“To assess political parties according to the criteria of truth, justice and the public interest, let us first identify their essential characteristics. There are three of these: 1. A political party is a machine to generate collective passions. 2. A political party is an organisation designed to exert collective pressure upon the minds of all its individual members. 3. The first objective and also the ultimate goal of any political party is its own growth, without limit. Because of these three characteristics, every party is totalitarian – potentially, and by aspiration.” – Simone Weil, On the Abolition of All Political Parties

Every once in a while, I find myself reading intelligent Substack note after intelligent Substack note, and I think “Why am I avoiding this platform?” Then I subscribe to a few people and suddenly my inbox is overrun with every intellectual twitch a writer has, and I immediately unsubscribe each and every one, panting and sweating by the end as if I’d just averted the apocalypse.

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."

J. R. R. Tolkien, “The Fellowship of the Ring”