Pongalh
9mo ago
Yeah there seems no reason for Barbie and Oppenheimer to be wedded like they are. Somebody put the Barbenheimer idea out there and it took off like wildfire, like some kind of random evolutionary mutation. So here we are.
For a minute there was a focus on their rival soundtracks but as far as I know Barbie has one and Oppenheimer doesn't. I'd seen someone put together a tracklist for Oppenheimer that included Joy Division of The Cure and other gothy groups and thought it was real, I admit.
Pongalh
6mo ago
I believe it's because Marxism better comports with Christian egalitarianism.
Pongalh
5mo ago
About 10 years ago the economist Stephen Lansburg got in trouble with his progressive students for floating some kind of thought experiment that they found offensive, and I believe it involved rape. An early example of cancel culture in action. They wanted his head.
I remember thinking to myself at the time, "See, this is what distinguishes conservatives from emotional progressives who get triggered by seemingly coldhearted and objective forays into political thought."
That needs reassessment.
Pongalh
3mo ago
Sure, my mom likes her. Boomer Republican, doesn't miss a 49ers game. Not Waspy rich or Jewish or anything like that. My mom works at Home Depot.
Pongalh
4mo ago
From years of reading fact checking sites for my job, this seems true. Snopes liberals fend off right wing accusations implicating and sullying Antifa with incredible regularity. Meanwhile something like smiling Covington kid, Damore and other stores that take off on the right isn't really their beat.
Pongalh
5mo ago
Speaks to the leveling instinct even among the right. "They get to do things you can't!"
On the other hand it's the American right, which contains a lot of Jeffersonian liberalism built-in.
Pongalh
6mo ago
Premium Twitter seems to be paying off. It was almost embarrassing or shameful at first to actually shell out for the blue check but more and more people are clearly doing that.
Grey Enlightenment has talked about this alot.
Pongalh
7mo ago
Yes. In the US there's a sense that you don't have the freedom to escape the pressure to try to be rich. It's up or out, striver for everyone. (Unless you want to join the ranks of the homeless, dropping out of any semblance of a normal middle class existence.)
I've been doing contracting jobs for years in tech and anyone not already looking over their shoulder at the next job when they're only a week in to their current one is kind of a sucker. An endless hustle.
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
2mo ago
I alluded to that same point regarding Israel vs. US interests/American people with a conservative on Twitter named Katya Sedgwick (who I interviewed a while back partially in the topic of the Ukraine proxy war, which we were both against, but October 7th has put us at odds).
The argument of cultural affinity and geopolitical good sense was the answer I got, to differentiate Israel/Jews vs. Somalia/Muslims. Highly questionable in my opinion, both as far as blowback and a Jewish ethnostate not particularly resonating with Americans on the ground nor their interests.
Pongalh
11mo ago
Post-liberalism has accepted as good everything ugly about politics the rationalists wanted us to get past. Clickbait is good. Sensationalism is good. Treating arguments as soldiers is good. Thinking ideologically is good. Just picking a damn side already is good. Thinking of people as ultimately political and not having some valuable quality that is outside of politics is good.
And so on.
Pongalh
5mo ago
Just waiting for an article of the type, "In Defense of Cynically Referring to Liberal Principles and Then Totally Abandoning Them"
This comes across like anti-wisdom. As I've gotten older I think I've gone the opposite direction. Realizing beauty is only skin deep.
To the degree attractive women are more fun, it's because it's fun to be attracted to someone. Are they more pleasant on average? No I'd say not. To say nothing of moral character, more substantive.
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
10mo ago
I remember when there was just as much concern about grooming and pedophilia but it was all allegedly taking place among priests and boy scout leaders. Now there's just as much panic but it's aimed at progressive mileus.
Pongalh
3mo ago
"jealousy is the core of privilege discourse..."
Interesting. This seems at odds with the analysis of someone like Wesley Yang, that privilege discourse is a rhetorical weapon of the strong, a clever and perhaps counterintuitive domination of the weak. The "successor ideology," or the new way the upper class advances itself.
So, a jealous upper class?
Pongalh
3mo ago
Some of these reasons sound like just-so stories. When Ron Paul would routinely wear an oversized suit I could say something like, "That's relatable, it's like your cousin Joe who has that one imperfect suit he wears for special occasions!"
But RP went nowhere with most.
Pongalh
4mo ago
In the popular imagination "grooming" is a conspiratorial right-wing thing, but it's true it's actually quite normative among younger people in general, that theme and accusation.
Colleen Ballinger aka Miranda Sings was accused of that and I'm pretty sure it wasn't coming from the right, who were never paying much attention to her.
Pongalh
4mo ago
"This is to say there are literally no white men in TV commercials..."
I saw a Liberty Mutual ad 30 minutes ago on tv with two white men appearing to play '70s style cops
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
5mo ago
I remember the lesser AHAs of the aughts too. Ibn Warraq, Irshad Manji. But haven't heard their names in years.
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
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.
I'm one of those who believe that this is a tragedy stemming from the end of forced institutionalization and the demise of law and order. This guy could have been alive being looked after and kept away from normies.
There does seem to be a cold new strain of secular right that just sees the guy as a worthless meat sack who shouldn't even exist. Seemingly confirming the progressive suspicion that the right would rather see whole swaths of humanity simply genocided.
On the one hand the right talks about upholding civilization, but the blase attitude regarding mediating institutions and recovering a government that was makes me think a primitive vigilante-ism strain that is quite anti-civilization is taking hold. A thrill of the idea of taking things into their own hands. Perhaps a kind of Fight Club style fascination with the manhood-testing the follows from the collapse of it all. An actual disappointment at 1955 law enforcement returning. The 1955 justice system would not just kill the guy. It was not that vicious. (You could say after 40 prior arrests it would...but Neely would never have gotten to 40 prior arrests. He'd have been put away permanently.)
More options
Context Copy link