A series of bold adventures from a secure base: that sounds like a good model, if you can get it, or create it. It also sounds like Tolkien! It also sounds like much of English history.
I am confused by conservatives in the UK. What do they want, and why does anything in US politics appeal to them? The reason I am confused is that my understanding of how British government works is that if a party has a majority of seats in parliament, then they are free to do pretty much anything they want. While in the US, to pass any non-budgetary legislation, you either need some genuine support among both conservatives and some liberals (or vice versa) or have a supermajority of 60 votes in the Senate. Functionally that means that for most elections in the US neither party wins because even a party with a majority still is extremely constrained in the actions that they can take. So the US is largely stuck with laws passed generations ago, whether or not anyone supports those laws anymore, because a minority of people can stop anything from happening. The point being that there is a broader appeal to Trump’s actions to upend the constitutional order in the US because it has been working so poorly, and there are some ways in which a more powerful presidency will bring more accountability to the US government. That is because no one has been genuinely in charge of the US government for quite a while, and stronger President would actually have the authority to make the changes that they campaigned on. Why any of this appeals to conservatives in the UK is beyond me, because all they need to do is win a majority in parliament, and then they can implement their platform. This is totally unlike the US, where the popularity of anyone’s platform is greatly obscured by the near impossibility of ever implementing anything that has less then 2/3 support among the electorate and also lukewarm opposition. The appeal of Trump breaking things is that they are already very broken, and breaking them even more might yield a new and better system. I just am unaware of any similar defects in the UK’s government (besides their lack of a bill of rights and lack of a strong commitment to free speech; Trump is a good exhibit of why it is a good thing that speech that pisses other people off is not only protected but understood in an almost stupid way to be a birthright).
The right in the UK, Reform and Tories, are not flattering Trump because they want to emulate what he is doing (the Tories anyway) but because his approval means a lot to british media, and by extension looks good to voters. UK gov needs US support, for deefence, for trade deals etc. This is why you won't ever have a UK PM criticising Trump more strongly. British right-wing politicians believe a wing from Trump can make them look like energy is on their side.
Imagine what a third party could do in the US under the current duopoly deadlock if it won 5 congressional and a couple senate seats. Personally I think the guys who devised the system almost 240 years ago would enjoy a plot twist like that, as would I. What you’ve got in mind isn’t exactly up their alley. Do you really trust Trump to hit the reset button?
Somewhat at odds with your AEIP commentary in tone.
Nevertheless, you are mistaken on the potential for a split on the right. The trad conservative leaders will huff and puff a little, but will eventually be bought off, and the rank and file won't notice most of the changes, and will experience the rest as a of force of nature/divine force. In other words, SBC won't be persuaded of the merits of USAID because 1000s of Africans start to die, because after all, everything is in God's hand, and perhaps this is his judgement, and what can you really do.
Is it me or is Jordan Peterson using his hands to seem more expressive way too much since doing series with the daily wire? Seems like they trained him to mime and make hand gestures to appear more engaged and appear to a younger audience on screen, or something like that, but he’s doing it even at live events and in person to person interviews.
As a Kennedy Independent and former Bernie supporter, I think we could hang. I like your style.
I’m fascinated by Trump’s audacity and the eclectic group he’s gathered. But they are going to have a tough time making America Great Again if they don’t realize that America is bigger than the USA. And I also agree that communitarian social policies are the way. Trump touts the Amish now. Maybe he’ll listen to them.
Hi Stella, you asked for critique so here it is: Great start but then delved into areas that would probably have lost 80% of your readers. However, you’re grasp of the English language is amazing, as if you’d lived here all your life.
Regarding the article, I suppose there’s a bit of keeping your enemies closer involved, always a good policy..
Cosplay lefties among the young, lose their way among reactionaries of the right, and their minds follow. You, on the other hand, appear to add buoyancy as they drown themselves, sinking into the desiccating puddles of inhumanity you characterize with almost charming descriptive power. Just keep your bear spray handy.
"and that smirks and irony are poor substitutes for kindness, curiosity and toleranc"
It's precisely "kindness, curiosity and tolerance" that has brought our civilisation to the brink of ruin. These young men need to be encouraging in quite the opposite direction, if we are to have any hope of survival
It’s simplistic and counterproductive to reject everything associated with opposing ideologies. Even bad actors can stumble into real questions, and sometimes those questions are too big to be owned by any one political or cultural faction.
Eric Weinstein’s claim about physics going dark post-WWII is one of those questions that needs to be spoken about by everyone. There is historical precedent and mechanisms for subverting scientific inquiry, whether for economic, political, or national security reasons. And there’s enough weirdness in both physics and reality itself to suggest this has happened—not just by suppressing research, but by shaping cultural attitudes so people self-police their curiosity.
This isn’t just about physics as we know it—it’s about the undiscovered physics of consciousness, something Weinstein gestures toward, whether or not he names it directly.
