The doctrines of Peter Thiel's system are simple and appealing. Modern culture needs but does not properly cultivate real innovation. Great wealth is achieved by the invention of new services which capture de facto monopoly power. Study of the Great Books inculcates the genuine creativity that can produce such wealth. Students paying top dollar for educations leading to ordinary jobs are wasting their time.
Like many men who have gotten rich, though, Thiel tends to think that others should—and, more important, can—get rich in the same way he has. Zero to One is part Thiel's apologia pro vita sua and part theodicy. Thiel's acquisition of wealth is justified because you, too, can get rich the same way. And if you don't, you have no one to blame but yourself.
The only problem with Thiel's counsel, of course, is that it is a lie. Seeking to go "zero to one" is only good advice if there are many areas awaiting that level of entrepreneurship. However misleading such a suggestion may be, it has the advantage of allure: the doubters can't be so sure that the number of "zero to one" opportunities is limited, and their doubts hold us back. How can you be certain if you don't try?
What the Zero to One proposal lacks is any sense of risk. Its readers are supposed to forgo the comfort of an "ordinary" career—indeed, of most of the elements of "ordinary" life—in order to seek the thrill and rush of creation. Thiel or his literary agent gave his book the subtitle "Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future," a nod to modesty followed by supreme arrogance. A better title might be Zero to One: You, Too, Can Be Icarus. Supposing anyone takes the book's advice, the ground will be littered with fallen zeroes who attempted to become ones.
Thiel himself only went Zero to One once, in the creation of PayPal. After that he retreated to the normal course of those exiting successful start-ups, and started a hedge fund—probably the single most conventional move he possibly could have made. Yet his readers are supposed to feel guilty for not attempting the same feats of creativity that Thiel himself pulled off once, in the early days of the Internet, when the chance still existed. Now, sixteen years after the founding of PayPal, we are supposedly being told how to do it ourselves.
Where Thiel hasn't gone "zero to one," though, is in creating a new genre of book. Zero to One is but the latest contribution to an overpopulated and indistinct genre of American writing—the oligarch's vademecum. Notable entries in the field include such classics as Trump: The Art of the Deal (New York, 1987), Og Mandino's The Greatest Salesman in the World (New York, 1968) and Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York, 1936). But Zero to One doesn't want to be just another Ninja Innovation (2013) or The Caterpillar Way (2013). It wants to be the one summary by executive abstracting agencies every busy CEO reads.
When Trump "wrote" The Art of the Deal in 1987, he at least didn't expect everyone to follow his lead. The Art of the Deal described doing business at a level almost intentionally unreachable to the average businessman. But Zero to One is marked by an overwhelming condescenion toward those who don't seek the same glory—a condescension born precisely of its intention to outline a path to the future. The Zero to One world consists of a handful of creative geniuses (or early arrivers) and the multitudes of unwashed who perform lesser tasks, like writing laws, growing food, overseeing day-to-day operations or perhaps—that forgotten act of creation—begetting children.
The deep irony of the Zero to One innovator is that even he has only one "moment" of innovation—the initial spark of heroic monopoly-seeking that begins his road to wealth. The insight "I can create a novel search engine" or "I can make money off of electronic payment-processing" only happens once, but it's enough to nurture a lifetime of mirror-gazing and meretricious "you can, too!"-ism.
It used to be said, even by praisers of democracy, that strength was found in numbers. A young doctor follows in his father's footsteps and perhaps his grandfather's, and joins a guild whose traditions at their best date back to the most ancient times. A young lawyer admitted to the bar arrives with extensive knowledge of the state of current law and—however flawed it may be—current legal practice. A young priest performs the same rituals that have been handed down since time immemorial. True, none of them has gone Zero to One. But they can pursue goals that aren't delusions, not inventing meaning but finding it.
Showing posts with label Modern Democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Modern Democracy. Show all posts
Monday, October 27, 2014
Monday, September 8, 2014
Scotland: Scruton v. Haldane
In the UK, it is basically ridiculous to ask what Conservatives think about Scottish Independence. For a long time, moves for devolution and ultimately independence have been cast almost solely in terms of assuring the electoral dominance of left-wing parties: the slogan boils down to - Vote for Independence And Scotland Will Never Be Ruled By Tories Again.
