"Based," in Richard's scenario is just so obviously "Woke, but it's opposite day." Can that really be the depth of thought behind a trifecta-winning movement?
If so, at least it will be short-lived. It has all the problems of Woke - including normie-alienating purity spirals (impurity spirals? Degeneracy spirals?)
Orwell also warned about the threat of not just pigs turning into men, but men turning into pigs. He feared that the advantages of ruthless human harvesting proving so great to the leadership classes of society that eventually everywhere would turn into Animal Farm.
Thankfully, the advantages of capitalism proved too much for socialist slavery to overcome in the prior century. I'm not sure we'll be so lucky this time.
I first encountered the term "based" used by Breadtubers (leftist youtubers). I now see it is used on the right as well. It appears to be a thing among the youngs whose minds have been overthrown by social media.
E.g arguing that "white men are privileged" so need to be punished is not virtue. It is sadism.
As is most of the hateful talk of so-called anti-racists, feminist advocates and the LGBTQQs.
That it is often communicated in a passive aggressive actually makes it more sadistic, as it holds you are not just to accept your punishment, but to celebrate it even asbyou are to pretend it isn't happening!
At least the MAGA lot have the courage to break out of this trap.
Affirmative action is a euphemism for racial and sexual discrimination against white people and men. Have the courage to at least call it what it is before accusing other people of being "cringe."
Nobody's punishing anyone. "Sadism" is absurd theatrics. You can agree or disagree with woke ideas, but they were clearly motivated by a desire to help the vulnerable and advance equality and make the world and country better for everyone, which is virtuous and empathetic and the opposite of the right.
Far from breaking from a trap, MAGA have been so consumed by resentment about this that it's shaped their entire worldview. You're still in the trap kid.
"You can agree or disagree with woke ideas, but they were clearly motivated by a desire to help the vulnerable and advance equality and make the world and country better for everyone."
That is a howler. I don't know where you grew up, but in my longtime Sacramento and Bay Area residencies that this is not true for nearly all but middle and upper class women with often Christian backgrounds. The rote self-flagellating, apologetic white and other progressives hoping to seize on any indication of anti-white bias - including insufficient appreciation for others' ethnic prides - is not the result of a kindhearted agenda. We're very far from some kind of midcentury brotherhood of man generic liberalism.
Woke is zero-sum and punitive.
(And yes MAGA diehards are ridiculous in another way.)
What a wheeze! "I'm not discriminating against you. I'm just helping out the others by discriminating for them (in a zero sum game that must inevitably result in discrimination against you). I'm motivated by only good and kind things, therefore I have no sadistic side at all!"
Fuck you and your dishonesty, even if the first person you're using it on is yourself.
Reducing the whole of progressive ideology to affirmative action is evidence that you're still in the trap.
Refusal to engage with the actual arguments for affirmative action - that it levels the playing field by correcting for preexisting advantages - is evidence that you're still in the trap. Still in your angry muttering resentful bubble.
I don't support affirmative action. But I am fair-minded enough to engage with its actual arguments, instead of convincing myself that its advocates were sadists who get off on watching white people suffer.
Sorry, you're not a good person. You just desperately want to see yourself as one. You're a coward who'll accept any fig leaf for a pat on the head. An enabler and therefore equally responsible.
No amount of bloviating should be able to hide the direct effect of affirmative action from someone with a brain.
When you read the news, you get the impression that a bunch of edgy 4chan teenagers are setting policy. I had assumed that was an exaggeration and these people were a little smarter than that, but it seems I was wrong.
Yeah... I don't even know how to respond to a question like that. It's breathtaking.
Should it be mocking? Or like a thorough explanatory opprobrium? Or should no one even dignify it with a response?
I don't know what's politically effective anymore, but I'm hopeful that most of the people who put Trump in power, or those who merely stood by, aren't so ideologically confused as this.
What a leading question and terrible framing. Our country was being destroyed by the religious fervor of progressives and their ideology. Those men in skirts, well, their aesthetics are a symbol of their ideology.
Oh yes those black Lives Matters riots were great for the US. DEI, de facto open borders, gender ideology. All just aesthetically displeasing but great for the country.
"Edgy 4chan teens" = a large implicit set of ideas about the world
"Old guys wearing skirts" = pure aesthetics with zero intellectual content
One day I hope you develop the level of epistemology necessary to at least list non-aesthetic traits when suggesting one group is worse at decision making.
I would not say that MamaBear mentioned DEI at all, nor would I say that guys wearing funny outfits is DEI. I guess they probably correlate but in that case you're just complaining that they're left-of-center but using aesthetics as a crutch to try to provoke a disgust response so you don't have to engage with any ideas.
You’re right. Mentally unwell men are full of intellectual content. I’m just a bigoted jerk who cannot separate my distaste for their fetishes from their intelligence. Meanwhile all s are 4 Chan imbeciles lacking a cohesive and positive world view.
Everyone on Richard’s substations obsessed with IQ and th ultimate insult is being low IQ. Everything is forgiven if your IQ is high enough even cross dressing freaks.
Sam Brinton and Mr Levine are not some intellectual heavyweights and the progressive ideology has been corrosive and destructive for decades.
The people setting the wide majority of Biden policies were the squarest nerds you've ever met. They weren't cross-dressing; they were middle-aged married guys with two kids and a dog.
Remarkable how much this reads in content like the kind of conversation you might see among young gang members in dictatorships. The boastful bragging about how your gang-leader is the best, the one-upmanship of edginess and lust for violence, the misogyny and lawlessness and endless racism.
These people talk about how they're preserving western civilization, but they're the vandals destroying it.
One thing I've noticed about US politics is that sometimes Side A will adopt Side B's positions without explicitly declaring that it did so.
In this particular case, I strongly suspect many Trumpian reactionaries got their implicit political positions from the woke left: modern democracy is a sham, your race is the most important thing about you, American institutions are contemptible, Western civilization is overrated, oligarchic capitalism destroys the social fabric, grievances are paramount, "we" need to stop "them" from "exploiting" us, etc.
The thing that's a bit puzzling is to see the left protest so loudly when its own claims are taken to their logical conclusions. If the US is irrevocably and systemically racist and neo-colonialist, shouldn't we be happy to see American influence on other countries wane? We should be cheering Trump on when he destroys American power and declares that we'll stop "policing" certain parts of the globe. And if there's a global economic slowdown, think of the benefits for degrowth! Why aren't any leftists happy about this?
Seems like Chomsky was the only one on the left who even tried to be ideologically consistent (e.g. sympathizing with Russia over the US in the Ukraine conflict). Granted, I don't know how much internal content there was to Chomsky's ideology beyond just "America bad". But at least he was consistent about it!
And how about that deep-seated racism at the heart of American institutions? Shouldn't we be quite glad that DOGE is taking a hammer to that stuff, since it was proven to be virtually unfixable?
In some sense it all flows downstream from negativity bias on social media. People are too cowardly to offer any sort of full-throated defense of any kind of positive vision because that would be too cringe, or it wouldn't generate the controversy necessary for virality. So you get opposing tribes of negativists competing to tear everything down.
This article is a classic example of the dishonest and sadistic passive aggressive style.
Writer *splits the world into good guys and bad guys* *claims bad guys are about power and control* *implies you're a bad guy who is about power and control if you don't do what the writer says and if you don't submit to their control* *layers in more emotional blackmail* *tells you you're even bad if you don't celebrate it.*
Pure sadism. From beginning to end. You are everything you hate but to dishonest to even begin to reflect upon it.
It is astonishing that human societies got this far without developing the social technology to easily out this kind of bid for power and to make those who use it take ownership of themselves.
I agree, I just want to see more of an explicit "we were wrong and here's why I think we got it wrong" moment.
After all, in 2024, approximately 0.00005% of America's black population was shot by cops while unarmed. I'm sure it will only be a few years before we once again realize that this is worth burning down buildings for. Why would a conservative enlist in the military and risk their life in order to defend such a horrendous country?
Sorry, I couldn't resist a little sarcasm because I find this situation so frustrating.
