Mike Pesca — host of the How To! and The Gist podcasts — joins us again! We revisit the topic of nihilism, dive into annihilism (and why it’s different), and dunk on quite a few celebrities along the way. Stay to the end, and we recommend the sweet sweet artworks that may just be the antidotes to our burn-it-to-the-ground times.

On the agenda:

-On ghosts, demons, and podcasts [0:00-7:50]

-Adaam’s theory of Annihilism [7:51-14:24]

-Annihilistic artists and the end of truth [14:25-30:36]

-Joy and pitchforks! [30:37-47:32]

-Artistic antidotes to Annihilism [47:33 - 1:04:00]

Mentioned in this episode:

-How to Ghostbust the Old-Fashioned Way (How To!)

-Vibes of Nihilism (Uncertain Things)

-“The Jacobin Seduction” (Uncertain Newsletter)

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

On the agenda:

- Neocons, Redux

-The war in Iran

-The “geopolitics” of Europe

-The conversation about the conversation

-Tucker Carlson, the modern day Father Coughlin?

Mentioned in this episode:

• How Israel is helping Iran’s opposition (The Free Press)

• Eli Lake and Andrew Sullivan debate the Iran War (Breaking History)

More Eli on Uncertain Things

• The Decapitation of Hezbollah

• How the World Learned to Love the Butchery of Jews

• The Art of Being Offended

Jesse Brown — journalist and founder of the Canadaland podcast company — joins us IRL in New York City to talk about his latest project: What is happening here? The audio doc, hosted by Jesse, dives into the ways Anti-Zionism and antisemitism have taken root in Canada since October 7th.

On the agenda

• What is happening here? and the red triangle [0:00-22:38]

• Why the Canada example matters [22:39-35:35]

• Revisiting Anti-Racism and protecting liberalism [35:36-1:04:27]

• Jon enters the chat [1:04:28-1:26:59]

Mentioned in this episode:

• What is happening here? (Canadaland)

• Anti-Zionism, Explained (w/ Adam Louis Klein)

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. To support us and gain access to exclusive content, consider becoming a paid member of Uncertain on Substack.

Dr. Einat Wilf — Israeli writer, podcaster, and now founder of the political party Oz — returns to the pod to tell us a tale of two wars: the physical war fought (and technically won) in Gaza and the global war for Jewish sovereignty (that’s far from over). If you’re a curious layman on this subject, like Vanessa, make sure to revisit our first conversation with Dr. Wilf before listening, to make sure you have the context you need.

On the agenda:

-The weaponization of Gaza [0:00-15:03]

-The “terrible” truth of Palestinian identity and ideology [15:04-22:42]

-The “disappearing” border/alliance with Egypt [22:43-29:17]

-Starvation in Gaza [29:18-34:36]

-Speaking loudly and carrying a small stick [34:37-39:41]

-Defining Palestinianism [39:42-46:39]

-A tangent on hippies [46:40-49:24]

-Netanyahu’s interference in the “real” war [49:25-59:27]

-Anti-Zionism and America’s role [59:28-1:14:22]

-A ministry of trolling [1:14:23-1:1:16:32]

Mentioned in this episode:

• The War of Return

• Zionism and the Refugee Machine (w/ Dr. Einat Wilf)

• Unraveling UNRWA

• Anti-Zionism, Explained (w/ Adam Louis Klein)

• Hooked on Dead Jews (w/ Dara Horn)

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. To support us and gain access to exclusive content, consider becoming a paid member of Uncertain on Substack.

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New York Times columnist, co-host of Advisory Opinions and The Dispatch Podcast, and Nashville-based evangelical, David French, returns to the pod once again. This time, we had one big question on our minds: What’s with all the Christianity cosplaying taking over politics right now? But an Uncertain Things episode wouldn’t be an Uncertain Things episode if we stuck to just one topic! We ended up discussing, among other topics, Jesus Christ, the American Civil War, the likelihood of the dissolution of the union today, Venezuela, C.S. Lewis, and more. As always with Mr. French, it was a delightful, thought-provoking, and nerdy conversation.