Consciousness isn’t just a byproduct of the brain; it interacts with reality in ways we don’t fully understand, potentially through a nonlocal medium of information and influence. That alone is disruptive. But it doesn’t stop there—there’s also gravity tech, something that isn’t entirely suppressible but is extremely dangerous to openly pursue. The people who look into it don’t necessarily disappear, but their research gets buried, discredited, or simply ignored by institutions that rely on maintaining a controlled framework of knowledge.
More radically, if there are undiscovered physics of concepts themselves, then we’re looking at something even bigger—a unifying structure that could bridge cultural and religious traditions in a way that absolutely nobody is prepared to approach openly. The dominant paradigms in both science and religion rely on mutual antagonism, but an actual unifying physics of meaning, thought, and consciousness would force both to radically reframe their foundations.
The fact that people react so aggressively, so reflexively, so culturally to certain scientific or metaphysical ideas isn’t just social conditioning—it’s the result of generations of epistemic control, sometimes intentional, sometimes emergent.
Many big questions aren’t just being ignored—they’ve been made unaskable.
You should reach out to Glen scrivener he was at ARC as well and produced a endorsement video (Youtube) of David Brooks' speech which may present just enough overlap for the two of you to have a fruitful conversation.
Also to note, I'm here because Paul VanderKlay referenced this article in his ARC2025 video (Youtube).
> He even argued that France is more of a threat to "us" than Russia or China. But who exactly is "us"?
I don’t think many people will recognize it, but that question is a tiny piece of status signalling. If you try asking it as a low-status non-native English speaker in the company of a few fellow speakers of your native language, someone will use it to derail the conversation and make fun of you, implying your English proficiency is so low you don’t know what the pronoun _us_ means.
I was there, adrift as a little Catholic environmentalist at home in no camp and deeply unsettled. I left a couple poems wrapped in rosemary behind the western canon which looked like a funery tribute to the culture attempting to be saved. Decided in the end the coat ladies were a pretty solid bunch.
The left. I am a communitarian social democrat. My small c conservative sensibilities are my personality and upbringing, and aesthetic, but I would never vote for a conservative party because politically I am not right wing.
A series of bold adventures from a secure base: that sounds like a good model, if you can get it, or create it. It also sounds like Tolkien! It also sounds like much of English history.
Ha! true
Lovely piece of writing. Thank you
Thank you for reading Gillian!
"American capitalists stand to gain greatly from the decline of European and British industries. "
Are you sure? Hard to sell IPhones and action hero movies to impoverished people.
they will sell them to China and Russia, their new friends
Have you seen American trade deficits?
Exactly. Trumpism is a zero-sum philosophy incompatible with capitalist concepts of growth, and hence closer to Fascism.
I am confused by conservatives in the UK. What do they want, and why does anything in US politics appeal to them? The reason I am confused is that my understanding of how British government works is that if a party has a majority of seats in parliament, then they are free to do pretty much anything they want. While in the US, to pass any non-budgetary legislation, you either need some genuine support among both conservatives and some liberals (or vice versa) or have a supermajority of 60 votes in the Senate. Functionally that means that for most elections in the US neither party wins because even a party with a majority still is extremely constrained in the actions that they can take. So the US is largely stuck with laws passed generations ago, whether or not anyone supports those laws anymore, because a minority of people can stop anything from happening. The point being that there is a broader appeal to Trump’s actions to upend the constitutional order in the US because it has been working so poorly, and there are some ways in which a more powerful presidency will bring more accountability to the US government. That is because no one has been genuinely in charge of the US government for quite a while, and stronger President would actually have the authority to make the changes that they campaigned on. Why any of this appeals to conservatives in the UK is beyond me, because all they need to do is win a majority in parliament, and then they can implement their platform. This is totally unlike the US, where the popularity of anyone’s platform is greatly obscured by the near impossibility of ever implementing anything that has less then 2/3 support among the electorate and also lukewarm opposition. The appeal of Trump breaking things is that they are already very broken, and breaking them even more might yield a new and better system. I just am unaware of any similar defects in the UK’s government (besides their lack of a bill of rights and lack of a strong commitment to free speech; Trump is a good exhibit of why it is a good thing that speech that pisses other people off is not only protected but understood in an almost stupid way to be a birthright).
The right in the UK, Reform and Tories, are not flattering Trump because they want to emulate what he is doing (the Tories anyway) but because his approval means a lot to british media, and by extension looks good to voters. UK gov needs US support, for deefence, for trade deals etc. This is why you won't ever have a UK PM criticising Trump more strongly. British right-wing politicians believe a wing from Trump can make them look like energy is on their side.
Imagine what a third party could do in the US under the current duopoly deadlock if it won 5 congressional and a couple senate seats. Personally I think the guys who devised the system almost 240 years ago would enjoy a plot twist like that, as would I. What you’ve got in mind isn’t exactly up their alley. Do you really trust Trump to hit the reset button?
Somewhat at odds with your AEIP commentary in tone.
