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Hello Gentleman. Firstly, thank you for your candour. I've missed the last couple of Q&A's, I needed a break from some of the "questions" submitted late last year. It seems the anti-woke crowd loves heterodoxy, until they don’t. And I don't mean the occasional healthy debate amongst subscribers. The moment Glenn strays from the prescribed path of his coterie on matters of global complexity or, heaven forbid, finds himself genuinely moved by the writings of an old ideological foe, many (not all) commenters begin frothing at the mouth, demanding seppuku. Meanwhile, John is expected to flagellate himself on a weekly basis for having strong opinions on Trump. It get's old,
fast. "Dear, John, I wondered if you wouldn't mind removing your own testicles for saying something disparaging about the King". The reactions to recent episodes suggest listeners feel something akin to betrayal when their favourite firebrand contrarians rub them the wrong way. Might I say that I am a true contrarian, in that I love being rubbed the wrong way, or perhaps that perversion is my own. After all, sometimes a hypocrite is a man in the process of change. And unless we mortals have stumbled upon omniscience, we'd best remain fluid, lest we guarantee our own intellectual obsolescence.
Anyway, I count myself among the contrarian rabble-rousers—or at least adjacent to them—casting an increasingly worried, furtive side-eye. I'll throw in a question as not to seem like an indulgent prick. Do you ever log off after one of these interrogatory Q&A's, and just think, "...what a bunch of c**ts" -
PS I'm British, so that insult is the highest honour one can bestow a fellow gentlemen or lady
Glenn, John:
Historians have long had a challenge fully understanding the past because what gets written about is typically not what is common, but, almost by definition, what is unusual enough to be noteworthy. This itself is exacerbated by the fact that for much of human history even the act of writing was limited to a select class of people.
With the advent of mass media in the 20th century the bar of noteworthiness dropped, and with the rise of social media in the 21st century the bar has plummeted to the truly mundane: birthdays, funerals, daily commutes, random musings, recipes, etc. are all available online. This gives historians of the future the opportunity to witness the glorious commonality of our time in a way never yet seen in human history. However, I worry that this bounty of information may be a glut and (lazy) future historians may still resort to focusing on the words and perspectives of the rich, powerful, and "authoritative" sources.
If you could speak directly to a historian, 100, 200, 500 years in the future, what important context do you think they should have, in your opinion, to properly understand the world in the first quarter of the 21st century? From any and all perspectives: political, cultural, economic, linguistic, etc.
Thanks.