There's something hilarious about accusing the left of exaggerating the extent of black people's risk from police in one sentence, and accusing them of "burning down all of the nation's buildings" in the next.
Sometimes, people speak loosely. They signal directionally. Especially when they are frustrated and venting at a moment of national chaos and emotional upheaval. Give them as much grace as you give yourself.
I mean, Tucker Carlson and the talking heads at Fox News were all full throated supporters of the Iraq War. They shouted "treason" at anyone who disagreed. They scoffed at the 10 million people who protested against it. They called John Kerry an effete girly man because he can speak fluent French.
None of them later said they were wrong. They just changed positions to get on board with Trump.
I absolutely agree with this! I think there's a lot of room for humility about the past with a focus specifically on how things will be different next time. This doesn't have to agree with the rightists about race, simply present candidly some of the reasons Wokeness failed and the lessons people have learned. It's politically questionable in terms of dividing your coalition though.
I think there's a much stronger case to be made for doing this around Joe Biden and the coverup of his age specifically. I'm a Democrat and I'd feel much safer with the Democratic party if it felt like they were truly cognizant of how bad the entire Joe Biden saga was and how important it is to demonstrate that the party is taking those issues seriously and ensuring that nothing like that can ever happen again. It's nowhere near as bad as dictator Trump is turning out to be, but Joe Biden attempting to run again was still extremely bad. It discredited all of liberal democracy in a time when liberal democracy needed Democrats the most.
"The medieval peasant had more freedom than we do, and it was rooted in an understanding of his place in the cosmos... Foot fetishes weren't a thing, think about how confused we are today." God this was funny.
The K-Town in the city where I live has a creation myth. Years ago when the first Korean immigrants arrived the neighborhood they settled in was largely African American. Racial tensions ran high. The matter was resolved when a hundred Korean men armed themselves with knives, bats and clubs and brawled with the locals in the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse. The Koreans drove off their opponents and subsequently the neighborhood underwent a rapid demographic shift.
Human beings evolved in a period of resource scarcity. They are hard wired for competition, if not outright conflict. Emphasize tribal differences and you get tribes, and isn't the raison d'etre of a tribe fighting with other tribes?
We have a generation of kids of all colors who are subject to competing impulses. On one hand they have grown up in the most multiracial generation in American history. On the other the forces of the educational establishment have preached the primacy of racial differences.
Emphasize tribal differences and you get tribes. Twenty years ago Americans thought they had a solution for living in a genuinely diverse society made up of different races and religions. It was called "the melting pot" and it emphasized assimilation and the commonalities between Americans.
But liberal philosophy poo-poos those ties that bind. Patriotism? The stuff of bigots and racists. The American dream? A conspiracy used by capitalist oligarchs to enslave the masses. The melting pot? Insufficiently sensitive to the disparate impact of systemic racism on minorities.
But what unifying factors do they propose as a replacement? None. And so the country busies itself devising secret handshakes and passphrases because the easiest way to die in a period of chaos is to go it alone, to be without a gang to back you up and deter aggressors. Quite the mess.
The thing that really fascinates me is how just in the past few years, the left has (thanks mainly to Ukraine, I believe?) basically decided that American power is essential for the world, and they're panicking that Trump is destroying it. Quite the pivot from the Floyd years, back when 1619 was our true founding date.
To be clear, I respect someone who's capable of admitting they are wrong. But if leftists think that they made a mistake, I want to see an explicit admission of that, a reflection on what went wrong, and a defense of an explicit *positive* vision for the US, what it means to be an American (positive connotation) and what our role in the world should be. Otherwise I'm going to keep assuming that modern left ideology is a fog which disappears when the wind redirects.
It's even the case that previous generations of progressive got this right. What was MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech but an explicit positive statement of what he wanted US race relations to look like? Why is it that the modern left always wants to talk about our contemptible Confederate monuments, and never our glorious Union monuments? (Does the average American even know that Union monuments exist? Those guys lived in incredibly gruesome conditions, and died in the tends of thousands -- all they wanted in exchange is that history remembered them for helping to end slavery. Was that too much to ask for?)
The reason you’re confused is you seeing the mainstream center left and leftist intellectuals and activists as the same people. They aren’t. There is a big difference between a Clinton, Obama, or Biden and some random Marxist college professor. Mainstream Democrats have always been saying America is a force for good in the world.
I don't know about you, but I don't waste my time arguing with the political equivalent of the crazy homeless person who thinks the pigeons are out to get her.
I think some historical perspective is in order: "The Year of Floyd" as you call it couldn't hold a candle to 1968, and society somehow made it through then. In fact, most of those protestors grew up to become Trump voters lol.
I’m waiting for my apology from the climate deniers, but I recognise that it’s ridiculous to realistically expect anyone to really give us our satisfaction.
The idea that there was some time in American history where there was no racial division is nonsense. Hanania doesn't even support civil rights!
Wokeism is hugely misguided, but conservatives like to tell themselves that there was some glorious time where America was colorblind, and the libs messed it up. There was never such a time.
You're literally commenting on the substack of America's most reasonable conservative, who is publicly and explicitly racist. Trump was sued for illegally screening black people from his buildings.
This doesn't mean every conservative is racist, or that every conservative lawmaker is. But liberals are not the ones pushing "race realism."
As for your question, the split between regular people isn't whether or not racism is bad. It's that conservatives claim that racism is over, and liberals say that it isn't.
Conservatives claim that systemic racism is nonsense--nobody would deny that chapters of the KKK aren't still kicking around.
Pointing out the shocking disparity in crime rates for blacks isn't "race realism", it's just realism period. It's a fact that nobody debates because it is unquestionably true. If we enter a period where you cannot assert that a fact is a fact then the country is entering dark times indeed.
As for the average citizen the consensus for generations has been the assimilation/the colorblind approach. The woke want to change that to an approach that focuses on racial differences. How does that engender unity?
I'm not really sure what you're saying. If you're saying that black people commit more crimes, yes that's true. A non-woke liberal acknowledges that, but says it's because many black people grow up in very difficult environments. If you say that's because black people are predisposed to violence, as Richard and many other conservative figures do, that's racist.
Liberals may be reluctant to engage in those conversations, because generally people very eager to talk about disparities in black and white crime rates are racist, and there's only so many times you want to argue with bigots.
But again, you reference back to some blissful past where America lived in a colorblind utopia. And again, this time never existed. Wokeness, which asserts that America is irredeemably racist, is a very recent phenomenon that got supercharged after Trump's first election.
David French observed that Trump makes everyone worse. Not just his allies, but his opponents as well.
A lot of observers would peg the start of the new woke period in the US at around 2010, so before Trump arrived on the scene. How could woke possibly be a reaction to Trump's first term?
I am not asserting that the past was a colorblind utopia. The Koreatown I referenced in my original post would have been forged in battle during the 1970's or 1980's. The question isn't really about stamping out racism since that's an impossible task. The question is whether the country was less racist/divided under the old colorblind regime versus the woke emphasis on racial differences.
And from my perspective there is still a lot of denial on the left about the racial differences in crime rates. I don't think that wokies are open minded students of the world who are loath to engage in debate about crime statistics because their opponents are racists--I think wokies are in complete denial of reality and want to brand anybody who discusses these statistics as bigots out of the gate because the facts disagree with one of their cherished narratives.
I suspect that most white people do not appreciate that the relationships between minority groups is at least as fraught as the relationships between minorities and the white majority. Why should they? From the perspective of a white person there are white people and then everybody else.
Somebody who's Asian or black, however, might appreciate that there is substantial anti-black animus in the Asian community just as there is substantial anti-Asian animus in the black community.
My God, it sounds like the problem is much worse than I thought. These people are moral nihilists.
Ironically, while these same people accused the Left of "virtue signaling" for years (i.e. not really believing their moral claims, but announcing them to others) these people are engaged in "Based Signaling" (i.e. not really caring about social conservative positions like abortion, so long as everyone believes in the right "based" things.)
