Finished Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown.

Reading Kingsnorth, Against the Machine. @JohnBrady made it sound like more than a collection of his blogposts (including Substack), so very many of which I’ve already read. 📚

Affirmed to see Kingsnorth quoting R.S. Thomas and Robinson Jeffers.

@ReaderJohn I generally like Kingsnorth, but have trouble giving him a lot of credibility.

I have little interest in relitigating the chaotic days of covid, when no one had a good idea of the right path forward. However, when I recall that Kingsnorth wrote a whole mini-book predicting that covid vaccines were going to cause the triumph of fascism in Europe, it’s hard to take his other prognistications with anything but a dose of skepticism.

As I wrote a few years ago:

> Kingsnorth reveals he remains proudly unvaccinated. He works to layer meaning on top of meaning to get to his point about how dangerous a situation we are in (this article is labeled part 1, so there’s more coming). I have to wonder about this perspective, though. What if this isn’t encroaching authoritarianism (history of Austria and Germany aside)? What if it’s not even particularly egregious paternalism? What if it’s really just about getting a vaccination that gives you a better survival rate against a deadly disease? What if it’s just about coming together to mitigate a public health crisis in the best ways that we know how?

@canneddragons I share your feelings about the vaccine, and argued along those exact lines ad nauseam during the whole pandemic. That said, I have a mental category that helps me with this sort of thing. It’s basically a funny, what-if-they’re-right, kind of New Yorker cartoonish image. I am perfectly onboard, for example, with science and evolution and billions of years, etc, etc. I have a long history of arguing with Young Earthers. But, I can’t shake — I don’t want to shake — the hilarious image of scaling that last mountain or reaching the pearly gates and discovering that… holy shit, Ken frickin’ Ham had it right this whole time. 🤓

Mutatis mutandis and whatnot.

@tinyroofnail Sure, we could all find out we are wrong on a whole host of subjects. In this case, though, Kingsnorth spilled a lot of ink predicting something that very clearly did not come to pass.

Everytime some doomesday cult predicts the rapture, I suppose there’s a chance that it could happen, but when it doesn’t, they lose credibility.

@canneddragons I’ve only become aware of Kingsnorth recently, and in just barely poking around some of his writings/interviews, this very thing immediately rubbed me the wrong way. Anyone can be wrong (and nearly everyone was, in some way, during Covid), but has he ever backtracked and admitted the largest threat of authoritarianism has turned out to be actually coming largely from the the right and not the vaccine-pushing of the left? If not, that hugely undermines his current credibility to me.

@JohnBrady Thanks for this. The comparison to earlier-era Dreher tone does feel apt, from what little I’ve read of PK. I will likely pick up his book at some point, though I’m also feeling sympathetic to this preemptive critique via Alan Jacobs.

@canneddragons I can’t disagree, but I essentially ignored him on that topic. I’m not even sure I saw him writing against the Covid vaccine.

@bethanyh Exactly. I think he can be directionally right in some ways, but I don’t know if I’d pay too much attention to his Chicken Little bits.

@JohnBrady Seems like sage advice to me.

@bethanyh @canneddragons Well, I’m not familiar with Kingsnorth’s Covid stuff, but I’ll add a couple things that come to mind, because needless to say this is not an unimportant subject.

One is a lesson I take from Masha Gessen among others:

>And this is why we compare. To prevent what we know can happen from happening. To make “Never Again” a political project rather than a magic spell. And if we compare compellingly and bravely, then, in the best case scenario, the comparison is proven wrong.

Something else comes from Steinbeck’s East of Eden, the story of Croesus. I think about that story a lot, but I’m not sure how to quickly summarize why that seems so fitting here, but there’s a haunting warning and a deep graciousness to it.

@cliffordbeshers ha!

@JohnBrady Thanks for this. Two chapters in and only “reading” it right now because I forgot that I preordered the Audible version for my dad. I don’t have much of a category for Kingsnorth, personally. I was talking to a bookstore owner this morning who had never heard of him and was reading a description of it on his computer, trying to describe him and resorting to the neither left nor right business. I’ve never read Drehr either. Sort of passed him going in opposite directions so to speak, so I don’t have the good-to-bad experience others have had with him

@JohnBrady Caution flags about Kingsnorth duly noted, but I’ve found that people on the fringes often have keener eyes than my own. Fringe figures in my past who didn’t drag me to perdition: Joe Sobran, Sam Francis, Pat Buchanan, Howard Zinn, R. J. Rushdoony,. I benefitted from all of them.

@JohnBrady The lockdowns barely affected me as a retiree, and we quickly resumed worship (with sparse attendance, masks and amateurish streaming).

As for vaccines, well, it’s kinda like this: I’ve fallen for pseudo-science too many times in my life to buy the “do your own research” thing, so I accepted the facially most plausible authority: the government.

That’s part of what infuriates me about RFK Jr.: the government health authorities no longer feel worthy of reliance.

@JohnBrady I just closed out chapter 3 — splendid. And I’m struck that perhaps this is a book following A. MacIntyre’s famous closing of After Virtue but one that MacIntyre would have welcomed. (As I recall, he did not like its association/use with R. Dreher.)

@ReaderJohn Meant to tag you in that as well

@ReaderJohn I’m with you with regard to fringe thinkers. I’ve read a lot of people with deeply problematic views and benefitted from them. Anyone who doesn’t espouse at least a couple of conspiracy theories is boring!

@ReaderJohn @JohnBrady @tinyroofnail @jabel @canneddragons Like I said, I plan to read the book - I don’t think wondering whether an author’s past overstated (?) critiques may somewhat undermine any of the current critiques is the same as a fear of being led to perdition by a fringe character, or a dismissal out of hand. I suspect I will appreciate much of what PK has to say in his book (as I do with nearly all of the similar recent/current writings on the problems with technopoly).

I have also had his novels on my to-read list for quite awhile, and expect to greatly enjoy them whenever I make time to finally pick them up!

(I also see the NYT has a profile on him today, which I’m looking forward to reading.)

@bethanyh Excellent. Thanks for that link!

@JohnBrady I’ve officially checked every bookstore within my call response radius. No dice. No one’s ever heard of him. I might stick with the audiobook. And they managed to pick a narrator both fitting and pleasant

@JohnBrady Haha. No, I’ve been looking for Kingsnorth paper copy copy. I’m not usually an Audible guy. I have the account as a gift to my dad, who can only get through a book if it’s audio. But I think I’ll stick with it this time. Walked into every bookstore around today with no luck. Some folks in one were talking bookmarks and someone mentioned kindles, and the bookstore owner chimed in: “You know, I usually tell people to bookmark their Kindle with a hammer.”

@JohnBrady Lovely. And you paid cash, yes?

Oh I’ve bought plenty from that guy. I usually order from the one right near my house. Sometimes with a book though, I (stubbornly? or anti-stubbornly?) refuse to order. If they don’t have it, I accept my fate. And I really do think the audio version is helping with Kingsnorth’s polemical overtones in this case