"The last thing that I want to do is post something that is low-effort and/or repetitive."
Thanks for this. Been unsubscribing to a bunch of stuff lately because of this and an overcrowded inbox. Managing to stay informed/making sense of events on your own without this sense of overwhelmingness is a real struggle. I am genuinely curious about how other people balance this?
Tracking events requires context for newer readers, but therein lies the trap of repeating yourself over and over again, boring longtime readers in the process.
I need to find a way to train newer readers to use the search function without coming across as an ass ;)
The only way to serve the truth as one sees it, as does Niccolo is not to be afraid to alienate the reader, as that honesty is why we subscribe in the first place. I am by no means 100% in agreement with Niccolo but it is the challenge of opposing views (thankfully rarely) coming from a place of considered truth which is stimulating, and this applies also to thje excellent commentators here.
Agree with George Menyhel and Sammie. I subscribe to Mat Taibbi also, and the very interesting Angela Nagle, but she seems to have slightly to ground.
Our national broadcaster RTE had an item on their news site about NYT verified murders of Russian POWs, but it has disappeared after usual whining and wheedling by both Uke Ambassador and political elites here. Imagine worthless time servers in our politics claiming they wrre agraid for their safety after being put on Russian sanctions list. The pitiful megalomanaic 'me too' of it all.
I'm 67, and have gone the full journey from gun believing republican socialist to cynical right wing, and have a nose for the bogus and inauthentic. Niccolo is the real deal.
It’s always fascinated me that the Puritans (through the schisms and recombinations that always accompany American Protestantism) were the predecessors of the United Church of Christ, one of the most socially liberal modern Christian denominations.
True that. My mother's family from Keene, NH, and very liberal from 19th century according to family lore. Small farmers tend conservative and Stearns were bankers, at least until crash of 1892 when they lost everything.
Another branch of Puritans evolved into Unitarians by the time of the American Revolution who evolved into the Unitarian Universalists of today, a non-Christian "religion" for the wealthy, educated white atheists.
With you on both points. The modern right are fully formed by the cultural forces of today. If/when they wake up and ditch the fey stuff (playing dress up with ideologies and causes from the past) they will be truly formidable. I'd say half a generation from now, perhaps?
I am not convinced that terms like 'conservative', 'Left' or 'Right' are useful when thinking about the 17th c. Those terms developed after the French Revolution and have all manner of baggage that are irrelevant or misleading when applied to the English of that period.
The Protestant Dissenters in England were mostly socially conservative, but there were also very radical political currents. Some Puritans wanted universal male suffrage. Their opponents were also a mixed bunch...the Royalists included free-thinkers and near-atheists like Hobbes, whose political thinking later justified the Glorious Revolution and the long Whig Ascendancy.
Following the Restoration people were incentivised to mock the Puritans and exaggerate whatever was distinctive or unusual about them. As a result the literary record is often unreliable and unfair. A great deal of suspicion needs to be applied to the subject.
All true, I am very much historical context and reading the original sources especially their own words. If you read Machiavelli, Metternich or Bismarck you wouldn’t recognize them from popular history, or god help us school.
Having said that the actions of Increase and Cotton Mather would be quite recognizable to Sam Bankman Fried , the difference being direct involvement in death, torture and direct profits from Salem real estate gained by the accusers against the accused.
Land being wealth then more than now.
SBF would have felt at home in Salem, as would #metoo.
Increase Mather put the money to good use. He founded Yale.
Where there is suffering and exploitation you invariably find the great and the good doing their thing. Apex predators go for injured or weakened prey as a matter of course...it's all just protein.
To expand on my earlier comment, I think that there is a danger for all of us in developing an imagined genealogy of influence for the current mess and simply explaining things from this.
It is easy for people to imagine the American Left as simply a further development of the wilder elements of English Protestantism. This allows us to ignore what is unique about our own time and place. Trads love to do this.
Netflix and cannabis are a more decisive influence on modern America than either Calvin or the Pilgrim Fathers. Whatever their faults, the Puritans do not deserve responsibility for Drag Queen story hour. The more I learn about them, the more I am inclined to admire their courage and resourcefulness and their perseverance in adversity and persecution. Theirs was a better generation than ours.
Agree on nearly points. Perhaps I was thinking it significant to say the modern right and Trads cannot be considered “Puritans.”
But on this I differ; the Ruling class of America is Harvard and Yale, both founded as Theocratic Seminaries and America remains a Theocracy today - without that pesky God.
The theocratic legacy is evident from the culture of elite America which reeks of sanctimony. American presidential oratory especially sounds like a parody of a sermon. This creeps me out and confuses me. How could anyone be taken in by any of it? I assume that most people are not, but they put up with it.