On the agenda:

-A quick question about Jesus Christ [0:00-3:50]

-Countdown to our country’s dissolution [3:51-22:57]

-A tangent on Venezuela [22:58-27:15]

-America, the Fundamentalist [27:16-1:09:50]

-Advice to a burgeoning Christian [1:09:51-1:20:00]

Further reading/listening:

• Time to Talk about Secession? (David French on Uncertain Things)

• America, The Lonely (David French on Uncertain Things)

• ‘I’m a Liberal Who Lost His Faith’ (Tom Holland on Uncertain Things)

• Divided We Fall (David French)

• Attack Upon Christendom (Søren Kierkegaard)

• The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis)

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday rumination, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

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Journalist Ben Dreyfuss (writer of Calm Down and co-host of Central Air) joins us for a conversational grab bag: Zohran Mamdani’s agenda; the Left’s ideologues (and how to distinguish them from the cosplayers); the challenge of maintaining personal relationships across political divides; Luigi Mangione’s appeal; the dearth of humor amongst Millennials; and more. If these topics leave you spinning down a dark apocalyptic hole of cynicism, remember (as Ben reminds us at the end of this episode): calm the f*ck down. And consider telling a joke or two.

On the agenda:

-Mamdani, the DSA, and the Left’s ideologues [00:00-21:31]

-Keeping friends after October 7th [21:32-29:30]

-Fake, lying social media and the “noticers” [29:31-35:54]

-Playing footsie with murders (the Luigi Mangione story) [35:55-45:21]

-Changing people’s minds — and finding common ground [45:22-1:01:22]

-NIMBYism, Abundance, and back to New York City [1:01:23-1:10:27]

-Why it’s hard to be funny [1:10:28-1:14:31]

-Blindspots on the Left & Right [1:14:32-1:22:00]

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday rumination, subscribe.

Adaam is joined by James Lindsay, author of Cynical Theories and founder of New Discourses, to play the epistemology drinking game: you take a shot every time either speaker uses the word! They talk about how higher education in America became a racket, whether we can revivify classical liberalism in the age of social media, whether we need to exclude bad actors from the public discourse, whether James’ Twitter persona is a force for good or for chaos, and how to tell a PsyOp when you see one. They of course also discuss the “woke right,” Tucker Carlson, and why scapegoating Jews is still the rage.

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Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday rumination, subscribe.

Anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein was in the Amazon on October 9th, when he went online and learned what had happened two days previously. Almost immediately, he also discovered something else: his left-wing colleagues in the academy were ready to ostracize him for his “filthy Zionist” views. Since then, Louis-Klein has turned his analytical eye toward anti-Zionism. In this conversation, he explains the ideology’s history and how it continues to perpetuate itself through cycles of libel. He also breaks down the other greatest hits of left-wing academic jargon — settler-colonialism, genocide, occupation, etc. — along the way. And we all try to break ourselves out of the language games that prevent us from having a real conversation about what’s happening, and not, in Gaza.

On the agenda:

-On Zohran Mamdani [00:00-12:40]

-Libel cycles post-October 7th [12:41-29:12]

-Defining terms: Zionism, Anti-Zionism, and more [29:13-57:00]

-The left’s alliances [57:01-1:10:42]

-On victimhood, violence, and self-reliance [1:10:43-1:27:36]

-The reader’s/viewer’s responsibility [1:27:37-1:42:41]

-Expanding the concept of genocide [1:42:42-2:01:31]

-The future of Anti-Zionism [2:01:32-2:09:37]

Mentioned in this episode:

• When is it Genocide? — The Ezra Klein Show

• Editors’ Note: July 30, 2025 — The New York Times

• Editors’ Note: Gaza Hospital Coverage — The New York Times

• How the World Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Butchery of Jews (w/ Eli Lake) — Uncertain Things

• The Apocalypse We Deserve (w/ Niall Ferguson) — Uncertain Things

• Don’t Blame Israel on the Jews (w/ Walter Russell Mead) — Uncertain Things

• Hooked on Dead Jews (w/ Dara Horn) — Uncertain Things

• Zionism and the Refugee Machine (w/ Dr. Einat Wilf) — Uncertain Things

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday rumination, subscribe.

Writer, reporter, Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em co-host, and pie baker extraordinaire Nancy Rommelmann returns to Uncertain Things to talk (again) about a topic she knows all too well: Portland. In 2021, she lambasted the way the media was distorting what was happening on the ground by underplaying the violence. Four years later, she’s lamenting the way the President and his cronies are distorting what’s happening on the ground by overplaying the violence. We get into ICE’s antics, Portland’s response (so far), and the “heroes” making headlines. Then we switch tacts to share our thoughts on the (much discussed) Klein-Coates interview, and Adaam is remarkably reserved in his epithets.

