Jordan Peterson was portrayed as a grifter and the incelsior saint in a shocking report by Nellie Bowles for The New York Times in 2018. In 2021, Bowles horizontally apologized. She lamented the cumulative harm her habit to going viral, no Peterson by name.
She would read “kills” stories for the Times, and the success of her work depended on how loud the Twitter rabble roared in response. This view made her famous. She even felt it was making her a narcissist. She then decided to leave the Times and speak with more caution.
Her new writing selection, Morning After the Revolution, is definitely light on “kills”, but, however, it’s lighting on faith as well. Bowles rarely offers insight while comparing some of the recent insanity to BLM, CHAZ, abolishing the police, and trans activism. Alternatively, he rehashed widely reported events with some wisecracks and beautiful reporting. Her new image is a “hemming-and-hawing reasonable” ready to poke excitement at anyone, whereas her takedown of Peterson was mean-spirited but clear because she was a foot soldier of the liberal left.
This setting works well in her sarcastic weekly news roundups. However, a book-length analysis of the most pressing issues of the past five years does n’t work with that tone. By eschewing principled views in favor of irony, Bowles adds little to the discussion besides entertainment.
When Johns Hopkins defines a gay as” a non- person attracted to non- men”, she is wisecrack,” Yep, that’s me”, but she does not pursue that with a defence of her placement on gender and sexuality. Her research is the product of pessimism and the moderational fallacy.
The Fallacy of Moderation
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle posited that virtue is the gold mean between two pleasures. Confidence can be found in cowardice and carelessness. decorum lies somewhere between modesty and callousness. Although this is a powerful moral theory, it is false to apply this idea in every situation because it holds that the truth can always be discovered at the midpoint.
For instance, if I say the sky is red and you say it’s yellow, that does n’t mean it’s orange. By the same token, if one side is pro- LGBTQIA + and the other side supports traditional marriage, that does n’t make pro- LGB correct. On important questions like,” Are all white people prejudiced”? or” Do trans people and natural people have the same characteristics?” Humans require and deserve honest, detailed responses, not just a slitting the difference between extreme left and right rhetoric. Then, your position depends on the desires of radicals.
However, Bowles, a married gay, is mealymouthed when examining whether the trans activity is a natural extension of the queer rights activity or a takeover of it. She acknowledges in a short moment that she went through a” tomboy” phase and that she may have received hormone therapy when she was younger.
She worries that trans activists ‘ claims that biological men would not benefit from sports, which they deny is an apparent lie, will undermine the law’s now established goal of legalizing gay marriage. She joked:” I was feeling, actually, a little mad about it all — these doctors are cutting little queer kids was my strengthen at dinner parties. I would try to raise the issue of women being erased in very inappropriate settings.
Then her Reform Jewish synagogue announced that the next” Tot Shabbat” — the children’s service — would be a drag queen story hour. Bowles initially panicked, but when the day came, the drag queen ended up giving a “very, very deeply Jewish Tot Shabbat”. After all, she recalls going to drag bars as a teenager and how incredibly fun it was, Buckles says,” Our daughter loved it and we did, too.” Bowles ‘ conclusion on the biggest lightning-rod issue of the day is a shoulder shrug.
Flippant to a Fault
When Bowles ‘ book was first announced, the press release called it Struggle Sessions, evoking the repressive Soviet regime ( and implying parallels with Bowles ‘ former employer, The New York Times ). However, Bowles does n’t really throw bombs, so it makes sense that the title ended up being” Morning After the Revolution,” implying that the BLM riots, CHAZ, and TERF/trans showdowns have more to do with a one-night stand or binge drinking than a police state. The “morning after” can be a little embarrassing upon reflection, but it’s hardly cause for shock and alarm.
Bowles ‘ opinion of her own contributions to culture is similarly lax. Here again, as an NYT darling- turned- outcast, one might expect some gory detail or hard- earned wisdom. Instead, the chapter” The Joy of Canceling” opens by describing the “pleasure” of canceling someone:
To do a cancellation is a very warm, social thing. It has the energy of a potluck. Everyone brings what they can, and everyone is impressed by their friends ‘ creativity.
Then she simply claims that once she fell in love, she lost her taste for blood rather than meditating on the perverse incentives of cancel culture and what she learned. Bowles would end up marrying Bari Weiss, who was an editor for The New York Times until she wrote a viral resignation letter accusing the Times of illiberalism, antisemitism, and a culture that viciously punished Wrongthink. Bowles abruptly left a few months later.
Bowles acknowledges that Bari was never cancelled in the same way. One may wonder if it’s because she was either too talented to be canceled or simply too milquetoast. As the saying goes, it’s good to have enemies: it means you’ve stood up for something, at some time in your life. There are hardly any blooms.
What Could Have Been
All the books that could have been used to make up Morning After the Revolution are problematic.
There could have been Nellie Bowles, bona fide counter- elite: a product of San Francisco private schools, Columbia University, and The New York Times, now a columnist at The Free Press and critic of the culture she came from. Or Nellie Bowles, award- winning reporter, here to give the definitive retrospective on the insanity of 2020 bolstered with on- the- ground observations. Or Hillary Clinton supporter Nellie Bowles, who is now being criticized by the right-wingers in her comments section, trying to understand our new coalitions.
Bowles does none of this. Instead, we have a book of outdated reporting — we already know BLM was a front, DiAngelo is a race hustler, and San Francisco is a hellhole — with wishy- washy analysis, punctuated with some blessed respites of humor. Because she never stakes out a position or enters the arena, Bowles ‘ refusal to make normative judgments makes her arguments tantalizing but ultimately unsatisfying.
Funnily enough, Jordan Peterson talks about just this challenge. He believes that to reach maturity one must move past cynicism and naiveté. You’re not being fooled, so at least you’re not. But having the courage to stand up for something, to aim higher than to tear down is even better.
A disillusioned progressive who uses irony as a cover until she can get her bearings once more reads Morning After the Revolution. Bowles is smart, witty, and talented. A little more courage and conviction ( dare I say, a little more Peterson? ) would be effective for her.
