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Prof. Steven Wayne Newell's avatar

One very careful sociological analysis of German politics that resulted in WW II was a pattern of preferring an essay on power over an essay of more complex content in an authentic quest for new meanings. It is alarming to see this social science research content at this time. The overall pattern in the trend toward fascism seems to be an echo of that earlier time. This is not the time to be defunding the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Water Act, and cutting funding to the CDC, while deregulating AI technology experimental development by wildly competing private billionaire CEOs seeking oligarchy power and control. The timing could not be more volatile than it is now, and yet, building consensus to restore a more familiar parliamentary procedure and convention-based democratically deliberative government seems arrested somehow, as if there is some planned organizing of a WW II fascist repeat.

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PEG's avatar

Striking essay. The diagnosis—that moral discourse is often more about appearance than action—feels especially sharp in our post-consensus world. We’ve lost the institutions that once coordinated moral meaning. In their absence, signalling becomes the default: fragmented, personalised, and adversarial.

It’s a moment where Hobbes and Gaus both seem right. Without shared frameworks (Hobbes), conflict escalates. But with enduring moral pluralism (Gaus), consensus was always a fragile achievement. Now we’re left with performance in place of resolution.

Movements like Just Stop Oil make sense in this light; not trying to persuade through shared norms, but to disrupt and force recognition. A kind of moral shock, staged in the vacuum where coordination used to live.

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