Nonetheless, ending the Union is of much broader historical import than the electoral politics of the moment; and its effects may well be lauded by some conservatives as promising. Hence it is fascinating to look at the different views on the subject of two of the UK's best philosophers: John Haldane and Roger Scruton.
The contrast between these two is striking, and not only in terms of philosophical allegiances. Scruton is English, Haldane is Scottish; Scruton is Anglican, Haldane is Catholic. And yet Scruton is in favor of Independence and Haldane, writing last week in First Things, against.
Scruton's argument is that only independence will allow Scotland (and England, for that matter) to mature into its own real nation, and at the same time, stymie the cultural and economic cannibalism of the UK, wherein the South in general and London in particular devours the young of the whole nation, creaming it for its most promising, returning the rest to live in poverty. He draws an analogy between the richer countries in the EU and the poorer Eastern European nations. The best of the young Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, and others, flock to London and other capitals, draining their homelands of the people perhaps best suited to contribute not just economically but culturally.
Haldane, by contrast, argues that the creation of an independent state now ma well produce the first radically secular European nation, committed from the very fabric of its founding ideology to hostility towards its Christian roots. England and most of the other members of the EU, though long secular in practice, have been restrained by their historic ties to Christianity. A newly-independent Scotland may well produce something (Haldane does not go this far) like the French Revolutionary State, a State committed in its founding to the eradication of Christianity, primarily on the grounds of its sexual morality.
Who's right? Whose view is longer?
That depends, of course, on what sort of future we are looking at. Scotland's independence could be a catalyst for a radical sanation of European Christianity, the first domino to fall in a chain reaction that ends not only with disestablishment, but the de facto criminalization of Christianity. Or else Scotland's independence could be a catalyst for a gradual undoing of the monolithic nation states of Western Europe, a reduction of European politics back to a human scale, which itself would offer a much stronger framework in which minorities (like practicing Christians) could thrive.
As federal power in the US becomes yet more of a threat to Christian practice, these questions are urgent for America as well, and I can't help but think that greater devolution and smaller political units could be more protective and hospitable to conservative and Christian interests.
As for Europe, I would take the long view. The nations of Europe have survived much, and will survive more still. The history of European Christianity is a wild record of zeniths and nadirs, and the current troubles too will pass. In this perspective, the independence of Scotland assumes an importance far beyond current political exigencies, but instead could represent one small step in undoing the early modern political settlement of European states.
But there is no question that it is a risk; it is a question, as Haldane and Scruton show, on which good men can disagree.
Nonetheless, ending the Union is of much broader historical import than the electoral politics of the moment; and its effects may well be lauded by some conservatives as promising. Hence it is fascinating to look at the different views on the subject of two of the UK's best philosophers: John Haldane and Roger Scruton.
The contrast between these two is striking, and not only in terms of philosophical allegiances. Scruton is English, Haldane is Scottish; Scruton is Anglican, Haldane is Catholic. And yet Scruton is in favor of Independence and Haldane, writing last week in First Things, against.
Scruton's argument is that only independence will allow Scotland (and England, for that matter) to mature into its own real nation, and at the same time, stymie the cultural and economic cannibalism of the UK, wherein the South in general and London in particular devours the young of the whole nation, creaming it for its most promising, returning the rest to live in poverty. He draws an analogy between the richer countries in the EU and the poorer Eastern European nations. The best of the young Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, and others, flock to London and other capitals, draining their homelands of the people perhaps best suited to contribute not just economically but culturally.
Haldane, by contrast, argues that the creation of an independent state now ma well produce the first radically secular European nation, committed from the very fabric of its founding ideology to hostility towards its Christian roots. England and most of the other members of the EU, though long secular in practice, have been restrained by their historic ties to Christianity. A newly-independent Scotland may well produce something (Haldane does not go this far) like the French Revolutionary State, a State committed in its founding to the eradication of Christianity, primarily on the grounds of its sexual morality.
Who's right? Whose view is longer?
