Very shallow analysis. Article is driving at something but just won't say it. There is a parallel being drawn, but it's not drawn completely, because...? I feel this the norm with articles in today's fragmented information landscape. People try to drive an agenda, write something shallow so it's out there and the headline is then digested subconsciously.<p>This seems to be an attack on rationality, and also the Enlightenment, which you'd think should not be controversial in today's world dominated by science. I know Marcuse doesn't have very rational writings. He is constantly twisting words and definitions and basically makes up B.S. with very corrupted logic. I'm not as familiar with Roderick, but from looking at that video, it seems he is doing something similar. "Rationality" takes on a different meaning for him, and he calls things like wanting to go home at the end of your workday, as something rational, but that's a completely arbitrary use of that word. He then builds up elaborate arguments attacking this "rationality" and concludes the Enlightenment must be bad. What's really happening is that Roderick's argument is itself not rational.<p>> " One example of Roderick’s, which has many parallels today, is Germany and the rise of National Socialism. Nowhere would instrumental reason more clearly show the logical endpoints of its great powers: powers to create a vast industrial war machine and the powers to build a hyper-rationalised culture of death and destruction to accompany it. "<p>The real rationale here, is to conclude America <i>at the time</i> is even more hyper-rationalized, with an even greater culture of death and destruction... because we created the nuke and dropped it on Japan! We also built way more tanks and weapons to defeat the Nat. Socs., so it follows the U.S. has more to be blamed for than Germany! I don't think that is the conclusion Roderick is going for, or even the author of the article.<p>I'm sure Marcuse and Roderick weren't saying that because of the hyper-rationalizing of the Enlightenment, Germany was bad, but the U.S. was even worse.
What was the difference? Well, both of them don't even go that far, because their reasoning is not really rational to begin with. They're not attempting at revealing the truth, and instead are using a different epistemology (which definitely Marcuse was doing), to arrive at whatever conclusion they desire.