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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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Well, I guess it was only a question of time before the ADL condemned Dave Chappelle and SNL more generally for "popularising" anti-Semitism.

Chappelle had a SNL monologue a few days ago where he walked a tightrope between supposedly condemning Kanye and Kyrie before slyly signal-boosting some of their talking points. Kanye comes across as crazy and Kyrie as plain dumb but Chappelle is neither, so this is arguably bigger news. Of course, Chappelle has been courting controversy before, such as his perceived anti-trans comments or complaining about college kids being too sensitive these days.

So I am not sure if this is some kind of cultural shift where black entertainment elites are more willing to criticise Jews or if it is simply Chappelle running towards controversy in order to stay relevant. Maybe it is both. Nevertheless, I think the ADL has by and large been enormously inefficient and self-defeating during these past 6 weeks. It seems even some Jewish publications agree.

Kanye is also somehow impossible to look away from. I don't know what it is. Some innate sense of comedic timing and pitch-perfect camp I guess. It doesn't seem like he intends it, it just seems to be part of who he is.

This is one of the funniest videos I've seen recently and he isn't even trying to be funny, I don't think.

He is, unironically, a lyrical genius. I'm not clear on whether he's the voice of a generation, but the man's sense for prose, wordplay, and timing makes him legitimately hilarious. This 12 minutes with Lex Fridman is quite the ride.

Oh I know, I watched the whole thing. The stuff that Kanye says is so incredibly stupid, but he's somehow so captivating while he says it.

well to quote Chappelle quoting Kanye, it's because his life is dope and he does dope shit.

Even without the context... just the content and delivery, the perfect comedic timing of the punchline, the tone, the gestures, how the whole thing is a sidetrack into a subordinate clause that he gets lost in and never closes. He's like a Coen Brothers character.

His, erhm, "personal trainer" was the one who originally made the phone call to have him committed. If you read this recent exchange that Jewish "personal trainer" had with Kanye I think it's hard to not understand Kanye's perspective:

I'm going to help you one of a couple ways... First, you and I sit down and have an loving and open conversation, but you don't use cuss words, and everything that is discussed is based in fact, and not some crazy stuff that dumb friend of yours told you, or you saw in a tweet.

Second option, I have you institutionalized again where they medicate the crap out of you, and you go back to Zombieland forever. Play date with the kids just won't be the same.

This isn't a doctor telling Kanye to take his meds. This is somebody threatening him and his children, threatening to medicate him to send him to "Zombieland forever" for criticizing Jewish people.

On one hand, Kanye is pretty unhinged, or at least that's how it looks, and I can believe your interpretation; a personal trainer, Jewish or otherwise, absolutely could send that message in good faith and without malice (though without «love» either). Antipsychiatric narratives are popular with exactly the kind of people who would benefit from some treatment – many among them Black adherents of insane doctrines.

On the other hand: «meds, schizo» is something I'd be receiving here for every second post of mine, but for the standards of local moderation; and indeed that's what I often get on platforms with lower (they'd argue higher, naturally) standards. This has nothing to do with the quality of the argument and everything with the fact that certain topics are coded as psychotic. The ability to define psychiatric norm, and therefore the bounds of permitted (or rather, conceivable in a polite society) discourse is a political superpower precisely because it lies nominally outside politics (cue Foucault), and punitive psychiatry is a well-known practice. The peace activist (and notable Philosemite) Andrei Sakharov was probably crazier when he proposed the tsunami-causing nuclear weapon than when he got forcefully medicated in 1984 for a hunger strike in the name of his wife Yelena Bonner, but the system, that is, the set of bureaucrats and careerists running the place, approved of the former way more, so that's how it went down. And if Black celebs were as policed by their Jewish agents and doctors for their takes on systemic white power... yawn. Well, you get it.

