Month: May 2025

Trump’s Magnificent MAHA Team

MAHA goes back a long way. Some of us are old enough to remember John F. Kennedy's stirring call to national fitness. It made a difference in our lives. If only Uncle Jack could see his nephew Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. teamed up with four distinguished medical doctors, Jay Bhattacharya, Marty Makary, Vinay Prasad, and Mehmet Oz.  

True (conservative) diversity and true (conservative) inclusion!  And no 'equity' in sight. Merit, excellence, achievement.  

Three of the doctors mentioned, health heretics in the dismal, dark, and demented days of Joey B's admin, are now health czars.

You may enjoy watching the forcible removal of some leftist reprobates who attempted to disrupt an RFK, Jr. hearing. A little schadenfreude never hurt anybody.

Play to Win . . .

. . . but with complete detachment from the outcome.  So I tell myself, while playing chess, for example, but not only in such competitions, but in all the affairs of life. Be like the lotus leaf that floats on the water but does not become wet! (Bhagavad Gita 5:10) But does the self-admonition refer to an achievable ideal? Is it psychologically possible for a human being freely to strive to accomplish some end he values but remain completely indifferent as to whether or not he achieves his end?

If it is not psychologically possible, then it cannot be an ideal let alone a moral obligation. Ought implies can, and what I ought to do I am morally obliged to do.  Surely I am not morally obliged to remain wholly indifferent to whether I achieve what I set out to achieve in all the pursuits of life if such detachment is psychologically impossible. 

What's more, such detachment is not even an ideal if my generalized 'ought' implies 'can' principle holds water.

Church Patriotism

Simone Weil, somewhere in Gravity and Grace, speaks of "church patriotism."  It's comparable to the knee-jerk patriotism of the "my country right or wrong" sort.  Both are forms of idolatry. Ecclesiolatry on the one hand, statolatry on the other. (That's not my coinage; bang on the link.)

Grok on Vallicella on Adorno

I put the following question to Grok: What does Bill Vallicella say in critique of the work of Theodor W. Adorno? Here is the answer it spit out in a few seconds, and though it did not dig up everything I have written about Adorno online,  it ain't bad.  It's a brave new world, kiddies. Future shock is upon us. Fasten your seat belts.  

William F. Vallicella, in his Substack post "Contra Adorno: A Preliminary Plea for Omphaloscopy" (published February 27, 2021), offers a critique of Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophical approach, focusing specifically on Adorno’s views on subjective reflection, contemplation, and the relationship between subject and object as presented in Adorno’s *Philosophische Terminologie* (lectures from 1962–63). Below is a summary of Vallicella’s key points of critique, grounded in the provided source:

1. **Critique of Adorno’s Rejection of Contemplation (Versenkung)**:
– Vallicella highlights Adorno’s dismissive attitude toward *Versenkung* (meditative contemplation or "navel-gazing"), which Adorno associates with an illusory, tautological, and contentless form of subjective reflection. Adorno argues that such inward focus leads to an "abstract inner emptiness" and fails to engage with external reality, producing statements like "I am I" or Heidegger’s "Being is Itself." Vallicella finds this dismissal problematic, suggesting it unfairly caricatures meditative practices and overlooks their potential for genuine insight. He defends contemplation by referencing historical practices, such as those attributed to St. Symeon the New Theologian, which involve focused introspection that Adorno might have reductively labeled as navel-gazing.[](https://williamfvallicella.substack.com/p/contra-adorno-a-preliminary-plea)

2. **Subject-Object Mediation and Hegelian Influence**:
– Vallicella critiques Adorno’s Hegelian framework, particularly the idea that the subject has no content except through its relation to external objects, and that subject and object mediate each other. Adorno posits that a subject sunk into itself is "contentless," and true depth arises only when the subject "externalizes itself" and engages with "otherness." Vallicella challenges this view, arguing that it risks reducing the subject to a mere function of its relations, a position he sees as rooted in Hegelian monism. He questions how entities can be constituted solely by their relations, noting that relations presuppose the existence of relata with some intrinsic being. This, Vallicella argues, reveals a flaw in Adorno’s (and Hegel’s) relational ontology, which he sees as anti-personalistic and overly abstract.[](https://williamfvallicella.substack.com/p/contra-adorno-a-preliminary-plea)

