lj - I think that Kim Stanley Robinson had the Indian government doing the sulfur geoengineering (rather than a private entity) is because India started doing it after it was clear that the world had already overshot the climate boundaries. It was part of a hodgepodge approach to solutions that was necessitated by our collective inability to make collective change.
The reasons for private entities to do this are more complicated, and get at wj's thoughts about the profit motive. The tech startups that are working the geoengineering angle are doing so partly for public minded reasons, but that is also mixed with the conviction that whatever we do collectively must not interfere with the economy or their own business interests. They are trying to delay the moment of accountability in order to stretch the bubble for their own fortunes.
It's an informative comparison, and it highlights the difference in priorities between the global north and south.
5 days ago
Just chased one of the Newsweek links from the anti-weather militia article to see what MTG had to say about her anti-weather-tampering bill.
She is an idiot - I am not suggesting otherwise - but at the same time, I don't think that it's a bad idea to pass laws forbidding unauthorized geoengineering because we are already seeing startups that are attempting to kick start this sort of environmental hacking in the name of combatting climate change:
MTG is not the only idiot around, and in this case I'll support one idiot in order to stop other idiots.
6 days ago
"Heritage American" is a bit like "Originalism" in that the term is infinitely Humpty-Dumpty-able. Once you establish that the Founding Fathers were Christian Nationalists (the subject of so many books and church basement visits by "noted Bible-believing historians") then the heritage in question becomes a spiritual heritage, and any American born Christian Nationalist regardless of ethnicity can be provisionally adopted into the family of Heritage Americans.
Of course that heritage is instantly revocable as well, even for actual Heritage Americans. I have ancestors on my father's side of the family going back at least to 1700, and possibly to Jamestown. I'm pretty sure that my status as a Heritage American was revoked the moment that it became clear to everyone that I was an exvangelical, a feminist, and in favor of LGBTQ+ rights. When my mother passed, the only people who spoke to my wife and I at her funeral were blood relatives or the two Taiwanese converts who were treated as adopted family. The pastor of the church was literally the only other member of my parents' church who spoke to us, and he only did so enough to try to suggest that I read CS Lewis (as if I hadn't already done that during my evangelical days).
1 week ago
Since we are on the subject of philosophy here, and the philosophical justifications for one's totalitarian tendencies, I ran across this piece at The Guardian, which highlights the cachet that Carl Schmitt has on the Christian Nationalist right:
Other Schmitt-positive applicants include a Heritage employee who has since landed in the administration. Max Matheu is now an attorney adviser at the State Department, according to his LinkedIn page.
[...]
In his Project 2025 application, in response to a question about which books have influenced him, Matheu nominated The Concept of the Political by Carl Schmitt, adding that “The friend/enemy distinction is the cardinal concept that undergirds all politics. The Left has been making the distinction since Gramsci and other cultural marxists captured the media and academic institutions to subvert Heritage Americans and the shared ideals this country once held."
Note here the use of the phrase "Heritage Americans" as a way of othering anyone that does not fit the alt-right mold. It's really interesting that Matheu is accusing "The Left" of being Schmittians. It's particularly ironic because Schmitt was using the friend/enemy distinction to argue why liberalism was doomed to fail because it insisted on universal rights and the humanity of all subjects in the realm of the political - pretty much the opposite of what they accuse "The Left" of doing. Not a surprise, really, when most of these Heritage hangers-on seem unable to hold onto the distinction between liberals and leftists, and treat them as interchangeable.
Since I have mentioned Schmitt so many times before, I should probably quote him here to show the central reason for his popularity in the Christian Nationalist right:
The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy…the distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflict with him are possible. - The Concept of the Political I.2
So the Christian Nationalist project functions institutionally upon this one basic premise - that the only way to have a unified state is to refine it into a homogenous, elemental society that is not vulnerable to any sort of othering. Any attempt to try to base that essence in a universal humanity is, to their eyes, doomed to lose in the realm of politics.