Rhett Butler, Mae West and Bob Mitchum are the America we all loved. Melville and James Jones too.
Are there Eastern Europeans (Central, Balkans, Finland to the Bosporus) on Substack who are worth checking out?
Very hard to find any. I mostly encounter these voices on 4chan (which I consume through an archive), which is throwaway banter in bad English.
Butthurt-free sources, preferably. For butthurt, in the Butthurt Belt, I don't need to go abroad, we have plenty of it at home, thank you.
Slightly offtopic: Germans, online, are extremely quiet. Underrepresented. Especially when it comes to quality prose/insights. I noticed this in the mid-2010s. There's not even a German wordpress blog that does realtalk that I know of. If you remove the Lugenpresse, the people are as quiet as North Korea. You'll run into a dozen Swedes before a German.
That sounds ominous. Exasperating as the Butthurt Belt is, its existence is a sign that people are comfortable sharing their opinions and feelings.
I'd expect that Germans are deeply conflicted. They'd be inhuman not to be disgusted at the sight of their country being trashed by the Yanks and the refugees, but they'd be insane not to be cautious about political dangers all round. Since they got rid of Bismarck the Germans have had a very poor succession of leaders.
Thanksgiving holiday was declared by Abraham Lincoln "fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving." Oct 1863.
This would eventually become the modern Thanksgiving holiday.
The USA had 18 months of brutal civil war that ended in Apr 1865..
Happy Thanksgiving Niccolo. Always a bright spot when I see your latest in my inbox. The Puritans never much interested me. Going to high school in Honolulu I found it hard to relate to them in my history classes. But I did learn something here.
I was wondering if you had any observations about what is going on in Brazil and it's recent election? Big protests ongoing but the press gives it only superficial coverage at that. You've done such a great job illuminating the issues in Ukraine and the situation in Eastern Europe, I could only hope to understand Brazil as well. Venezuela also intrigues me. The US media is demonizing Maduro, but there seems to be something else going on here that we're not being told. If you know of any good Substack writers who cover Latin America, let us know. And keep up the good work.
Brazil is a very divided society with a weak history of democracy. It can also be quite complex. There are elements that want Bolsonaro to seize power, but they lack critical mass.
Brazil is a great comparator for the USA. Some regions are advanced, others backward. To balance the competing social and political dynamics, they have perfected the management of poverty and the suppression/containment of the middle classes. The elite abhor the populist Bolsonaro and prefer the tame Leftist Lula.
An excellent book on the origins and progress of English Protestantism in an academic but accessible book, is The Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy. It was a massive transfer of wealth and property to the elite class.
I read about the puritans and then think “what a bunch of nuts” and then I see the Republic of Ireland do *anything* and I remember that Cromwell did nothing wrong
Thanks Niccolo. The next best thing about being an American (after owning copious amounts of semi-automatics) is cozy Thanksgiving. Now I’ll start work on getting all kinds of drunk. Cheers
Taking a bit of a breather this week to collect my thoughts as I am all over the place travel-wise. I will see you guys on Saturday.
Enjoy and refresh
"The last thing that I want to do is post something that is low-effort and/or repetitive."
Thanks for this. Been unsubscribing to a bunch of stuff lately because of this and an overcrowded inbox. Managing to stay informed/making sense of events on your own without this sense of overwhelmingness is a real struggle. I am genuinely curious about how other people balance this?
Tracking events requires context for newer readers, but therein lies the trap of repeating yourself over and over again, boring longtime readers in the process.
I need to find a way to train newer readers to use the search function without coming across as an ass ;)
Yes, you don't want to alienate readers more than you absolutely have to
The only way to serve the truth as one sees it, as does Niccolo is not to be afraid to alienate the reader, as that honesty is why we subscribe in the first place. I am by no means 100% in agreement with Niccolo but it is the challenge of opposing views (thankfully rarely) coming from a place of considered truth which is stimulating, and this applies also to thje excellent commentators here.
Let me know how this goes
People who don't subscribe to Fisted by Foucault think I'm some kind of dark oracle. I tell them the truth, of course.
I let my Substack inbox replace traditional news sources.
Still more gems than trash.
I've also unsubscribed (paid) from several Substacks over the past month; but not FxF.
I appreciate the vote of confidence!
Agree with George Menyhel and Sammie. I subscribe to Mat Taibbi also, and the very interesting Angela Nagle, but she seems to have slightly to ground.
