Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
Thanks to foodies, Epicureanism has been having a moment. We’ve got the Food Network, endless new restaurants serving up every flavor of hipster food, thoughtful reflection upon food, and a resurgence of everything from retro diners to creative new options for the wealthy elite.
It’s a great time to love food! And many of those who talk about food do so in terms of gustatory pleasure.
Thus enters the philosophy of Epicurus and Epicureanism.
The Atlantic recently wrote a profile of Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG). At the beginning, it offered a brief bio.
MTG’s father grew up in a working-class family, born to a factory worker. He got into home construction first as a worker and contractor, and then as the owner of a small construction company. MTG grew up in a more rural part of a red state in an area with a deep history of racism. That history left the area with almost no black population. Her parents raised her Catholic, but she later left the church.
MTG attended the major public university in her state and became the first college graduate in her family. And as she got older, she saw something deeply wrong with the world.
From the sectarian left to mainstream socialists, many U.S. leftists put forward dealignment to explain politics today. Jacobin recently dropped an issue on the topic. As long time readers surely know, I have sort of a love/hate relationship with the mag. Its founder has done some good work. As has the mag itself. But the mag has its faults, which I’ve also discussed in a few posts.
But I’m not here just to talk about a magazine. I’m here to talk about dealignment, especially as it concerns class. And especially a recent article on it – ‘From Bowling Alone to Posting Alone,’ by Anton Jäger.
With the 2022 election a couple of days behind us, it’s time to take a look. And the look runs parallel to last time: the GOP blew it.
They more or less had a House and a Senate majority in the bag. And while they probably (barely) managed the former, they’ve probably missed the latter again. In most parts of the country, they performed worse than the polls suggested and far worse than they could have done with better candidates and messaging.
I won’t say much else about national elections in the rest of this post. But read on for ballot initiatives and the state of things in Iowa!
Here we are again: another election. Like all other recent elections, this one, of course, is the most important in our lifetime.
I guess that with another one around the corner, it’s time for a new round of election predictions! And as much as we had to discuss Trump in 2020, he remains a big factor in this one, too. Since 2015, we haven’t been able to discuss U.S. electoral politics without placing Trump near the center.
Imagine traveling back in time to 2008 and telling someone that.
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