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The problem is that finding an anti-woke positive message veers dangerously close to asking what the meaning of life is.

Wokeism smells like religion because it gives adherents an all encompassing, infinitely large mission that can absorb unlimited energies from unlimited people (at least, if you accept the axioms). It is a Meaning Of Life.

To compete with that you've got ... what? Going to Mars? Irrelevant to 99.999% of all people because Mars is cold and empty and they can't take part even if for some reason moving to an oxygen-free freezing desert sounded good. The Enlightenment Project? What does that even mean? National greatness? The best of a bad bunch but even so, it hardly means anything.

I felt for many years that at the root of a lot of social problems in our society is the realization that we're stuck here on Earth, that we explored the whole thing and that there's nowhere left to go. Why exactly are we here? What is it all for? What should we strive for? Very few politicians are willing to make a full throated pitch for technological utopianism, partly because that offers nothing to anyone who isn't a technologist and politicians rarely are. Traditionally Christianity offered answers, so discarding it has left a meaning-shaped hole that the culture war fills (but unfortunately, fills with bitterness).

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Good points. I do have two questions:

1) Why do you think that South Asians (like Vivek and also Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley) seem to be more successful in American politics than East Asians, despite East Asians making up more of the population?

2) You say that social liberalism and economic conservatism are both high-status. Does that mean libertarians are the highest-status people? If so, why is the Libertarian Party not gaining much traction?

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In a previous life I worked some with Vivek. He is, easily, one of the three smartest people I’ve interacted with in my life, maybe number one. And his intelligence is immediately obvious but not off-putting. I hope his campaign goes well, whatever that means.

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Always enjoy your takes, but surprised you agree with the MSM on the idea that "poor candidate selection" was a major factor in Republican losses. Oz was a centrist, but he lost to Fetterman, who is mentally challenged, to put it mildly. Blake Masters was bright and interesting, and lost to a boring boomer. Seems like these losses were due to the fact that the RNC refused to financially support candidates that veer too far from the approved message, plus demographic changes and mail in voting.

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The poll you use to prove people support federal government agencies was taken before the Covid regime, which renders it as relevant as a poll about the DoD before 1967 or so. I would put money that support for each of those agencies (especially the CDC) has but cut by at least 50% in the last three years.

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Don't agree that successful politics relies on a positive message, because recent Democratic successes falsify this notion. Since 2016 Democrats have run on Trump, Trump, Trump. Their apparently successful 2022 messaging centered on "election denial" is an extension of "Trump is bad." They didn't offer any sort of a positive vision, they focused on how much their opponent is Hitler and brought more wokeism in after winning elections on those grounds.

I do agree with you that coming across as angry and bitter appears to be bad for a politician, which explains the success of people like John Fetterman and Joe Biden. Sure, they might be literal corpses, but that's the thing--dead people aren't very scary or threatening. I can totally buy that people vote against the person they hate more/are more scared of, not for the guy they actually like. If we take the broader view of the past few election cycles, I think it would be reasonable to frame it as Trump and his buddies coming across as bitter, angry, and resentful, and losing because of it.

But that still does not mean Democrats offered any kind of positive message. They just succeeded in painting the other guys as losers. It also fits the 2016 outcome if we consider Hillary as someone who was bitter over all her previous political scandals compared to Trump who was fresh at the time and did not yet have anything to act resentful about.

This is not to say that I don't think it's a good idea to offer people a positive vision for their lives, either. I think it is good to do that. But number one, I don't necessarily think it follows that "our democracy" is any good at actually doing that or incentivizes politicians to do it, and number two, doing that honestly would involve treading upon forbidden ground (i.e. suggesting that family, community, and *gasp* maybe even religion! actually matter and are good things) and is thus disallowed.

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RH again with solid analysis. I believe I can paraphrase it as "Republicans are losers, Democrats are not; Republicans will lose less and win more if they become more like winners in key ways." This seems true enough, but is answering a question most Republicans aren't asking: "How do we win elections?"

It might seem shocking that politically-interested people could not put "win elections" at the top of the priority stack, but this is just what Yudkowsky meant when he said that rationalism = winning.

But wait just a sec -- this comment so far might seem biased against Republicans. Let's look again and see if I've missed something. Oh, yes! Being on the losing side of a conflict doesn't mean being on the wrong side of it, and some people (deontologists, perhaps) do what they feel is right, and often get very very angry about people doing things that feel wrong -- especially if they're doing it to the deontologist's own family and community.

Sure, it's easy to be on the winning side when a massive army attacks one's less-numerous country -- just switch teams! Don't you want to win? Don't let pesky and outdated concepts like "treason" stand in your way!

