Friday, July 24, 2020

The Final Solution: Newton's Third Law of Motion


Portrait of Isaac Newton by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1689)
2021 could well turn into l984. There's a pendulum swing in ideologies. It’s gone on certainly since the Russian Revolution when the early idealism of Trotsky was turned to a dictatorship of the apparachnik, as opposed to proletariat. Max Weber coined the term “routinization of charisma.” The citation may have derived from the history of early Christianity when sects based on fervid connection with faith were replaced by churches that that institutionalized belief and created an intermediary between man and God. Parenthetically the whole story of modern liberation movements is prophesied in the history of Christianity itself with Luther’s 95 Theses protesting corrupt practices like pardons by which church hierarchies profited from the unthinking allegiance of their followers. Even as the hatred of Trump fuels the hopes for new regimes, there are glimmerings of a new era of intolerance on the left. "The Letter on Justice and Open Debate"recently published in Harper’s (7/7/20) and signed by Noam Chomsky, David Brooks and Laura Kipnis, among others, is an expression of the fear of a counter reaction on the left that ends up being as reactionary as anything that occurred during the Trump years. "When one body body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body," reads Newton’s Third Law of Motion.

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