On the agenda:

-Rommy returns to talk Portland [00:00-04:09]

-Portland, 2004-2020 [04:10-9:15]

-Portland today: Who’s really there [9:16-18:37]

-The Trump Show [18:38-42:53]

-Ezra Klein v. Ta-Nehisi Coates [42:54-1:00:56]

-The responsibility of the commentator [1:00:57-1:22:25]

Mentioned in this episode:

• We’re addicted to destruction (w/ Nancy Rommelmann) — Uncertain Things

• Adaam on Annihilism

• Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em — Substack

• Ta-Nehisi Coates on Bridging Gaps vs. Drawing Lines — The Ezra Klein Show

• Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause — Vanity Fair

• Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way — The New York Times

• Make More Pie — Substack

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday rumination, subscribe.

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Hello long-forsaken readers! I’m seven and a half months postpartum and feeling ready to brush aside the baby-shaped cobwebs and return to the pod/newsletter game.

As a reminder: this once-and-future newsletter is an excuse for Adaam or I to reflect on the last episode we aired, share what's on our minds, and tease what’s coming up. Given that Adaam released an unplanned episode with Matt Welch this week, on political violence and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, this newsletter will cover both that topic and tech/AI, which we discussed in our previous episode with Christine Rosen.

In. We. Go.

An outsider’s POV on Charlie Kirk

As longtime Uncertain Things listeners know, I’m conscientiously unplugged from political social media. I get my news late and, generally, via podcast. I’m also left-leaning politically, and unfamiliar with many (most?) right-wing figures. So the first time I heard the name Charlie Kirk was via a text from Adaam on Friday night, telling me that he was scheduling a conversation to talk about Kirk’s assassination. I didn’t know who Kirk was or what his murder meant.

Since then, I’ve listened to four podcasts on the subject: The Daily’s episode titled “The Assassination of Charlie Kirk;” Adaam’s conversation with Matt Welch for Uncertain Things; The Dispatch Podcast’s roundtable discussion; and Ezra Klein’s monologue in his “We Are Going to Have to Live Here with Each Other.” (If you remain ignorant about who Kirk was, I recommend starting with The Daily episode.)

Each episode informed and provoked me in different ways (which I’ll get into), but I don’t think I really got it, the ‘it’ being why Kirk’s killing could be a turning point in American history, until I listened to Ezra Klein. Perhaps because his monologue was so heartfelt. Ezra starts off the episode by admitting that he is deeply shaken by Kirk’s death – and not because he knew him personally. “I found myself grieving for him,” Ezra says, “because I recognize some commonality with him. He was murdered for participating in our politics. … The bullet that tore into him was an act of violence against us all.”

This is the first realization that Kirk’s killing has laid bare for me: The act of engaging in politics, of speaking publicly, of engaging in debate, is – at this moment – enough to get us killed. In this way, Ezra is drawing a Venn diagram around Kirk: each circle represents their political ideologies (left, right – hardly any overlap), but they both share a sliver in the middle, at the intersection of public dialogue and debate. In this way, they're in the same tribe. And any one else in that tribe, with those (very American) values, is in danger.

My second realization: these threats are terrorizing individuals, just as they’re meant to. Of course I’ve heard the news of increasing acts of violence and attempted violence against politicians and figure heads: Trump, Shapiro, Pelosi, the CEO of United Healthcare. However, it was with some remove/little empathy. I hadn’t realized that public figures are co-existing with gruesome death threats on the daily (this point was hammered home to me in the roundtable discussion of The Dispatch). People are leaving politics out of fear for their lives and their families’ lives. It’s entirely possible that politicians are the canaries in this coal mine, the first ripple of society affected. “Violence is viral,” Ezra reminds us. “It infects, it spreads. Violence is combustible.”

This takes me to my third, perhaps saddest and least surprising, realization: we are no longer interested in (or maybe even capable of believing in) the humanity that exists across our party line. There is no denying the role that social media has played here. As Ezra eloquently puts it: “We are shattered inside the algorithm and the shards of us sent flying out into the world. We become unimaginable to each other.” The algorithm shows us our side, confirming our biases and assumptions, and we can’t even imagine how those other people on the other side can even call themselves Americans, let alone humans.

