Novelist, essayist, heresiarch | CUJ grad | Literature, history, ideas | Rep: Carlos Segarra at CAA | Essays upcoming on crime, Kafka, McCarthy, Flaubert, Tu Fu
Jul 27, 2020 • 14 tweets • 8 min read
The media got the coronavirus very wrong. The WHO was feckless at best. But even as their #COVID19 messaging changed, their sham certainty remained the same.
What was the WHO head telling the world? That anti-Chinese stigma was "more dangerous than the virus itself"; that it was in fact "the most dangerous enemy."
Jul 13, 2020 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
Earlier this year I published a lengthy essay outlining the illiberal moralism that has taken hold of our culture, dissecting its root causes, and anticipating where it would go next.
The pushback against the Harper's letter bears out one of my primary assertions, that there is a kind of social-justice catechism now in place which artists, entertainers and intellectuals are expected to recite. Virtuous victim signaling and grammar policing are its hallmarks.
Feb 11, 2020 • 12 tweets • 7 min read
A specter is haunting the arts—the specter of puritanism. From the most artful novels to the airiest pop confections, a stifling new atmosphere of illiberal moralism has taken hold.
I wrote about this phenomenon and its harmful effects for @CityJournal. city-journal.org/cultural-moral…@CityJournal Like the religious movement of old, the New Puritanism demands rigid adherence to a narrow set of morally correct views and precepts.
It demands this of artists and entertainers. It demands this also of the works they create. Their very identities are cause for praise or blame.