That depends, of course, on what sort of future we are looking at. Scotland's independence could be a catalyst for a radical sanation of European Christianity, the first domino to fall in a chain reaction that ends not only with disestablishment, but the de facto criminalization of Christianity. Or else Scotland's independence could be a catalyst for a gradual undoing of the monolithic nation states of Western Europe, a reduction of European politics back to a human scale, which itself would offer a much stronger framework in which minorities (like practicing Christians) could thrive.
As federal power in the US becomes yet more of a threat to Christian practice, these questions are urgent for America as well, and I can't help but think that greater devolution and smaller political units could be more protective and hospitable to conservative and Christian interests.
As for Europe, I would take the long view. The nations of Europe have survived much, and will survive more still. The history of European Christianity is a wild record of zeniths and nadirs, and the current troubles too will pass. In this perspective, the independence of Scotland assumes an importance far beyond current political exigencies, but instead could represent one small step in undoing the early modern political settlement of European states.
But there is no question that it is a risk; it is a question, as Haldane and Scruton show, on which good men can disagree.
Saturday, July 26, 2014
and they called it humane . . .
So, yet another botched lethal injection . . .
The issue at stake has nothing to do with capital punishment. Two hours is a long time. Longer than 'hanging by the neck until dead.' Longer even than fire, as rare as that may have been. Certainly longer than a Roman criminal would have lasted in the Colosseum. It's even longer than having your insides cut into a blood eagle by savage worshipers of Odin . . . The point is there are few societies in a history awash in cruelty who tortured their condemned for two hours before they expired.
And yet this, and this alone, is what passes the test of 'cruel and unusual'? How is this possibly better than the firing squad, or the noose, or the guillotine? Even that other insane twentieth-century science project (or better still, billboard) of death, the electric chair, is better than that.
What is it about lethal injection that appeals to the modern American? The technological distance imposed by the drug? The clinical nature of it mirroring the blindness and dispassion of justice? Perhaps the fact that it is administered by doctors rather than executioners (as fine as that distinction may be becoming)?
It's certainly part of a broader trend of general callousness and sentimentality in the administration of justice. Only a sentimentalist could hold that life in a modern prison without parole is the merciful option; only one utterly callous to every urge of humanity could view the universal prevalence of sexual assault of the worst description behind prison walls with a smirk and smile. Only a sentimentalist could believe that in general rehabilitation is possible after throwing minor offenders in with the worst and most hardened of felons to live and learn (and be assaulted and become addicted) for two, three, four, ten years. Only the most callous and despicable of libertarians could think that it possibly a good idea to give profit-seeking enterprises a financial stake in expanding the number and duration of incarcerations, and to actually advise that the state hand over what is arguably the most fundamental of its responsibilities into the hands of CFOs and consultants.
I have no doubt that coming centuries will remember us, if at all, with just a sad shake of the head . . . perhaps, we will be remembered for more than our cupidity and cruelty, but remove those two elements, and what is left?
The issue at stake has nothing to do with capital punishment. Two hours is a long time. Longer than 'hanging by the neck until dead.' Longer even than fire, as rare as that may have been. Certainly longer than a Roman criminal would have lasted in the Colosseum. It's even longer than having your insides cut into a blood eagle by savage worshipers of Odin . . . The point is there are few societies in a history awash in cruelty who tortured their condemned for two hours before they expired.
And yet this, and this alone, is what passes the test of 'cruel and unusual'? How is this possibly better than the firing squad, or the noose, or the guillotine? Even that other insane twentieth-century science project (or better still, billboard) of death, the electric chair, is better than that.
What is it about lethal injection that appeals to the modern American? The technological distance imposed by the drug? The clinical nature of it mirroring the blindness and dispassion of justice? Perhaps the fact that it is administered by doctors rather than executioners (as fine as that distinction may be becoming)?