3. **Totalitarian Denial of Transcendence**:
– Vallicella’s most pointed critique is that Adorno’s philosophy is "totalitarian" in its denial of transcendence. He interprets Adorno’s thought as aligning with Hegel’s dictum "Das Wahre ist das Ganze" (the true is the whole), where everything is mediated by the social whole, and nothing possesses substantial being independently. Vallicella argues this view eliminates any possibility of transcendence or individual autonomy, trapping the subject within a monistic system where all meaning derives from social relations. He sees this as a denial of personal identity and spiritual depth, contrasting it with philosophies that affirm individual or metaphysical transcendence.[](https://williamfvallicella.substack.com/p/contra-adorno-a-preliminary-plea)

4. **Philosophical Implications**:
– Vallicella suggests that Adorno’s rejection of subjective depth and transcendence reflects a broader materialist and collectivist bias, influenced by Marxism and Hegelian dialectics, which prioritizes the social whole over individual or metaphysical realities. He argues that this approach undermines the possibility of authentic philosophical inquiry into the self or ultimate truth, reducing philosophy to a critique of social structures. Vallicella’s defense of "omphaloscopy" (navel-gazing) is a provocative counterpoint, advocating for the value of introspective practices that Adorno dismisses.[](https://williamfvallicella.substack.com/p/contra-adorno-a-preliminary-plea)

### Context and Limitations
Vallicella’s critique is narrowly focused on Adorno’s treatment of contemplation and subjectivity in *Philosophische Terminologie*, rather than engaging with Adorno’s broader oeuvre, such as his work on the culture industry, negative dialectics, or aesthetics. The critique is also shaped by Vallicella’s own philosophical commitments, which lean toward defending individual transcendence and contemplative practices, contrasting with Adorno’s critical theory and its emphasis on social critique. The source does not indicate whether Vallicella addresses Adorno’s specific works like *Dialectic of Enlightenment* or *Minima Moralia*, so the critique may not fully capture Adorno’s complex views on modernity, capitalism, or art.

### Conclusion
William F. Vallicella critiques Theodor W. Adorno for rejecting contemplative introspection as illusory and for adopting a Hegelian framework that denies transcendence and reduces the subject to its social relations. He sees Adorno’s philosophy as totalitarian, monistic, and dismissive of individual depth, arguing that it overlooks the value of subjective reflection and relational autonomy. This critique, while sharp, is limited to a specific aspect of Adorno’s thought and reflects Vallicella’s defense of contemplative and transcendent perspectives. For a deeper understanding, readers may consult Vallicella’s Substack post directly or explore Adorno’s primary texts to assess the fairness of these criticisms.[](https://williamfvallicella.substack.com/p/contra-adorno-a-preliminary-plea)

If you’d like me to search for additional sources or analyze specific works by Adorno or Vallicella in more detail, let me know!

‘Old Hat’

It's an expression I have often used.

To say of something that it is old hat is to say that it is old, or well-known, or passé.

Wondering about the origin of this curious phrase, I turned to Robert Hendrickson, Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd ed. (2004), p. 529. What I found there surprised me:

Today old hat means out of date or not new, and it has meant this for at least a century. But back as early as 1754 it was "used by the vulgar in no very honorable sense," as Fielding put it. It then meant, in Grose's punning definition from his 1785 Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: "a woman's privities: because frequently felt."

This is no doubt interesting, but how does it explain the origin of the the adjectival phrase 'old hat'? That 'old hat' was once used as a noun by a certain class of people to refer to "a woman's privities" does nothing to show the origin of 'old hat' as currently and adjectivally used.

