Pongalh
5mo ago
I've heard progressives say that abolishing the Civil Rights Act is absolutely letting back in Jim Crow and full blown racism. They don't believe Constitutional talk of the value of federalism or decentralization and private, voluntary action. No, CRA removal is just an exterminationist aim.
Pongalh
9mo ago
Good post. This kind of humility is a hallmark of classical liberal thinking. Such thinking has of course gone out of vogue lately.
Pongalh
1yr ago
I think something different about today's moralism, or why youth are no longer suspicious of it, is because they see it as largely enforced by themselves. Enforced horizontally rather than vertically. While it is also wielded vertically, it doesn't seem like that's where it finds it's legitimacy.
Youth of the 80s and 90s felt the power was being wielded vertically and in an illegitimate fashion they couldn't agree with, fundamentally. They were also less consumed by credentialism, theory and, well, words. So while they had a vague sense of their own moralism it's nowhere near as self-conscious and cohesive as that of Gen Zs and Millennials. Not to mention reinforced through documentation everywhere they look within the new information environment.
Pongalh
6mo ago
The curious thing about Maine is that its most popular language after English is French. It makes sense being adjacent to Quebec but it's not a popular fact. (I remember reading this factoid about 10 years ago so maybe Spanish has now edged it out.)
That Walking Dead spin-off Daryl Dixon depicts this actually.
Pongalh
7mo ago
More than half of all smartphones are Apple, in the US. Interesting that the affluent set uses the most popular phone. You'd think there'd be a "rich people phone" that stands out among the plebs.
(Maybe it does, and it's the fanciness of said iPhone, i.e. new and not used, or more memory, that makes the difference.)
Pongalh
4mo ago
Right. How many wealthier conservative white men who aren't particularly culturally aggrieved - but are economically savvy - have attained that status, indirectly, by advertising (read cultural) trends that do not put the likes of them front and center?
Pretty convenient that elite realignments are cool and edgy (edgy though really?...VC and non-profit realignments as edgy?) given that's the easiest thing to get behind. Relatedly, inequality soars... inequality is actually cool!
And how about simply being not anti-semitic, not philo-semitic? In fact philo-semitism seems a good way of generating more anti-semitism.
Pongalh
7mo ago
You make a good point. Strictly speaking an economic analysis of this stuff should be culture-free, with no implicit notion that the employers are conscientious, bright and noble and their employees are parasitic drag-em-downs. They are just two groups of actors engaged in contractual dispute/process. Whatever emerges from that just is the market. There's no reason why a victorious union should not be thought of as the clever, superior stock of human capital.
But the US-style Daniel Plainview conservativism always leaks its way in.
Pongalh
3mo ago
The "lying flat" movement in China would seem to buttress what you're saying.
Pongalh
10mo ago
That's interesting because "neurotypical" I thought to be genuinely merely descriptive.
I'm beginning to believe that anyone who pays close enough attention to politics can't actually approach these things as JAQ neutral liberal. Before you can sincerely suggest X is descriptive, someone will convincingly tell you that term has already been weaponized and is not just descriptive.
Those who lament the hijacking of liberalism are forced to participate in such hijacking lest they show themselves to be rubes who just fell off the proverbial turnip truck.
Anyone approaching politics in a "descriptive, neutral" way is a con artist or a moron.
Pongalh
7mo ago
A curious premise.
The prevalence of climate change is impervious to anyone's opinion about climate change. But people's opinion about anti-semitism does seem more "dynamic," in relation to the actions of anti-semitism orgs.
Pongalh
7mo ago
Wow. Nice. I stand to inherit a Ford hybrid. And that's about it.
"Better than a stick in the eye!" my dad likes to say.
Pongalh
1yr ago
I was living in San Francisco for the past few months (and may return in the new year) and when riding Bart in the odd hours I decided to just ditch the fair. I felt like a chump paying when so many others neglected to; and when the machines didn't work, and there was no one around to help. You just want to get the hell out of those rotten stations as quick as possible at ~midnight in any case.
So I saw how deterioration of norms can come after the bourgeois too. I never skipped fare before but this year was a tipping point.
Pongalh
1yr ago
"Show me a hot woman, and I'll show you a man who's tired of fucking her."
Things will get tired. What you can imagine you can have will always be greater than what you can actually procure. One has to just live with that fact and begin de-prioritizing sexual variety.
There was about a two-year period in which I was with a woman who was into bringing other people into bed, but I knew it had a built-in but fuzzy expiration date. Kind of dysfunctional and couldn't go on for long.
Pongalh
6mo ago
Armstrong and Getty are somethin else. They are so incredibly unknown among any of the right people, but they've been doing their thing for 25 years or so.
I used to listen to them while delivering flowers in Sacramento in the mid-2000s. The effect of aging has not yet affected their voice/delivery. They haven't skipped a beat.
Pongalh
7mo ago
Being for a strong military as an expression of national virility but also being isolationist seems like a strange combination to me. What should the military do then? Lots of drills and restricting yourself to monitoring the coasts certainly doesn't seem particularly glorious as a display of male capacity.
I think the part of the New Right that is big on the former realizes there's tension here, and so they've actually gone in for interventionism to square the circle, and want to separate themselves from the loser-y defeatist vibes of the libertarian non-interventionists.
Not liking libertarianism is really big with the new right, and being anti-war there is a trope. So that ends up being implicated in their disdain for free market liberals. But of course if you go too far this direction you end up right back in NeoConland.
Pongalh
1yr ago
"Can something be a culture war topic by being culture war free?"
This reminds me of the notion of "radical centrist." It sounds oxymoronic but makes sense when a significant number of people move away from centrism such that centrism inches closer to an offensive abnormality.
Pongalh
1yr ago
I remember that as well. It was essentially secular population reductionists against often religious pro-natalism types.
The fashionability of Westerners telling people in the Global South to have fewer babies has diminished since then, weirdly putting progressives closer to Catholic conservatism stateside that hated the efforts of the United Nations etc.
Pongalh
1yr ago
Yeah I think of the YouTube shooter as a kind of weird unsung hero or patron saint of those who are slaves to social media view counts. A uniquely 21st century kind of disgruntled.
Speaking of QAnon, the focus there seemed to be Jeffrey Epstein and his ilk, or a bunch of wealthy straight guys diddling young girls. How has that morphed in the last few years into an obsession with drag queen groomers?
Is the continuity just a focus on the intersection of children and debaucherous sexuality that just follows where the news and vibes go, almost unconsciously?
Pongalh
1yr ago
Yes the whole idea of touching grass can easily be construed as a form of escapist quietism.
I think if you care about the direction of society something you simply have to risk mental unwellness and a certain myopic obsession with politics.
Though there are weird implications of this, like conservatives being less interested in grillpilling and having families and instead staying single and devoting all their resources to politics, much like progressives do.
Pongalh
5mo ago
You can make $100,000 a year managing a Taco Bell??
And if so, are the dating prospects awful because despite your solid income because you work at Taco Bell? I suppose if you restrict yourself to the people that actually come into your store and buy a chalupa things aren't that bad.
That's pretty much Thomas DiLorenzo's shtick
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