* Woke cancel culture was genuinely awful and nonsensical. When you meet someone else who agrees with you on this, it's real bonding experience. That bonding over anti-wokeness is a stronger bond than the any bond over traditional American ideals like freedom, democracy, prosperity, meritocracy, and strong institutions, which are great things, but were background facts taken for granted when these kids were growing up. No one argued explicitly in favor of them because those arguments were won so decisively generations ago.
* These super-based ideas sort of lack natural predators. Again, I blame wokeness for this one. Most of the woke people just clutch pearls when encountering based ideas. If you actually try to refute the based ideas on their merits, the woke people will try to cancel you for that, using e.g. the Nazi bar argument (which itself is essentially just a viral anecdote with little solid basis so far as I can tell).
I'm actually a bit annoyed with Richard, since in a certain sense he just does a different, more pretentious version of the pearl-clutching. I wish he'd actually do a podcast with one of the based bros and dismantle the ideas on their own merits. I think that's more effective if we're actually gonna move beyond this.
If you *do* record such a podcast Richard, be sure to do your homework. There's a natural asymmetry where the based bro is always more immersed in their ideas than a critic, which creates a natural home-field argumentative advantage for the bro.
>it is a revealing double standard to blame the left’s miscalculation for the right’s intentional behavior, but never the right’s behavior for the left’s miscalculation.
I'm happy to blame extremists on each side for extremists on the other side. Not sure I buy the distinction you're trying to make between "miscalculation" and "intentional behavior".
>Reasonable people stopped quibbling with the left because MAGA radicalized, which made those quibbles into small potatoes by comparison.
Yes, this was one of my arguments for voting for Harris.
>Also, the reason MAGA radicalized was surely not from a dearth of intelligent, principled alternatives available to them. It’s more accurate to say they had little interest in the project of elevated discussion, so they repeatedly rejected those alternatives in favor of the emotions they wanted to feel.
I think they radicalized because Trump was seen as the most credible alternative to wokeness. I feel this quote of yours supports my position:
>Dozens of times in 2016, I had the surreal experience of trying to talk libertarian dudes into small government positions, and watching their brains completely turn off. Watching the thread revert to the culture war.
WRT this quote:
>That’s why “both-sides” became a punchline.
I don't think it became a punchline due to coherent, rational reasoning, but rather groupthink. In any case, if left-wing flaws are driving right-wing flaws (and vice versa), then for the purpose of defeating the right, it makes sense to criticize left-wing flaws. That's usually my motivation in criticizing them. Perhaps you could argue that I should modulate this strategy depending on the position in the election cycle, e.g. be sure to avoid critiquing the left if it's an election year or something. But I did spend a fair amount of time critiquing the right last election year, so...
>You can't reason people out of a position that they never reasoned themselves into.
This could be taken as an argument to address the emotional drivers of Trump's appeal, ie wokeness. What's the alternative? Attack them so they'll dig in harder? That seems to be what your'e implicitly arguing for, but I'm not sure it will go anywhere...
>The fights we choose reflect our priorities and emotional hangups.3 Ultimately, they express our character. They tell the world: of all the problems, these are the ones that most matter to me.
Disagree. I'm allowed to just goof off online and not be super strategic about my internet arguments.
I also just think you may be underestimating wokeness, e.g. I'm not sure it is an exaggeration to claim wokeness, too, is "at war with liberal democracy, the constitution, intellectualism, ethics, truth itself". Of course the MSM would not frame it that way, but I'd want to see an actual objective assessment. I think MAGA is probably correct that the left has not honored the constitution for instance, e.g. justifying abortion based on the fourteenth amendment, and these transgressions have been laundered by elite institutions. And Scott Alexander made an interesting point that authoritarianism laundered by elite institutions is more insidiuous.
>to hold us accountable for the bad arguments of anyone on our side of the aisle, simply because we failed to correct them? That creates a preposterous double standard in how much energy, patience, courage, self-awareness, strategic thinking, and resistance to peer pressure you expect the two tribes to exhibit.
Even Trump explicitly disavows his most radical supporters now and then. I've never seen mainstream liberal politicians do that?
>What actually polarized conservatives against research was the persistent experience of it not being on their side.
Your bailey: "Science says conservatives are wrong. Surely because science is institutionally free of bias, that means conservatives are simply wrong." Your motte: "Well, woke nonsense was only 2-3% of federally funded science under Biden."
From my perspective, 2-3% seems quite high and demonstrates institutional rot which I expect to extend to research on politicized topics, even those which don't match on woke keywords. But even the science that says conservatives are wrong could easily be a part of the 3% Cruz identified, even, with the vast majority of science simply studying non-political topics. Your reasoning just seems rather shoddy to me on this point.
Even a relatively minor-seeming shift from institutional rhetoric that emphasizes intellectual integrity like this, to institutional rhetoric which explicitly aims for left political goals, seems plausibly to be enough to make science on any politicized topic worthless, in my view. The replication crisis shows sciencie is plenty hard enough even when the topic *isn't* politicized.
You could be right though, perhaps I'm too much answering the question of "why I would hypothetically support Trump" rather than the question of "why people actually support Trump". How does the Trump era actually end? One story would be: it ends when the far left loses clout, we nominate a moderate Democrat who's actually willing to explicitly and loudly disavow the excesses of the left in the general election, in a way that makes it ultra clear to voters that they aren't beholden to far-left elements in the institutions. The Dem wins in a landslide, and the GOP realizes that it needs to redesign their party from the ground up if they want to have a shot with the median voter.
In Act II, Max and Alex rape Natasha in the restroom because it’s based to believe that women are whores. James tells them that what they did is not based because she carries his baby. Max and Alex call him a cuck gay Jew, and he is quickly kicked out of the group.
The ordo amoris doctrine is particularly infuriating because Jesus refutes it not just once, but twice. The parable of the Good Samaritan refutes it, as does the Sermon on the Mount. Stupid fake doctrines like ordo amoris are why Jesus commands us not to be bound to the traditions of men (as many Catholics have a strong tendency of doing if such traditions come from Augustine or Aquinas). Here is Matthew 5:43-47
"43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?"
The Pope wrote a letter to American bishops earlier this year that denounced Vance's interpretation of ordo amaris.
In general, the problem with Vance and other people's interpretation of concepts like "ordo amaris" and "America First" is that they are using the metaphor of a line that you are making sure your family gets first place in. That's reasonable as far as it goes. If people are lining up for a meal, I'm gonna try to make sure my daughter gets served first.
But the thing about lines is, after you've taken your turn, you need to get your ass out of the way so that the next person in line can take their turn. I'm gonna try to make sure my daughter gets a good place in line, but I'm also going to make sure she gets out of the way when it's the next person's turn.
People like Vance always omit that last part. They say that we should put Americans first. But they never say that Americans have already been served, so they need to get out of the way and let somebody else take a turn.
That's not really ordo amoris or "America First." Catholic doctrine says that even if your first duty is to your family, you do have a duty towards everyone to some extent. A lesser duty is still a duty. "America First" implies that at some point, somebody gets to be second.
In general most people recognize that we have a duty to both ourselves and our families, and a more general duty to make the world a better place. I don't see why countries should be different. For instance, PEPFAR seems like a good thing. It seems obviously bad that it was canceled and lots of people might die because of it. Maybe if PEPFAR was so expensive that the US government had to cut spending on programs to Americans to pay for it, "America First" might have a point, but it was a tiny fraction of the federal budget.
Yes it is America first and no we don't owe others anything, unless WE choose to do so. For decades, America has put the needs of the rest of the world on the same level as other countries and I'm sick and tired of it, as are many other Americans. America First means WE decide and we can say NO.
There is no duty to make the world a better place, whatever that means anyway. It's all fluff and no substance, meant to be nebulous to justify ridiculous programs and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Go tell the rest of the world to start funding these programs or better yet, send your own hard earned money on a post-tax basis to help those in needs instead of commandeering other people's money to fund NGOs in faraway lands.
America has never put the needs of the world on the same level as that of Americans. Ever. The vast amount of money and effort that the federal government has spent has been on Americans. It's been spent on social security, welfare, defense, education, etc. This is true even though Americans are ludicrously wealthy compared to people in other parts of the world, and other people could definitely use it more.
