The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Gymnastics on the Front Bench From one extreme to another Sophia Barnes In his 1957 work  Mythologies , the French philosopher Roland Barthes explored the role of ‘euphoria’ in creating the myths by which we make sense of experience. Questionable links between ideas become, by the magic of ideology, self-evident. We construct narratives that suit us and harmonise contradictions in the process. No one dares to deny these myths. A clear example of such ideological gymnastics can be found in the Labour Party’s proclaimed intentions concerning misogyny. In the wake of the recent unrest across the UK, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced plans to identify, tackle, and reduce online radicalisation. This includes treating  ‘extreme misogyny’  as a form of extremism. It will be interesting to see how the Government copes with the cognitive dissonance of declaring misogyny to be extremism while continuing with plans to protect Islam by law and criminalise ‘Islamophobi...

  The Regime's Crisis of Legitimacy is Getting Worse It's all falling apart and they're going to get more desperate. Theophilus Chilton Over the past week, one of the more disturbing news stories to come out of the wheelhouse involved the apparent takeover of several apartment buildings in Colorado by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. On top of this, we then saw something similar happen in Chicago. American border security and social integrity, already in shambles, are being shown as practically non-existent in real time. Thanks to the massive influx of immigrants, we’re now  formally  seeing the rise of social and political balkanisation take place in America. Legitimacy is one of those things that a government either has or it doesn’t. Either the rulers are able to maintain a  moral mandate to exercise power that extends beyond reliance upon raw force  or they aren’t. Having that moral mandate, however, comes with providing good leadership, safety, and so fo...

  La France en Feu! A flaming tour through le quatorzième siècle Librarian of Celaeno It all began with a curse . . . King Philippe IV  Le Bel  (the beautiful) was said by contemporaries to be less a man than a statue, with a face- and heart- of marble. The driving purpose of his life was the centralization of power in France, efficiency, order, and rationalization of law. But achieving this would mean war and wars were (and are) expensive. Squeezing his population would only yield so much before it would become counterproductive and destabilizing. Philippe needed to get creative. Ladies? Ripping off the Jews and exiling them was the obvious first step, but Philippe was committed to more comprehensive fiscal reforms to complement his political plans. The Church owned an enormous amount of land in France, the revenues from which were controlled by the pope in Rome. Philippe got into it with Boniface VIII, who in response to their spiraling conflict  advanced the then-...

  Chop the trees, ration the cars Irina Slav That we live in strange times has, I believe, been established beyond the shadow of a doubt. What was once hard fact is now open to interpretation if not outright rejected as fact, which is how we get statements, made in all seriousness, that some trees may benefit from carbon dioxide. The post-truth flood, however, is still gaining momentum. “The wildfires that ripped through Canada's boreal forest last year produced more carbon emissions than the burning of fossil fuels in all but three countries, a new study has found,” leads  a story by CBC  that podcast partner Tammy Nemeth shared with me a few days ago. The study in question was  led by  “a carbon cycle scientist with expertise in data assimilation. His work has improved approaches for estimating sources and sinks of CO2 derived from atmospheric CO2 observations, leading to insights into linkages between the carbon cycle, climate, and extreme events.” He  d...