Yeah I’m just wondering because I’ve seen it implied that he might have been leftist. I’ve read enough of DFW and he always had a bit of a conservative streak about him. The individual always loomed large in his writings because he seemed to have an affinity for solipsism as an explainer for the societal predicament we’re all mired in.

You should read the piece he did on John McCain in 2000 for Rolling Stone. That’s the one piece that always stuck with me in regards to DFW, and how his writing almost always gets bogged down to the ‘individual’, instead of focusing on the more systematic nature as to why a guy like McCain could be principled in one respect, but a craven individual as a politician. The idea is that maybe a guy like McCain deserves a chance, deserves a vote, because he refused freedom to stay with the rest of the POWs. What’s completely glossed over is that McCain didn’t have any qualms about serving in the war, and spent the rest of his life restating the belief that it was a just war. DFW then has a bit of a moral crisis towards the end of the article, as it becomes more and more apparent that McCain is…a politician. So what does it mean? It means that we should keep in mind both of these sides of John McCain, and what it means to us as individuals.

The end of the article is so ridiculously meek, and really just emblematic of liberal dead ends. And honestly this evasiveness seems to be in all of DFW’s works. It’s a shame because he really was an amazing writer. I have to wonder if his suicide had something to do with the sense of futility that seemed to litter his writings, even as he sensed that the capitalist order sucked and maybe we should be more emphatic.

Be warned, the article is super long

Being anti-capitalist is completely compatible with being a lib. It’s like a release valve for them.