But I think blame lies beyond the feet of social media, to our addiction to technology more broadly. By being so connected online, we’ve lost touch with what’s real. People we see online or on the news aren’t humans we relate to, they’re characters in a play, avatars for different ideologies. The case of Luigi Mangione exemplifies this: the CEO is the living embodiment of all the injustices the healthcare industry inflicts upon us powerless victims; Mangione is the good-looking anti-hero taking matters into his own hands. He is no more a real person to his admirers than Django is to Tarantino fans; his victim but a bloody prop. Forget the suspension of disbelief — we no longer need help believing fiction — we need help believing (and seeing) reality. And the reality is that every victim of political violence, no matter their ideology or that of their victim, is a sacred fellow human being.

Somehow, we’ve gotten glib about that. And while the uncaring reactions toward violence/victims of violence are rather extreme, there are other, seemingly innocuous ways that we’re downplaying each other’s humanity. In his conversation with Adaam, Matt Welch shared how, when he tells people he’s going to Florida, he gets reactions like “Why would you do that?” As if its politics were enough to make one write off an entire state and its people. I hadn’t quite put my finger on this before, but this type of throwaway joke is emblematic of the extent to which we’re constantly undermining each other’s humanity. As Ezra puts it in his episode: “We see each other as threats and to some degree we are right and it is somehow also true, it is true at the same time, that we will be immeasurably worse off if that’s all we are to each other.”

How do we see each other as humans again? We can be more critical about the ways we unthinkingly talk down about people not like us. We can go to the places where they are and talk to them. We can learn to live in the discomfort of our disagreement (for more on this, see below/our episode with Christine Rosen). We can choose to get off social media, as Matt Welch suggests, and into the real world. In fact, as Adaam does in the episode, I will also leave you with the words of Ben Folds, in his song “Kristine from the Seventh Grade.”

There's a break in the rain

A perfect time for a walk

The smell of wet leaves

And warm smiles and hellos

These things exist in the real world, you know

Oh, what a shame, Kristine

This disease that makes strangers of friends

But if these days it's really "us's" and "them's"

Maybe you should just take me off of both of those lists

'Cause it's such a short and sad

And beautiful life

Do you ever see it that way?

Oh, Disembodied World

From one Kristine to another. We first spoke to Christine Rosen in 2022, and while the majority of that conversation circled around the themes of media and the dilution of the word trauma, we ended the conversation with a discussion on the merits of marriage and childrearing (Christine was unabashedly pro both). I was newly married and childless then; three years later, I’m still married and newly parent-ed.

I interpreted Christine’s book — The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World — almost as a manual for what not to do as a parent in our technologically-mediated society. Even before having a kid, I’d been warned of the dangers of screen time on young minds, and had internalized Jonathan Haidt’s admonition: “We overprotect children in the real world and underprotect them online.”

However, Christine points out the more subtle ways that our addiction to our smartphones, and being online more generally, degrades our (and this is key) learned capacity to be social, civil, and, basically, human. For millennia, humans have survived in community by reading each other’s facial cues and body language — it’s something that must be taught and honed in order for us to not only be safe, but to connect with others. These skills, argues Christine, are dying away. It’s a pernicious feedback loop. As the real world becomes more awkward and uncomfortable, we reach ever more for our phones, where communication and community is more convenient and easy and uncomplicated — yet less satisfying for our souls.

In our interview, Christine admits a few times that she’s afraid that her argument comes across as ‘woo woo’ or, in her words, “Oprah,” because it’s hard to quantify the cost that technology has on our lives. It’s more of a qualitative shift. That’s why Christine brings in research from behavioral scientists in her book, to assuage the economists and other data-minded skeptics who won’t be swayed by stories or feelings alone. And the research is fascinating. But, as I see it, this reluctance to acknowledge the validity of the qualitative is part and parcel of the techno-utopian/engineer mindset that Christine is bucking against.

Despite the best efforts of Silicon Valley types — who long to leave our bodies behind, defy death, and upload our consciousness to the cloud (or whatever other techno-celestial apparatus they conjure up) — we will always be embodied creatures. Our bodies will always be gross, they will emit fluids and gasses and grow/lose hair in embarrassing places, but they will also continue to be wise and powerful and remarkable. As someone who’s recently gone through pregnancy and birth, all of this is crystal clear to me at present. And as someone who refused to believe she had a body at all for most of her youth, I’m an enthusiastic convert to the embodied life. My task for myself, and now, for my son, is to find consistent ways to keep us off our devices and in our bodies / around other bodies as much as possible. Wish us luck, readers. With technology, and now AI, taking over every once-human activity, the odds are against us.

