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The Redpilling of the American public intellectual?
Being extremely online, using both X and Substacks and having used them for several years, I cannot not notice a process of redpilling of many US-opinion makers, both blue and grey tribe members.
Elon Musk and Marc Andressen are the first obvious examples, with both of them having directly followed and quoted members of the Dissident Rights (Andressen some days ago tagged Covfefe Anon in a post). Musk in particular speaks often with figures like Indian Bronson, Cremièux and Hanania, all of them supporters of the HBD and "liberal-racist" or "liberal-realist" (still fun that we are talking about an Indian, a Jew and a Palestinian).
Then we have the old New Atheism and IDW intellectuals gang like Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt and others. Their contribution to progressive criticism is not new, but from what I see on X, on the wake of the Harvard controversy, they are talking an harder turn. I cannot confirm because it is only an impression from who they interact with on X.
We have the "Silicon Valley Galaxy", the network of Musk-supporters based in California, with people like Mike Solana (another gay man) exorting the virtues of nationalism and communism-bashing on his wildly popular newsletter.
Nate Silver is a very fun example. A gay Jew who, in the last year, took an hard turn against progressivism because of Covid criticism and the purges that came from it, and now on his substack is attacking the left at every turn, attracting the very entertaining hate of the academic crowd on every post.
Also an individual like Noah Smith, while still completely faithful to the Neoliberal project, began to heavily criticize the progressives, saying that they are way more dangerous than the right.
I am sure that there are other names I forgot.
All of this to say that I see a change of opinion of public figures that, in the year 2016, would have been for sure allies of the Democrats against a Trumpian state. Obviously the change of opinion of twitter-based figures, online characters and academic eretics is not a change of opinion of the PMC at large, but for sure is more that the Dissident Right could have hoped for some years ago.
The real question imo is whether the "centrists" will vote for the GOP or if they will still continue to give the progressives they disagree with more power. I'd be a bit surprised if any of them aside from Musk ended up doing so.
It's a question of threat assessment. You can either give the DSA-types more power, or you can give creationists and BAP/lots-of-posters-on-this-forum-style explicitly ant-meritocratic racists power.
It's not at all clear that choosing the side with DSA-types is more damaging. In the last 8 years in the US, the Democratic party in particular has done a much better job of denouncing its extremists. Just look at the most prominent recent examples: if you look at NT Times articles/their comment sections, you can see that the mainstream left's reaction to pro-Hamas protesters or the whole Claudine Gay affair has been pretty condemnatory.
Trying to make the same check on the right for strict abortion restrictions, someone like Stephen Miller being put in charge of immigration policy, etc does not present a compelling case to to change your vote. You can even make a very unflattering comparison by just reading this forum for a bit and seeing how much support explicitly anti-meritocratic and anti-individualistic racism has in even the more intellectual part of the right.
What's wrong with giving creationists more power? Defending evolution does not seem to be very popular. The top post is about American public intellectual slightly adjusting toward 'HBD' which is in essence the belief that human evolution does not stop at the neck. The Dr Watson position:
Another popular one from a previously resigned Harvard President :
Which political movement is defending these science-based, evolution-grounded positions?
Not to mention the contemporary dualist belief that some people's souls get mismatched to the wrong body and hormones. Nobody ever explains who creates these souls and how this works from an evolutionary point-of-view, but this is apparently the Science.
That we are in 2024, not 2004 and this Dubya era cause of teaching creation science/intelligent design is as defeated as any political cause can be? Read wish lists of most radical conservative wishful thinking, you will not find there any notice of this thing.
And as for BAP - he is troll and shitposter, who does not have any actual political demands and proposals here and now (what could these be? compulsory fitness training to make the nation more muscular? this would be massively unpopular, most of all among the conservative base).
Real reason why even moderate centrist people who hate wokeness and DSA types and who would appreciate less immigrants and more law and order balk at voting R is, outside of raw classist disgust of rednecks and their unsightly pickup trucks, in most of the cases, abortion. They fear giving right-to-lifers-from-conception even morsel of more power.
Well we were talking about hypothetically picking between 'DSA and creationists and BAP/lots-of-posters-on-this-forum-style explicitly anti-meritocratic racists'.
I don't see racists as anti-meritocratic, as per the top post, modern racist intellectuals are a pretty diverse bunch :
Whoever can hack it will find a spot in the racist coalition, no matter where they come from.
Why is killing their own child so central to some people's life? Especially funny in light of recent events. Whether we're talking about beheaded babies or bombed hospitals, a thousand voices will raise in indignation and condemnation. Not to mention the hysteria around people that dared to expose others to their breath.
But the mere suggestion that perhaps one should avoid certain practices instead of murdering their own child. Beyond the pale.
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