This is what we are up against. Anyone not actively working for their Christian Nationalist agenda is not a Heritage American, and therefore can be excluded from political existence. Their attempts at gerrymandering are merely the least bloody and turbulent means to make their enemies cease to exist. Failing that, there are other means.
lj - I think that Kim Stanley Robinson had the Indian government doing the sulfur geoengineering (rather than a private entity) is because India started doing it after it was clear that the world had already overshot the climate boundaries. It was part of a hodgepodge approach to solutions that was necessitated by our collective inability to make collective change.
The reasons for private entities to do this are more complicated, and get at wj's thoughts about the profit motive. The tech startups that are working the geoengineering angle are doing so partly for public minded reasons, but that is also mixed with the conviction that whatever we do collectively must not interfere with the economy or their own business interests. They are trying to delay the moment of accountability in order to stretch the bubble for their own fortunes.
It's an informative comparison, and it highlights the difference in priorities between the global north and south.
Just chased one of the Newsweek links from the anti-weather militia article to see what MTG had to say about her anti-weather-tampering bill.
She is an idiot - I am not suggesting otherwise - but at the same time, I don't think that it's a bad idea to pass laws forbidding unauthorized geoengineering because we are already seeing startups that are attempting to kick start this sort of environmental hacking in the name of combatting climate change:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/24/1066041/a-startup-says-its-begun-releasing-particles-into-the-atmosphere-in-an-effort-to-tweak-the-climate/
MTG is not the only idiot around, and in this case I'll support one idiot in order to stop other idiots.
"Heritage American" is a bit like "Originalism" in that the term is infinitely Humpty-Dumpty-able. Once you establish that the Founding Fathers were Christian Nationalists (the subject of so many books and church basement visits by "noted Bible-believing historians") then the heritage in question becomes a spiritual heritage, and any American born Christian Nationalist regardless of ethnicity can be provisionally adopted into the family of Heritage Americans.
Of course that heritage is instantly revocable as well, even for actual Heritage Americans. I have ancestors on my father's side of the family going back at least to 1700, and possibly to Jamestown. I'm pretty sure that my status as a Heritage American was revoked the moment that it became clear to everyone that I was an exvangelical, a feminist, and in favor of LGBTQ+ rights. When my mother passed, the only people who spoke to my wife and I at her funeral were blood relatives or the two Taiwanese converts who were treated as adopted family. The pastor of the church was literally the only other member of my parents' church who spoke to us, and he only did so enough to try to suggest that I read CS Lewis (as if I hadn't already done that during my evangelical days).
Since we are on the subject of philosophy here, and the philosophical justifications for one's totalitarian tendencies, I ran across this piece at The Guardian, which highlights the cachet that Carl Schmitt has on the Christian Nationalist right:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/28/project-2025-heritage-foundation-hack
Note here the use of the phrase "Heritage Americans" as a way of othering anyone that does not fit the alt-right mold. It's really interesting that Matheu is accusing "The Left" of being Schmittians. It's particularly ironic because Schmitt was using the friend/enemy distinction to argue why liberalism was doomed to fail because it insisted on universal rights and the humanity of all subjects in the realm of the political - pretty much the opposite of what they accuse "The Left" of doing. Not a surprise, really, when most of these Heritage hangers-on seem unable to hold onto the distinction between liberals and leftists, and treat them as interchangeable.
Since I have mentioned Schmitt so many times before, I should probably quote him here to show the central reason for his popularity in the Christian Nationalist right:
So the Christian Nationalist project functions institutionally upon this one basic premise - that the only way to have a unified state is to refine it into a homogenous, elemental society that is not vulnerable to any sort of othering. Any attempt to try to base that essence in a universal humanity is, to their eyes, doomed to lose in the realm of politics.
This is what we are up against. Anyone not actively working for their Christian Nationalist agenda is not a Heritage American, and therefore can be excluded from political existence. Their attempts at gerrymandering are merely the least bloody and turbulent means to make their enemies cease to exist. Failing that, there are other means.