Despite getting back into regularly updating this blog over the last year, one of the things I’m really awful at these days is “blogging”. I post a lot of things here that could count as an “essay” (a lot of them admittedly only after a couple more drafts), but I don’t tend to regularly update this website with short pithy reactions to things that I’ve come across.
The advent of social media has somehow syphoned off my ability to do that – before Facebook and Twitter I could easily write three or more short posts here a day. But the problem with that kind of platform is that it’s so transient: you post something, share half a dozen other people’s posts, and the next thing you know that thought you wrote is buried under a pile of things and difficult to dig up.
Given that I write primarily to sort out my own thinking on things that isn’t very useful. So I’m going to try a new format here in the hopes of better logging things that I think are worth other people considering, and also easier for me to refer back to in the future, in a (hopefully) relatively concise format.
1. “The End of Trans Rights in the UK Is the Start of Democratic Collapse” — Toby Buckle, Liberal Currents
I don’t really have much to add to this one, except to say that I commend it as a concise and justifiably angry look at how the rights of trans people have been undermined in recent years in the UK — in particular how anti-democratic the trans-hostile movement is. If basic decency and respect for an incredibly marginalised minority can’t persuade you to leap to trans people’s rights, then the worrying threat this represents to liberal democracy itself really ought to.
The Trans+ Solidarity Alliance is holding a Mass Lobby in Parliament on Wednesday 24th June to put pressure on MPs to reject the proposed EHRC guidelines to further restrict trans people’s ability to live normal lives. I went to their mass lobby last year, and I strongly urge everyone to join me there next month.
Also, I increasingly find myself returning to Liberal Currents, with its focus on political affairs from an egalitarian liberal perspective. I wish I’d come across it earlier!
2. Francis Fukuyama: History and Democracy — Doomscroll
I recently finished reading Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which is a book which that comes with a certain reputation which I found myself only partially reconsidering having read it.
I’m not in a huge rush to put his more recent books on my reading list, but I have to say I was a little surprised to see how his opinions quite so radically changed in the 33 years between that book and this interview. He now calls himself (sort of) a social democrat, and while I’d very much put him on the right side of that ideology, that’s a major shift for someone who was once a leading figure of neoconservatism. So I ended up finding myself nodding along to a fair amount of this interview, with two major exceptions — one of which challenged me and the other I’m merely sceptical of.
Firstly, I don’t have a good enough answer to his claim that Rousseau is the source of identity politics, because his focus on the idea that humans being essentially good (as opposed to the Hobbesian view of human nature being essentially savage), meant that people trusted their inner selves more and collective identities less. I don’t think that’s a fully accurate description of Rousseau (indeed, liberals more traditionally denounce him for being the godfather of totalitarianism), but I do need to get to grips better with this whole “identity politics” debate.
As I said in my article on neoliberalism, I think we’re often talking about very different things when we lump all forms of individual self-expression into one basket. I intend to return to this topic.
Secondly, Fukuyama is a self-confessed fan of Ezra Klein and the Abundance movement. I read Klein and Derek Thompson’s book Abundance late last year and I have to say I was unimpressed — particularly the section about getting rid of regulations to enable the state to build more things.
This may be more of a British thing, but I’ve heard politicians regularly demand a “bonfire of the regulations” throughout my adult life, but it’s never lead to anything for the simple fact that no-one seems to be able to agree on what regulations should be put to the pyre. Indeed, for two years we had a “Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency” in the form of Lord Agnew and Jacob Rees-Mogg (yes, the UK had BOGE before Musk’s DOGE), and it achieved precisely nothing and was quickly forgotten. Similarly, Labour was elected explicitly on a build more manifesto, but while they seem to be making some progress, the key problem seems to be more rooted in a lack of capacity than it does in regulations.
I’m always open to the suggestion that some regulations need to be scrapped, and that some nationally directed targets may be necessary. But this shouldn’t be at the expense of, say, the 30 by 30 global initiative. I certainly don’t buy that this is somehow the magic bullet that is going to sweep the Democrats into power in 2028, and I’m baffled by the drive in the US for the party to somehow consider it to be their equivalent of Project 2025.
But at least I agree with Fukuyama that since 2008, neoliberalism is dead.
3. Lord of the Rings and fascist fantasy — Science Fiction with Damien Walter
While I often quibble with Damien Walter on the specifics, I find him to be quite a compelling essayist, who has a lot of interests which are very convergent with mine.
This podcast from a few years ago (it was recorded during the early stages of the Ukraine War, and touches a lot upon Putin’s imperialist ambitions) may be primarily about Tolkien, but actually has a lot to say about science fiction, transhumanism and of course fascism. He actually ends up siding with Tolkien, praising his work as a valuable antidote to fascism, and seeing the resolution of The Lord of the Rings as pointing to a future in which we see a merger of our pre-modern, modern and post-modern impulses.
I find this quite a compelling argument which I want to sit with for a bit. It is certainly the case that with Tolkien we have a narrative which urges us to not seek power, indeed that all power should be regarded as corrupting and bad, and embrace mercy and wisdom. It’s definitely an argument. I’m sure Michael Moorcock would hate it.
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