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Rock Du Jour - 4/29/22 - The New Intellectual Right and J.D. Vance and Exactly Who We're Voting For - Very Important, Folks! (3 Viewers)

"Ninety percent of their discourse is about the discourse" is a great description of the times we live in. Or a great discourse about the state of our discourse.

 
You know why we’re not on the verge of civil war? Because we have football. 

I’m not kidding about this. The first Battle of Bull Run had over 30,000 spectators. Some of them paid tickets for good seats. There were no organized sports, and as a result, most of the generals on both sides of the Civil War became celebrities. 

No matter what our differences we won’t have a civil war because we can’t be bothered. Too many pastimes. 

 
timschochet said:
Because we have football.
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Um, this isn't too far from the truth and don't think I haven't thought exactly this thought. The Romans did. Bread and circuses, my friend. Bread and circuses. 

 
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rockaction said:
Any takers on reading this one? 
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But the people these pieces describe, who made up most of the partygoers around me, were only the most buttoned-up seam of a much larger and stranger political ferment, burbling up mainly within America’s young and well-educated elite, part of an intra-media class info-war. The podcasters, bro-ish anonymous Twitter posters, online philosophers, artists, and amorphous scenesters in this world are variously known as “dissidents,” “neo-reactionaries,” “post-leftists,” or the “heterodox” fringe—though they’re all often grouped for convenience under the heading of America’s New Right. They have a wildly diverse set of political backgrounds, with influences ranging from 17th-century Jacobite royalists to Marxist cultural critics to so-called reactionary feminists to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, whom they sometimes refer to with semi-ironic affection as Uncle Ted. Which is to say that this New Right is not a part of the conservative movement as most people in America would understand it. It’s better described as a tangled set of frameworks for critiquing the systems of power and propaganda that most people reading this probably think of as “the way the world is.” And one point shapes all of it: It is a project to overthrow the thrust of progress, at least such as liberals understand the word.

This worldview, these worldviews, run counter to the American narrative of the last century—that economic growth and technological innovation are inevitably leading us toward a better future. It’s a position that has become quietly edgy and cool in new tech outposts like Miami and Austin, and in downtown Manhattan, where New Right–ish politics are in, and signifiers like a demure cross necklace have become markers of a transgressive chic. No one is leading this movement, but it does have key figures.

One is Peter Thiel, the billionaire who helped fund NatCon and who had just given the conference’s opening address. Thiel has also funded things like the edgelordy and post-left–inflected New People’s Cinema film festival, which ended its weeklong run of parties and screenings in Manhattan just a few days before NatCon began. He’s long been a big donor to Republican political candidates, but in recent years Thiel has grown increasingly involved in the politics of this younger and weirder world—becoming something like a nefarious godfather or a genial rich uncle, depending on your perspective. Podcasters and art-world figures now joke about their hope to get so-called Thielbucks. His most significant recent outlays have been to two young Senate candidates who are deeply enmeshed in this scene and influenced by its intellectual currents: Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance, running for the Republican nomination in Ohio, and Blake Masters in Arizona.

This New Right is heavily populated by people with graduate degrees, so there’s a lot of debate about who is in it and whether or not it even exists. At one end are the NatCons, post-liberals, and traditionalist figures like Benedict Option author Rod Dreher, who envision a conservatism reinvigorated by an embrace of localist values, religious identity, and an active role for the state in promoting everything from marriage to environmental conservation. But there’s also a highly online set of Substack writers, podcasters, and anonymous Twitter posters—“our true intellectual elite,” as one podcaster describes them. This group encompasses everyone from rich crypto bros and tech executives to back-to-the-landers to disaffected members of the American intellectual class, like Up in the Air author Walter Kirn, whose fulminations against groupthink and techno-authoritarianism have made him an unlikely champion to the dissident right and heterodox fringe. But they share a the basic worldview: that individualist liberal ideology, increasingly bureaucratic governments, and big tech are all combining into a world that is at once tyrannical, chaotic, and devoid of the systems of value and morality that give human life richness and meaning—as Blake Masters recently put it, a “dystopian hell-world.”

Vance recently told an interviewer, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine,” a flick at the fact that he thinks the American-led global order is as much about enriching defense contractors and think-tank types as it is about defending America’s interests. “I do care about the fact that in my community right now the leading cause of death among 18- to 45-year-olds is Mexican fentanyl.” His criticisms of big tech as “enemies of Western civilization” often get lost in the run of Republican outrage over Trump being kicked off Twitter and Facebook, though they go much deeper than this. Vance believes that the regime has sold an illusive story that consumer gadgets and social media are constantly making our lives better, even as wages stagnate and technology feeds an epidemic of depression.

