(Im)morality and (In)equality

No, I have no big ideas about China--I'm following Gans here in seeing China as the most obvious example of an at least potentially successful authoritarian order. The twitter feed of "scientism" also contains, periodically, examples of ways in which China is advancing past the West in science, technology and even social organization. But I don't know what it's adding up to--you seem to know more than I do. I really wanted to make the distinction between the defeatist notion of surrendering to China (in which case we should hope for the simplified characters) and learning from, rather than being repulsed by, its authoritarianism. Maybe there's not so much to learn--but there must be something.

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Yes, I would reject that first passage you quote, and think I have in my commentary on it. I am working on constructing an absolutist GA through a dialogue with Gans's liberal GA. And I want to introduce Gans to absolutists and NrX more generally. He does see victimary thinking in "anarchist" terms, as an spontaneous expression of resentment, but much of what we says about is still worth working with.

I'm not sure Gans sees the elite as believing in the "end of history"--Gans has rejected that concept, but is very sympathetic to the related (Fukuyaman) notion that liberal democracy is the "last," in the sense of untranscendable, form of government. I suspect here he is mourning the elite's abandonment of "end of history" thinking, not celebrating that elite's embrace of it.

Regarding talk on China, I think a lot of it is using China as a stick to beat the West with--I'm not sure how serious it is. Gans is in his way a very realist thinker--he doesn't propose any possibility without a real life model to point to. So, if he's going to talk about an authoritarian possibility, he looks around to see what best fits, and China's a good selection. But from your description they can't be thinking along the same lines I am because I think Trump does have control. It seems to me that a lot of our discussions here are about the best to talk about what is happening here and now, given how radically different an absolutist order would have to be. Are there any coordinates in today's world that point towards an absolutist future. I assume there must be.

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Very interesting. I'll just add that Confucianism seems to be a formidable intellectual and ethical inheritance, though I still only know snippets.

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I should mention (and apologize for) some problems with the formatting of the blog post that made it difficult to distinguish my words from Gans's at a couple of points. I just noticed it and I've fixed it.