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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6291 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025

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Has nobody brought up the Marjorie Taylor Greene thing? I guess I'll jump on that grenade.

After break with Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene will resign

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who rose to prominence as one of President Trump's biggest defenders and recently became one of his biggest critics, is leaving Congress.

In some respects, it seems like the current GOP coalition is beginning to fracture. Up until recently, MTG was a high profile face in the MAGA movement. The fact that she is bowing out seems to represent something of a sea change in DC politics.

Both parties seem to be having problems, and to me, at least, it's fascinating that the problems seem to have a lot of overlap. In no particular order, both the DNC and GOP seem to be having a lot of internal problems with the following:

  1. Israel
  2. Economic policy - particularly healthcare
  3. Nazis
  4. Epstein

In some respects, it almost feels like a realignment might be creeping up on us. Is anyone else getting a similar feeling? Are there any alternatives that fit current events better?

Marjorie Taylor Greene was brave. She was freethinking. She was also stupid.

There's a great Substack article that's been framing my thinking lately. One of the defining features of populism is revolt against cognitive elites.

The crucial feature of common sense, as Frank Luntz helpfully observed, is that it “doesn’t requires any fancy theories; it is self-evidently correct.” (One can think of this as the primary point of demarcation between the people and the elites – the people have “common sense,” whereas elites subscribe to “fancy theories.”) This distinction, in turn, does not arise from the ideological content of a belief system, but rather from the form of cognition employed in its production.

The problem is that one cannot run a modern government without "fancy theories" that conflict with "common sense". This creates a dynamic in which the easiest strategy for a politician is to:

  1. Campaign on red-meat populist issues: cheaper groceries, lower rent, fewer [immigrants/bigots] walking around on the streets, and then:

  2. Govern like a captured technocrat, because you don't actually want to destroy society.

You don't need an advanced degree in hyperbolic topology to notice the tension between the two points above. Frustrated voters respond by demanding candidates become even more populist, and populist politicians respond by focusing on certain key issues

This reservoir of discontent creates the opportunity that is exploited by populist politicians. Democratic political systems are fairly responsive to public opinion, but they are still systems of elite rule, and so there are specific issues on which the people genuinely have not been listened to, no matter how angry or upset they got. This creates an incentive to do an end-run around elites, and around institutions dominated by elites (e.g. traditional political parties), in order to tap into this fund of resentment, positioning oneself as the champion of the people. What is noteworthy about populists is that they do not champion all of the interests of the people, but instead focus on the specific issues where there is the greatest divergence between common sense and elite opinion, in order to champion the views of the people on these issues.

Right now, there is a vast gulf between popular opinion of neoclassical economics and Jews, and elite opinion of neoclassical economics and Jews. Solve for the equilibrium.

The difference is the popular opinion of neoclassical economics doesn't affect how well neoclassical economics works; it only affects how well your country works. Whereas if our resident Jew-posters get their opinions enshrined in law it very much affects the Jews.

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