Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

Reading Robin’s The Reactionary Mind, i’ve concluded i’m not much of a fan of books of “theory” that are basically just moving from page to page by quoting this author, then that one, then the other one.

ho hum.

i just don’t get what it proves. Duncan suggested that what I see as Robin’s sloppiness, the lack of precision in his definition, might be a feature in so far as he’s writing to a general audience. Which is fine. I write to a general audience too! But if what you do is string one author together with others in order to make a grand claim about what conservativism is, without providing much of a sense of where your position fits with others, then how can it be written to a general audience? I have a vague understanding of the common claim that conservatives are opposed to change in general. The only exposure I’ve had to that idea is through reading LBO, specifically Carrol Cox writing that. After that, I have no idea what a body of literature on conservative thougth has had to say about it. Which means, I would guess, that I’m a general reader, a typical, educated reader of the leftist persuasion - precisely the kind of audience to which the book was marketed. Judging by the places where I saw mention of the book - interviews on TV, book reviews online and in print, guest appearances on radio shows - then I, perhaps egotistically, think the book is targeted at people like me.

But if I have little clue as to what are the general claims made about conservativism, then while it’s certainly possible to read and understand this book, what isn’t possible to do very well is have any handle on whether Robin is full of shit or not. Apparently, you just have to trust his reading.

But why should I? Robin doesn’t give me any reason at all to trust that his particular interpretation is worthy. He tells me that he’s making an intervention, providing a new improved way of looking at conservative thought, but I am never really given any sort of literature review so as to have some sense of where Robin’s intervention fits.

The other thing that’s missing is why? Who cares? Why the fuck should I care, why should it matter that Robin has come up with a new improved way of looking at conservative thought. When I switched to drinking diet soda made with Splenda, I had a reason to prefer it to saccharin and aspartame. Splenda = tasty. Aspartame = bitter. I would have lived with the saccharin and asparame, but Splenda = much more tasty.

So, with Robin, since I don’t really know what the alternative thoughts on conservativism were - except some vague claim once made by Carrol about conservatives not liking change - i have no idea why the other views were ok and tolerable, but just not as great at Robin’s. I don’t even know what they were, actually, since Robins doesn’t really going into them much, except for fleeting gestures at the others who say this about conservatives not liking change.

The other thing is, I have no idea why it matters politically. At least not so far. But you’d think that, in abook like this, there’d be some glimmer, early on, why I should see a political or practical or something advantage to seeing things Robin’s way and not, say, Carrol’s way. Or, perhaps, seeing things Carrol’s way AND Robin’s way. Maybe Robin addresses this later, so my comment might be premature, but so far not a peep.

So, I really have no reason why this book is compelling - haven’t been told it anyway. It’s interesting to read, but Robin strikes me as a frustrated novelist. Someone who knows how to pick up interesting phrases from other books and then ties them into his own work. Sometimes, I feel like a whole passage was written just to say something slightly clever. The tendency to stroke the phrase also suggests that this is a person who wishes he could write more of what the cook kids these days call “creative non-fiction.”

Also I find some of the approach suspect, especially when he says things like “People on the left often fail to realize this, but conservatism really does speak to and for people who have lost something. It may be a landed estate or the privileges of white skin, the unquestioned authority of a husband or the untrammeled rights of a factory owner.” (I’d quote the page but I’m reading on a kindle and haven’t figured out if there is such a thing as figuring out the page number were this print! )

First of all: really? The left doesn’t understand that conservatives are bummed because they’ve lost a way of life, status, money, whatever? I find that hard to buy.

I find it hard, second of all, because Robin tells us that leftists used to be the ones who understood that politics was a zero sum game, and in the same paragraph as the above claim. Thus, “It used to be one of the great virtures of the left that it alone understood the often zero-sum nature of politics, where the gains of one class necessarily entail the losses of another. But as that sense of conflict diminishes on the left, it has fallen to the right to remind voters that there really are losers in politics and that it is they - and ony they - who speak for them.”

*shakes head*

wuh?

OK. This slip sliding business. Wooo. making me dizzy, man.

Does anyone see what I mean? There’s no fucking there there? It’s a lot of empty nonsense. No rigor. Like not a soul called him on a shittin thing he’s supposedly ever typed. How could anyone have let that slide?

what he really wants to slip in there is a jab at fellow leftists. *rolls eyes* So, apparently, the entire pointing of writing this is not so much to understand conservatives, but to understand why there are problems with leftists and maybe even some leftists’ views of conservatives. So, while you’re busy thinking about the nasty leftists who’ve forgotten all about *real* class conflict and *real* class politics you’re not really paying attention to the fact that he’s just figured out a way to take a jab at leftists while making hearts bleed for misunderstood conservatives who really do suffer….

oiy. lord. poor misunderstood conservatives. they really do suffer under a radical regime.

and then there is the problem he, so far, hasn’t addressed. what about white “liberals” and “progressives” - are they somehow magically free of the human tendency to love most what they no longer have - which is, in this case, white privilege?