Levy is an It girl in a downtown Manhattan scene—The New Yorker has published her fiction; she is named in a New York Times story that tries to describe that scene—where right-wing politics have become an aesthetic pose that mingles strangely with an earnest search for moral grounding. “Until like a year and a half ago I didn’t believe good and evil existed,” she told me, later adding: “But I’m not in a state of grace, I shouldn’t be talking.” I asked if she would take money from Thiel and she cheerily said, “Of course!” She also described her cohort as a bunch of “libertines,” and on her podcast you can get a window into a world of people who enjoy a mind-bendingly ironic thrill by tut-tutting each other for missing church or having premarital sex. “Most of the girls downtown are normal, but they’ll wear a Trump hat as an accessory,” she said. The ones deep into the online scene, she said, “want to be like Leni Riefenstahl–Edie Sedgwick.”

Like Levy, Milius is in the funny position of being at the intersection of many of these crosscurrents, having worked in mainstream politics but appearing on so-called dissident podcasts and being on the periphery of a cultural scene where right-wing politics have taken on a sheen approximating cool.

She said she was too “black-pilled”—a very online term used to describe people who think that our world is so messed up that nothing can save it now—to think much about what it would look like for her side to win. “I could #######g trip over the curb,” Milius said, “and that’s going to be considered white supremacism. Like, there’s nothing you can do. What the frick isn’t white supremacism?”

******

It's a very interesting article, I think many won't be able to get through the paywall.

Of course as there was a clearly concerted effort by the radical left and the establishment Democrats to take Big Education decades ago, the trees are bearing fruits. I'm a lot older by a wide clip than nearly everyone here ( Tragically I didn't confirm that until I realized Wikkid was just a high speed alias, the bizarre rantings on the greatness of January Jones was kind of a huge neon sign, even for the slow eyes of a geriatric like me)

With age you can see the fracture points grow. It's like working in a cubicle for 20 years and watching the guy in the box next to you slowly lose weight. From morbidly obese to rail thin. You notice it and then you don't. It's impossible to avoid now as the seedlings that were planted long ago are now old enough to infuse into the modern workforce, but also into the places where they can operate with large platforms.

The radical left's young core were not trained properly. In any widespread attempt to indoctrinate, you'll have those who rebel, those who see past the curtain, those who have been exposed to how the sausage actually gets made. And you'll have the rare few that still have their parents as the most influential educators in their lives. The people who don't agree can't be let loose into the wild. The idea of "prisoners" is a mostly modern concept in all of human history. It's both a feature and sin of being born into a society of abundance. Establishment Democrats want the young radical left to do their killing for them. The young radical left from the over educated classes feel entitled to have the state slaughter all dissidents.

If you leave survivors, they will rally together because they don't have a choice. What do Dave Chappelle and JK Rowling really have in common? Well if not before, they do now. On a micro scale, it's happening everyday. You have disenfranchised young intellectuals who are over educated but question the system. They realize the Blue Pill wasn't a choice, someone tried to shove it down their throats.

My take is Thiel wants "TradCon" populists on his side. A dangerous consistent trend with the young overeducated radical left is they exist in insular bubbles where they mistake some Mutual Admiration Society schlock as the total barometer of what the masses want and need. They don't understand that they have NOTHING in common with every day working class Americans who are a paycheck and a half away from being homeless. I bet exactly zero of these think tankers have ever read Mark Bowden's Killing Pablo and picked up the intricacies of what happens in power in isolation that does not accept the realities of how functional populism works. You can't have people who have never built anything directing and educating others on  what practical public policy means or what functional governance means.

I would say most of the over educated radical left have, at some point, read Alex Haley's Autobiography Of Malcolm X, but most don't pay attention to the total arc of West Indian Archie. And if their smug arrogance couldn't handle that, then Richard Bachman ( really Stephen King's) short novel of The Running Man should suffice.  All power bases that deviate from some "system" in place requires one to slow low to the ground and near the rank and file. This is where the "New Right" ( really the non Blue Pill swallowing that the radical left didn't have the guts to slaughter off) can operate with cover.

The "Info War" only matters if people are tuning in. And the masses are honestly tuning out. Trad Con principles however operate as message by example, and that's tremendously powerful, because it aligns with instinctive group building strategies that align with our core biological imperative. Humans are wired to seek community because combined arms/combined labor is safety. What people say means little when nearly everything is some kind of propaganda. But what people do can be measured.

Something I observe about you Rock is you tend to avoid the "People Are The Mob" factor in the discussion of politics. The PSF is not built for a Grantland style collective of political discussion. It's a filter out point to protect the Shark Pool and Free For All from the bad faith actors that have nowhere else to go and won't be put down.