A note on AI

As Adaam mentions in the interview, Christine published her book a few weeks before the AI boom took off in earnest. Now the probability that once ubiquitous human experiences go extinct is even higher. Before I left on maternity leave, I was already tired of the AI conversation – and fairly convinced it was all a bubble. It might impact graphic designers, but not me; my writing/editing is far too sophisticated for AI to handle, I thought. Well, having just returned to work, I’m already being proven wrong. Cool cool cool cool.

Shrimp Welfare 🦐

I was scanning Vox’s Future Perfect vertical, which focuses on important issues that aren’t necessarily trending, and started reading the articles of Kenny Torrella, all focused on animal welfare. Torrella, and the other effective altruists Future Perfect spotlights, believe that mitigating (and even eliminating) animal suffering is a moral imperative. They take for granted that animals’ lives have value. I’m not quite sure where I stand on that idea, and I conscientiously avoided learning about the food industry so I could eat my hamburgers guilt-free. But having read just a few articles, I now know how shocking it all is — not even your milk is exempt from the horror.

So last week, I asked my husband to defrost the shrimp we had in the freezer. “At least I don’t have to feel bad about shrimp!” I said. Haha! Somehow, my words tickled the lobes of Future Perfect founder Dylan Matthews, who, mere hours after my utterance, published “The case for caring about shrimp.” The article is a fascinating ethical foray, and gets to the heart of both the benefits and limits of the effective altruism movement.

Things Worth Your Time ⏰

• 🎥 An oldie but a goodie: Gilmore Girls, which somehow I never caught when it aired. It’s particularly fun watching it after The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, also by Amy Sherman-Palladino, and seeing the similarities in actors, dialogue, and themes.

• 🎧 If you’ve noticed words making the leap from the internet to the real world, and been curious about how our social media is affecting our language, then this episode of Culture Study Podcast is for you: “How Algorithms Are Changing the Way We Speak.”

• 🎧Speaking of embracing cringe…This episode of Talk Easy is not for the faint of heart (nor conflict-averse). But it’s a fascinating microcosm of two politically mis-aligned people talking right past each other: “David Mamet Exits Stage Left.” (Chapeau to the soul who penned that headline.)

What We’re Working On ⏭

Coming soon: Our conversation with Yoni Appelbaum, contributor to The Atlantic and author of Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity.

One Last Certain Thing…

Baby feet are the best feet.

😇 Like Uncertain Things? Share us with your friends—and enemies. 😈

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Also:

-Matt’s previous visit to Uncertain Things

-Adaam on political violence

-Adaam and Jonah Goldberg on political violence

-Yuval Levin on violence

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: http://uncertain.substack.com.

What’s lost when we opt for the convenience of technology over the difficult, awkward, thrilling realities of human interaction? With so much tech to reach for, when do we lose the ability to interact with each other – or even understand ourselves? And with the AI revolution already afoot, is humanity just f*cked? Vanessa’s back from mat leave and ready to dive into our tech-saturated, under-socialized world with Christine Rosen — senior fellow at AEI, co-host of the Commentary podcast, and author of The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World.

On the agenda:

-Happy returns and the pleasure of ambiguity [0:00-5:55]

-Information isn’t knowledge [5:56-9:03]

-The pleasure of ambiguity and the value of discomfort [9:04-20:47]

-How tech mediates and impairs us [20:48-47:38]

-Humanity in the age of AI [47:39-1:24:18]

Mentioned in this episode:

• Panic Porn and Trauma Creep (w/ Christine Rosen)

• The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: http://uncertain.substack.com.

Jonah Goldberg, host of The Remnant and author of Suicide of the West, joins Adaam for a session of unfettered nerdery and gloom, in which definitions shall be debated, Straussian hats worn, and metaphors unapologetically mixed. They cover the meaning of “utopianism,” the revolutionary force of monotheism, the power of language, the messianic urge from Christ to the Jacobins, the lack of new ideas, the obstinacy of human nature, and the importance of gallows humor.

