100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
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User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
23hr ago
This comment is better than my original post by leap and bounds. Thank you.
I'll do my best to offer a similarly effortful response.
On David French
You asked;
What makes you think that's a fair or charitable description of his position? If you asked French himself, do you think that's the position he would advocate for?
I do think that, if asked, French would say that liberalism from about JFK to George H.W. Bush was "working." He'd crow about this or that policy and perhaps bemoan the decline of mainstream church attendance more than your average political commentator, but the conclusion would be a general approval that "the liberalism of my youth" worked in terms of resolving political arguments and was based on "shared values." He would point to Trump / MAGA, wokeism, an the progressive left of today as obvious evidence that we're so much worse off and that we need to go back to suit-and-tie, groovy Ivy League liberalism.
As others have pointed out, going back is impossible, so French's remedy is nonsensical. I'd take it a step further. French's appreciation of the liberalism of yesteryer is itself not only misguided but fails to appreciate the system that led us to our current state of affairs. To me, it's like saying "Man, I know I'm an alcoholic. I wish I could just go back to my late 20s and early 30s when I was drinking every day and nothing was wrong!" Rewinding the tape doesn't mean we get to change how the movie unfolds.
On The Rage Against 20th Century Liberalism
I agree with your critiques of Ahmari and Drehrer. In a previous post I even presaged some of the same things you said about Drehrer. I cited Ahmari 1) because I was having a little fun with the original post (always try to!) and 2) The (broadly inclusive) New Right is not yet at the point of offering real solutions, but has done a good job of pointing at the problem. The most comprehensive works on it are what Deneen has written and the criminally underreported The Age of Entitlement by Christopher Caldwell. The latter does the most comprehensive breakdown of how and why the Baby Boomers are not only greedy etc. but have an incoherent political worldview which gives you things like a real estate hustler from Queens being the champion of the West Virginia coal miner, and trans twelve year olds as the rallying cry of retired Berkeley-grad grandmas. Ahmari's hyperbolic critiques of French - flawed as they are - are still a principled expression of frustration. I'm not electing him to be the intellectual core of the New Right, but I'll take him over the weird post-post-post-irony nonsense of Nick Fuentes and your average "Republican Group Chat" Z-llenial. 6 7? 6 7? Am I doing this Right?
On a Solution
There's not yet an emerging consensus for "wat do?" on the new right. Right now, this is largely due to the fact that Trump and MAGA take all the air out of the room and the various sub-factions (Deneenists, Frenchists, Ahmarists, etc.) are trying to figure out how to square-peg-that-round-hole to ride MAGA coattails after the departure of Trump or, in the case of French, decamp entirely to a kind of conservo-liberalist island. I think we can, however, point to some major elements that will, in some way, be foundational parts of whatever a post-Trump right looks like.
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Techno-industrialist revival. Vance (noted Thiel acolyte) being VP solidified this for me. If, however, you spend the time to go through the list of folks who ended up in the Trump Admin after 2024 (and I mean folks way, way down the latter. Not secretary level, but like "deputy under other whatever for x") you'll see lots of folks with obvious connections back to the Silicon Valley right - Palantir and Anduril types being significantly represented. Also, a LOT of GWOT veterans (specifically special operations) who then picked up MBAs a Stanford / Harvard. These people are in the places they need to be to truly redirect the industrial policy based of America to something that is a) responsive to a kinetic event with China and b) poised to produce a much higher volume of physical goods instead of software, IP, and financialized products. Now, will they be successful? Totally different question, totally different post.
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Pro-natalism. Strong pro-natalism. Again, made obvious with the Vance pick, but also supported all over the place by even totally secular or atheist folks who can do the simple math of demographics are realize there aren't enough Americans. With immigration being what it is because of what it was under, mostly, Biden, no one on the right is going to be making the argument that we can solve the demographic shift by importing people.