Homo Faber, Homo Mendax

Man the maker is a damned liar. He is a fabricator in both senses of the term. A little god and a little devil.  Neither the Father of all nor the Father of lies, he is a chip off the old blocks.

This observation has a Manichean flavor. But if there are not two co-eternal and co-equal principles butting heads, then we get the problem of how the Good Itself can sire evil which is rather lamely viewed as a mere privatio boni.

That it is a dubious doctrine I will argue later, but for now I will simply note that the evil-as-privation doctrine does seem to accommodate an intuition that many of us have, namely, that good and evil, though opposed, are not mutually independent.

Thus in one clear sense good and evil are polar opposites: what is good is not evil and what is evil is not good. And yet one hesitates to say that they are on an ontological par, that they are equally real. They are not opposed as two positivities. The evil of ignorance, for example, is not something positive in its own right: the evil of ignorance consists in its being an absence of something good, knowledge. Good is an ontological prius; evil has a merely derivative status as an absence of good.

Or so it seems. Until we think harder. More later. Old Sol is threatening to rise once again. The heat is back. The mountain bike beckons. The sun also rises, and so do I from the bench of blog to greet the day.

Rosie O’Donnell

The corpulent cow's self-deportation has put many a mile between her and the object of her hatred, and many a smile upon conservative faces. Curiously, her spatial distance from the Orange Man seems only to have exacerbated her animosity. Given the quality of the Dem field, she should be considered for 2028.

Ronald Radosh on David Horowitz: A Critical Appreciation

On very rare occasions, something surfaces at The Bulwark worth reading.

Radosh, who is well worth reading, gives his take on Horowitz's flipping of his ideological script, and takes him to task for his late extremism. But how is this judgment by Radosh not itself extreme:

What David is being celebrated for is the opposite of the introspective and empathetic writer, a thoughtful and moderate conservative, evident in his personal books. And his supporters give him credit for helping to create the most repulsive and nasty of the Trump entourage, Stephen Miller, who of course, added his own tribute to David. Another right-wing extremist protégé, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, wrote to single out David’s responsibility for Miller’s career in these words . . . .

What hatreds politics sires! I am reminded of something I wrote in From Democrat to Dissident:

We were friends for a time, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary nonintellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas. They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter. He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas. So the tendency is for one intellectual to view another whose ideas differ as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing. Why? Because ideas matter to the intellectual. They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists. If one’s eternal happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one “gets it right” doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you had better belong to the right church. It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant “for their own good.”

Addendum (5/9)

Here is Stephen Miller in action. Trenchant, but wholly on target, and the reprobates who are the recipients of the trenchancy richly deserve it. Miller is neither repulsive nor nasty by any sane measure.  Perhaps someone should ask Radosh which side he is on these days.

Would that the extremity of the political polarization of the present could be avoided, including the polarization over polarization itself, its nature, causes, effects, and who is responsible for it. I say they are responsible for it.   Our positions are moderate; theirs are extreme. 

For example, James Carville, the "ragin' Cajun," is poles apart from the sane and reasonable Victor Davis Hanson.  Bang on the links and see for yourself.  But 'see' is not the right word inasmuch as leftists are blind and can't see 'jack.' How explain such blindness, such intransigence, such praeter-natural feculence of brain, perversity of will, foulness of heart?

I find it endlessly fascinating. Polarization, I mean. Why this depth of disagreement? But it's all grist for the mill, blog-fodder for the Bill.

For another example, compare Newt Gingrich's sanity to its lack in one  who is "terrified" at Trump's judicial picks.

Addendum (5/10): polarization update 

TDS at TNR:

Living under a far-right authoritarian regime that is gutting every American institution that keeps people safe, alive, and connected to a thriving civilization, we have to keep asking ourselves how we got here—and how we can get out. And the most important factor in Donald Trump’s win was that Kamala Harris lost.