I'm not one of those crazy utilitarians who thinks that improving the general, impartial welfare of all humanity(ie, making the world a better place) is the only important moral duty. But it's definitely an important one and any moral system that doesn't recognize it is monstrous. You are correct that Americans have a right to decide not to fulfill that duty, but if they choose to exercise that right they are dicks.
Totally ignoring the fact that by doing what America did after world war II in making the world a better place (in particular Europe) we:
1. Kept communism at bay which would have led to a much worse world for all of us.
2. Created markets for the products that Americans produced which led to unparalleled prosperity for Americans.
That is, helping the world be a better place wasn't about making the world a better place for them it was about making a better world for us, Americans. It isn't zero sum.
I used to comfort myself with gentle illusions about the Right. I thought, "Well, there's some crazy folks. But you know what? the Left had crazy hippies back in the day. Still, saner heads prevailed."
I know that the hippies were dumb, but the adults on the far Left usually kept the genuine kooks (like Bill Ayers) off in academia land where they could do the minimal amount of damage. While there are genuinely smart people on the Right, their IQ-effectiveness is diminished because they get their ideas from Catturd and PowerfulTakes. The problem with the Right isn't low-IQ. The problem is that both the low and the high-IQ people on the Right get all their info from the same number of bad actors. (I noticed even the Ivy League educated Ann Coulter was interview Micheal Shellenburger the other day!) X has come to dominate the Right's brain, and this had made it so that everyone from the Ivy League/Silicon Valley types like JD Vance to drunken morons like Pete Hegseth shitpost racist memes in their Signal Chat. That two men at the highest levels of power are doing this speaks volumes. The "edgelord brainrot" goes all the way to the top. What I called (in another comment on this thread) "moral nihilism" is now a feature not a bug of the Right.
The Trump admin has done some great things. It has taken the correct position on Transgenderism (while supporting LGB Americans), supported Israel despite Leftist criticism, repealed an important Civil Rights EO on Affirmative Action, cut taxes, closed the border and is trying to dismantle the Department of Education. Two cheers for Trump!
The problem facing Trump is two fold: First, he has allowed moral and intellectual lunatics like RFKJr and Peter Navarro near the levers of power. Second, I am starting to get the grim feeling that the good things Trump has accomplished are based more in "owning the Libs" than a genuine commitment and understanding of how the world works. This means we can expect more "President Catturd." That is, a President who is all about performative morality. We'll get a President that doesn't really care about closing the border, but just wants to punish immigrants as much as and as publicly as possible ("That'll own the libs!") We'll get someone who doesn't care about policy, except how that policy will play out on X and TikTok ("That'll make Libs on TikTok cry!"). This is the morality of a teenager trolling his teacher on social media, except in this case the teenager isn't hiding behind an anon account, but doing so in front of the world. This dialogue is frightening because it shows that the adults are not in charge. In fact, the adults don't seem too different from their younger soon-to-be-replacements. That's what's most terrifying. That, and the fact that a ton of morons are applauding like clapping seals on X.
Liked but with some reservations. I’d describe myself as a practical liberal - I do believe people’s rights should be upheld but not privileged at the expense of others. That has been one of the problematic consequences of extreme and performative wokeness, and so in areas where the administration is correcting that, I do agree with those actions.
The problem is as you said that Trump perhaps wants to perform rather than reform, and that’s where things get scary. The flouting of the Constitution that we see in the terrorizing of immigrants, legal and illegal, and the attacks on higher education are unconscionable and self-destructive. The President’s attempt to show what a financial genius he is threatens the US and the global economy. And the buddying up to dictators and despots is alarming. What a shame. If Trump wasn’t such a bully and have so profound a need for admiration good could have been done; all we see now is destruction.
I don't know ... After decades of setting policy based on Blank Slatist lies ("let's spend hundreds of billions to equalize test scores until all the children are above average") and cancelling anyone who objects, this really doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world.
Sure, these guys are immature, callow, hypocritical, etc. but at least they are oriented towards basic human values.
The "basic human values" include pandering to a bunch of obese Walmart people. You've gotta ask yourself, what's the next thing Alex Jones is going to have these people riled up about? Sunscreen? Chlorinated swimming pools? The "smart" Trumpers often look the other way, but there's a near-universal refusal to condemn that crap.
Directional orientation that is based on wrong frameworks isn't valuable in terms of who you want in power - negative externalities like holding a belief in 'heritage americans' are the result of the same thinking that lends them to refute blank slatism.
I'm happy to see that you're documenting the rise of this new elite. I think we can all agree that the shift is a good thing, and that the new ideas of this crowd might be our only pathway out of federal budgetary collapse and open borders insanity and NGO vassalage. It seems like you're developing some themes about the unique status signals and language games of this clique, which is interesting. I think that almost anything is better than to have an elite which is strictly forbidden from actually discussing our social problems and from honestly dealing with their causes. If the change comes with a little vapidity and offensiveness, well that's a bargain that I (and most Americans, I suspect) will happily make. Democracy in action, you might say.
Does anyone want to try and make a serious argument for this not being true:
"it’s a characteristic of white people that they treat their women better than third world savages"
Perhaps you can quibble about what a "characteristic" is, but until it is ok to acknowledge what is blatant reality that literally everyone knows, the so-called bssed ritual will have power. You feed it with your constant lies.
Worse, there's an entire mythology that's come from the media over the last few decades, which tries to paint a picture that is opposite to reality, thinking it is being nice to "third world savages", when really it is defaming white people.
An apology for this would go a long way.
You can't expect people to be sensitive to feelings and expressions of polite virtues just after you've spend decades trashing theirs.
Why? Because all of the incentives you've laid down are to trash yours in return.
Say what you will about the virtue-signalling left, at least virtue signalling is better than vice signalling.
"Based," in Richard's scenario is just so obviously "Woke, but it's opposite day." Can that really be the depth of thought behind a trifecta-winning movement?
If so, at least it will be short-lived. It has all the problems of Woke - including normie-alienating purity spirals (impurity spirals? Degeneracy spirals?)
I call it "The Orwell's pigs syndrome". When you are so (maybe pretensiously) devoted to fight an enemy that you eventually metamorphosize into him.
Orwell also warned about the threat of not just pigs turning into men, but men turning into pigs. He feared that the advantages of ruthless human harvesting proving so great to the leadership classes of society that eventually everywhere would turn into Animal Farm.
Thankfully, the advantages of capitalism proved too much for socialist slavery to overcome in the prior century. I'm not sure we'll be so lucky this time.
I first encountered the term "based" used by Breadtubers (leftist youtubers). I now see it is used on the right as well. It appears to be a thing among the youngs whose minds have been overthrown by social media.
Even “Boomer” and “Karen” were invented by leftists. But know are commonly used among rightoids as well
Left-wing vice signalling takes the form of eg cheering for Hamas on October 7
That’s actually based
No, this idiotic concession needs to be erased.
E.g arguing that "white men are privileged" so need to be punished is not virtue. It is sadism.
As is most of the hateful talk of so-called anti-racists, feminist advocates and the LGBTQQs.
That it is often communicated in a passive aggressive actually makes it more sadistic, as it holds you are not just to accept your punishment, but to celebrate it even asbyou are to pretend it isn't happening!
At least the MAGA lot have the courage to break out of this trap.
victim complex rightoids viewing themselves as oppressed by sadists because something like affirmative action exists is so cringe to me.
Affirmative action is a euphemism for racial and sexual discrimination against white people and men. Have the courage to at least call it what it is before accusing other people of being "cringe."
rightoids?
Nobody's punishing anyone. "Sadism" is absurd theatrics. You can agree or disagree with woke ideas, but they were clearly motivated by a desire to help the vulnerable and advance equality and make the world and country better for everyone, which is virtuous and empathetic and the opposite of the right.
Far from breaking from a trap, MAGA have been so consumed by resentment about this that it's shaped their entire worldview. You're still in the trap kid.
