one of the better essays written about "unreality" i've read recently. was trying to explain this to a friend who studies comparative gov't: modern states are built on legibility & use of force, and this is anti-state power pooling around challenging that legibility. in other words, civil conflict
I wrote about the hurricanes, attention grifters, the limits of the term misinformation, and how it is more apt to call it a full cultural and political assault on any person or institution that operates in reality. (gift link)
What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.
i've studied civil war for ~10 years so i don't use the 'civil conflict' language lightly. rebel challenges to state use of force is a much bloodier affair -- but we also don't know what an intensification of this different kind of challenge looks like.
Make Hobbes Great Again (thinking particularly of Behemoth & S Holmes' wonderful intro to his edition)