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Notes -
Look at this Politico piece about the rift in the Democratic Party between the young(ish) people pushing for the left agenda:
And of course it makes him sound insufferable, pompous, and up his own backside (the piece does some lovely stiletto in the back moments like this throughout).
These people do have privilege, which they have learned is bad. They are uneasily aware that they are The Enemy, as all their political thinking has informed them they must be, but they personally don't feel like The Enemy - they're not racist or sexist or transphobic! But they have both a privileged position, according to the Oppression Totem Pole, and they can't do anything about it - activism is all very well, but they're not in a position to make the decisions that lead to real change, because they don't have political or financial clout.
But what they can do, in order to relieve this sense of pressure about being part of the problem but not part of the solution, is to participate in it. They are suffering too! They are thinking about poverty and injustice and feeling bad! They share all this to reassure each other, and be reassured, that they are in fact not the bad guys, they're one of the good ones.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
For many, I suspect there's also an element of selling out.
Nerd culture, especially the US flavor, has a strong countercultural streak to it. By talking about these topics, signaling support, and wearing a hoodie, it's probably possible to mask (from yourself) the fact that you're making a boatload of money, writing design documents, and talking about KPIs, quarterly goals, and securing wins.
That doesn't quite work... Counter cultural nerds were among the first victims of privilege-checkers. Even now, if a nerd even so much as mumbles "I didn't like that recent MegaCorp adaptation of Nerd Franchise" they get smeared as everything from Nazi to transphobe.
What if these nerds are not the Eric S. Raymond/Richard Stallman type, the initial bazaar dwellers, but the new crop of folks that entered the culture post-DomCom crash? The pragmatic ones who love the counter cultural aesthetic but just want a safe, cool job?
They can stop calling themselves nerds, and get off my lawn!
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It is our fate to live in an age where this is how journalists write, if you give them half a chance.
Harlequin5942 said, taking a puff from his 1962 Cuban cigar.
How the fuck did thinkers and writers this awful wind up the professional caste of writers?
Reminds me of the popes who owned brothels... institutions actively selecting for the worst possible candidate.
I hope some crazed video essayist literally devours him... not figuratively. Literally. Let one instant in his life be poetic
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Oh, they all write like that since the New Journalism, because it's human interest donchaknow, it makes it bright and newsy and relatable and gives people a hook to emotionally attach to the story.
Ordinarily this annoys me, because I want "just the facts, ma'am" and I don't care if blonde 42 year old Doris was sipping her morning coffee as she looked out her kitchen window and saw the car crash, I want to know "there was a car crash? where?"
But in this case it doesn't matter, since it's not reporting as such, it's a colour piece about a bunch of insufferable youngish leftyish Democrats chewing one another's faces off over who gets to steer the party, vaguely realising that if they want to win seats they need to have policies that appeal to normal people, and tripping over themselves not to use the word "populist" since they have succeeded in making that a dirty word, but also realising that damn it, they need to be populist.
So the pretentious twats in both camps being described as sipping their cocktails as they have their 'happy hour' parties and watch and rewatch videos of old election debates are perfectly suited for this style. In this case, I do want to know if they look like 'inflated eight year olds' (oooh, that one was sharp) and what kind of nonsense they indulge in, thinking this makes them cool and mysterious when it just makes them look like prats to the adults in the room.
I mean, a guy who can say with a straight face that "hungry kids are counting on us" should be mocked soundly, roundly and often by having someone write in excruciating detail what his sad little drinking group are like as they fool themselves that they matter, they're relevant, hey AOC swung by one of our dos a couple years back!
The photos, oh my God the photos. They look exactly as you imagine they'd look.
Imagine being a Democratic party operative who has worked in politics for donkey's years, and this twenty year old infant strolls in wearing a black T-shirt and saying nothing because he wants to look cool. Do you, grown-up politics person, think "Wow I should let myself be said and led by this wunderkind" or do you go "Holy crap, is this what the party has come to? Okay, we'll let the nerds do the number-crunching in the back while we do the real work of the campaign"?
Imagine being so clueless you take the advice of people around you to wear black and say nothing, you'll be cool and mysterious, you'll have that rock-star vibe (meanwhile, to anyone over the age of thirty, it's abundantly clear you only started shaving two years ago).
The black t-shirt, eh whatever, but you've got to admit that "say nothing" is powerfully good advice in context. "Mouth shut, ears open" is something every novice usually doesn't hear enough.
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Good points. Perhaps by accident, it's useful information in this article, rather than just a thin sickly familiar in the form of Hunter S. Thompson.
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I couldn't tell if this article was supposed to be a hit piece, and if so which side it was trying to hit.
For once, I enjoyed a Politico piece, because it's pretty clear the writer was fed-up with both sets of pretentious wannabes. The writer is "David Freedlander is a veteran New York City-based journalist. He writes long-form features about politics and the arts, people and ideas, and has appeared in New York Magazine, Bloomberg, Rolling Stone, ArtNews, The Daily Beast, Newsweek and a host of other publications."
So he's older than this bunch of 20-30 year olds, I think maybe in his mid-forties, and he's probably been around long enough to no longer be impressed by this kind of guff.
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