"You can agree or disagree with woke ideas, but they were clearly motivated by a desire to help the vulnerable and advance equality and make the world and country better for everyone."
That is a howler. I don't know where you grew up, but in my longtime Sacramento and Bay Area residencies that this is not true for nearly all but middle and upper class women with often Christian backgrounds. The rote self-flagellating, apologetic white and other progressives hoping to seize on any indication of anti-white bias - including insufficient appreciation for others' ethnic prides - is not the result of a kindhearted agenda. We're very far from some kind of midcentury brotherhood of man generic liberalism.
Woke is zero-sum and punitive.
(And yes MAGA diehards are ridiculous in another way.)
What a wheeze! "I'm not discriminating against you. I'm just helping out the others by discriminating for them (in a zero sum game that must inevitably result in discrimination against you). I'm motivated by only good and kind things, therefore I have no sadistic side at all!"
Fuck you and your dishonesty, even if the first person you're using it on is yourself.
Reducing the whole of progressive ideology to affirmative action is evidence that you're still in the trap.
Refusal to engage with the actual arguments for affirmative action - that it levels the playing field by correcting for preexisting advantages - is evidence that you're still in the trap. Still in your angry muttering resentful bubble.
I don't support affirmative action. But I am fair-minded enough to engage with its actual arguments, instead of convincing myself that its advocates were sadists who get off on watching white people suffer.
Sorry, you're not a good person. You just desperately want to see yourself as one. You're a coward who'll accept any fig leaf for a pat on the head. An enabler and therefore equally responsible.
No amount of bloviating should be able to hide the direct effect of affirmative action from someone with a brain.
When he ran out of regurgitated bs, he resorts to name calling. Very intellectual
Concisely and accurately put.
“Vice-signaling” — good term.
When you read the news, you get the impression that a bunch of edgy 4chan teenagers are setting policy. I had assumed that was an exaggeration and these people were a little smarter than that, but it seems I was wrong.
And older men prancing around in skirts and bondage wearing bright pink lipstick is better?
(Gigachad.jpg) Yes.
Hard disagree.
You chose to call yourself "Mama Bear"
Shush, for it is not the product of thinking that you espouse
What a ridiculous question. "Which is worse, something I find aesthetically displeasing, or the complete destruction of our country?"
Yeah... I don't even know how to respond to a question like that. It's breathtaking.
Should it be mocking? Or like a thorough explanatory opprobrium? Or should no one even dignify it with a response?
I don't know what's politically effective anymore, but I'm hopeful that most of the people who put Trump in power, or those who merely stood by, aren't so ideologically confused as this.
What a leading question and terrible framing. Our country was being destroyed by the religious fervor of progressives and their ideology. Those men in skirts, well, their aesthetics are a symbol of their ideology.
Only in your imagination
Oh yes those black Lives Matters riots were great for the US. DEI, de facto open borders, gender ideology. All just aesthetically displeasing but great for the country.
Too much to unpack with your ridiculous statement, but it’s quite rich for you to care about BLM riots. Don’t you have another January 6th to attend?
It seems to me that politics is almost always a choice between bad and worse.
"Edgy 4chan teens" = a large implicit set of ideas about the world
"Old guys wearing skirts" = pure aesthetics with zero intellectual content
One day I hope you develop the level of epistemology necessary to at least list non-aesthetic traits when suggesting one group is worse at decision making.
Would you say DEI is not intellectual content?
I would not say that MamaBear mentioned DEI at all, nor would I say that guys wearing funny outfits is DEI. I guess they probably correlate but in that case you're just complaining that they're left-of-center but using aesthetics as a crutch to try to provoke a disgust response so you don't have to engage with any ideas.
Disgust is a complexly valid response.
Yes I have 💯 disgust for men pretending to be women and destroying women’s rights.
If you hate people destroying women's rights, you're gonna be REALLY upset when you find out what the 19th Amendment is.
And no, disgust is not a valid way to determine truth.
Low-IQ non-response.
You’re right. Mentally unwell men are full of intellectual content. I’m just a bigoted jerk who cannot separate my distaste for their fetishes from their intelligence. Meanwhile all s are 4 Chan imbeciles lacking a cohesive and positive world view.
Everyone on Richard’s substations obsessed with IQ and th ultimate insult is being low IQ. Everything is forgiven if your IQ is high enough even cross dressing freaks.
Sam Brinton and Mr Levine are not some intellectual heavyweights and the progressive ideology has been corrosive and destructive for decades.
"Mentally unwell men are full of intellectual content."
Guy who made this might not have been the most mentally stable, it's still funny:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GocNoVCW8AAhtLD?format=jpg&name=medium
"Sam Brinton and Mr Levine are not some intellectual heavyweights and the progressive ideology has been corrosive and destructive for decades."
Who here is saying they are? You're just making up strawmen to avoid addressing the real issue. And that's caused by low IQ.
The people setting the wide majority of Biden policies were the squarest nerds you've ever met. They weren't cross-dressing; they were middle-aged married guys with two kids and a dog.
Remarkable how much this reads in content like the kind of conversation you might see among young gang members in dictatorships. The boastful bragging about how your gang-leader is the best, the one-upmanship of edginess and lust for violence, the misogyny and lawlessness and endless racism.
These people talk about how they're preserving western civilization, but they're the vandals destroying it.
One thing I've noticed about US politics is that sometimes Side A will adopt Side B's positions without explicitly declaring that it did so.
In this particular case, I strongly suspect many Trumpian reactionaries got their implicit political positions from the woke left: modern democracy is a sham, your race is the most important thing about you, American institutions are contemptible, Western civilization is overrated, oligarchic capitalism destroys the social fabric, grievances are paramount, "we" need to stop "them" from "exploiting" us, etc.
The thing that's a bit puzzling is to see the left protest so loudly when its own claims are taken to their logical conclusions. If the US is irrevocably and systemically racist and neo-colonialist, shouldn't we be happy to see American influence on other countries wane? We should be cheering Trump on when he destroys American power and declares that we'll stop "policing" certain parts of the globe. And if there's a global economic slowdown, think of the benefits for degrowth! Why aren't any leftists happy about this?
Seems like Chomsky was the only one on the left who even tried to be ideologically consistent (e.g. sympathizing with Russia over the US in the Ukraine conflict). Granted, I don't know how much internal content there was to Chomsky's ideology beyond just "America bad". But at least he was consistent about it!
And how about that deep-seated racism at the heart of American institutions? Shouldn't we be quite glad that DOGE is taking a hammer to that stuff, since it was proven to be virtually unfixable?
In some sense it all flows downstream from negativity bias on social media. People are too cowardly to offer any sort of full-throated defense of any kind of positive vision because that would be too cringe, or it wouldn't generate the controversy necessary for virality. So you get opposing tribes of negativists competing to tear everything down.
All the more reason Democrats should take up the mantle as the positive and hopeful Captain America party instead of going back to their own version of wokeism! https://kirazublin.substack.com/p/democrats-for-the-future-what-would
This article is a classic example of the dishonest and sadistic passive aggressive style.
Writer *splits the world into good guys and bad guys* *claims bad guys are about power and control* *implies you're a bad guy who is about power and control if you don't do what the writer says and if you don't submit to their control* *layers in more emotional blackmail* *tells you you're even bad if you don't celebrate it.*
Pure sadism. From beginning to end. You are everything you hate but to dishonest to even begin to reflect upon it.
It is astonishing that human societies got this far without developing the social technology to easily out this kind of bid for power and to make those who use it take ownership of themselves.
I agree, I just want to see more of an explicit "we were wrong and here's why I think we got it wrong" moment.
After all, in 2024, approximately 0.00005% of America's black population was shot by cops while unarmed. I'm sure it will only be a few years before we once again realize that this is worth burning down buildings for. Why would a conservative enlist in the military and risk their life in order to defend such a horrendous country?
Sorry, I couldn't resist a little sarcasm because I find this situation so frustrating.
There's something hilarious about accusing the left of exaggerating the extent of black people's risk from police in one sentence, and accusing them of "burning down all of the nation's buildings" in the next.
