Hello,
We here at THE ZONE are hard at work on our new merchandise. We know you aren't interested in stale, boring merch like t-shirts, mugs and whatever the hell a “tote bag” is, though. Instead, we're bringing you original products.Are you tired of logging with your old, stale, boring chainsaw? Log in style with the THE ZONE chainsaw.
I know there are a few design kinks to iron out but I'm optimistic about the finished product.
Obligatory shilling. I wrote a short item for UnHerd about the media successes and actual failures of Andrew Cuomo.
I also wrote for my paying Substack subscribers about the late 90s and early 2000s as a golden age of American nastiness.
Nu-feudalism. Ed West writes with typically sober elegance about the squeezing of the middle classes and the rise of a new aristocracy. Conservatism, for good reasons, has always rested on bourgeois values - but the future, and their continued existence, depends on transcending their imaginative limits.
Blogkanization. The always interesting Tanner Greer dislikes Substack, seeing it as a platform which disadvantages young talent and leads to “intellectual discussion [retreating] entirely behind the battlements.”
I’m hardly an intellectual, so I do not think it is a great loss to our times if some of my stuff is behind a paywall. But I do agree with Greer that the privileging of established writers gives them a special responsibility to elevate younger and more obscure voices. I would mention some here but that would make me look like a condescending asshole.
The Scruton Cafe. It exists, in Budapest. If I was going to have an establishment dedicated to my memory I would hope that it would be a little bar on the seedier edge of town: dark, dingy, vaguely poetic, and destined for ignominious bankruptcy.
European frontiers. David Patrikarakos reports on growing tensions between Greece and Turkey. From converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque to supporting the Azeris against Armenia, Recep Erdoğan has had quite a year. I wonder if overcoming that coup went to his head.
On longing. Father Edmund Walstein writes beautifully for the Point about the celibate life of the Catholic priesthood. I am sceptical about how many people can be satisfied without an earthly romantic and sexual life. But it is also a fact that many people are unsatisfied with them.
Trappists' coffins. A sad but lovely essay by Leah Libresco about the monks who build caskets for dead children.
Have a lovely week,
Ben