It's certainly part of a broader trend of general callousness and sentimentality in the administration of justice. Only a sentimentalist could hold that life in a modern prison without parole is the merciful option; only one utterly callous to every urge of humanity could view the universal prevalence of sexual assault of the worst description behind prison walls with a smirk and smile. Only a sentimentalist could believe that in general rehabilitation is possible after throwing minor offenders in with the worst and most hardened of felons to live and learn (and be assaulted and become addicted) for two, three, four, ten years. Only the most callous and despicable of libertarians could think that it possibly a good idea to give profit-seeking enterprises a financial stake in expanding the number and duration of incarcerations, and to actually advise that the state hand over what is arguably the most fundamental of its responsibilities into the hands of CFOs and consultants.
I have no doubt that coming centuries will remember us, if at all, with just a sad shake of the head . . . perhaps, we will be remembered for more than our cupidity and cruelty, but remove those two elements, and what is left?
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Solving the Problem of Sexual Assault
It is not often that the state of California arrives at simple, elegant solutions to the very problems the state has engendered. (Its laws severely restricting firearms ownership come to mind. Background checks do not manias dissolve.) But credit where credit is due: this time, to Kevin de Leon, Democratic state senator from Los Angeles. According to LA Weekly,
Since according to the proposed law verbal consent is sufficient, critics need not appeal to the absurdity of written contracts in order to make their point. It would be equally simple to devise a consent-granting iPhone app in which the scanning of proprietary matrix barcode identifications suffices for consent. Better yet, with the looming advent of biometric identification tied to smartphone applications, we could simply allow our smartphones to decide for us whether we consent, based on their evaluation of signals in relevant brain regions.
The current problem of sexual assault revolves around the question of consent -- whether it was granted, and in what manner the granting of consent can be reasonably perceived and understood. The hookup culture to which allegations of sexual assault are usually tied cannot be brought under scrutiny, however. To challenge the hookup culture would be to brush up against the sacred doctrine of consent, according to which everything consented to is good and everything not consented to is bad -- except when done in order to foster better consent. (Various regulations and other state managerial policies designed to improve consent can thus be justified even if they are not consented to, since they are ordered toward further consent in the realm of personal interaction.)
But the doctrine of consent can be restated another way. Every personal interaction consistent with the consent principle, or consistent with the nonaggression principle, is acceptable. Liberalism conditions a society for the maximum level of mutual abuse consistent with the harm principle. Once you wall off physical coercion, everything else is a-OK.
These observations return us to the problem of sexual assault, and how to solve it.
Contrary to the critics of Rep. de Leon, he can only be faulted for not going far enough -- so to speak.
If the state of California requires written consent and release of liability prior to sexual activity, it has simply adopted a practice necessary for the legally regulated, commercial-industrial production of sex, whether through prostitution or through obscene materials.
It would be much simpler for liberal society if all sexual relations, at least all nonreproductive sexual relations, were simply made public according to legal standards -- i.e., made pornographic. Consent would be given first, with a release of liability. No obligations would follow. And since our society fears that events do not exist unless they are photographed, the requirement that all sex be pornographic will ensure that everything everyone does is (as in universal photography) simultaneously meaningful and completely meaningless.
Is this suggestion any more absurd than other stratagems our society has undertaken to remove itself from all human responsibility through the doctrine of consent? If the laws of contract could appear before us, they would surely blush.
When we admit that liberalism arranges a society for maximum mutual abuse consistent with the doctrine of consent, we have unwittingly slipt into the observations of a social thinker whose equations of liberalism with the "authoritarian personality" grow daily, and frightfully more true.
There is only one problem remaining, more acute than ideology was even in the day it had critics. We have so excused ourselves through the ideology of consent that we do not even acknowledge the problem, still less its depths.
a law co-authored by L.A. state Sen. Kevin de Leon would have state-run college campuses establish an "affirmative consent" standard for its students.
According to the language of the bill, SB 967, students who want to have sex must essentially establish that there has been "an affirmative, unambiguous, and conscious decision by each participant to engage in mutually agreed-upon sexual activity." In fact, the legislation says: "It is the responsibility of the person who wants to engage in initiating the sexual activity to ensure that he or she has the consent of the other person to engage in the sexual activity. Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent."
No more making sexy faces and sounds for you. You've got to verbalize. Or get it on paper.The proposal has drawn jeers from the left-right commentariat: what collegian, already doubtless impaired by spirits, would stop or even think to stop and obtain written permission for the further progression of sexual concourse?
