Thread by @jholbo1

Thank goodness there's a good chance Weinstein's preferred candidate, Trump, will be returned to office in 2024 and deploy his signature brand of MAQA (Make America Quixotic Again) windmill tilts and Xi-praise to halt the anti-science, pro-China slide. 1/ washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…

https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1446717796386172930

But seriously: what even? I don't just mean to 'gotcha!' Yes, it's hypocritical to object to madness and self-harm, by and for the US, and be an apologist for Trump. But why be hypocritical this way? Weinstein will reply he doesn't really like the nutty side of Trump. 2/

But once you are reasoning that maybe the least-bad option for the republic is an orange Quixote, it ceases to be clear what you are objecting to if the other side is, as well, eccentric at times. (Let it be so. Why should that be bad not good, if what we need is nuts?) 3/

I guess Weinstein is a Thielist? That would make some sense. But what is a Thielist? I am reminded of this "New Yorker" piece by Benjamin Wallace-Wells. 4/

This outlook makes sense of how cancelling a 'Gifted program' for the sake of 'equity' might be especially triggering, even if that one move hardly seems like an existential threat to the republic - let alone 'madness'. 5/

I guess what seems to me notable about Thielism is its tendency to be principled pseudo-populism. Mayberry Machiavelli - but good! What the republic needs is not sanity but a pseudo-populist strongman who will instinctively set about breaking up existing structures. 6/

I've been rereading Dombowsky on Nietzsche-as-Bonapartist, because I'm trying to write a paper about Nietzsche's conception of the so-called 'Sovereign Individual'. That's fairly abstruse of me! Forget it! But this page jumped out at me today. 7/

That's not a perfect description of Thielism, or Trumpism, but you can do worse, and it gets at the affinities that lead Thielists to be Trumpists. What the US needs is a Caesar in the sense that it needs a pseudo-populist, pseudo-legit strongman to seize the bureaucracy. 8/

Why would THAT be a good thing? Because we need to ... shake things up around here. It's just too ... mediocre, these days. Too stuck. There's a lack of appreciation for the Gifted, as symbolized by thoughtless cancellation of programs for the gifted. 9/

This dovetails with Ross Douthat's repeated apologies for Trump as merely some '19th century adventurer', i.e. not really an ideologist, ergo not such an ideological-hence-existential threat to the constitutional order. 10/ nytimes.com/2021/10/05/opi…

Back to Dombowsky. I tweeted about this a while back and said I really liked the book because it helped me understand an element of Nietzsche's politics that, before, just didn't compute. Yeah, he's this Napoleon stan. And that kind of makes sense. But so what? 11/

Dombowsky has interesting to say about Bonapartism as an ideological position, above and beyond fanboying a guy on a horse. It's weird because it IS so off-the-ideological map as we know it. Napoleon isn't Hitler. The 20th century eclipsed Napoleon. 12/

But, precisely because no one wants to be an ideological Hitlerist, as such - I'm sure Weinstein doesn't approve of that! - it makes sense that right-wingers would cast about for a 'usable Bonapartism'. And it would be more Nietzschean than Randian ... maybe? 13/

If you are right-wing and despise all social justice mediocrity of contemporary liberalism - it's just resentful tarantula dancing of the masses! - you are going to re-invent Bonapartism? Maybe? It's weird times, man. 14/

What do you think, @CoreyRobin? Anyway, you oughta check out Dombowsky. Your kinda stuff. 15/

Final note about Dombowsky. I really like the book but it goes too far in reading Nietzsche's major works as, in effect, crypto-Bonapartist punditry. I'm pretty convinced by his take on Nietzsche's politics. But I find it hard to imagine N wanting Napoleon to read GM or GS. 16/