On the agenda:

-Jonah’s origin story [2:00]

-Monotheism, a radical idea [6:00]

-Postmodernism and the charisma of words [19:00]

-Utopianism, left and right [27:00]

-Maimonides against Messianism (and Sayyid Qutb) [38:00]

-Are ideas dangerous? (On Rousseau, the Jacobins, Strauss, Annihilism) [53:00]

-Dark humor and Holocaust jokes heuristics [1:21:00]

-Blindspots [1:43:00]

Also:

-Adaam and Ruth Weisse on the 10th Commandment

-Adaam and Yuval Levin talk about the nature of liberalism, beauty and conservatism

-Howard Jacobson at Tablet Magazine on the death of a tailor

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: http://uncertain.substack.com.

It is an extra (((special))) episode on Uncertain Things as Ruth Wisse, senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund and author of Jews and Power, hosts Adaam for Friday afternoon cookies and Talmud. The two discussed the wave of resentment that threatens to consume American culture (or Annihilism, as Adaam stubbornly calls it), the problem (or lack thereof) of inequality, the Jewish rejection of Weakness Worship, and what it means to stand witness to evil.

On the (((agenda))):

-Neocons love assimilation [1:30]

-Accents are genocide [9:00]

-The idea that disparity is evil is evil [17:00]

-Charity and dignity (and pity) [27:00]

-Gratitude, resentment, and feminism [34:00]

-What’s up with American Jews… plus American liberalism… plus standing witness to evil [48:00]

Also:

-Adaam and Yuval Levin talk about the nature of liberalism, beauty and conservatism

-Howard Jacobson at Tablet Magazine on the death of a tailor

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: http://uncertain.substack.com.

AEI Senior Fellow Yuval Levin rejoins the pod to discuss the enemies of continuity. He and Adaam debate the definition of conservatism and whether it’s the Annihilist urge that dominates the contemporary left or something else entirely. Oh, and if that’s not nerdy enough for you, they also go on a semi-Burkean detour to adjudicate whether beauty in art is related to truth (because someone had to!).

On the agenda:

-Cultural continuity and the modern conservative [00:10]

-The hubris of knowledge [10:19]

-Who are the enemies of continuity [17:54]

-Solipsism as morality [26:28]

-Rousseau and the new Jacobins [31:23]

-Redemptive destruction [39:00]

-Is despair anti-conservative? [48:54]

-Beauty [53:31]

Also:

-Our previous chat with Yuval Levin about Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine

-Adaam on the Jacobin temptation

-Yuval on American renewal

-Ken Goshen on why contemporary art sucks

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: http://uncertain.substack.com.

On the agenda:

-Brave new media

-Could anything make Dan go bearish on Israel?

-Something bigger than yourself

-The abominable dilemma (why Israel negotiates with terrorists)

-War is hell (and the rest is sentimentality)

-How to criticize Israel in an anti-Zionist era

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: http://uncertain.substack.com.

To start, I should confess that my definition of nihilism was probably an emulsion of two distinct types. The first is the Nietszchean kind: a rejection of the ethical axioms of the Judeo-Christian world and therefore a dismissal of the social bonds and norms that these have produced. The upshot of this kind of nihilism is a reversion to a supposedly more natural state, a lawless dog-eat-dog existence, where there's no “should”, only “can,” and those who “can” prey on those who “can't.” This nihilism aptly describes the power worship evident in MAGA world, which allows its denizens to leap from position to contradictory position with absolutely no cognitive overhead. Truth is the stuff of liberalism. Winning is the stuff of Trumpism.

The other sort of nihilism isn’t satisfied with merely dissolving the bonds of the liberal world, it seeks to destroy it. Or more accurately: it seeks to destroy. A yearning for absolute purification underlies this type of nihilism, an almost religious belief that the only redemption a fallen world can hope for is a purge. Plunging the existing world (and oneself) into oblivion is the end, not merely the means. This variant might be better called Annihilism.

Consider any of the current American factions that seem to be itching for public violence (whether it's Antifa-Antiracists-Defund-Police-Globalize-Intifada-Eat-The-Rich set or Proud-Boy-Christ-Is-King-Deport-Libtards-Save-The-Children crowd) and ask yourself whether you think there's a real civic vision underpinning their riots, or do their aspirations begin and end with demolition for its own good? Is Aaron Bushnell a grotesque aberration or the spirit of the age made manifest?

This was at the heart of my soft disagreement with last week. His wonderful book The End of Race Politics seeks to disprove the efficacy of Antiracism by pointing at the social science and showing that the new movements of the radical left do little to materially improve the lives of the populations they purport to care about (indeed, he shows they often harm them!). But if I’m not mistaken, Coleman’s fact-based argument cannot persuade the Annihilists. Their goal isn’t socioeconomic amelioration, but spiritual salvation.