Nevertheless, you are mistaken on the potential for a split on the right. The trad conservative leaders will huff and puff a little, but will eventually be bought off, and the rank and file won't notice most of the changes, and will experience the rest as a of force of nature/divine force. In other words, SBC won't be persuaded of the merits of USAID because 1000s of Africans start to die, because after all, everything is in God's hand, and perhaps this is his judgement, and what can you really do.
Is it me or is Jordan Peterson using his hands to seem more expressive way too much since doing series with the daily wire? Seems like they trained him to mime and make hand gestures to appear more engaged and appear to a younger audience on screen, or something like that, but he’s doing it even at live events and in person to person interviews.
Anyway
As a Kennedy Independent and former Bernie supporter, I think we could hang. I like your style.
I’m fascinated by Trump’s audacity and the eclectic group he’s gathered. But they are going to have a tough time making America Great Again if they don’t realize that America is bigger than the USA. And I also agree that communitarian social policies are the way. Trump touts the Amish now. Maybe he’ll listen to them.
Hi Stella, you asked for critique so here it is: Great start but then delved into areas that would probably have lost 80% of your readers. However, you’re grasp of the English language is amazing, as if you’d lived here all your life.
Regarding the article, I suppose there’s a bit of keeping your enemies closer involved, always a good policy..
my readership is very wide ranging Andy, hard to please them all ;-) thanks for reading, and for the feedback!
Cosplay lefties among the young, lose their way among reactionaries of the right, and their minds follow. You, on the other hand, appear to add buoyancy as they drown themselves, sinking into the desiccating puddles of inhumanity you characterize with almost charming descriptive power. Just keep your bear spray handy.
time will tell, thanks Jack x
"and that smirks and irony are poor substitutes for kindness, curiosity and toleranc"
It's precisely "kindness, curiosity and tolerance" that has brought our civilisation to the brink of ruin. These young men need to be encouraging in quite the opposite direction, if we are to have any hope of survival
It’s simplistic and counterproductive to reject everything associated with opposing ideologies. Even bad actors can stumble into real questions, and sometimes those questions are too big to be owned by any one political or cultural faction.
Eric Weinstein’s claim about physics going dark post-WWII is one of those questions that needs to be spoken about by everyone. There is historical precedent and mechanisms for subverting scientific inquiry, whether for economic, political, or national security reasons. And there’s enough weirdness in both physics and reality itself to suggest this has happened—not just by suppressing research, but by shaping cultural attitudes so people self-police their curiosity.
This isn’t just about physics as we know it—it’s about the undiscovered physics of consciousness, something Weinstein gestures toward, whether or not he names it directly.
Consciousness isn’t just a byproduct of the brain; it interacts with reality in ways we don’t fully understand, potentially through a nonlocal medium of information and influence. That alone is disruptive. But it doesn’t stop there—there’s also gravity tech, something that isn’t entirely suppressible but is extremely dangerous to openly pursue. The people who look into it don’t necessarily disappear, but their research gets buried, discredited, or simply ignored by institutions that rely on maintaining a controlled framework of knowledge.
More radically, if there are undiscovered physics of concepts themselves, then we’re looking at something even bigger—a unifying structure that could bridge cultural and religious traditions in a way that absolutely nobody is prepared to approach openly. The dominant paradigms in both science and religion rely on mutual antagonism, but an actual unifying physics of meaning, thought, and consciousness would force both to radically reframe their foundations.
The fact that people react so aggressively, so reflexively, so culturally to certain scientific or metaphysical ideas isn’t just social conditioning—it’s the result of generations of epistemic control, sometimes intentional, sometimes emergent.
Many big questions aren’t just being ignored—they’ve been made unaskable.
You should reach out to Glen scrivener he was at ARC as well and produced a endorsement video (Youtube) of David Brooks' speech which may present just enough overlap for the two of you to have a fruitful conversation.
Also to note, I'm here because Paul VanderKlay referenced this article in his ARC2025 video (Youtube).
> He even argued that France is more of a threat to "us" than Russia or China. But who exactly is "us"?
I don’t think many people will recognize it, but that question is a tiny piece of status signalling. If you try asking it as a low-status non-native English speaker in the company of a few fellow speakers of your native language, someone will use it to derail the conversation and make fun of you, implying your English proficiency is so low you don’t know what the pronoun _us_ means.
No, I’m not suggesting anyone should avoid it.
I was there, adrift as a little Catholic environmentalist at home in no camp and deeply unsettled. I left a couple poems wrapped in rosemary behind the western canon which looked like a funery tribute to the culture attempting to be saved. Decided in the end the coat ladies were a pretty solid bunch.
> All humans want to be told they are fundamentally good.
I don’t.
Wait, so which side are you on, politically? You spoke of “we leftists” and then referred to your conservative sentiments.
The left. I am a communitarian social democrat. My small c conservative sensibilities are my personality and upbringing, and aesthetic, but I would never vote for a conservative party because politically I am not right wing.
Omg. Someone actually said something nuanced and complex and human. I shall call the fire brigade immediately
😂😂😂 thanks