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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   38856 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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Richard Hanania thinks Desantis should challenge Trump to a boxing match. Desantis's campaign so far has been pretty pathetic. He's been afraid to really push back against Trump despite Trump lobbing almost daily attacks against him. Desantis is great on paper, with his victories against woke institutions in Florida, but he's failed to appeal to the Republican id so far. Many Republican voters care far more about appearance and physical vigor than policy positions, good governance, intelligence, etc.

I don’t think Trump can lose a Republican primary at this point. But if I were giving DeSantis advice, it would be to do the opposite of what Abernathy suggests. Republican voters love the stupidity, obnoxiousness, vulgarity, and simian chest-beating. While the conventional wisdom seems to be that Rubio and Cruz tried rolling around in the muck with him and failed, Rubio’s most vicious personal attacks in 2016 didn’t come until after Trump had won the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucuses, that is, pretty late in the game. And Rubio wasn’t the guy to do it.

Instead of seeing Republican primary voters as concerned citizens seeking a voice, try to imagine them as chimps laying around under a canopy. They’ve chosen the alpha male. He’s the loudest, most obnoxious member of the tribe, and his power depends on the degree to which other apes are afraid of him and give him symbolic displays of respect, which in this case has meant saying, for example, that he actually won the 2020 election. What could break this spell? Not reasoned arguments, but signs of weakness. And no, not weakness in the sense that he might not be the most electable candidate — that’s counting on a level of thinking that is far too abstract for this population.

Rather, one needs to emphasize literal physical weakness. Notice how obsessed Republicans have been with the real and imagined physical and cognitive shortcomings of figures like Biden and Hillary. In many corners of right-wing media, “our opponents are old, fat, ugly” seems to get at least as much attention as actual issues, especially during election season. In 2020, we saw doctored videos of Pelosi slurring her words go viral on social media, and this shows not only how susceptible the Republican base is to fake news, but also how obsessed they are with physical and physiological correlates of health.

The Dylan Mulvaney hysteria is another demonstration of the red tribe being driven by the most base and primitive instincts. These people started shooting beer cans with assault rifles because a company sent a six pack to a guy who acts like a sissy. Good luck explaining to them the importance of going after higher education accreditation agencies.

You might think it’s strange for a group like this to have chosen Trump as their leader. But when he posts memes of himself as an Adonis or says things like he’s in better shape than Obama or Bush were while they were in office, and no one corrects him, that serves to only cement his dominance over the party. Trump’s perfect body is like the unreliability of Dominion voting machines. Shirtless Putin has a similar effect in Russia. Educated Westerners roll their eyes at his primitive demonstrations of vigor, but I suspect that, like Trump, he’s a much better student of human nature than they are. The conspiracy theories might have been false, but the Trump-Putin bromance was real, and no accident.

This means that DeSantis’ best shot is trying to emphasize that Trump is physically weak and he no longer intimidates others in the party. You can’t do this with words alone. DeSantis can call him fat, and Trump can reply everyone is saying that I’m in the best shape of any man who’s ever lived, and the voters will eat it up. The Florida governor needs a way to clearly highlight that he’s younger, stronger, and more physically courageous.

DeSantis should therefore challenge Trump to a boxing match. Trump will almost certainly refuse, at which point he can say that this shows what a coward the former president is. Or, DeSantis could say that, on further reflection, maybe it wasn’t fair to challenge an 85 year-old man (yes, lie and exaggerate, Republican voters love that too), and he understands that his opponent is too feeble at this point in his life to get into the arena.

DeSantis shouldn’t do this out of the blue. He could start by trying to bait Trump into saying something particularly nasty about him, or preferably his wife or kids. Then he can play the role of the justifiably angry patriarch. Every time Trump launches a personal attack, DeSantis can reply by saying that his opponent is a pathetic coward, and if he has a problem with him he’s already made clear that they can settle their differences like men. If he’s not willing to do that, then we can stick to the issues, at which point DeSantis can go on about whatever he did in Florida. At the very least, a challenge to fight will eat up all the energy and make sure no other candidate gets any attention, as one of the main things DeSantis needs to do is make the primary into a two-man race.

Right now, the DeSantis strategy is to try to get the Republican voter to ask questions like “who is more electable?” or “who has shown more focus in fighting woke?” Those are exciting questions to conservative intellectuals but way too boring for the Republican masses. They will never tell a pollster this, but they resent anyone trying to make them think too hard, which is part of the reason they hate liberals in the first place.

There are a lot of ways that this could go wrong, and it probably wouldn’t work. But I think people are still yet to truly understand that, if things proceed as normal, Trump is going to be the nominee. Making sure he’s not would require meeting Republican voters where they are, instead of continuing to wish they were something else.

Republican voters love the stupidity, obnoxiousness, vulgarity, and simian chest-beating.

