Here is one of those weird articles from the literary Left, well written I suppose, but which can be decomposed with cold hard logic, Damon Linker, “LOL Nothing Matters. Or Does It?” The article is an attack on Trump, mixing in the theme of nihilism, which I supposed is linked to Trump’s supposed post-truth stance, when in fact it is the Left which is post-truth, following from their postmodernism. Thus, Linker just accepts the story that Trump referred to soldiers as losers and suckers. That story came from anonymous sources, which could easily be fabricated, since nothing else collaborated it. The story was smashed on numerous sites. Given so may false news stories about Trump, like the Russian hoax, wouldn’t Linker have at least been open to a bit more critical thinking about this? Nope. He argues that Trump failed over Covid-19, but there are video clips of Biden saying in January 2020 that it is not a problem. What we have here is the selective preservation of information that fits one’s political position. Linker finds Trump and Trump supporters repulsive and wonders what his kind is going to do about it. No mention of antifa when he says that the country is on fire, no, it is global warming, not the failure of doing back burning because of insane Leftist environmentalism. Clearly the political camps cannot meet, and cannot live together. The country needs a divorce, secessionism everywhere.
https://theweek.com/articles/936846/lol-nothing-matters-does
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/16/exclusive-nearly-800-military-family-members-sign-open-letter-in-support-of-trump/
Here is Brett Steven’s comments on this:
http://www.amerika.org/politics/periscope-september-17-2020/
• That’s why “nihilism” is the right word to describe it, at least if it’s understood in Friedrich Nietzsche’s sense, to mean moral and creative enervation. Maybe you’re like me and you’ve found yourself every so often exclaiming to no one in particular, “I’m so tired.” Tired of what? Tired of standing up straight before the onslaught of B.S. that’s now flung in our faces every single day. Just getting out of bed to face it again every morning can feel like it takes too much energy. How much easier it would be to slouch into the gutter for a day-long nap.
Why is it all so draining? What produces the pervasive feeling of entropy? Answer: The instinct to care about a world that shows so many signs of coming unhinged. More likely, we find it difficult to care about a world that makes no sense, which takes us directly to criticism of democracy. After centuries of Leftist misrule, people are pushing back, and they do not care about the specifics. They are exhausted by painstakingly fighting over the details of “issues” that never address the point that we have one issue, which is planning our future, and all of democracy works to break that down into evasive non-issues like equality. We need a functional civilization; ideas like equality and democracy do not deliver that, so we are moving on. This is not nonsense or fatalism, but an embrace of the inherent emptiness of egalitarian thought. Now we go with gut instinct, history, and a desire for excellence (arete) instead of what the egghead peasants thought was smart.”
Being world weary is part and parcel of being aware of the seismic movements of our civilisation.