The Very Best of Last Week in Reaction (2017/01/22)

Welp… Last week’s TWiR is finally up at Social Matter. The Committee’s decisions were as follows…

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Honorable Mentions:

David Z. Hines: Days of Rage. A 12k word pamphlet on the history and prospects of political violence; explains well the fundamental asymmetry between left and right political violence.

P. T. Carlo: Doomsday Optimism. An historical and psychological inspection of the role of collapse in extreme right and left movements. And how the right must resist the temptation to love collapse too much.

James A. Donald: Open Letter to Scott Aaronson. A pithy and entertaining recapsulation of the reasons that it is not all “crystal clear” that all the things Aaronson takes to be “moral progress” are either moral or progress.

Evolutionist X: The Slave Narrative Collection (part 1 of 4). She cracks open the transcriptions of interviews conducted with former slaves in the 1930s. This stuff is just a pleasure to read and one of the clearest surviving windows into the real culture of the antebellum South. This prior to the Roots and Django narrative sucking all the moral oxygen out of the room.

Quincy T. Latham: Loving the Sinner, Part 4: Political Parties and Loving the Sinner, Part 5: Postscript. A wrap up, packed with insight, to this superb series that began last week.

Quincy T. Latham: What is the Alt-Right? Part 1: Disruption is Easy. The start of a series on the Alt-Right. He focuses mostly taking exception to Vox Day’s recent distinction between Alt-White and Alt-West factions of it.

Reactionary Tree: The Intolerant Politics of Reality. A very well-polished admonishment to disaffected rightists sitting on the fence of the Alt-Right to dive deeper into the waters of the Dark Enlightenment.

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The Silver Circle:

Quincy T. Latham: The Cathedral, the English Civil War, and informal power. A history-infused lesson on political coalitions, formal vs. informal power, and how to avoid the latter.

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… And the Winner Is:

Ryan Landry: MLK Day Mythology. A superb, compelling roast of MLK and the ostentatiously sanctified place he holds the in white psyche.