Digest, 6/11/2022: Satan, Satan, Satan Get Beside Me
the fifty-third digest post
This Week’s Posts
Monday, June 6 - Depp-Heard Seems Like a Civil Liberties Disaster to Me
Defamation and libel cases should be design be very hard to win, and this case clearly seems to cut against the core right to self-expression.
Tuesday, June 7 - Seventeen Theses on Disability
Maybe I believe them all. Maybe I don’t.
Wednesday, June 8th - We Don’t Throw People Away
Compassion for everybody means for everybody.
Friday, June 10th - Let's Read a Poem - Thomas Hardy's "The Convergence of the Twain" (subscriber only)
Just a good old-fashioned close reading. I love this stuff.
We also had our first monthly list of subscriber writing!
From the Archives
Song of the Week
Book Recommendation
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson, 1962
Funny story: this newer edition of this book, with this cover, became suddenly so ubiquitous that I assumed it was a contemporary Young Adult novel. I’m glad that it’s not, as it would be filled with all kinds of terrible YA cliches then. Instead, it’s a spare and sharp little tone poem, an imagistic novel that’s short on plot but great on atmospherics. There are no shoehorned-in characters that exist only to placate the sensitivity reader, no chosen one narrative, and no wise old master who gravely explains which character is right and why. Famously plotless, you shouldn’t go looking for a lot of conventional narrative here. Instead you’ll find a profoundly weird little story of a profoundly weird little family, some old-school blue-bloods with dark secrets…..
Non-Garbage Online Reading
The latest critique of social-justice politics that has inspired a great deal of bad faith criticism, mostly by people who don’t want their politics to have a name.
That’s all. Domani.
Digest, 6/11/2022: Satan, Satan, Satan Get Beside Me
Freddie, I consider myself a big fan and don't necessarily disagree with any of your 17 theses on disability, but you seemed there to be needlessly provocative, itching for the expected dunking by your detractors. Your language doesn't normally read as intentionally inflammatory but that piece sure did. For you to now say here, "maybe I believe them, maybe I don't" borders on cockiness, even trolling. Do you stand by what you wrote, or don't you?
Quoting Adler-Bell: "Solidarity requires an invitation, a warm and friendly offer to collude in a risky proposition"
Yes, you will do better if the offer is warm and friendly. But more important than that, something which Adler-Bell (and the entire left) compleely ignores, is explaining what that proposition actually IS.