I think the perspective of someone like Hanania is to a large degree born of the way social media just presents an onslaught of topicality. It's non-stop news, which is entirely made up of object level details and the triggered sentiment that goes along with that. It's very difficult to think high level, more like a political philosopher. Everyone goes into second order intellectual mode ala journalism, not some kind of academic-style creative synthesizer. A low-key tabloidization of everything is where even the smartest people are basically at now, and they're beginning to rationalize it. "Great minds think about ideas, media minds think about events, small minds think about people" is being rendered almost impossible to uphold.
People have already talked about the way the age of books and newspapers allowed for more disembodied reasoning. Now it's a bunch of little thumbnails of someone whose face you just want to punch (in an online environment that mimics a small town, as Megan McArdle observed) and whatever argument is attached to that, well so much the worse for it.
The people on the right who think the problem now is we didn't censor enough back in the day, I'm not sure what could have been done then would have any bearing on where we are now. Who saw censorship largely occurring in private hands in a handful of companies in California? 99% of the discussion of censorship had everything to do with government actions until about 5 minutes ago.
Pongalh
2yr ago
When you say in private in response to stated opposition, it suggests that they privately admit to this. But they don't even do that in private, in my experience. But they do often behave as if they believe it, yes.
Pongalh
2yr ago
The tireless focus on blacks exclusively really gives away an America-centric worldview. I'm enjoying Sandman on Netflix but wow does that colorwash everyone except blacks and whites.
Pongalh
2yr ago
This is interesting because I believe that studies have shown progressives relatively unhappy and often mentally ill. Their myopia the causes them distress in service of the cause, but allows them to rack up political wins. The grill pillers otoh are on the periphery making little political impact, but generally content and mentally well.
I have anecdotal evidence in support of what you're saying however. In my job there is an emerging team leader who is MtF trans who rallies everyone and engages in all the pats on the back and mutual positive reinforcement you speak of. Real girl power stuff. Of course my team is about 75% female, which helps.
What I find weird is that you would think wordsmiths would be the most sympathetic to this constant abuse of language and it's cheapening, but wordsmiths are precisely the people leading us into this brave New World.
I liking it too intellectuals obviously being the most sympathetic to the idea that free expression is vital. Turns out that was way off base.
In either case, it's because words and ideas have power that they've been abused like this. Only people who understand the heft of a word like genocide can wield it to include people they are sympathetic to but for whom the term should not apply, heretofore.
Pongalh
2yr ago
Right. It would be nice if the trads could both stick it to neoliberalism but also sire a cozy family, but in practice you are definitely more enmeshed within consumerist capitalism when you go the marriage and children route. It matches my own observations of people my age who are married. Buying drones, Amazon Prime membership, Disney+, two homes, new cars, Vrbo rentals.
Tangentially, the people I know who become successful enough to actually live something of a life the boomers got to enjoy are more into progressive nostrums, not less. It kind of makes sense; the more professional success - required to have a family - the more you're not able to turn a blind eye to woke rituals but actually must participate. Kids in schools, ditto.
The most conservative guys I know are single.
Pongalh
2yr ago
I feel like there's some kind of revisionist history going on with this whole conservatism is actually just fine with not being prepared to have kids, you'll learn it along the way!
That was absolutely not the impression or messagw I got growing up in the '80s and '90s. It was considered quite important to be prepared to have children. You don't just pump one out and hope for the best.
Pongalh
2yr ago
Agreed. Progressives like to get very granular with much of their idpol classifications but not THIS granular. Just as the HBD folk like to say that evolution does not end at the neck, racial classification does not end at White People.
One way of undermining the woke stack is to deny any of it matters, perhaps ala official colorblind civic nationalism, and deliberately obfuscating. Another way of undermining it is to say that every kind of ethnicity or racial classification matters, massively muddying their methodological waters.
You can sound kind of moronic and simple if you take the former tack. But if you actually appreciate what the civic nationalists aim for, might maintain a sophisticated credibility by going far beyond what the progressives do. Hopefully exploding their paradigm, provoking exhaustion, and falling back on civic nationalism by default.
Pongalh
2yr ago
You're right about vulnerable young men. I remember reading that the average Robinhood user balance is $200.
Update: it's $240.
Well there are many on the dissident right and weirdo left who believe that the world both before social media and orthogonal to it is the real mind virus. So they have a complicated relationship with acknowledging this kind of problem.
Pongalh
2yr ago
This reminds me of what the criminologist Mark Kleiman proposed years ago, before he died.
But as we know policy is now dictated by social media which makes anything smart almost impossible to implement. It's about competing vibes. And the vibe around this still looks far too right wing, I'm sure.
This is too totalizing and bleak. It's a matter of degree of censorship, and approximation to liberal attitudes on speech. It hasn't been exactly like it is now since forever, otherwise we wouldn't all be talking about censorship in the current era as if something important really has changed in the last decade or so.
Tangentially, speaking in terms of "we shouldn't let that happen again, so let's censor harder," fails to grasp that there are a number of disagreements within one's own tribe or political camp.
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