Since according to the proposed law verbal consent is sufficient, critics need not appeal to the absurdity of written contracts in order to make their point. It would be equally simple to devise a consent-granting iPhone app in which the scanning of proprietary matrix barcode identifications suffices for consent. Better yet, with the looming advent of biometric identification tied to smartphone applications, we could simply allow our smartphones to decide for us whether we consent, based on their evaluation of signals in relevant brain regions.
The current problem of sexual assault revolves around the question of consent -- whether it was granted, and in what manner the granting of consent can be reasonably perceived and understood. The hookup culture to which allegations of sexual assault are usually tied cannot be brought under scrutiny, however. To challenge the hookup culture would be to brush up against the sacred doctrine of consent, according to which everything consented to is good and everything not consented to is bad -- except when done in order to foster better consent. (Various regulations and other state managerial policies designed to improve consent can thus be justified even if they are not consented to, since they are ordered toward further consent in the realm of personal interaction.)
But the doctrine of consent can be restated another way. Every personal interaction consistent with the consent principle, or consistent with the nonaggression principle, is acceptable. Liberalism conditions a society for the maximum level of mutual abuse consistent with the harm principle. Once you wall off physical coercion, everything else is a-OK.
These observations return us to the problem of sexual assault, and how to solve it.
Contrary to the critics of Rep. de Leon, he can only be faulted for not going far enough -- so to speak.
If the state of California requires written consent and release of liability prior to sexual activity, it has simply adopted a practice necessary for the legally regulated, commercial-industrial production of sex, whether through prostitution or through obscene materials.
It would be much simpler for liberal society if all sexual relations, at least all nonreproductive sexual relations, were simply made public according to legal standards -- i.e., made pornographic. Consent would be given first, with a release of liability. No obligations would follow. And since our society fears that events do not exist unless they are photographed, the requirement that all sex be pornographic will ensure that everything everyone does is (as in universal photography) simultaneously meaningful and completely meaningless.
Is this suggestion any more absurd than other stratagems our society has undertaken to remove itself from all human responsibility through the doctrine of consent? If the laws of contract could appear before us, they would surely blush.
When we admit that liberalism arranges a society for maximum mutual abuse consistent with the doctrine of consent, we have unwittingly slipt into the observations of a social thinker whose equations of liberalism with the "authoritarian personality" grow daily, and frightfully more true.
There is only one problem remaining, more acute than ideology was even in the day it had critics. We have so excused ourselves through the ideology of consent that we do not even acknowledge the problem, still less its depths.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Whose Politics? Which Antipolitics?
The noted political philosopher Russell Brand begins his essay on revolution by recalling the nonpolitical reason why he was willing to edit The New Statesman's issue on revolution. "I said yes," he tells us, "because it was a beautiful woman asking me." Whether it is Brand's intention to highlight the connection between beauty and political revolution is a matter for separate inquiry. The real thrust of Brand's complaint is simply that we have no politics in which to participate. There's no reason to vote, he told Paxman, and thus he violated the sacred rule that one mustn't impugn the democratic process no matter how undemocratic it may be. To do so would of course be "deeply dangerous."
Doubts about the democratic process are now routinely cited as examples of the "rising climate of anti-politics" (anti-politics being evidently not a tide). Americans want sexual permissiveness and legally sanctioned access to marijuana, FT notes, and they are concerned about the national debt. But they may not go in for the Southern-tinged populism of the Tea Party, and they're likely to prefer Rand Paul to Ted Cruz -- two largely similar senators who nevertheless project different images.
As everyone knows, only 8% of Americans think Congress is doing a good job. The hand-wringing class isn't sure whether to fault Congress or the American people for such a dismal statistic: who, after all, elected the bastards? The people perhaps, but certainly "democracy" doesn't deserve the blame.
The European Union's poll numbers are hardly better, and recently registered their all-time low. But if Nigel Farage points this out as he did yesterday, he can count on UKIP's being called "indignant, angry people" and "brainless Eurosceptics." It takes a special brain to appreciate European democracy.
Our blame of the people and exculpation of democracy indicate that whatever else it may be, today's democracy is by no means rule of the people. Nor could it ever be. The rule of the people is now wholly impossible. Why?
