switched places and the right has become the new left. While this reversal seems to hold for many issues, on the question of Israel and Palestine—a question of massive domestic and global import—it appears that the right is, indeed, the same old right.
What do you think?
Provocation
“Whenever Israel is mentioned one is required, it appears sometimes to me, to maintain a kind of pious silence. Well, why? It is a state like other states. It has come into existence in a peculiar way. But it does not, does not, become a state because people who wrote the Balfour Declaration, or Winston Churchill, or for that matter anyone in Europe, or in the Western world, really cared what happened to the Jews. I wish I could say differently, but I would be lying if I did—it came into existence as a means of protecting Western interests at the gate of the Middle East.”
—James Baldwin, “The Cross of Redemption”