Arendt’s breathless romance with a particularly ridiculous bounded reading of Aristotle’s vision of political publics versus other, what Arendt describes as spheres (like the oikos), has again and again informed successive generations of self-styled, intellectual mavericks, who
take whatever particular, due or undue hostility their work provoked as an opportunity to bemoan the collapse of the public sphere of difference—where once, as Arendt’s story goes, the difference of idea was sheltered from the difference in position, allowing the place of
politics to become the venue for an exalted individuality, which the moderns have reversed: now, the relentless pursuit of equalizing everything has made the public of difference become the social sphere of conformity, where individual dissensus is perpetually under assault by
the belligerent mental cowardice of the mob. It’s important to note that the dismantling of the public of difference came only after the material organization of authority that made it possible to limit the political sphere, according to Aristotle, to material equals had been
toppled. In other words, like a country club, access to the Aristotelian political public was limited by class position—only those free from necessity to work or even the responsibility of attending too much to their own household and business had the capacity of being an equal—
therefore, very much like the pearl clutching around preserving safe spaces for difference of opinion that we hear today, the model that Arendt plucks from her snorkeling around antiquity is at root undermines when the wrong kind of difference is being voiced by those
Interested in the wrong kind of equality. The very notion of the common freedom that all these heterodox thinkers and representatives from the far corners of the ideological galaxy have convened this latest drum circle to champion, is premised upon the real understanding that
they have some membership in the club. It is in this sense that their stakes are shared, that they can fight for each other’s right to be wrong. Their common enemies are those who don’t follow the club house rules, who often, don’t even belong to the club...the truth is that
few of these guardians are equal opportunity defenders of all and any voice, quite the opposite, most as opinion and thought-makers actively employ maneuvers that belong to the vast arsenal of the cancel culture they oppose. It’s really, in the end, not about individuals whose
mode of thought they object to, because it’s not individuals at all—their horror is the vague terror of the majority, the senseless, insensitive mob of tweets, that disregard platform, position, or pleasantries. Sorry I got to the airport early
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