I say in this case, because this is a formulation Robin makes frequently: we love most what we have lost, what we no longer have. Really? I lost my virginity. Sorry! I don’t miss it that much! I’ve lost my water bottle quite a few times. I mean, I’ve lost about four water bottles. Don’t miss a blessed one!

I’m no longer in povery, don’t miss that.

I mean, what kind of pap is this: we love most what we have lost?

Really? It’s .. what is that? A platitide…. unthinking. Just said because he thinks it resonates with people. but what the fuck does he mean by it? Is it a statement that holds up to scrutiny?

But, back to what I was gonna say about identity. What happens when you are a white woman leftist? Are you a conservative on race, a leftists on gender? class? Is it possible to be a reactionary against the process of dismantling white privilege and, at the same time, be a big lefty who advances all kinds of other leftists causes in the name of leveling hierarchies? Well, of course it is possible. We see it all the time! And of course there are people, like Phyllis Schafley, who are women who embrace conservative views on gender even though they haven’t appeared to lose anything. OF course, he has a disclaimer in there that it could just be the perception of lose. There’sno objective criteria for measuring if someone has really faced loss. So, then I guess we’re talking about something beyond the level of the individual psyche and the individual’s experience of loss and on to some meta-individual experience or something?

This is just one of the examples that drives me insane. Platitudes. He’s dealing in platitudes.

Then there is the slippery problem of just who can be called a conservative.

Why can’t Robin, himself, be seen as conservative. If it’s possible that a white male leftists be conservative wrt women’s liberation, but not conservative about eberything else, then why not Robin be conservative in his opposition to anarchists. I got to thinking about this reading TINA’s response to any reading of Robin to suggest that he might be sympathetic to anarchists.

Now, if anarchists are opposed to all forms of hierarchy and if TINA is right that nothing about Corey’s politics should suggest he’s a supporter of anachists and is, in fact, a firm supporter of government/state, then what makes Robin not a conservative. Why is supporting the state and representative democracy against radical democracy and full democratic participation in the decicions that effect our lives not a conservative position.

After all, Robin uses the word hiearchy and says that social struggles have been fought against social hierarchies such as patriarchy, white supremacy, nationalism, ethnocentricism, etc. If movements to dismantle hierarchies are, thus, progressive and radical - revolutionary in their desire to level hierarchies between people– if what scared people during the Seattle General strike of 1919 was that people themselves took over the functions of government so that people showed that they didn’t need government to provide services, then why isn’t Robin’s (and others’) resistance to an anarchist politics a form of conservative reaction?

I think it is. Naturally, they do not. Even so, to strengthen his argument, Robin would have to address that issue. OBviously, there are differences over what constitutes a legitimate hiearchy. Robin uses the term hiearchy, but clearly thinks that some are the object of legitimate opposition while others are not. Let’s assume for instance that as a parent, he happens to be for hiearchies of authories between parents and children. There are people who advocate dismantling hiearchies between adults and children. Why is one struggle legit and not others.

Duncan mentioned that he didn’t think that the lack of rigor was necessarily a drawback. Sure, writing to an educated, popular audience doesn’t require the rigors required of academic scholarship. Still, Robin never really tells me why his book matters. He’s clear speaking to, positioning his book as an advance over, other competing treatments of conservativism. But he never goes into detail as to what those competing positions are, and why they are flawed and what his position offers to the discussion. I also don’t know why it matters politically or practically. Will something be better about political life or political debate if we elect to use Robin’s ideas?

I also feel as if he’s just stringing together quotes from conservatives. I have no idea whether he’s cherry picking or not. That’s clearly on me: I don’t know the literature well enough to make this judgment. Then, why is this book written to a general audience who, like me, won’t know the literature either. So, it makes me wonder if he’s just confused about who his audience is. The general reader? Who is just there to be massaged with quote after quote. Here, lookee me. I now know some quotes from Joseph de Maistre. Not that Corey Robin ever bothered to explain who Maistre is, mind. He drops one name after another, most of whom ring bells, but nearly all of whom I could have used a bit of a backgrounder. D’israeli? Heard that one. But that’s about it. Anyone writing to a general audience would not just use a last name and would provide a wee bit of a bio/intellectual history to position the guy.

This reads like a book for someone who wants to appear clever at dinner parties. Oh, as Maistre said of the French Revolution…..’ tee hee, ho ho, hee hee hoo ha. Try some hummus dahlink? Dim sum? Oh, can’t. Watching my carbs.

Or