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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6391 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.

What a garbage article.

Unfortunately, there are many cases in which the people are right to distrust elites. Analytical reasoning is sometimes a poor substitute for intuitive cognition. There is a vast literature detailing the hubris of modern rationalism. Elites are perfectly capable of succumbing to faddish theories (and as we have seen in recent years, they are susceptible to moral panics). But in such cases, it is not all that difficult to find other elites willing to take up the cause and oppose those intellectual fads. In specific domains, however, a very durable elite consensus has developed. This is strongest in areas where common sense is simply wrong, and so anyone who studies the evidence, or is willing to engage in analytical reasoning, winds up sharing the elite view. In these areas, the people find it practically impossible to find allies among the cognitive elite. This generates anger and resentment, which grows over time.

This is completely false - there is no counter-elite in Washington fighting against wasteful foreign wars, there is no counter-elite fighting against immigration policies that enrich the wealthy by driving down wages and driving up asset prices, there is no counter-elite fighting against H1-b visa abuse, there is no counter-elite fighting against omnipresent warrantless surveillance, there is no counter-elite fighting against obsequious support for foreign nations that the majority of the population dislike. Where is the counter-elite arguing against illegal immigrant farm labor, a policy which Trump has explicitly come out and supported? "Common sense" is completely, 100% correct in these cases.

The elite, cognitive or no, act in their own interests and those interests are not the same as that of the populace.

The problem with demanding political correctness in speech, and punishing or ostracizing those who fail, is that it turns every conversation into a Stroop test, allowing elites the opportunity to exhibit conspicuous self-control.

No, this isn't the problem - the problem is that this language policing makes it impossible for the lower classes to object to the policies responsible for their impoverishment and elite enrichment. They're not upset because they aren't smart enough to play the language game (plenty of them can and do), but because the entire purpose of this language game is to deny them the vocabulary to describe their problems. Illegal immigration directly contributes to the impoverishment of the wage-earning class, and so their opposition to it is considered low-class and problematic because it comes from them. The reason that this system is breaking down is not that these people hate thinking, but because the failures of the policies endorsed by these "cognitive elites" are finally reaching the more privileged classes. Unemployment among people with degrees is skyrocketing, and tech degrees are now far less capable of getting someone into a good career - not because the people getting them are stupid, but because the policies of outsourcing, infinity indians and overt discrimination against men.

But to leave the article aside and return to your post...

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:

No, this isn't the case at all. These "fancy theories" are just so much squid ink deployed to mask the obvious underlying incentives - widespread H1-B abuse is a policy with very clear winners and losers. You don't actually need infinite immigration to run a modern government! What, exactly, is the fancy theory that justifies insider trading on the stock market by members of congress? That justifies immense corruption in military procurement (what's the fancy theory justifying 8000 dollar plastic wastebins)? You don't need a mass welfare scam run for the benefit of intertribal Somalian warfare, but that's exactly what all those "fancy theories" have produced. I'd actually go even further - when the democrats passed laws which meant the government provided vast amounts of money to their captive NGOs and political influence operations these actions are entirely understandable through the lens of common sense. It isn't that people are angry about these policies because they don't understand them, they are angry about these policies because they are directly injured by them!

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