Sometimes, people speak loosely. They signal directionally. Especially when they are frustrated and venting at a moment of national chaos and emotional upheaval. Give them as much grace as you give yourself.
I changed it
I mean, Tucker Carlson and the talking heads at Fox News were all full throated supporters of the Iraq War. They shouted "treason" at anyone who disagreed. They scoffed at the 10 million people who protested against it. They called John Kerry an effete girly man because he can speak fluent French.
None of them later said they were wrong. They just changed positions to get on board with Trump.
(Trump also supported the Iraq War.)
I absolutely agree with this! I think there's a lot of room for humility about the past with a focus specifically on how things will be different next time. This doesn't have to agree with the rightists about race, simply present candidly some of the reasons Wokeness failed and the lessons people have learned. It's politically questionable in terms of dividing your coalition though.
I think there's a much stronger case to be made for doing this around Joe Biden and the coverup of his age specifically. I'm a Democrat and I'd feel much safer with the Democratic party if it felt like they were truly cognizant of how bad the entire Joe Biden saga was and how important it is to demonstrate that the party is taking those issues seriously and ensuring that nothing like that can ever happen again. It's nowhere near as bad as dictator Trump is turning out to be, but Joe Biden attempting to run again was still extremely bad. It discredited all of liberal democracy in a time when liberal democracy needed Democrats the most.
"I agree, I just want to see more of an explicit "we were wrong and here's why I think we got it wrong" moment."
I'd like to see that too, but realistically nobody ever apologizes for anything.
chomsky is very consistent indeed in his support of terrorists - ruSSia and hamas
both are now having a good time with trump, so maga really are commies in disguise
if you think about it - gays, abortions and immigrants were just as suppressed in uSSr as they are now in uSSa
"The medieval peasant had more freedom than we do, and it was rooted in an understanding of his place in the cosmos... Foot fetishes weren't a thing, think about how confused we are today." God this was funny.
Hey, you skipped the best part which was the idea that the village blacksmith would be the one making shoes.
the whole thing was very good. I love how these are sentiments you will actually hear among the based, yet totally crazy.
The K-Town in the city where I live has a creation myth. Years ago when the first Korean immigrants arrived the neighborhood they settled in was largely African American. Racial tensions ran high. The matter was resolved when a hundred Korean men armed themselves with knives, bats and clubs and brawled with the locals in the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse. The Koreans drove off their opponents and subsequently the neighborhood underwent a rapid demographic shift.
Human beings evolved in a period of resource scarcity. They are hard wired for competition, if not outright conflict. Emphasize tribal differences and you get tribes, and isn't the raison d'etre of a tribe fighting with other tribes?
We have a generation of kids of all colors who are subject to competing impulses. On one hand they have grown up in the most multiracial generation in American history. On the other the forces of the educational establishment have preached the primacy of racial differences.
Emphasize tribal differences and you get tribes. Twenty years ago Americans thought they had a solution for living in a genuinely diverse society made up of different races and religions. It was called "the melting pot" and it emphasized assimilation and the commonalities between Americans.
But liberal philosophy poo-poos those ties that bind. Patriotism? The stuff of bigots and racists. The American dream? A conspiracy used by capitalist oligarchs to enslave the masses. The melting pot? Insufficiently sensitive to the disparate impact of systemic racism on minorities.
But what unifying factors do they propose as a replacement? None. And so the country busies itself devising secret handshakes and passphrases because the easiest way to die in a period of chaos is to go it alone, to be without a gang to back you up and deter aggressors. Quite the mess.
The thing that really fascinates me is how just in the past few years, the left has (thanks mainly to Ukraine, I believe?) basically decided that American power is essential for the world, and they're panicking that Trump is destroying it. Quite the pivot from the Floyd years, back when 1619 was our true founding date.
To be clear, I respect someone who's capable of admitting they are wrong. But if leftists think that they made a mistake, I want to see an explicit admission of that, a reflection on what went wrong, and a defense of an explicit *positive* vision for the US, what it means to be an American (positive connotation) and what our role in the world should be. Otherwise I'm going to keep assuming that modern left ideology is a fog which disappears when the wind redirects.
It's even the case that previous generations of progressive got this right. What was MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech but an explicit positive statement of what he wanted US race relations to look like? Why is it that the modern left always wants to talk about our contemptible Confederate monuments, and never our glorious Union monuments? (Does the average American even know that Union monuments exist? Those guys lived in incredibly gruesome conditions, and died in the tends of thousands -- all they wanted in exchange is that history remembered them for helping to end slavery. Was that too much to ask for?)
The reason you’re confused is you seeing the mainstream center left and leftist intellectuals and activists as the same people. They aren’t. There is a big difference between a Clinton, Obama, or Biden and some random Marxist college professor. Mainstream Democrats have always been saying America is a force for good in the world.
I didn't see them arguing against the 1619 people.
I don't know about you, but I don't waste my time arguing with the political equivalent of the crazy homeless person who thinks the pigeons are out to get her.
You just silently let them commandeer society like they did during the Year of Floyd?
Oh, c'mon--"commandeer society", please!
I think some historical perspective is in order: "The Year of Floyd" as you call it couldn't hold a candle to 1968, and society somehow made it through then. In fact, most of those protestors grew up to become Trump voters lol.
I’m waiting for my apology from the climate deniers, but I recognise that it’s ridiculous to realistically expect anyone to really give us our satisfaction.
The idea that there was some time in American history where there was no racial division is nonsense. Hanania doesn't even support civil rights!
Wokeism is hugely misguided, but conservatives like to tell themselves that there was some glorious time where America was colorblind, and the libs messed it up. There was never such a time.
Yeah, but what is the better strategy to minimize racial division? Playing up racial differences? Or emphasizing colorblindness?
How did conservatives come to be the guardians of the colorblind approach?
You're literally commenting on the substack of America's most reasonable conservative, who is publicly and explicitly racist. Trump was sued for illegally screening black people from his buildings.
This doesn't mean every conservative is racist, or that every conservative lawmaker is. But liberals are not the ones pushing "race realism."
As for your question, the split between regular people isn't whether or not racism is bad. It's that conservatives claim that racism is over, and liberals say that it isn't.
Conservatives claim that systemic racism is nonsense--nobody would deny that chapters of the KKK aren't still kicking around.
Pointing out the shocking disparity in crime rates for blacks isn't "race realism", it's just realism period. It's a fact that nobody debates because it is unquestionably true. If we enter a period where you cannot assert that a fact is a fact then the country is entering dark times indeed.
As for the average citizen the consensus for generations has been the assimilation/the colorblind approach. The woke want to change that to an approach that focuses on racial differences. How does that engender unity?
I'm not really sure what you're saying. If you're saying that black people commit more crimes, yes that's true. A non-woke liberal acknowledges that, but says it's because many black people grow up in very difficult environments. If you say that's because black people are predisposed to violence, as Richard and many other conservative figures do, that's racist.
Liberals may be reluctant to engage in those conversations, because generally people very eager to talk about disparities in black and white crime rates are racist, and there's only so many times you want to argue with bigots.
But again, you reference back to some blissful past where America lived in a colorblind utopia. And again, this time never existed. Wokeness, which asserts that America is irredeemably racist, is a very recent phenomenon that got supercharged after Trump's first election.
David French observed that Trump makes everyone worse. Not just his allies, but his opponents as well.
A lot of observers would peg the start of the new woke period in the US at around 2010, so before Trump arrived on the scene. How could woke possibly be a reaction to Trump's first term?
I am not asserting that the past was a colorblind utopia. The Koreatown I referenced in my original post would have been forged in battle during the 1970's or 1980's. The question isn't really about stamping out racism since that's an impossible task. The question is whether the country was less racist/divided under the old colorblind regime versus the woke emphasis on racial differences.
And from my perspective there is still a lot of denial on the left about the racial differences in crime rates. I don't think that wokies are open minded students of the world who are loath to engage in debate about crime statistics because their opponents are racists--I think wokies are in complete denial of reality and want to brand anybody who discusses these statistics as bigots out of the gate because the facts disagree with one of their cherished narratives.