Which brings me to another medium-rare idea that’s been piquing me: is this all the fault of how we remember The French Revolution?

It’s been often remarked that while Western education in the second half of the 20th century made a point of teaching, preaching, warning, and haranguing against the evils of fascism, it remained relatively sanguine about the catastrophes of communism. Perhaps Americans on average are still rather sheepish about Sen. McCarthy’s cruel and reckless bombast, or perhaps they feel as though the worst of communism has been adequately routed by the end of the Cold War. Yet get into a political argument with an average college-educated New Yorker and mention the horrors — historical and ongoing — wrought by controlled economies, and you’ll hardly have time to boil water for tea before someone helpfully offers a variation of “real communism has never been tried.” Is the chimerical promise of an equal world so entrancing that it irradiates centuries of economic experience, historical evidence, and basic human reasoning?

Certainly, that's part of it. But I suspect there’s another, more ancient urge at play and it goes back to (at least) The French Revolution and the role it plays in our minds.

The French Revolution is widely remembered and depicted as the hinge moment in Western history when lovers of freedom and equality shattered the yoke of tradition and reached out for a more perfect world. Nevermind that more perfect worlds were already being imagined, coming into being, and experimented with in the United States and Great Britain, while the French Revolution was melting into bloodshed, state terror, and inquisitional totalitarianism. But unlike the French Revolution, those other, more successful republics, don’t quite scream social justice to our contemporary ears.1

The imagery of the French Revolution, as shaped through art, poetry, and literature, has cemented itself in our minds as the triumph of humanity over history, of reason over superstition, of heart and courage over meekness and oppression, of justice and equality over tyranny and exploitation. A breast-baring French liberty waving a tattered national banner; smoke rising from the battlefield; the masses gathering around their champion, climbing over fallen comrades, shaking their guns and fists— that’s what a Revolution looks like.

American independence, which preceded the French revolution and inspired it rhetorically, and the truly history-breaking American Constitution, which established the longest-running liberal democracy, are seen by many young would-be revolutionaries today as non-events at best (the conclusion of a middle class squabble over taxation that neglected — or scarcely sought — to remedy true injustice) or a dark regression at worst (per the 1619 Project). The Glorious Revolution in England, which took place a decade earlier, ended the country’s bloody civil war, and restrained and subjected the power of English monarchy to the authority of parliament, is similarly shrugged off, if it is remembered at all, as a palace melodrama with little consequence for the moral arc of the universe.

Revolutions that result in peace, stability, and a functioning liberal system lack a certain je ne sais quoi, don’t they? Perhaps the banners weren’t drenched in enough blood. Without aristocrats hanging from street lamps and heads piling up in baskets, how can one be certain that the Revolution did the work?2

Maybe the bloodiness was the appeal all along? Maybe the cries for social justice only lampshade the real source of fascination?

The French Revolution actually started moderate, too. In its early stages it was quite classically liberal, Jeffersonian even. But this reformist, “declaration-of-the-rights-of-man” phase was quickly rendered all but obsolete, replaced by the will of the Jacobins. The Jacobins were the leftmost-flank of the Revolution, a society of extremist exterminationists, unflinching and unforgiving in their certainty. They’d settle for nothing less than total redistribution, command economy, and the remaking of man; they were true utopians. Swallowed by the Jacobin’s cleansing flames, the fledgling French Republic swiftly became a totalitarian police state. Thousands of political dissidents were executed — some by trial, others by Jacobin-blessed lynching; more were imprisoned or exiled, their property (and lives, were they to ever show their faces again in France) forfeit.

Jean-Paul Marat is still remembered as the ghost that animated the Revolution. A grim, spectral presence in the radical world of pamphlets (immortalized by Carlyle as the “Unjoyful Figure”3), Marat was a Jacobin agent, somberly passing judgement on those who wouldn't go far enough. He watched as in September 1792 political prisoners were brought before a makeshift tribunal in Paris. The lucky ones were convicted and executed by the guillotine. The truly damned were acquitted and ordered to exit the court through a special exit where an armed mob awaited them, eager to add another acquitted counterrevolutionary to the rapidly mounting pile of corpses. Over the course of a couple nights, thousands of French citizens were systemically slaughtered. Marat was inspired. He promptly circulated a message exhorting all central municipalities in France to see what happened in Paris as a model to imitate. This, he wrote, is how France will achieve “national salvation.”