All important issues recognizable to conservatives a century ago have been definitively decided in favor of progressives, beyond any possibility of redress. The trend seems likely to continue. Conservatives will continue to lose, and maybe they'd lose a little slower if they gave up being angry about it, and gave up being white or christian or rural or any of the rest. But what would be the point? Shouldn't they just join the winning team?

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Do brown people have a comparative advantage in adopting the mantle of 90s Liberalism? Woke activists don't seem to really know what to do with them.

A white guy that runs on returning to 90s Liberalism will get accused of wanting to gas trans people and deport minorities to Auschwitz or whatever.

But when a brown guy promotes color-blind views that were the norm a few decades ago, the progressives are less riled up and there's more room to thread the needle.... stake out a more neutral position. Or so it seems.

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The Pew poll didn't surprise me, but it did depress me. I can take some solace in the fact that it was from March 2020... just before the public got more data.

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That's a very well argued essay. Unfortunately for you, as Ramaswamy is currently polling between zero and one points in the republican primary (https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/republican_nomination_polls/#!), it is all worthless dribble without a shred of truth to be found. Trump is far ahead, followed by DeSantis. To those of us that live in the real world rather than up in the clouds, it seems that bitterness sells. On both the left and the right grievance is the order of the day. You might bother to include some statistics the next time that you decide to present yourself as a genius political strategist, though in this case there are none to be found in your favour.

I took particular umbrage at this line:

"...and the need for an immigration system based on merit, rather than a globalist conspiracy to flood first world countries."

You mean the conspiracy that politicians are following their openly stated policy positions on immigration? (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/flashback-joe-biden-constant-unrelenting-immigration) I expect this kind of dishonest framing from the mainstream media, but I had expected better of your blog.

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I always feel somewhat low status when attempting to advance criticisms of the dominant cultures of financialisation, borderless trade, DEI and so on. But is this because one is inevitably associated with actually low status people, who just react to everything on a gut level (and often construct mad stories which may actually be allegories that they mistake as reality)?

Richard seems to be onto something here and I hope he keeps talking about it.

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Feb 23, 2023·edited Feb 23, 2023

This entire post is rather tedious. You’re correct that the low status, stupidity problem is the biggest thing hindering Republicans, your proscription of returning to Bush like pro-immigration, Reagan politics is so stale it beggars belief. I’d rather live under a literal Communist government than have to endure that crap again. It doesn’t even penetrate the woke narrative. It’s literally “ok, I accept that our country exists only to extract wealth from the land and provide more to the great god GDP, we’ll just do it more efficiently and not under the guise of helping oppressed minorities or whatever.” Worthless. Cede every moral argument to the Left. Let’s see where that got the British Tories and Canada, oh yeah, LOL.

In fact your argument is basically “Republicans should become like the Tories”. Ramaswamy is literally just Rishi Sunak. Well given they are about to be vaporized from orbit electorally by like 20 points, I’m not sure your advice is wise. The reality is the voters want immigration restriction because they are motivated by nativist tendencies. You burn them they’ll just vote for Daddy Biden and the social welfare state in lieu of a genuine nationalist program.

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Richard, do you think your endorsement will help or hurt Vivek? Even if he agrees with you (as I'm sure a lot of people do) about "womens' tears" and police profiling, those positions are very easy to paint in a bad light politically.

Have you tried inviting him to your podcast?

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Generally the Democrats since Bill Clinton have presented a moderate facade while deferring to their activist base behind the scene (ie Biden rhetoric on immigration versus how his appointees behave).

Do you recommend Republicans take a similar approach?

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***the need…not to fight a “deep state” cabal conspiring against Republicans***

Doesn’t this depend on whether or not there actually IS a “deep state” cabal conspiring against Republicans?

Do you think Russiagate, the first bogus Trump impeachment, the suppressing of information about the Hunter Biden laptop and all the other censorship accomplished by government collaborating media and tech companies, and all the other government/media hoaxes were NOT “conspiring against Republicans”?

Or do you just think that it’s so low-status to complain about these conspiracies that Republicans should stop fighting them?

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So I looked at Vivek's twitter, read his pitch, and he seems fine. I don't think he'll win the nom but I'd prefer him over all the candidates save for 1 or 2 maybe. But other than I guess abortion and vaccines, doesn't seem that different than Desantis. And Desantis is fairly moderate on both of those issues. Also Vivek doesn't seem particularly hawkish on Ukraine (which I like, but everyone else, including Hanania, is now saying is a political liability).

What am I missing? Is he trying to thread the needle? He seems like a slightly more positive version of Desantis. Is there really that much daylight between them?

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