Jesus you seem like a disturbed individual. Exaggerating all of society’s problems. You are either an incel or a wifebeater.
I suspect that most white people do not appreciate that the relationships between minority groups is at least as fraught as the relationships between minorities and the white majority. Why should they? From the perspective of a white person there are white people and then everybody else.
Somebody who's Asian or black, however, might appreciate that there is substantial anti-black animus in the Asian community just as there is substantial anti-Asian animus in the black community.
My God, it sounds like the problem is much worse than I thought. These people are moral nihilists.
Ironically, while these same people accused the Left of "virtue signaling" for years (i.e. not really believing their moral claims, but announcing them to others) these people are engaged in "Based Signaling" (i.e. not really caring about social conservative positions like abortion, so long as everyone believes in the right "based" things.)
That these lunatics have power is frightening.
Not really caring about abortion is one thing the Trumpian GOP has in common with the pre-Trump Paul Ryan GOP.
So what created this situation?
* Woke cancel culture was genuinely awful and nonsensical. When you meet someone else who agrees with you on this, it's real bonding experience. That bonding over anti-wokeness is a stronger bond than the any bond over traditional American ideals like freedom, democracy, prosperity, meritocracy, and strong institutions, which are great things, but were background facts taken for granted when these kids were growing up. No one argued explicitly in favor of them because those arguments were won so decisively generations ago.
* These super-based ideas sort of lack natural predators. Again, I blame wokeness for this one. Most of the woke people just clutch pearls when encountering based ideas. If you actually try to refute the based ideas on their merits, the woke people will try to cancel you for that, using e.g. the Nazi bar argument (which itself is essentially just a viral anecdote with little solid basis so far as I can tell).
I'm actually a bit annoyed with Richard, since in a certain sense he just does a different, more pretentious version of the pearl-clutching. I wish he'd actually do a podcast with one of the based bros and dismantle the ideas on their own merits. I think that's more effective if we're actually gonna move beyond this.
If you *do* record such a podcast Richard, be sure to do your homework. There's a natural asymmetry where the based bro is always more immersed in their ideas than a critic, which creates a natural home-field argumentative advantage for the bro.
wokeness did not create marxism, which is basically what maga is - anti freedom, anti democracy, anti prosperity, anti meritocracy, anti institutions
I wrote on why it's wrong to blame wokeness for the right here. https://exasperatedalien.substack.com/p/liberals-are-not-responsible-for
>it is a revealing double standard to blame the left’s miscalculation for the right’s intentional behavior, but never the right’s behavior for the left’s miscalculation.
I'm happy to blame extremists on each side for extremists on the other side. Not sure I buy the distinction you're trying to make between "miscalculation" and "intentional behavior".
>Reasonable people stopped quibbling with the left because MAGA radicalized, which made those quibbles into small potatoes by comparison.
Yes, this was one of my arguments for voting for Harris.
>Also, the reason MAGA radicalized was surely not from a dearth of intelligent, principled alternatives available to them. It’s more accurate to say they had little interest in the project of elevated discussion, so they repeatedly rejected those alternatives in favor of the emotions they wanted to feel.
I think they radicalized because Trump was seen as the most credible alternative to wokeness. I feel this quote of yours supports my position:
>Dozens of times in 2016, I had the surreal experience of trying to talk libertarian dudes into small government positions, and watching their brains completely turn off. Watching the thread revert to the culture war.
WRT this quote:
>That’s why “both-sides” became a punchline.
I don't think it became a punchline due to coherent, rational reasoning, but rather groupthink. In any case, if left-wing flaws are driving right-wing flaws (and vice versa), then for the purpose of defeating the right, it makes sense to criticize left-wing flaws. That's usually my motivation in criticizing them. Perhaps you could argue that I should modulate this strategy depending on the position in the election cycle, e.g. be sure to avoid critiquing the left if it's an election year or something. But I did spend a fair amount of time critiquing the right last election year, so...
>You can't reason people out of a position that they never reasoned themselves into.
This could be taken as an argument to address the emotional drivers of Trump's appeal, ie wokeness. What's the alternative? Attack them so they'll dig in harder? That seems to be what your'e implicitly arguing for, but I'm not sure it will go anywhere...
>The fights we choose reflect our priorities and emotional hangups.3 Ultimately, they express our character. They tell the world: of all the problems, these are the ones that most matter to me.
Disagree. I'm allowed to just goof off online and not be super strategic about my internet arguments.
I also just think you may be underestimating wokeness, e.g. I'm not sure it is an exaggeration to claim wokeness, too, is "at war with liberal democracy, the constitution, intellectualism, ethics, truth itself". Of course the MSM would not frame it that way, but I'd want to see an actual objective assessment. I think MAGA is probably correct that the left has not honored the constitution for instance, e.g. justifying abortion based on the fourteenth amendment, and these transgressions have been laundered by elite institutions. And Scott Alexander made an interesting point that authoritarianism laundered by elite institutions is more insidiuous.
>to hold us accountable for the bad arguments of anyone on our side of the aisle, simply because we failed to correct them? That creates a preposterous double standard in how much energy, patience, courage, self-awareness, strategic thinking, and resistance to peer pressure you expect the two tribes to exhibit.
Even Trump explicitly disavows his most radical supporters now and then. I've never seen mainstream liberal politicians do that?
>What actually polarized conservatives against research was the persistent experience of it not being on their side.
Your bailey: "Science says conservatives are wrong. Surely because science is institutionally free of bias, that means conservatives are simply wrong." Your motte: "Well, woke nonsense was only 2-3% of federally funded science under Biden."
From my perspective, 2-3% seems quite high and demonstrates institutional rot which I expect to extend to research on politicized topics, even those which don't match on woke keywords. But even the science that says conservatives are wrong could easily be a part of the 3% Cruz identified, even, with the vast majority of science simply studying non-political topics. Your reasoning just seems rather shoddy to me on this point.
Feynman said: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool." https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9377486-that-is-the-idea-that-we-all-hope-you-have
Even a relatively minor-seeming shift from institutional rhetoric that emphasizes intellectual integrity like this, to institutional rhetoric which explicitly aims for left political goals, seems plausibly to be enough to make science on any politicized topic worthless, in my view. The replication crisis shows sciencie is plenty hard enough even when the topic *isn't* politicized.
You could be right though, perhaps I'm too much answering the question of "why I would hypothetically support Trump" rather than the question of "why people actually support Trump". How does the Trump era actually end? One story would be: it ends when the far left loses clout, we nominate a moderate Democrat who's actually willing to explicitly and loudly disavow the excesses of the left in the general election, in a way that makes it ultra clear to voters that they aren't beholden to far-left elements in the institutions. The Dem wins in a landslide, and the GOP realizes that it needs to redesign their party from the ground up if they want to have a shot with the median voter.
Richard, how much of this is transcript (names changed, I assume) vs. emblematic fiction? It reads like the latter plus commentary.
This read like an Act I of a play.
In Act II, Max and Alex rape Natasha in the restroom because it’s based to believe that women are whores. James tells them that what they did is not based because she carries his baby. Max and Alex call him a cuck gay Jew, and he is quickly kicked out of the group.
Who will help me with Act III?
The ordo amoris doctrine is particularly infuriating because Jesus refutes it not just once, but twice. The parable of the Good Samaritan refutes it, as does the Sermon on the Mount. Stupid fake doctrines like ordo amoris are why Jesus commands us not to be bound to the traditions of men (as many Catholics have a strong tendency of doing if such traditions come from Augustine or Aquinas). Here is Matthew 5:43-47
"43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?"
Spoken like a Protestant. Vance is a Catholic so naturally takes the Catholic view.
The Pope wrote a letter to American bishops earlier this year that denounced Vance's interpretation of ordo amaris.
In general, the problem with Vance and other people's interpretation of concepts like "ordo amaris" and "America First" is that they are using the metaphor of a line that you are making sure your family gets first place in. That's reasonable as far as it goes. If people are lining up for a meal, I'm gonna try to make sure my daughter gets served first.