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Strong traditional gender identities. Hanania, I believe, had a recent article on observations about hanging out with liberal vs conservative women in DC. One of the major takeaways was that conservative women dress ... women-ly. Skirts, heels, tight tops with low necklines, makeup, jewelry. Liberal women wear flats, oversized blazers, those weird big-box pants, little to zero makeup, subdued hairstyles. On the other side of the coin, half of the MAGA appeal (at least) is that men can and do men stuff. There's a vaguely military aesthetic, but mostly it's about male coded activities; lifting, combat sports, general bro'ing out. This is part of the reason, I think, Trump picked up more male latino and black votes in 2024. The key here, however, is that the New Right - beyond the heavily religious new right of TradCaths etc. - isn't going to ask women to completely go back to being SAHMs. Without a strong religious fealty, women today, even extremely and truthfully conservative ones, cannot commit the social suicide of actually "only" being a Mom. Even if it isn't traditional careerism, they'll want to be out of the house a lot. Here is not the place to comment on why that is or if its good. All I'm saying, in this context, is that The New Right will be totally fine with women doing whatever they want, so long as they do it as very obviously women.
** On Getting There **
So let's say I'm right and the three points above are the only "reliable" proto-planks of a New Right platform post Trump. How do we actually get there?
That's the danger. There's no real consensus. It's all being held together by the force of personality that is Donald Trump. Once he is off the stage (and, no, he cannot be some sort of shadow president following a potential Vance win in 2028), there's going to be some kind of War of The Roses. I put money on the Thiel people just because they run real deep, have lots of money, and aren't reflexively anti-intellectual and, frankly, bizarre, the way the OG Steve Bannon and current Stephen Miller wings are. The Trump children will have a lot of influence and I think it's key to remember that Barron Trump was and is, allegedly, the social media guru within the White House.
The other option, of course, is that the Democrats win in 2028. This would require them to not fuck up an election. Color be doubtful. If a compromise Dem candidate wins -- let's just say Mayor Pete, even though that is impossible - the David French's of the world will rejoice. But nothing will happen and nothing will get done. You'll have some sort of MAGA redux in 2032. The democrats need to violently eject the progressive part of their party to remain relevant - but they won't do that. I truly am utterly perplexed by this.
** My Very Online Solution **
I'll spare you a full blueprint, because I don't have one, but the crux of it, specifically, gets down to repealing the Civil Rights Act. Look at it's legislative history and you'll see how horrifically it's morphed over time to become a orwellian "general fairness" law that is close to nonsense and so can be weaponized at will. Of course, if any Senator apposes appealing it, they're walking directly into the woodchipper of "the racisms!"
Without a CRA, identity politics and the politics of resentment become electoral losers because you can no longer make the case to specific voting demographics that you'll be able to help them specifically. You wouldn't be able to. Politicians would have to, instead, make the case that their policies have the best chance of being broadly beneficial. I think you might even see a general decline in gerrymandering.
And this is where I run out of steam. I hope this response to your excellent comment was at least a C-.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
(BTW, if you mean the former Harvard-associated women's college, it's Radcliffe. Ratcliffe is the CIA director and doesn't give degrees, at least not degrees you're allowed to talk about)
Thanks. Fixed.
LOL, this period didn't exist.
Exactly! But there is a weird BoomerCon rose-colored-glasses rembrance of the 1980s nonetheless.
Directly related to one of the top line comments from last week is an opinion piece by David French - non-paywalled link.
Half of it is snark. The title and lede are designed to get the pearls clutched. A paragraph later, French gives up the sarcasm and goes on at length about how "akshually, Men can be real meanies!"
The complete dodge of any real intellectual engagement with the original Helen Andrews piece is, sadly, totally on brand for what passes as journalistic "editorials" these days. Sohrab Amari previously called out French for being a conserva-cuck. His conclusions remain unchallenged.
And that's the culture war angle I'm actually interested in. The latest battles in the Gender War were pretty well covered in the thread from last week (linked above). Any new insights are welcome on that front, however, my focus is on what I see as an intra-male conflict between boomer conservatives and the Young Right. Now that I think about it, this also links to the "Nasty Republican Group Chat" thread. I am too lazy, now, to link to it.