Instead of seeing Republican primary voters as concerned citizens seeking a voice, try to imagine them as chimps laying around under a canopy. They’ve chosen the alpha male.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a lot of words, but Hanania may as well have written, "ooga booga you dumb" for all he's said. Wojak is at the Republican primary, standing in the corner, his feet hurt, I bet they don't even know how I've transcended simian instincts. This is just dumb, Hanania is arguing against a cartoon Republican he just made up in his head.

In 2020, we saw doctored videos of Pelosi slurring her words go viral on social media, and this shows not only how susceptible the Republican base is to fake news

Good morning, it's Sunday Morning.

These people started shooting beer cans with assault rifles because a company sent a six pack to a guy who acts like a sissy.

This is exceptionally dumb. In one paragraph Hanania is kvetching about media hyperreality, and in the very nexy sentence Hanania is using some video of some person shooting a beer can to characterize the whole Republican base. This is not an argument, it's gesticulsting, and it's not even well-informed gesticulating. (The word "imagined" is doing a lot of work in his argument: I can trivially find examples of Biden, Hillary, and Pelosi all having senior moments.)

If this is Hanania's usual stuff, then he's a pseud and deserves to be ignored.

Wojak is at the Republican primary, standing in the corner, his feet hurt, I bet they don't even know how I've transcended simian instincts.

Way to prove him correct. Did you feel clever when writing it? Or did you feel Based?

This is just dumb, Hanania is arguing against a cartoon Republican he just made up in his head.

No, he is not. In fact he isn't arguing at all. He is trying to normalize shaming of Trump loyalists as low-status, trash, unserious Republicans, to divert the remaining talent to a candidate with better chances – both of winning the election and of prosecuting a desirable policy.

We still have tons of Trump loyalists even on this relatively sophisticated sub, for all the good this loyalty has done for them. Hanania is very mean, sure, but his meanness is sensible. What would it take for them to abandon Trump, if his demonstrable political ineptitude, lack of gratitude or respect for his base, ugly and self-defeating tantrums, immaturity so pronounced one has to suspect it's affected etc. – did not?

I think he's correct that it's only humiliation of Trump as a man. But it doesn't really matter. The sad truth is that very many people do not even have a simian idea of political worth. It only matters for them whether voting for Trump is Based or Chringe.

What would it take for them to abandon Trump, if his demonstrable political ineptitude, lack of gratitude or respect for his base, ugly and self-defeating tantrums, immaturity so pronounced one has to suspect it's affected etc. – did not?

The only one here disrespecting Trump's base is Hanania. Why would Trump supporters care what Hanania thinks when he's expressed nothing but contempt for them? By the same logic, why should I care what you think of me?

Way to prove him correct. Did you feel clever when writing it? Or did you feel Based?

It's fair game if this is how Hanania wants to play. We need to trick Trump supporters by looking masculine and tough? OK then, Hanania is a pale nerd who looks like he could barely bench the bar.

Oh, right, Hanania doesn't believe that applies to himself because he and his audience are the smart crowd, teehee, we're not boorish and vulgar like those populists. That's the problem, Hanania's argument isn't an argument, it's contempt disguised as an argument. There is no intellectual content, it's all attitude, it's about looking like an intellectual, by looking down on people who aren't trying to look intellectual.

The hell does any of that mean? Let's go step by step:

Why would Trump supporters care

Does it look like he's talking to Trump supporters even to express contempt?

what Hanania thinks when he's expressed nothing but contempt

Because arguments are to be considered on their merits, for one thing, and there is demonstrably some merit to DeSantis but zero merit to Trump as a political representative? Because this attitude makes you extremely vulnerable to trivial manipulations?

By the same logic, why should I care what you think of me?

What logic exactly?

And why would I care whether you care or not? Scratch that, what even is this inane macho train of thought about caring or not caring, this one-upmanship? Hanania talks of Trumpists from a zoological perspective; I am using you as a reference point. You are demanding gestures of unconditional respect for your position as advance payment for deigning to engage at all. But this precludes the possibility of any conscious change on your part, thus makes debating you a waste of time.

Still. Let me elucidate my opinion: the point is not to convince you of anything. The point is to convince those on the margins of the Red Tribe that your kind is a lost cause, that you are completely impossible to rescue from your self-satisfied vulgarity, your boomer Facebook group Qanon fetishes, your perverse addiction to throwing tantrums and toothless LARPing.

Hanania probably does believe that, hypothetically, you may be enticed by an alpha male chimp who physically assaults Trump, or by some other bait. This is all peripheral. At the core of that piece is Hanania's desire to have smarter Republicans – not just RINOs, but every Republican with more brains and greater self-restraint than an average Chechen teenager has – join him in losing compassion for you, for their own family and culture, and plot for disenfranchising you from here on out. It is a long-term agenda that is meant to outlive Trump as a political figure, regardless of how well he does in 2024.

Because arguments are to be considered on their merits, for one thing, and there is demonstrably some merit to DeSantis but zero merit to Trump as a political representative?

If arguments are to be considered on their merits, than Hananias argument is garbage even when there's more merit to DeSantis as a representative.

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