Dear Hannah,
I'll have to confess here that I hated Milo at first. The way he treated fat women made me sick. He seemed cold, and vile, and low; and if you ever had an overweight mom or a sister or even just a fat friend he made his jokes sting personally.
I'll have to confess here that I hated Milo at first. The way he treated fat women made me sick. He seemed cold, and vile, and low; and if you ever had an overweight mom or a sister or even just a fat friend he made his jokes sting personally.
Not that I side with the people against "fat shaming." In the end they aren't against shame but against health, and beauty, and good taste; and I think they deserve every bit of what they get. But a fat person is just fat. Not a crusader for evil but an underachiever in good health. They fail in a bikini but usually make up for it with a personality.
This needs to be said just because it's controversial to say; and the truth is men like Milo come across as extremists because we are the extremists. We can't even say fat is ugly anymore, even though almost all of us think it. We came up with a rule that everyone should feel good about the way he looks. Milo went the opposite direction. He looks terrible because he says we look terrible. Fat people don't get laid and they die early but we feel good about ourselves -- for lying.
So here comes the big question: why is Milo considered horrible if he's honest? And why are we afraid of being associated with him? Take a good look at yourself and you realize that the "horrible bully" like Milo, trashing gingers and Muslims and overeaters, is only saying what many are thinking. And I posit that if we were any other way, we wouldn't have survived long enough to be here in the first place.
We like to think of the two sides of ourselves as the angel and the devil on our shoulders, but the truth is that both sides are the angel. What we refer to as the devil was never an evil force rebelling against our saintly side, but the side of us that judges things as they appear so that we can do what we need to survive. And the other side of us, more commonly referred to as the angel, isn't actually an angel, but a herd instinct: the thing that knows we need people to survive, and asks us what we have to do to survive around people. The "devil" says fat and fit and ugly and gorgeous and brilliant and stupid and stylish and tasteless, and the "angel" says if you say fat or ugly you'll piss off your friends. Without our "bad" side we could never pursue our happiness. We need it to avoid terrible people and terrible things. Without our "good" side, we'd never know what we have to hide or sacrifice so that we can pursue it in a group.
It needs hardly be mentioned that society has a hard time balancing these two forces, and the incalculable lists of do's and don'ts we know as our culture can (and often do) run too far one way or another**. The job of our intellectuals and comedians and critics, above all, is to let us know whether we've let one part of ourselves run too far over the other. Too much toward the herd instinct, and we end up killing ourselves in an attempt to fit in. Too much toward the side of inner judgment, and we end up poisoned by our wives and beaten up by coworkers.
Milo's place in the world is with the side of our inner judgment. For dozens of years we've swung further and further toward our herd instinct, until the things we thought were sociable were not only suffocating but dangerous. In this respect he serves as a liberator; as the voice that everyone needs to assert their self-worth and their taste, and a refuge against the endless tide of things we said would be nice to a few, and were actually cruel to the most. Milo isn't a saint, and thank God he never intended to be. But he's a savior all the same, putting himself on a cross when the rest of us were stuck in our "sociability." He's taking our beating when we should have been manly enough to take it ourselves. That's why I side with him.
What we can also appreciate about Milo is that he's actually interesting. He's handsome. He's brave. Unlike most Republicans he's funny -- and stylish and original and dangerous. And if you read someone like Mises or Hayek you might end up learning a lot -- but you'll never quite feel like they were fun. Hayek is on your bookshelf like medicine is in your cupboard. Following Milo on Facebook is like taking drugs.
Most aging conservatives will never understand this. Simply put, they're dying, and the remaining carcass of their movement, whose only trajectory of late has been downward, has already disintegrated before them. The National Review is boring, and sexless, and uninspired. Fox News is indignation porn for the senile. Milo will cover himself in pigs' blood like Marilyn Manson to get your attention. He'll say ugly things to get you to think about beautiful things. And although at the end of the day he reminds us that our judgment needs judgment to keep it in line, and that even truth requires some tact, he reminds us of a day when conservatives were known as liberals, and all the artists, all the rebels, all the people who scared parents and fought tyrants were talking about things like freedom of speech and unalienable rights -- and turned the world over in search of their liberty.
I can't endorse everything Milo says or the way that he says it. But I'm glad that he's saying it. And if I'm not willing to say he's a sage or a saint or a scholar or even a great writer, he represents something much different from these and still equally vital. He represents the will to live freely and loudly and proudly in the face of oppression. His shamelessness may be too shameless. But in an age when respectable men are cowering in fear of an ugly and tyrannical SJW, what we need are not always polite and political men. Sometimes, like even the Puritans rallied around the rascally Monmouth, and the Protestants rallied around Luther, what you actually need is more of a bastard.