David French, and many boomer conservatives like him, despised Trump all the way back in 2016 and haven't changed their tune one bit. They do hold some bedrock right/conservative views; taxes shouldn't be so high, gun rights (to an extent), free speech even if it makes people feel icky, pro defense in a broad yet milquetoast sort of way. I suppose they are, at their most "extreme", still committed neo-cons of the Bush 2 era.
And they're all still living in The Matrix. They all believe that we can go back to that perfect little period when ole Ronny was in the White House and everyone was getting rich and you could come home to a steak dinner with the little lady - who, of course, had a degree from Radcliffe and was totally smart and independent but just so happened to truly want to be a stay at home mom. The insane conceit of the BoomerCons is that their worldview rests on a stone foundation of traditionalism establish, through blood, but the Greatest Generation. Where the BoomerCon looks at women in the military without too much worry - well, maybe not in the infantry - the Greatest Generation Grandpa laughs, saying, "I can't imagine a broad landing in Normandy". Where the BoomerCon rolls his eyes at political correctness yet makes sure to use the appropriate terminology ("Dude, Chinaman is not the appropriate nomenclature"), the Greatest Generation Grandpa, that one Thanksgiving, "couldn't believe the number of Spaniards at the grocery store!". Where the BoomerCon pinched his nose during the 2008 bank bailouts - "It's a systemic issue, we have to act!", the Greatest Generation Grandpa laughs "Oh, The Bank lost all your money?! Yeah, I remember the 30s!"
The Young Right is a kind of double-bounced mirror image if the Greatest Generation in terms of their hard-bitten suspicion of the world. Coming of age in the late 2000s, they saw a financial collapse in the middle of an expeditionary war of questionable strategic import. The young men, especially, then had their place in society not changed but neutered starting in about 2013 (the first "cultural appropriation" fracas at Yale). On a larger scale, any economically aware young person sees how the Boomers have systematically rigged the system against them; social security, Medicare/aid, and the home mortgage ponzi scheme. It's intergenerational theft plain and simple.
But the David French's of the world want to, you know, guys, c'mon, pump the breaks. Turn down the temperature. Feminization of American is totally fine...actually, let me tell you about the summer of 1969, oh man, I was at this Grateful Dead show and....
But there is no going back to that. The damage is done and now it's a rebuilding effort in the middle of a hot (culture) war.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
4d ago
On Sunday evening, I watched Southern Comfort.
Which is a film about how @hydroacetylene spends his weekends.
No, seriously - Louisiana Nat'l Guard in the 1980s. This film is, essentially, an attempt to re-make Deliverance with, I guess, a more military patina. It doesn't do a great job and mostly survives on a sloppy thriller plot and some competent to good performances by a very young Powers Boothe and Keith Carradine.
It isn't a great film, but it is an okay-to-good film that wants to be great.
So, my low stakes question for Sunday is: What are other films that are good, not great, but really want to be great?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
8d ago
I feel like you're being intentionally sarcastic, snarky, and passive-aggressive. If I am wrong, please forgive me.
If I'm right, you're a coward. Fuck you.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
8d ago
This is a good point. Valuation voodoo can actually lead to meaningful damage when a bubble pops because it isn't an actual representation of cash flow.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
"That's a no from me, dawg" as the great bard of our time, Randy Jackson, would say.
You actually did the article author a big favor with your down select of sections. Buried in a lot of emotionality are some interesting economic and geopolitical points for debate.
But so much of the article is full of these kind of things:
Disrupt the disruptors. Boycott companies that don't demonstrate integrity. The future isn't lost yet, we can still create the world we deserve.
How can a company "demonstrate integrity?" This is the same wishy-washy style assertion as "be an ally" or "speak truth to power." It's just so sophomoric.
If I have to pick just one cognitive and logical failing from the article, it directly falls into the fundamental attribution error trap multiple times:
These people think AI is the last thing humans will invent
and
The people in power aren't willing to risk that outcome, and they've been bewitched by the idea of being the only ones to have superintelligence, so they're willing to go all-in to win big and fast.
and
Remember that these people place incredible value on being the first to superintelligence
and
The dynamic in the valley is that the people at the top know the game already, and they intend to exploit it to its fullest
Then you also have these kind of whoppers:
I wouldn't be surprised if Larry Ellison already has a contract signed in blood for this stashed away somewhere to whip out once he knows he can get away with implementing it.
and, in the "conclusion."
