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Sorry, his articles are not coherent. They are rambling and full of passages calibrated to cause unease and uncertainty. Encountering one, you then read on in
by mturmon 14y ago
Sorry, his articles are not coherent. They are rambling and full of passages calibrated to cause unease and uncertainty. Encountering one, you then read on in an effort to have the latest outrageous statement substantiated, but usually in vain.
The riddle or puzzle aspect of his writing kind of engages my intellect, but it's a time sink. Because of his self-regard and unconventional intellectual reference frame, you think there is something there, but there is not. (Unless you agree with him politically, which seems impossible, because he takes pride in being to the right of everyone.)
- rhizome 14y agoSophistry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophism#Modern_usage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophism#Modern_usage
- mturmon 14y agoYep. Another point of comparison is the character Naphta from Thomas Mann's 1924 novel The Magic Mountain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Mountain#Naphta:_Radicalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Mountain#Naphta:_Radi... For example, "Naphta was [...] revolutionary in a reactionary sense: [...] fighting against the ideals of left-wing socialism, liberalism and enlightenment, but also detesting the lost Empire’s dull conservatism of the petty bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. [...] somewhat elusive, flirting with every radicalism against established views." The subhed to his blog, of course, is "Reactionary Enlightenment." In this scheme, the innocent HN reader plays Hans Castorp, the young German engineer, and the day you spend puzzling over the abstruse and impenetrable arguments within the sanitarium of the blog will pass by in what seems like an instant.