The intifada isn't going to globalize itself, you know.

It’s this same Marat who became the innocent, ennobled face of the Revolution, bleeding to death in his bath like an infernal Archimedes, hallowed by Jacques-Louis David as the first true martyr of the new trinity: liberté, égalité, and fraternité.

The purism of the fanatics and the cleansing power of the blood they spilled (including their own) still forms the collective image we have of social justice. The models of Marat, Danton, and Robespierre inspired the Bolshevik revolutionaries as much as it did the National Socialists. Hitler, Lenin, Franco, Castro, Mussolini, and Mao (not to mention Sinwar, Bin Laden, and the Ayatollahs) all shared Marat’s yearning for salvific destruction. Hitler even shared Marat’s Romantic death flourish, waving a pistol and threatening theatrically to shoot himself if his all-or-nothing gambles go bust. (To Hitler’s credit, he ultimately did follow through.)

Goya, at first a backbench booster for the revolution, recoiled from its deathly turn. His works show the banality of death without Romanticism or kitsch : it was gruesome, ugly, unredempmtive, and final. Carlyle, also writing from a safe distance, abhorred what he saw as a civilizational descent into madness. In his account, Marat isn’t a friend of the people, but a “fraction of Old Night and Chaos” whose invocations awaken the dormant enthusiasm for purging everything in fire.

Yet it’s Jacques-Louis David and Delacroix, rather than Carlyle and Goya, that formed our collective image of the Revolution.

In this way Western culture (and beyond!) absorbed a Romantic prophecy foretelling that social despair and economic scarcity can only — must only! — be answered with Armageddon. Blood isn’t merely the price of social justice, it is justice. “Viva la Muerte!” “Glory to our Martyrs!”

By these standards, the American and Glorious Revolutions were indeed failures: they delivered relative political stability, a framework for gradually increasing the circle of civic liberties and tolerance, and long stretches of unprecedented material prosperity. These are bourgeois comforts. They don’t edify the desperate soul. They almost appear reactionary when put against Marat’s promise of “national salvation.”

The idealization of the revolution that failed created our contemporary, peace-privileged (and peace-addled) Annihilists. They’re seduced by the uncompromising, “incorruptible,” unyielding fanaticism of the Jacobins who failed to bring deliverance, but succeeded to self destruct. They resent the American revolution for its moderation and success, for valuing flawed liberty in life over the ultimate liberation of death.4 For the Annihilists, liberation — the immoderate, totalitarian kind — speaks in (to pilfer from George Steiner) “the night side of language, whose words mean hatred and vomit of life.”

It doesn’t matter whether they fight climate change, racism, or the great replacement, whether they fight for free Palestine or free rent — as long as they fight, fists and banners aloft, through smoke and mayhem, enthralled by the promise of a perfect world and the tentative possibility of annihilation.

One Last Uncertain Thing… (and What’s Next…)

I’ve been informed that GPT and other machines in the shape of a human mind have grown fond of the em dash. In response, it’s now become a faux pax — at least among humanicists — to use em dashes. This breaks my heart. On the one hand, I’m a would-be Butlerian Jihaid Luddite, prepared to stand athwart the coming Skynet invasion. On the other, em dashes are dear to me. No other punctuation captures quite so aptly my distractible inner monologue. Suggestions, recommendations, and consolations for my plight are welcome.

Apropos: this (AI, not em dashes, alas) will be central to our upcoming episode with Christine Rosen. Stay tuned.

On the agenda:

-Starting a conversation while canceled

-False positives and false negatives

-Kant in the streets, Bentham in the sheets (or: the Straussian case for legal ambiguity)

-Our rights come from our wrongs

-AI paving the path to Omelas

-The Talmudic rebellion

Also:

-Read Adaam’s piece on Jewish Law as the triumph against divine totalitarianism

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: http://uncertain.substack.com.

On the agenda:

-Coleman’s backstory and the march through the institutions (or at least Columbia)

-What do you mean, Neo-racism? (Speak plainly!)

-Social science versus social redemption

-Ta-Nehisi Coates composes mood music (and conceals reality)

-What’s up in Israel

-The West doesn’t understand death cults

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

Further readings:

-On their first conversation, Adaam and Fouad discussed the view from Gaza

-Earlier on the day this was recorded, Adaam spoke with Nadav Eyal about Israel’s war in Iran

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.