Your father,
-J
*Your mother and I were not only obese when we were teenagers, with my weight peaking somewhere around 280lbs, but we were both heavily influenced by what's commonly known as awkward teenager or ugly duckling syndrome. Because of the teasing we got, we ended up fighting to be liked; and because we both fought to be liked, both of us ended up likeable. To be cool or especially good-looking in your childhood is a disability -- especially for women. To be laughed at by strangers while you're running at the pool may leave you with a complex -- and the complex may lead you into a lifetime of fitness.
**As one example of cultural development, Persian boys in the days of Cyrus the Great were taught to ride a horse, shoot a bow, and tell the truth. If he wants to get ahead, a modern American teenager is trained to drive a car, brush his teeth, and lie to your face.
We like to think of the two sides of ourselves as the angel and the devil on our shoulders, but the truth is that both sides are the angel. What we refer to as the devil was never an evil force rebelling against our saintly side, but the side of us that judges things as they appear so that we can do what we need to survive. And the other side of us, more commonly referred to as the angel, isn't actually an angel, but a herd instinct: the thing that knows we need people to survive, and asks us what we have to do to survive around people. The "devil" says fat and fit and ugly and gorgeous and brilliant and stupid and stylish and tasteless, and the "angel" says if you say fat or ugly you'll piss off your friends. Without our "bad" side we could never pursue our happiness. We need it to avoid terrible people and terrible things. Without our "good" side, we'd never know what we have to hide or sacrifice so that we can pursue it in a group.
It needs hardly be mentioned that society has a hard time balancing these two forces, and the incalculable lists of do's and don'ts we know as our culture can (and often do) run too far one way or another**. The job of our intellectuals and comedians and critics, above all, is to let us know whether we've let one part of ourselves run too far over the other. Too much toward the herd instinct, and we end up killing ourselves in an attempt to fit in. Too much toward the side of inner judgment, and we end up poisoned by our wives and beaten up by coworkers.
Milo's place in the world is with the side of our inner judgment. For dozens of years we've swung further and further toward our herd instinct, until the things we thought were sociable were not only suffocating but dangerous. In this respect he serves as a liberator; as the voice that everyone needs to assert their self-worth and their taste, and a refuge against the endless tide of things we said would be nice to a few, and were actually cruel to the most. Milo isn't a saint, and thank God he never intended to be. But he's a savior all the same, putting himself on a cross when the rest of us were stuck in our "sociability." He's taking our beating when we should have been manly enough to take it ourselves. That's why I side with him.
What we can also appreciate about Milo is that he's actually interesting. He's handsome. He's brave. Unlike most Republicans he's funny -- and stylish and original and dangerous. And if you read someone like Mises or Hayek you might end up learning a lot -- but you'll never quite feel like they were fun. Hayek is on your bookshelf like medicine is in your cupboard. Following Milo on Facebook is like taking drugs.
Most aging conservatives will never understand this. Simply put, they're dying, and the remaining carcass of their movement, whose only trajectory of late has been downward, has already disintegrated before them. The National Review is boring, and sexless, and uninspired. Fox News is indignation porn for the senile. Milo will cover himself in pigs' blood like Marilyn Manson to get your attention. He'll say ugly things to get you to think about beautiful things. And although at the end of the day he reminds us that our judgment needs judgment to keep it in line, and that even truth requires some tact, he reminds us of a day when conservatives were known as liberals, and all the artists, all the rebels, all the people who scared parents and fought tyrants were talking about things like freedom of speech and unalienable rights -- and turned the world over in search of their liberty.
I can't endorse everything Milo says or the way that he says it. But I'm glad that he's saying it. And if I'm not willing to say he's a sage or a saint or a scholar or even a great writer, he represents something much different from these and still equally vital. He represents the will to live freely and loudly and proudly in the face of oppression. His shamelessness may be too shameless. But in an age when respectable men are cowering in fear of an ugly and tyrannical SJW, what we need are not always polite and political men. Sometimes, like even the Puritans rallied around the rascally Monmouth, and the Protestants rallied around Luther, what you actually need is more of a bastard.
Your father,
-J
*Your mother and I were not only obese when we were teenagers, with my weight peaking somewhere around 280lbs, but we were both heavily influenced by what's commonly known as awkward teenager or ugly duckling syndrome. Because of the teasing we got, we ended up fighting to be liked; and because we both fought to be liked, both of us ended up likeable. To be cool or especially good-looking in your childhood is a disability -- especially for women. To be laughed at by strangers while you're running at the pool may leave you with a complex -- and the complex may lead you into a lifetime of fitness.
**As one example of cultural development, Persian boys in the days of Cyrus the Great were taught to ride a horse, shoot a bow, and tell the truth. If he wants to get ahead, a modern American teenager is trained to drive a car, brush his teeth, and lie to your face.
Thank you for your thoughtful essay. I have been so taken by Milo after I started following him on Facebook, and have been slightly horrified at myself for being so impressed. You articulated very, very well what he represents and why we should thank the people who are willing to put themselves out there to call out the Emperor's who have no clothes.
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