Started as a comment – see diary Assange & Wikileaks – in reply to a post linking Sean Wilentz 2014 article.
Neatly packaged and tie-wrapped. Just analyzing the syntax of sentences and words usage should raise red flags about the author. It did with me and I went through the effort to break down his article. It’s no more than a rant against individuals the author despises. Who is Sean Wilentz of the New Republic? From his article …
Snowden, Greenwald, and Assange hardly subscribe to identical beliefs, and differ in their levels of sophistication. They have held, at one time or another, a crazy-quilt assortment of views, some of them blatantly contradictory. But from an incoherent swirl of ideas, a common outlook emerges. The outlook is neither a clear-cut doctrine nor a philosophy, but something closer to a political impulse that might be described, to borrow from the historian Richard Hofstadter, as paranoid libertarianism [The Paranoid Style in American Politics | Harpers Magazine – 1964 |]. Where liberals, let alone right-wingers, have portrayed the leakers as truth-telling comrades intent on protecting the state and the Constitution from authoritarian malefactors, that’s hardly their goal. In fact, the leakers despise the modern liberal state, and they want to wound it.
○ Sean Wilentz on TNR R.I.P. – How Philistinism Wrecked ‘The New Republic’
In 2008 Wilentz was an outspoken supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee for the presidency. He wrote an essay in the New Republic analyzing Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign, charging Obama with creating “manipulative illusion[s]” and “distortions,” and having “purposefully polluted the [primary electoral] contest” with “the most outrageous deployment of racial politics since the Willie Horton ad campaign in 1988.”
During the Democratic National Convention, Wilentz charged in Newsweek that “liberal intellectuals have largely abdicated their responsibility to provide unblinking and rigorous analysis” of Obama.
Wilentz has prominently engaged in current political debate. He is reportedly a long-time family friend of the Clintons.[10] He has appeared in public venues as a staunch defender of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton: he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on December 8, 1998 to argue against the Clinton impeachment.
…
Wilentz’ historical scholarship has focused on the importance of class and race in the early national period, especially in New York City. Wilentz has also co-authored books on nineteenth-century religion and working-class life. His highly detailed The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (W.W. Norton, 2005) won the Bancroft Prize. His goal was to revive the reputation of Andrew Jackson and Jacksonian Democracy, which was under attack from the left because of Jackson’s support for slavery and pursuit of escaped slaves, and especially his harshness toward Indians, including his forced removals of Indian populations from land confiscated by European-ancestry populations.Wilentz returned to the pro-Jackson themes of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who in 1946 had hailed the pro-labor policies of Northern, urban Jacksonians. He has more recently turned his scholarship to modern U.S. history, notably in The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008, published in May 2008.
Sean Wilentz is a exponent of the elite, a ruling class beyond the reach of common folks who should remain, without pretense of belonging, to their inferior class.
Googling some elements of my analysis of the writings by historian Sean Wilentz, I came across a book, a study about class relations in a Malay village.
- The ideologies justifying domination of this kind include formal assumptions about inferiority and
superiority which, in turn, find expression in certain rituals or etiquette regulating public contact
between strata. Despite a degree of institutionalization, relations between the master and slave,
the landlord and the serf, the highcaste Hindu and untouchable are forms of personal rule providing
great latitude for arbitrary and capricious behavior by the superior. An element of personal terror
invariably infuses these relations – a terror that may take the form of arbitrary beatings, sexual
brutality, insults, and public humiliations.
[Source: Domination and the Arts of Resistance by James C. Scott]
This explains in detail assumptions of inferiority and superiority, domination in relations, master and slave, the landlord and serf. It appears historian Wilentz lives in his phantasy of the Jacksonian age, nearly 200 years ago. Science, technology and society has changed. No historical blueprint can laid over today’s challenges and certainly the needs of the individual or groups. Power corrupts, capitalism undone of regulations will enhance the rich and dominate the masses. It’s time for a Revolution On Inequality. Wilentz has one thing in common with Hillary Clinton whom he admires … they are stuck in the wrong century.
Criticism of article by Sean Wilentz:
Wrong if Republican, Right if Democrat
Many hands have taken apart Wilentz’s article, this example taking pride of place for thoroughness and calm reasoning. But it seems unlikely that Wilentz will allow any of it to pierce his armor. The critical responses to his absence of reason assume that he’s engaged in a political object, in an argument about political means and political ends. He’s not. He’s engaged in a personality-centered diatribe about teams and sides, protecting his team’s banner against the other team’s banner-grabbers.
Interesting reference to Hofstadter in this excellent article about Donald Trump:
○ The Fearful and the Frustrated | The New Yorker – September 2015 |