But the thing about lines is, after you've taken your turn, you need to get your ass out of the way so that the next person in line can take their turn. I'm gonna try to make sure my daughter gets a good place in line, but I'm also going to make sure she gets out of the way when it's the next person's turn.
People like Vance always omit that last part. They say that we should put Americans first. But they never say that Americans have already been served, so they need to get out of the way and let somebody else take a turn.
The issue is who must be served. It’s not Americas job to serve the rest of the world. They don’t get to get in line.
That's not really ordo amoris or "America First." Catholic doctrine says that even if your first duty is to your family, you do have a duty towards everyone to some extent. A lesser duty is still a duty. "America First" implies that at some point, somebody gets to be second.
In general most people recognize that we have a duty to both ourselves and our families, and a more general duty to make the world a better place. I don't see why countries should be different. For instance, PEPFAR seems like a good thing. It seems obviously bad that it was canceled and lots of people might die because of it. Maybe if PEPFAR was so expensive that the US government had to cut spending on programs to Americans to pay for it, "America First" might have a point, but it was a tiny fraction of the federal budget.
Yes it is America first and no we don't owe others anything, unless WE choose to do so. For decades, America has put the needs of the rest of the world on the same level as other countries and I'm sick and tired of it, as are many other Americans. America First means WE decide and we can say NO.
There is no duty to make the world a better place, whatever that means anyway. It's all fluff and no substance, meant to be nebulous to justify ridiculous programs and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Go tell the rest of the world to start funding these programs or better yet, send your own hard earned money on a post-tax basis to help those in needs instead of commandeering other people's money to fund NGOs in faraway lands.
America has never put the needs of the world on the same level as that of Americans. Ever. The vast amount of money and effort that the federal government has spent has been on Americans. It's been spent on social security, welfare, defense, education, etc. This is true even though Americans are ludicrously wealthy compared to people in other parts of the world, and other people could definitely use it more.
I'm not one of those crazy utilitarians who thinks that improving the general, impartial welfare of all humanity(ie, making the world a better place) is the only important moral duty. But it's definitely an important one and any moral system that doesn't recognize it is monstrous. You are correct that Americans have a right to decide not to fulfill that duty, but if they choose to exercise that right they are dicks.
Totally ignoring the fact that by doing what America did after world war II in making the world a better place (in particular Europe) we:
1. Kept communism at bay which would have led to a much worse world for all of us.
2. Created markets for the products that Americans produced which led to unparalleled prosperity for Americans.
That is, helping the world be a better place wasn't about making the world a better place for them it was about making a better world for us, Americans. It isn't zero sum.
Amen.
I used to comfort myself with gentle illusions about the Right. I thought, "Well, there's some crazy folks. But you know what? the Left had crazy hippies back in the day. Still, saner heads prevailed."
I know that the hippies were dumb, but the adults on the far Left usually kept the genuine kooks (like Bill Ayers) off in academia land where they could do the minimal amount of damage. While there are genuinely smart people on the Right, their IQ-effectiveness is diminished because they get their ideas from Catturd and PowerfulTakes. The problem with the Right isn't low-IQ. The problem is that both the low and the high-IQ people on the Right get all their info from the same number of bad actors. (I noticed even the Ivy League educated Ann Coulter was interview Micheal Shellenburger the other day!) X has come to dominate the Right's brain, and this had made it so that everyone from the Ivy League/Silicon Valley types like JD Vance to drunken morons like Pete Hegseth shitpost racist memes in their Signal Chat. That two men at the highest levels of power are doing this speaks volumes. The "edgelord brainrot" goes all the way to the top. What I called (in another comment on this thread) "moral nihilism" is now a feature not a bug of the Right.
The Trump admin has done some great things. It has taken the correct position on Transgenderism (while supporting LGB Americans), supported Israel despite Leftist criticism, repealed an important Civil Rights EO on Affirmative Action, cut taxes, closed the border and is trying to dismantle the Department of Education. Two cheers for Trump!
The problem facing Trump is two fold: First, he has allowed moral and intellectual lunatics like RFKJr and Peter Navarro near the levers of power. Second, I am starting to get the grim feeling that the good things Trump has accomplished are based more in "owning the Libs" than a genuine commitment and understanding of how the world works. This means we can expect more "President Catturd." That is, a President who is all about performative morality. We'll get a President that doesn't really care about closing the border, but just wants to punish immigrants as much as and as publicly as possible ("That'll own the libs!") We'll get someone who doesn't care about policy, except how that policy will play out on X and TikTok ("That'll make Libs on TikTok cry!"). This is the morality of a teenager trolling his teacher on social media, except in this case the teenager isn't hiding behind an anon account, but doing so in front of the world. This dialogue is frightening because it shows that the adults are not in charge. In fact, the adults don't seem too different from their younger soon-to-be-replacements. That's what's most terrifying. That, and the fact that a ton of morons are applauding like clapping seals on X.
Liked but with some reservations. I’d describe myself as a practical liberal - I do believe people’s rights should be upheld but not privileged at the expense of others. That has been one of the problematic consequences of extreme and performative wokeness, and so in areas where the administration is correcting that, I do agree with those actions.
The problem is as you said that Trump perhaps wants to perform rather than reform, and that’s where things get scary. The flouting of the Constitution that we see in the terrorizing of immigrants, legal and illegal, and the attacks on higher education are unconscionable and self-destructive. The President’s attempt to show what a financial genius he is threatens the US and the global economy. And the buddying up to dictators and despots is alarming. What a shame. If Trump wasn’t such a bully and have so profound a need for admiration good could have been done; all we see now is destruction.
Yep.
I don't know ... After decades of setting policy based on Blank Slatist lies ("let's spend hundreds of billions to equalize test scores until all the children are above average") and cancelling anyone who objects, this really doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world.
Sure, these guys are immature, callow, hypocritical, etc. but at least they are oriented towards basic human values.
The "basic human values" include pandering to a bunch of obese Walmart people. You've gotta ask yourself, what's the next thing Alex Jones is going to have these people riled up about? Sunscreen? Chlorinated swimming pools? The "smart" Trumpers often look the other way, but there's a near-universal refusal to condemn that crap.
Directional orientation that is based on wrong frameworks isn't valuable in terms of who you want in power - negative externalities like holding a belief in 'heritage americans' are the result of the same thinking that lends them to refute blank slatism.
Orwellian Political Dadaism
I wonder how much of previous movements were performative. Performative militarism, performative anti-intellectualism.
Wield the tards.
I'm happy to see that you're documenting the rise of this new elite. I think we can all agree that the shift is a good thing, and that the new ideas of this crowd might be our only pathway out of federal budgetary collapse and open borders insanity and NGO vassalage. It seems like you're developing some themes about the unique status signals and language games of this clique, which is interesting. I think that almost anything is better than to have an elite which is strictly forbidden from actually discussing our social problems and from honestly dealing with their causes. If the change comes with a little vapidity and offensiveness, well that's a bargain that I (and most Americans, I suspect) will happily make. Democracy in action, you might say.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/leviathan
You have a history of severe substance abuse. It’s clear you are a malignant individual and let’s hope you fall off the wagon permanently.
Does anyone want to try and make a serious argument for this not being true:
"it’s a characteristic of white people that they treat their women better than third world savages"
Perhaps you can quibble about what a "characteristic" is, but until it is ok to acknowledge what is blatant reality that literally everyone knows, the so-called bssed ritual will have power. You feed it with your constant lies.
Worse, there's an entire mythology that's come from the media over the last few decades, which tries to paint a picture that is opposite to reality, thinking it is being nice to "third world savages", when really it is defaming white people.
An apology for this would go a long way.
You can't expect people to be sensitive to feelings and expressions of polite virtues just after you've spend decades trashing theirs.
Why? Because all of the incentives you've laid down are to trash yours in return.
It is a point. Western culture is the most feminist of the big ones--certainly Islamic, Hindu, and East Asian cultures are more patriarchal.