'the monstrosity of human ego..'

antibes,  july 21, 1968. pharoah sanders: tenor sax, lonnie liston smith: piano, norris "sirone" jones: bass, najeed shabazz: drums, nathaniel bettis: congas. (sorry horsemouth missed out posting this yesterday). 

yesterday was a very pleasant day. horsemouth got out for a wander down by the abbey (and back). from here on in decent(ish) weather until thursday.

late afternoon a zoom call with howard. howard did something with bells once but the zoom call ran out before they could get to discuss it. horsemouth has asked for a letter on the topic. 

biden is not contesting the election (the donors have spoken) but horsemouth thinks trump will now win it whoever the democrats run. 

'the monstrosity of human ego..' remarks sean o'hagan at the republican national congress. trump has been told to stay on script and sound presidential but he can't help himself and veers off into trump rally crazy territory. 

'this constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. a people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong... with such a people, you can do whatever you want.'

horsemouth encourages the reading of hannah arendt's the origins of totalitarianism because he thinks that is what is going on. he encourages the reading of carl schmitt also because it is the intellectual justification of what the powerful are up to in defence of their wealth.

schmitt is the theorist of the limits of liberal democracy and precisely the moment when the state's authority is broken down (weimar germany) and needs to be refounded (er. nazi germany - that went well). but schmitt is also the theorist of the re-foundation of west german state authority after nazism in the federal republic. trump has (probably) not heard of schmitt so it is worrying that vance and his backers have. vance himself may turn out to be a liability, or an irrelevance soon forgotten but if the rich men behind trump are reading schmitt approvingly that is seriously bad news.

on the other hand j.d. vance quoting schmitt may be just j.d. vance being a show-off and twitching aside the curtain. there are broader questions about the stability of liberal democracies but there's no  ideology to the super-rich owning the politicians (they are just acting in defence of their wealth).