Our national broadcaster RTE had an item on their news site about NYT verified murders of Russian POWs, but it has disappeared after usual whining and wheedling by both Uke Ambassador and political elites here. Imagine worthless time servers in our politics claiming they wrre agraid for their safety after being put on Russian sanctions list. The pitiful megalomanaic 'me too' of it all.
I'm 67, and have gone the full journey from gun believing republican socialist to cynical right wing, and have a nose for the bogus and inauthentic. Niccolo is the real deal.
'gone to ground' ref Angela Nagle.
Happy Thanksgiving!
It’s always fascinated me that the Puritans (through the schisms and recombinations that always accompany American Protestantism) were the predecessors of the United Church of Christ, one of the most socially liberal modern Christian denominations.
True that. My mother's family from Keene, NH, and very liberal from 19th century according to family lore. Small farmers tend conservative and Stearns were bankers, at least until crash of 1892 when they lost everything.
Another branch of Puritans evolved into Unitarians by the time of the American Revolution who evolved into the Unitarian Universalists of today, a non-Christian "religion" for the wealthy, educated white atheists.
The Puritans might be thought the English “Left” at the time, they were certainly not conservative, that was Royalty and monarchism.
Fair enough, but my point is that they wouldn’t recognize the UCC’s stance on basically any social issue:
https://www.hrc.org/resources/stances-of-faiths-on-lgbt-issues-united-church-of-christ
https://www.ucc.org/ucc-team-leader-self-managed-abortion-is-as-easy-as-pills/
https://answersingenesis.org/culture/united-church-allows-atheist-pastor-to-remain-in-pulpit/
https://www.ucc.org/justice_for_native_americans/
I was actually just pointing it out to defend the modern right and Trads, who always get called Puritans - anything but.
The Puritans of the past are absolutely innocent of any deeds but their own.
With you on both points. The modern right are fully formed by the cultural forces of today. If/when they wake up and ditch the fey stuff (playing dress up with ideologies and causes from the past) they will be truly formidable. I'd say half a generation from now, perhaps?
I am not convinced that terms like 'conservative', 'Left' or 'Right' are useful when thinking about the 17th c. Those terms developed after the French Revolution and have all manner of baggage that are irrelevant or misleading when applied to the English of that period.
The Protestant Dissenters in England were mostly socially conservative, but there were also very radical political currents. Some Puritans wanted universal male suffrage. Their opponents were also a mixed bunch...the Royalists included free-thinkers and near-atheists like Hobbes, whose political thinking later justified the Glorious Revolution and the long Whig Ascendancy.
Following the Restoration people were incentivised to mock the Puritans and exaggerate whatever was distinctive or unusual about them. As a result the literary record is often unreliable and unfair. A great deal of suspicion needs to be applied to the subject.
All true, I am very much historical context and reading the original sources especially their own words. If you read Machiavelli, Metternich or Bismarck you wouldn’t recognize them from popular history, or god help us school.
Having said that the actions of Increase and Cotton Mather would be quite recognizable to Sam Bankman Fried , the difference being direct involvement in death, torture and direct profits from Salem real estate gained by the accusers against the accused.
Land being wealth then more than now.
SBF would have felt at home in Salem, as would #metoo.
Increase Mather put the money to good use. He founded Yale.
Where there is suffering and exploitation you invariably find the great and the good doing their thing. Apex predators go for injured or weakened prey as a matter of course...it's all just protein.
Interesting stuff, Long Warred and Philip, as always.
To expand on my earlier comment, I think that there is a danger for all of us in developing an imagined genealogy of influence for the current mess and simply explaining things from this.
It is easy for people to imagine the American Left as simply a further development of the wilder elements of English Protestantism. This allows us to ignore what is unique about our own time and place. Trads love to do this.
Netflix and cannabis are a more decisive influence on modern America than either Calvin or the Pilgrim Fathers. Whatever their faults, the Puritans do not deserve responsibility for Drag Queen story hour. The more I learn about them, the more I am inclined to admire their courage and resourcefulness and their perseverance in adversity and persecution. Theirs was a better generation than ours.
Agree on nearly points. Perhaps I was thinking it significant to say the modern right and Trads cannot be considered “Puritans.”
But on this I differ; the Ruling class of America is Harvard and Yale, both founded as Theocratic Seminaries and America remains a Theocracy today - without that pesky God.
Oh, he was just in the way.
The theocratic legacy is evident from the culture of elite America which reeks of sanctimony. American presidential oratory especially sounds like a parody of a sermon. This creeps me out and confuses me. How could anyone be taken in by any of it? I assume that most people are not, but they put up with it.
Rhett Butler, Mae West and Bob Mitchum are the America we all loved. Melville and James Jones too.
I have read about New England colonies, but I have not known these interesting facts. Now I see Boston and Cambridge in a new light.