You want to provoke thought. I appreciate that about you. It's not very common. But heed the lesson of William Goldman's Lord Of The Flies. The majority here only want to provoke people. The more you edge along the lines of their cognitive dissonance, for the crime of actual free speech,  the sooner they will rationalize the best way to cut your throat in your sleep. There's a tipping point where social and cultural terrorists just transition into plain old terrorists running into crowds with a Dead Man's Switch. Provoking thought is one of the most dangerous acts one can make in a system built around silencing all dissent.

The "New Right" needs to balance their message outside their own bubbles and recognize they don't control the barometer of public opinion. They must lockstep their approach with real sustainable acts that trigger the love of the common man.

 
I muted and ignored the NFL Draft so I could read and respond to GordonGekko. He is one of the more interesting and thought-provoking voices on the board. I often vehemently disagree, but that's just how it is. 

Gekko, I'd like to clarify some of the things you said so that I might better understand what you're saying. I'll mostly be asking for a typo clarification or definition of a term. Nothing crazy. 

GordonGekko said:
Something I observe about you Rock is you tend to avoid the "People Are The Mob" factor in the discussion of politics. The PSF is not built for a Grantland style collective of political discussion. It's a filter out point to protect the Shark Pool and Free For All from the bad faith actors that have nowhere else to go and won't be put down.
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I'm not sure what you mean by "people are the mob." Not for lack of effort -- I Googled it and tried to run it through a search in various iterations and permutations, but I'm getting a Carl Sandburg poem. Perhaps I can pick your brain for what "people are the mob" means. 

GordonGekko said:
I bet exactly zero of these think tankers have ever read Mark Bowden's Killing Pablo and picked up the intricacies of what happens in power in isolation that does not accept the realities of how functional populism works.
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I haven't had the pleasure of reading Killing Pablo. Are you saying that populism got Escobar killed? My understanding of the story is that Escobar seized power, his ruthlessness led him to be against the people, and that the government organizations in place in two countries had him killed as public enemy number one. But I'm not sure how populism informs his ascent nor decline. 

GordonGekko said:
All power bases that deviate from some "system" in place requires one to slow low to the ground and near the rank and file.
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Stay low? What are the power bases that deviate from some "system" with respect to America? I'm having trouble understanding this. 

GordonGekko said:
My take is Thiel wants "TradCon" populists on his side.
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I agree with this. 

That's about it. If you're so inclined or have the time, you're certainly free (of course) to respond however you'd like. I'd be interesting in hearing it. 

 
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rockaction said:
I muted and ignored the NFL Draft so I could read and respond to GordonGekko. He is one of the more interesting and thought-provoking voices on the board. I often vehemently disagree, but that's just how it is. 

Gekko, I'd like to clarify some of the things you said so that I might better understand what you're saying. I'll mostly be asking for a typo clarification or definition of a term. Nothing crazy. 

I'm not sure what you mean by "people are the mob." Not for lack of effort -- I Googled it and tried to run it through a search in various iterations and permutations, but I'm getting a Carl Sandburg poem. Perhaps I can pick your brain for what "people are the mob" means. 

I haven't had the pleasure of reading Killing Pablo. Are you saying that populism got Escobar killed? My understanding of the story is that Escobar seized power, his ruthlessness led him to be against the people, and that the government organizations in place in two countries had him killed as public enemy number one. But I'm not sure how populism informs his ascent nor decline. 

Stay low? What are the power bases that deviate from some "system" with respect to America? I'm having trouble understanding this. 

I agree with this. 

That's about it. If you're so inclined or have the time, you're certainly free (of course) to respond however you'd like. I'd be interesting in hearing it. 
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Wow. I certainly disagree with your opinion of GG but I won’t offer my own as I’ve stopped commenting on other posters. 
 

Vance scares the hell out of me. Not caring about the Ukraine is a terrible attitude. Isolationism is always going to be a popular position among voters, but those running for office should know better. 
We are heading into dark times, I fear. The left is pretty harmless IMO, but they’ve screwed up their messaging. The right is going to dominate voting for a while, and they’re extreme and isolationist and nativist and won’t address climate change, the biggest problem we face. We’re in deep trouble. 

 
rockaction said:
I'm not sure what you mean by "people are the mob." Not for lack of effort -- I Googled it and tried to run it through a search in various iterations and permutations, but I'm getting a Carl Sandburg poem. Perhaps I can pick your brain for what "people are the mob" means. 