Trump has run for president three times and Harris is the only person to have lost the popular vote to him. In 2024, he had no special magic; if anything, he was marred as a felon and a failed coup leader. A major part of the problem was Harris, who embodies the change-nothing politics of Hillary Clinton without the latter’s political savvy; and the cautiousness of Joe Biden without his populist instincts.

Heaven and Hell: the Looming of the Last Things at the End of the Trail

A friend of mine, nearing the end of the trail, afflicted in body and soul, writes:
 
A question, my friend. Can you imagine someone on his deathbed saying, "Well I never really believed I'd meet Jesus, but the possible reward (eternal salvation) was so great that I was persuaded to be a believer so long as the probability of salvation was not effectively zero. I can't say I really believe in Jesus, but the possible rewards of believing are so great I had to buy the ticket." A decision-theoretic argument for belief that some think can made stronger by also postulating Hell (eternal damnation). If I don't believe, I risk Hell, even if I think the probability of that is very small.
 
Well, the Hell branch of the argument has the problem that eternal damnation is incompatible with a just and benevolent deity. Way too many people are sent to Hell for merely not believing (especially children). So what about Heaven? Can a just and benevolent God reward me with eternal happiness just for believing in (and maybe worshipping) him? Just as the threatened punishment seems totally disproportionate, so the promised reward seems "too good to be true" (in other words, a scam).
 
Not necessarily MY view of Heaven, but one that I hear often.
 
As for hell, I tend to agree with my friend.
 
Suppose God exists and there is an afterlife the quality of which depends on how one behaves here below.  Suppose that the justice which is largely absent here will be meted out there.  And suppose we take as a moral axiom that the punishment must fit the crime.  The question then arises: what crime or series of crimes by any human being could merit everlasting post-mortem punishment?  I would say that no crime or series of crimes would merit such punishment.  Thus it is offensive to my moral sense that a just God would punish everlastingly a human evildoer. 
 
Two qualifications. (1) It is reasonably presumed to be  otherwise with angelic evildoers such as Lucifer, so let's leave them out of the discussion.   (2) It is also reasonably presumed to be otherwise if a human, whether evildoer or not, wanted to maintain himself in a state of rebellion against God, after coming face-to-face with God, in which case my moral sense would have no problem with God's granting the rebel his wish and maintaining him in a state of everlasting exclusion from the divine light and succor.  Candidate rebels: Christopher Hitchens, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Josef Stalin.

Suppose that, after death, Stalin sees the errors of his ways and desires to come into right relation with God.  He must still be punished for his horrendous crimes. Surely justice demands that much.  What I fail to grasp, however, is how justice could demand that Stalin be punished everlastingly or eternally (if you care to distinguish eternity from everlastingness) for a finite series of finite crimes. 

Thomas Aquinas disagrees:

The magnitude of the punishment matches the magnitude of the sin. Now a sin that is against God is infinite; the higher the person against whom it is committed, the graver the sin—it is more criminal to strike a head of state than a private citizen—and God is of infinite greatness. Therefore an infinite punishment is deserved for a sin committed against Him. (Summa Theologica, Ia2ae. 87, 4.)

Some years back, my friend floated the suggestion that we are in hell right now. This can't be right, for reasons I won't go into. But it is reasonably held that we are right now in purgatory. The case is made brilliantly and with vast erudition by Geddes MacGregor in Reincarnation in Christianity (Quest Books, 1978,  see in particular, ch. 10. "Reincarnation as Purgatory.")

As for heaven, my friend asks,

Can a just and benevolent God reward me with eternal happiness just for believing in . . . him? Just as the threatened punishment seems totally disproportionate, so the promised reward seems "too good to be true" . . . .

The question is essentially this:  If justice rules out everlasting, 'infinite,' punishment for finite crimes committed by miserably limited humans, does it also rule out everlasting reward for finite good deeds? If the threatened punishment is totally disproportionate, is the promised reward also totally disproportionate?