When we ordinarily speak of "the rule of the people," we indicate that the people take themselves as their own ruling principle. It's this aspect that has become impossible today. Only non-"people," namely intellectuals and academics, assert that the people rule. The people themselves defer to other gods, to the sports-actors whose exertions enable their lassitude, to the musicians whose songs are elaborate disguises spun over a core of nothing, to the techno-prophets and their endless stream of computational anesthetics. The rule of the people is a cipher for the rule of technocrats over the ruins of ordinary life.
The reason why democracy is always on the lips of our technocrats, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and other cynics, is that "the people" are the object of their social science. Politicians and capitalists alike aspire to perfect knowledge of the behavior of "the people," no longer constituted as the subject of political action but as an aggregation of very peculiar codes -- genetic, epigenetic, environmental, "political" and consumer codes. Knowledge of these codes is a different type of wisdom, not the wisdom enabling activity in ordinary life, but knowledge enabling the extraction of resources from those who are living (putatively) ordinary lives.
Who is the greater cynic, the "anti-political" citizen or the authors of The Victory Lab? Everyone knows the answer. The cynics who rule cannot tolerate cynicism in the ruled.
Every former context of political dispute is now outside the realm of politics properly so called. What the psychotic technocrats call "anti-politics" is only a vestige of human nostalgia in the posthuman world.
Doubts about the democratic process are now routinely cited as examples of the "rising climate of anti-politics" (anti-politics being evidently not a tide). Americans want sexual permissiveness and legally sanctioned access to marijuana, FT notes, and they are concerned about the national debt. But they may not go in for the Southern-tinged populism of the Tea Party, and they're likely to prefer Rand Paul to Ted Cruz -- two largely similar senators who nevertheless project different images.
As everyone knows, only 8% of Americans think Congress is doing a good job. The hand-wringing class isn't sure whether to fault Congress or the American people for such a dismal statistic: who, after all, elected the bastards? The people perhaps, but certainly "democracy" doesn't deserve the blame.
The European Union's poll numbers are hardly better, and recently registered their all-time low. But if Nigel Farage points this out as he did yesterday, he can count on UKIP's being called "indignant, angry people" and "brainless Eurosceptics." It takes a special brain to appreciate European democracy.
Our blame of the people and exculpation of democracy indicate that whatever else it may be, today's democracy is by no means rule of the people. Nor could it ever be. The rule of the people is now wholly impossible. Why?
When we ordinarily speak of "the rule of the people," we indicate that the people take themselves as their own ruling principle. It's this aspect that has become impossible today. Only non-"people," namely intellectuals and academics, assert that the people rule. The people themselves defer to other gods, to the sports-actors whose exertions enable their lassitude, to the musicians whose songs are elaborate disguises spun over a core of nothing, to the techno-prophets and their endless stream of computational anesthetics. The rule of the people is a cipher for the rule of technocrats over the ruins of ordinary life.
The reason why democracy is always on the lips of our technocrats, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and other cynics, is that "the people" are the object of their social science. Politicians and capitalists alike aspire to perfect knowledge of the behavior of "the people," no longer constituted as the subject of political action but as an aggregation of very peculiar codes -- genetic, epigenetic, environmental, "political" and consumer codes. Knowledge of these codes is a different type of wisdom, not the wisdom enabling activity in ordinary life, but knowledge enabling the extraction of resources from those who are living (putatively) ordinary lives.
Who is the greater cynic, the "anti-political" citizen or the authors of The Victory Lab? Everyone knows the answer. The cynics who rule cannot tolerate cynicism in the ruled.
Every former context of political dispute is now outside the realm of politics properly so called. What the psychotic technocrats call "anti-politics" is only a vestige of human nostalgia in the posthuman world.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Trierweiler or Gayet? It doesn't matter . . .
So the British and American media is wondering why the French media are worrying about something the French are certain that only the British and the Americans would be concerned about . . .
After all, presidential affairs are as French as blanc des noirs and mimolette, right? (Don't mind that the latter is actually a French knock off.)