Are there Eastern Europeans (Central, Balkans, Finland to the Bosporus) on Substack who are worth checking out?
Very hard to find any. I mostly encounter these voices on 4chan (which I consume through an archive), which is throwaway banter in bad English.
Butthurt-free sources, preferably. For butthurt, in the Butthurt Belt, I don't need to go abroad, we have plenty of it at home, thank you.
Slightly offtopic: Germans, online, are extremely quiet. Underrepresented. Especially when it comes to quality prose/insights. I noticed this in the mid-2010s. There's not even a German wordpress blog that does realtalk that I know of. If you remove the Lugenpresse, the people are as quiet as North Korea. You'll run into a dozen Swedes before a German.
To be honest, none that I am aware of.
I had one commenter who I still treasure, but he's not posting.
https://open.substack.com/pub/eugyppius?r=91o16&utm_medium=ios
There is actually a German Substack that talks about Germany and German politics, among other topics - yours truly.
But you are right, Germans are very absent from the DR. I am working to change that.
Noted, subscribed and treasured! Danke!
Perhaps Eugyppius? https://www.eugyppius.com/?utm_source=%2Fprofile%2F15736836-eugyppius&utm_medium=reader2&utm_campaign=substack_profile
I think he mostly writes about COVID from a German perspective.
I already read him, I wasn't aware he was German.
The COVID stuff is behind me so I consume very little of that. It's for my mental health, others can seek justice to their pleasure.
He does more than COVID.
COVID is like Trump, both expose the system in all its tawdry, evil banality.
Here’s a great German substack
https://open.substack.com/pub/eugyppius?r=91o16&utm_medium=ios
That sounds ominous. Exasperating as the Butthurt Belt is, its existence is a sign that people are comfortable sharing their opinions and feelings.
I'd expect that Germans are deeply conflicted. They'd be inhuman not to be disgusted at the sight of their country being trashed by the Yanks and the refugees, but they'd be insane not to be cautious about political dangers all round. Since they got rid of Bismarck the Germans have had a very poor succession of leaders.
Where is this Butthurt Belt?
Everywhere - see George Menyhei's post above (as I understand it, it is the zone of chronic complaint).
Happy Thanksgiving everyone
Thanksgiving holiday was declared by Abraham Lincoln "fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving." Oct 1863.
This would eventually become the modern Thanksgiving holiday.
The USA had 18 months of brutal civil war that ended in Apr 1865..
Interesting, and thanks!
Happy Thanksgiving Niccolo. Always a bright spot when I see your latest in my inbox. The Puritans never much interested me. Going to high school in Honolulu I found it hard to relate to them in my history classes. But I did learn something here.
I was wondering if you had any observations about what is going on in Brazil and it's recent election? Big protests ongoing but the press gives it only superficial coverage at that. You've done such a great job illuminating the issues in Ukraine and the situation in Eastern Europe, I could only hope to understand Brazil as well. Venezuela also intrigues me. The US media is demonizing Maduro, but there seems to be something else going on here that we're not being told. If you know of any good Substack writers who cover Latin America, let us know. And keep up the good work.
Tom
Brazil is a very divided society with a weak history of democracy. It can also be quite complex. There are elements that want Bolsonaro to seize power, but they lack critical mass.
Brazil is a great comparator for the USA. Some regions are advanced, others backward. To balance the competing social and political dynamics, they have perfected the management of poverty and the suppression/containment of the middle classes. The elite abhor the populist Bolsonaro and prefer the tame Leftist Lula.
On the different origins of different regions, David Hackett-Fischer's Albion's Seed is highly recommended
Definitely.
An excellent book on the origins and progress of English Protestantism in an academic but accessible book, is The Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy. It was a massive transfer of wealth and property to the elite class.
I read about the puritans and then think “what a bunch of nuts” and then I see the Republic of Ireland do *anything* and I remember that Cromwell did nothing wrong
Thanks Niccolo. The next best thing about being an American (after owning copious amounts of semi-automatics) is cozy Thanksgiving. Now I’ll start work on getting all kinds of drunk. Cheers
Thanks... Hello from Germany. Collect your thoughts. I enjoy your writings.
Vielen Dank!
Nichts zu danken. Es freut mich, deinen Posts zu lesen. Alles Gute! (I was born in America by the way.)
Hrvatska seems slow and old
Canada, faster and younger, can have a chance vs them in their next game
Belgium vs Croatia seems to be also a win for the belges
Where's the next Modric?
Happy Thanksgiving to you
For those interested in pursuing the Puritans, here is a timely and accessible piece on the subject.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/original-puritans-thanksgiving