To sharpen it a bit further, let's translate the interrogative into a declarative:  If no everlasting punishment is justified, then no everlasting reward is either.  If that is the claim, then I would respond by saying that the Beatific Vision is not a reward  for good things we do here below, but the state intended for us all along.  It is something like a birthright or an inheritance.  One doesn't earn one's inheritance; it is a gift, not a reward.   But one can lose it.  Similarly with the Beatific Vision.  One cannot earn it, and one does not deserve it.  But one can lose it.

It is also worth noting that 'totally disproportionate' and 'too good to be true' differ in sense.  The visio beata is admittedly totally disproportionate as a reward  for the good things that we wretched mortals do, but that is not to say that it is too good to be true.  If it is true that our ultimate felicity is participation in the divine life, and true that this participation is open to us, as a  real possibility and a divine gift, then that is the way things are. How could it be too good to be true?  Whatever good thing exists, precisely because it exists ,cannot be too good to exist.

Concluding Existential-Practical  Postscript

What I really want to say to my friend is that, while these philosophical and theological problems are genuine and important, they cannot be resolved on the theoretical plane.  In the end, after canvassing all the problems and all the arguments for and against, one simply has to decide what one will believe and how one will live. In the end, the will comes into it.  The will must come into it, since nothing in this area can be proven, strictly speaking. The 'presuppers' are out to lunch, to mention one bunch of those who fabricate a fake certainty for themselves to assuage their overwhelming doxastic security needs. And the same goes for the Biblical inerrantists.  The will comes into it, as I like to say, because the discursive intellect entangles itself in problems it cannot unravel.  

In my own case, I have had enough mystical, religious, aesthetic, moral, and paranormal experiences to convince me to take the Unseen Order with utmost seriousness — and I do. And so that's the way I live, devoting most of my time to prayer, meditation-contemplation, lectio divina, study of the great classics of philosophy and theology, moderate ascesis, such good works as befit my means and station, and writing philosophy, which I view as itself a spiritual practice.  I mean: what could be a better use of a life than to try to ascend to the Absolute by all possible routes?  But this won't make any sense to you unless you perceive this world, the Seen Order, to be a vanishing quantity devoid of ultimate reality and value, and our fleeting lives in it unsatisfactory and ultimately meaningless, if they end in annihilation.  

So I say to my friend: you are on your own. Going to a church and participating in external rites and rituals won't do you much if any good, nor will confessing your sins to a pedophile priest. (Ex opere operato is on my list of topics to discuss.) There is no need to go outside yourself; truth dwells in the inner man. Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi. In interiore homine habitat veritas. (Augustine) Review your life and try to recall those moments and those experiences which seemed most revelatory of the Real, and live and then die in accordance with them. 

In the face of temptation, ask yourself: How do I want death to find me? In what state?  The lures of this world are alluring indeed, and it is well-nigh impossible to resist them, as witness the corruption of (some of) the cardinals who voted on the new pope. You have a sense of the Unseen Order if you sense that temptation ought to be resisted.  Whence the bindingness of that Ought? Whence the vocation to a Higher Life?  Are they just illusions of brain chemistry? Could be! You decide!

I myself have decided that The Greatest Temptation must be resisted.

One more point about church-going. It may be necessary for those excessively social animals lacking inner directedness, but I'd say that Matthew 6:6 hits the mark: "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." (KJV)

But I don't want to deny that special places, some of them churches, have an aura that aids and may even induce contemplative repose.  I recall a time in Venice, Italy when I entered an ancient and nondescript little church and spent a few moments there alone. Upon exiting, I was unusually calm and collected.  My girlfriend at the time, noticing the transformation,  remarked, "You ought to go to church more often." The following, though AI-generated, is spot on. 

Aura of Places

An aura of a place can be described as a distinctive atmosphere or feeling that seems to surround and emanate from it. This term is often used metaphorically to convey the unique quality or vibe that a location gives off. For example, a place might have an aura of mystery, tranquility, or invincibility.

In spiritual contexts, auras are thought to be energy fields surrounding all living and non-living things, including places. These fields can be influenced by the emotions, thoughts, and experiences of those who frequent the location.