I haven't had the pleasure of reading Killing Pablo. Are you saying that populism got Escobar killed? My understanding of the story is that Escobar seized power, his ruthlessness led him to be against the people, and that the government organizations in place in two countries had him killed as public enemy number one. But I'm not sure how populism informs his ascent nor decline. 

Stay low? What are the power bases that deviate from some "system" with respect to America? I'm having trouble understanding this. 
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I wrote a long reply this morning that apparently got deleted. Curious.

When you meet people, assess two questions

1) Can they admit they are wrong when they are wrong

2) Can they laugh at themselves

If the answer is No for one or both, cut them out of your life. Now in the parts of your life where you can't avoid people ( things like family or coworkers or day to day obligations), it helps to assess people in this light for motive. People who can answer Yes to the two questions above will interact with you for "Who You Are"  There's a chance they like you for you and nothing else. Not for some gain. Everyone else is in it for "What You Are"  How can they benefit from knowing you? What access points can you give them? Can you elevate their status by association with you in some desirable peer group or profession?

When you can break people down dispassionately in what amounts of a large scale asset management perspective, then breaking down the machinery of the politics around them becomes very simple. No one cares how you feel. They care if you deliver wins. Understanding human behavior, I mean really locking it in, requires taking your bias, your feelings, your life experience out of the equation.

Escobar wanted to be King of two different worlds. He wanted to be part of the "legitimate" ruling class that saw him as a novelty, and he resented the narrower scope of power he did have because he felt the commoners who beloved him were beneath him. His greatest sin was "not staying in his lane" If you deviate from any large scale social system in place, you can only hold power close to the ground, to the people, to those who suffer like you did or do. Where the wants and needs of the rank and file aren't met by the state apparatus. Outlaws are summarily put down, that's the way of bureaucracy of any kind. Escobar killed police, military, judges, the educated classes and other Cartel members. While he had the love of many people, he also triggered the hate of many others. He didn't want to be beholden to anyone but that's the irony of power, you are more of a servant than you are a leader most of the time.

The "New Right" funded by guys like Thiel are part of a practical political strategy. Asymmetrical in nature. Move more to the right on cultural issues, and more slightly to the left on some financial/economic issues in terms of public policy.  It's clear the current Democratic Party is creating "wants and needs" not being met by the state apparatus. No one gives a damn about culture wars if they can't afford food and gasoline and find basic housing. Conservative based political groups have accepted the fight as presented. They don't control Big Education, Big Social Media ( Musk is new situation), Big Tech, Big Finance, Hollywood and most of the MSM. The current radical left are encompassing much of Escobar's worst flaws in ego and desire for external validation in some insular bubble of group think and cognitive dissonance. The lessons of Escobar apply to both political Parties right now.

Top Down political platforming ( current radical left and core of establishment Democrats) - Escobar just slaughtering and running roughshod against all his "enemies" without consideration of the long term impact. Not recognizing you CANNOT be a "populist" and a social/cultural terrorist at the exact same time

Bottom Up political platforming ( current Conservative base) - Escobar building hospitals and baseball fields and creating jobs and helping poor areas with vast resources. Focus on giving people enough so they stop opposing your agendas (I have NO illusion about the reality that the GOP is just as dangerous, sometimes more, than the current Democratic Party) Becoming an X factor where the traditional government is weak to stay low to the ground and find operational purchase in the safety net that the masses provide.

I wrote more in my reply this morning, but like I said, someone apparently deleted it.

Top Down versus Bottom Up political platforming is a pretty interesting discussion area though. I don't think many people cover it now in the MSM because it's very difficult to conceal the implied social/cultural warfare levied against the average rank and file American citizen once you start talking about it.

Let's see if this post survives. Maybe this one will get deleted too.

 
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@GordonGekko, my posts all across the board have been deleted. My PM to a friend was deleted (or never sent) earlier this morning. Something was up with the boards. 

As for your response, I think I get it. I'll definitely think about it some more, but it sounds like what you're saying is that if the machinations of law are left in the hands of those who seek power qua power, then in the ministering of the law, there are wants and needs of the people left unfulfilled. Gaps that must exist because of the power sought. The populist's role is to assess those needs and wants and provide them (or an outlet for them) and you will have the love of the people where their love of those administering the current government end. 

That's a fascinating topic for discussion and a worthwhile framing of the issue. I had started a thread once called "There Is Always A ***** In The Armor Being Fulfilled By A Bodega" where I assumed that needs unaddressed by a highly centralized government would be met by the entrepreneurial black market. What I did not address was that there are very important non-economic wants, needs, and ways of life that are being threatened by the establishment. This is where Republican populism steps to the fore, it seems. 

I'll go into it more later, but I get what you're saying in that respect. 

 
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