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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1135 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 24, 2025

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So what are you reading? I just finished The Children of Men by P.D. James, review below. Also working on Way of Kings, Capital, and some Kant.

Didn't realize that the author of this was THE P.D. James, of thriller writing fame. I guess there is something about British authors who abbreviate there first and middle names and pulling surprisingly deep science fiction commentary that has stood the test of time (thinking of you E.M. Forster).

The Children of Men is a book about a world with ultra-low fertility, in other words, an extreme version of a world that we already live in. I had a friend's birthday party at the park a couple weeks ago (I'm getting close to 30 unfortunately), and I noticed that out of the 20 or so couples there, only one had a child. And I think this is becoming increasingly true over the whole entire world. Many of the downstream aspects of this fact also seem to be shared between James' novel and reality: the prevalence of pet parents, the lack of interest in the future of society (but a fixation on the past), and an obsession with health and safety at all costs.

Beyond the social commentary, the actual plot of the novel is a little lackluster. It centers on an Oxford Professor of History, Theo, who happens to be the cousin of the dictator of England. Theo lives a pretty unremarkable and utterly selfish life (even before the "Omega" where most men suddenly become infertile), until he becomes involved with a rebel group that wants to enact some minor changes in the governmental system, but more importantly, is sheltering a woman who happens to be pregnant. Theo's time with this group changes his inner and outer lives almost completely: it's amazing what hope for the future does to an individual, although I was left wondering at the end how much would really change in England after the birth of this child.

Having children is no basis for a moral system in of itself (this was Chesterton's critique of H.G. Wells), but it sure as hell makes constructing a society a hell of a lot easier. Unfortunately I think our world is headed to a future more similar to what James envisioned in the 1990s. People simply aren't having children: I'm guilty of this too: it's not like I'm close to being married even. And that, I think, means that this society isn't very long for this world.

Reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four for the third time.

My first time was in high school in the 90’s, where mostly it was Newspeak that impacted me. I’d just finished Rush Limbaugh’s two current affairs books, and the trickery of politicians changing words to “politically correct” variants was my takeaway.

My second read was during the first Trump administration, where the shock of the totalitarian state of IngSoc/Airstrip One/Oceania and the geopolitics of Goldstein’s book made me look at current affairs in a new light, especially during the Biden/Covid years.

This third time through, the small details of Winston’s life are hitting me hard. He’s 44 or 45, a few years younger than me, and his constant mentions of physical problems punctuate the existential misery of his life in the lower rungs of the Party.

He’s married but separated, a fact I’d forgotten. I haven’t yet reached the parts detailing his love affair. I also hadn’t remembered his furtive writing of a diary where he introduced the idea that freedom is the ability to say that two plus two equals four, giving [spoiler] the perfect tool to break him in the end.

Contrasted with the other big dystopias I’ve read (The Hunger Games’ Panem, Brave New World’s ultracivilization, Atlas Shrugged’s crippled Communist America, and Harry Potter’s Voldemort’s Magical Britain), the world system in 1984 feels the most hopeless, the most capable of keeping heroes from arising, the most terrible to live under — and yet somehow, the most realistic and likely, with certain aspects already showing up in America’s coastal capitals.

It’s incredible how Orwell wrote something which, no matter one’s political affiliation, candidly describes one’s outgroup.

I dunno. There's stuff you can pin on any authoritarian regime, but it clearly resembles some ideologies more than others. I think it had a pretty specific inspiration as well.

More than one, certainly.

I do not believe that the kind of society I describe will necessarily arrive, but I believe (allowing, of course, for the fact that the book is a satire) that something resembling it could arrive...[it is] a show...[of the] perversions to which a centralised economy is liable and which have already been partly realisable in communism and fascism.

Dude hated the Soviet Union; he was also pretty unhappy with getting bombed for years.

I think I recall reading something about how the "we have always beem at war with Eastasia" bit was inspired by his experience of the infighting between the Republican factions in the Spanish Civil War.

Wikipedia says it was inspired by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, but I’d believe that too.

I really need to read Homage to Catalonia.

What a lot of people never learn is how much the modern imperial states (Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, FDR’s USA, the Soviet Union and Communist China) resembled each other, differing mostly in how their philosophers describe them and how much (and how often) their governments are perceived to be allowed to violate their citizens’ and enemies’ human rights.

The opposite of libertarian isn’t communism, it’s totalitarianism.

Much like Moldbug’s “demotism,” that model sounds dramatic, but doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. The bits which resemble each other are not the ones with explanatory power.

If nothing else, the U.S. comes out way ahead on body count. We have a distinct lack of Holocaust or Holodomor or Great Leap Forward. Surely that reflects a difference in methodology.

FDR’s USA

Interesting how the wiki entry for the National Industrial Recovery Act makes no reference to fascism despite it being part of FDR and the brain trust's inspiration for the act.

Man, fascism used to be hip and happening.

Where can I read more about this? None of the related articles have anything to say on the subject.

Where can I read more about this? None of the related articles have anything to say on the subject.

Various critics were deriding FDR as fascist within his first year in office, yet that NIRA article mentions none of it. Herbert Hoover was a prominent critic and wrote 2 anti-New Deal books in 1934 and 1936 specifically pointing out the parallels.

In the part about critics from the left:

Richard Hofstadter noted that critics from the left believed "that the NRA was a clear imitation of Mussolini's corporate state".[35]

There is this line in the criticism of FDR article:

John P. Diggins found only superficial similarities between the New Deal and Italian fascism. However, Diggins produced some quotations indicating that Roosevelt was interested in fascist economic programs and admired Mussolini.[49]

Footnote 49:

Early in 1933, Roosevelt told a White House correspondent: "I don't mind telling you in confidence that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman". In June 1933, Roosevelt wrote to Ambassador Breckinridge Long in Italy about Mussolini: "There seems no question that he is really interested in what we are doing and I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy and to prevent general European trouble". John P. Diggins. Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (1972). Princeton University Press. pp. 279–281.

I haven't read the book by Diggins, but it sounds interesting.

This article by Codevilla talks about it some, but he doesn't cite sources.

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