By “latent” is meant that form of schizophrenia in which all manifestations of the illness are expressed only to a degree that is “marginal” or “slight,” and there are no such gross symptoms as hallucinations. The following symptoms are those most characteristic of latent schizophrenia (they are quoted from a textbook for students at medical institutes): introversion, listlessness, lessened interest in life, generalized pessimism and melancholy, preoccupation with inner experiences, inappropriate thoughts and actions, bigotry ana rigidity of opinions, and suspiciousness, etc. So that if you are an introvert with a penchant for self-analysis; if you are uncommunicative; if you do not want to change your convictions because you do not consider then “groundless”, if the fact that you are being tailed and your telephone conversations are being bugged is attributed to “suspiciousness,” or perhaps a “delusion of persecution,” the conclusion is clear… Nor will you be saved by the fact that you are successfully coping with your job responsibilities, or with creative work; that you show an interest in it and are even “growing” professionally. Although formally the presence of a psychic pathology does not rule out responsibility for your actions your “exculpation” is inevitable.

– A Dissident’s Guide to Psychiatry, Vladimir Bukovsky and Semyon Gluzman, ~1973

The interesting thing is that schizos act against their interests and can't keep their mouths shut, unlike normies who learn from example; so if you institutionalize people for X, eventually only schizos will keep bringing X up, which will tie X to schizophrenia in the public mind and retroactively justify your stigmatization of X back when you were institutionalizing dissenting normies. This is another good case for always doubling down, a la Greenblatt, I wonder how far down that path we are with regards to this topic.

Gluzman is an interesting character. Bukovsky is fairly well-known.

Do people really call your writing schizophrenic? Is that like...a default slur?

I could buy “manic” or maybe “autistic,” if I were desperate to label your style with a condition, but schizophrenic seems odd.

Thanks for high praise, hah.

Well, they do. In lesser venues, writing a lot (writing little is beneath me), and on unconventional topics too, is enough to get the diagnosis (unless it's rdrama and they call you a cute twink instead?)

By the way, there are estimates that SZ is overdiagnosed by 500% in Russia, so I could have received the same diagnosis from a shrink. In my real interactions with them this never happened; but then, I never tried motteposting at shrinks.

And hey, manifestoposting (which long posts can pattern-match to) is robustly associated with schizo and paranoid traits.

More comments

I have my doubts about that text

That's fair, but he hasn't denied it or responded to any comment requests from the articles I've checked. I think he would have made a comment to deny it if it were not authentic.

secondly possible that this is ‘tough love’ come from a genuine place of - if not actual altruism, then at least mutual self interest in Kanye’s life and career not imploding spectacularly.

I'm sorry, but I think it is completely absurd to call that threat "tough love." It is deranged and lends credence to Kanye's perception. This Newsweek article also paints Pasternak as a scandalized Jew, very upset that Kanye's anti-Semitic remarks got less attention than his "White Lives Matters" t-shirt:

Pasternak also told Newsweek on Monday, "I spoke to Kanye for about five hours yesterday, and his communication is very incoherent at this point. It doesn't forgive someone for being antisemitic. In fact, the lack of outrage over his tweet from people is very sad, regardless of whether he's mentally ill or not. It's not acceptable."...

Said Pasternak, "As someone who's been his friend for 15 years, I will not speak with him again until he issues a formal apology. He seems like he's either [having] or is on the verge of a mental break. This is a person who probably struggled understanding reality from not reality even in the best of times, and I'm extraordinarily saddened by the lack of outrage. The amount of outrage that came from a T-shirt that he wore a few days earlier was a millionfold more vocal than the tweet that he implied that he was going to wipe out a race of people."

That's not "tough love" when you are telling Newsweek that you are sad more people aren't piling on outrage, and interpreting the "death con 3" Tweet with the most uncharitable interpretation humanly possible. He'll tell Newsweek that everyone should be more offended by Kanye's anti-Semitism, but no denial of that deranged message he sent Kanye...

truly one of the best flameouts of all time.

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