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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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Are Davos people jealous? Are they the 1% or the 10%?

I'm probing as I'm curious how this reconfigures political understanding. So, a right-populism that hates the top 10% virtue-signallers - but only superficially for class-based reasons, as it's really cultural and psychological - and is joined by the top 1% the loser top 10% are jealous of. Which raises the question, why are the top 1% not also virtue signalers? Do you really stop seeing successor ideology antics at that strata?

One of the flaws of our culture, oft noted, is the lack of self confidence of the elites. One of the ways this manifests is that no one claims elite status, everyone is jealous and oppressed. No one is the Blonde Beast, everyone is the nebbish loser who doesn't fit in.

Not just the 1% but the 1, Elon Musk is jealous, perceives others as getting things he deserves, as having unfairly easy lives. Throughout the tippy top upper classes: Trump, Ackman, Adelson. Nowhere do we find the easy self assurance of the aristocrat. We find grievance.

Our culture is in disarray because the trads are rebellious and the rebellious are defending tradition.

Davos is quite a bit narrower than the 1%, they virtue signal all the time, and the right hates them.

Davos is a combination of whoever happens to be in power at the time (typically elected) and people who want to sell them things (bankers, consultants, lobbyists, think tanks, assorted corporates).