The difference here, I think, is marriage. If the hapless Hollande and Trierweiler (or Royale, for that matter) were actually married, then his fling with an actress would have passed I think with nothing more than the by-now traditional "et alors?". But in reality, the only thing that gives Trierweiler any status, the only thing that makes it even possible to refer to her quite (albeit improperly) as the Première Dame is the fact that the President has decided to bed her on a presumably regular and on-going basis. Should le President decide that another bed is more amenable, she becomes nothing more than another member of the ubiquitous class of French media personalities. The status of Première Dame becomes something arbitrarily in the President's gift, to be retained or revoked as he sees fit. As a result, we are in the beyond ridiculous situation of bating our breath to see who Hollande will name as First Lady, in terms that remind me at least of the Lebron James Decision of 2010. Maybe one could convince Trierweiler's old pals at Direct8 to have a live hour-long special to broadcast the President's choice.
What this means in the long term is probably the obsolesence of the office. After all, the idea of a presidential couple is suffused with the not-quite-entirely-exorcised spirit of monarchy - it is a sacral concept still hanging on in a decidedly non-sacral political system. After all, companies are not ruled by the CEO and his consort anymore, although perhaps a century ago the position of factory-owner's wife was real and meaningful (although sometimes extremely pernicious, as Lisbeth Burger has shown).
If Hollande were married, none of this would have happened like it has. As silly as it may seem to use the word sacral in connection with as sad a sack as François Hollande, he will go down, I think, as the last French president with that particular remnant of monarchical aura. And that is a sad thing.
On a different note, that famous French attitude of unconcern about marital fidelity (even if it has never been as true as the stereotype suggests) is bound to disappear as well. You can only have affairs if you're married - it is simply silly to talk about cheating on a paramour. In its place will come a string of overlapping romantic or erotic connections, every person always inching towards their next one, perhaps held back by lingering ties of affection or familiarity. Without marriage as something real and solid, the boundary between relationships and flings is bound to grow fuzzier still. And somehow, that also seems like a sad thing too.
After all, presidential affairs are as French as blanc des noirs and mimolette, right? (Don't mind that the latter is actually a French knock off.)
The difference here, I think, is marriage. If the hapless Hollande and Trierweiler (or Royale, for that matter) were actually married, then his fling with an actress would have passed I think with nothing more than the by-now traditional "et alors?". But in reality, the only thing that gives Trierweiler any status, the only thing that makes it even possible to refer to her quite (albeit improperly) as the Première Dame is the fact that the President has decided to bed her on a presumably regular and on-going basis. Should le President decide that another bed is more amenable, she becomes nothing more than another member of the ubiquitous class of French media personalities. The status of Première Dame becomes something arbitrarily in the President's gift, to be retained or revoked as he sees fit. As a result, we are in the beyond ridiculous situation of bating our breath to see who Hollande will name as First Lady, in terms that remind me at least of the Lebron James Decision of 2010. Maybe one could convince Trierweiler's old pals at Direct8 to have a live hour-long special to broadcast the President's choice.
What this means in the long term is probably the obsolesence of the office. After all, the idea of a presidential couple is suffused with the not-quite-entirely-exorcised spirit of monarchy - it is a sacral concept still hanging on in a decidedly non-sacral political system. After all, companies are not ruled by the CEO and his consort anymore, although perhaps a century ago the position of factory-owner's wife was real and meaningful (although sometimes extremely pernicious, as Lisbeth Burger has shown).
If Hollande were married, none of this would have happened like it has. As silly as it may seem to use the word sacral in connection with as sad a sack as François Hollande, he will go down, I think, as the last French president with that particular remnant of monarchical aura. And that is a sad thing.
On a different note, that famous French attitude of unconcern about marital fidelity (even if it has never been as true as the stereotype suggests) is bound to disappear as well. You can only have affairs if you're married - it is simply silly to talk about cheating on a paramour. In its place will come a string of overlapping romantic or erotic connections, every person always inching towards their next one, perhaps held back by lingering ties of affection or familiarity. Without marriage as something real and solid, the boundary between relationships and flings is bound to grow fuzzier still. And somehow, that also seems like a sad thing too.
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