We can fight back though, we already have the weapon of our liberation: the power of the purse. You're not powerless. Boycott campaigns forced Disney to walk back Jimmy Kimmel's suspension, that was our power in action. If you care about a just world, don't do business with unethical companies. Demand that the titans of tech change, and if they don't, stop feeding them your dollars.
Then, there's the truly tinfoil hat level of conspiracy thinking:
They've been gutting the IRS and talking about reforming the tax code for a long time, but the plan I see them positioning for is sinister. By raising the nominal tax rate at the same time that they reform the tax code, they can engineer in quasi-legal loopholes that the wealthy can take advantage of by design, probably involving digital coins. They get good talking points ("time to tighten our collective belts for the good of the nation," etc) while letting their friends dodge most real responsibility.
Team Trump (which is really being controlled by the Silicon Valley oligarchs) is going to revamp the IRS in order to support a crypto investment scheme? They're going to pull this off under the radar yet in plain sight. And the tens of thousands of bureaucrats at the IRS, FTC, SEC etc. that would need to be "in" on this scheme are just going to be unaware of it happening? Or they are in on it? And what about when the Big Banks get wind of this? I though they controlled Congress. No, wait, that's Silicon Valley. Or Big Oil. No, I meant Big Pharma.
While above the median level of "orange man bad / big tech bad", it isn't much above that level. I don't know what this authors politics are and, unlike him, I will not presume to know his personal cognitive state or full internal belief and value structure.
On a content only level, I look at this as another flavor of AI doomerism. This isn't paperclip machine doomerism, this is economic theory doomerism. "We've put so much money into AI that it has to work out!" But money doesn't just disappear if a business fails. If the business burnt through all their money, it's probably bad for that businesses' particular investors, but it also means that money went somewhere - other vendors, other businesses. The market moves the money the best it can. Of course I'll admit that this isn't necessarily a great outcome. It's not as if bubbles and over investment are good things in the long run --- right?. Regardless, while growth may flatline (which is bad) the money is still moving. Why 2008 was so frightening was because it looked like money might actually stop moving. A system level credit crunch means that even really good and obvious investments or simple spending can't happen because of a lack of liquidity.
But back to the main economic point; are we so "all in" on AI that if it "fails to deliver" we're 100% giga-fucked? Sure, if we keep all of these definitions slippery and uncertain, why not. On the "failure to deliver" point, I don't see any real rubric or threshold from the author beyond "you better hope and pray that AI delivers a magical transformation." Okay, so we need the ROI on AI to be approximately one Abracadabra. Got it. If we don't get to this magical level of returns, what, exactly, happens? All the BigAI firms go insolvent overnight. Locked out employees, broken keycards. And the new datacenters and chip fabs just immediately fall into a state of disrepair and end up looking like the steel mills outside of Youngstown, Ohio? Again, I'll be charitable here and say that if the BigAi bubble bursts hard, it probably is recession time for a while. But the money doesn't evaporate and all of the human capital doesn't commit suicide. There is a VERY direct line to be drawn from the dot com bubble of late 90s to early 2000s all the way to the rocketship of silicon valley beginning in .... 2009? Or earlier? Google IPO'ed in 2004 IIRC.
Doomerism isn't better than irrational exuberance just because it is the inverse. This is the cowardice of cynicism and pessimism more generally. "I hope I'm wrong but I'm probably not (unsaid: because I'm just so dang smart!)" isn't the flex people think it is. You're prognosticating a negative outcome probably as means to do some preemptive emotional self-satisfaction. I'm not against hearing about downsides to AI. In fact, I've posted about them myself at least two times. All I'm looking for is a cogent enough argument on the hows of Things Falling Apart.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
15d ago
This is a better take on the Palisades fire than my take.
And my general point still stands.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
15d ago
I appreciate you.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
15d ago
(also @sarker and @JarJarJedi)
Here's a post from Catholic Answers that is already more fleshed out than what I could scribble into a comment: LINK
@Hoffmeister25, specifically:
I think there are benefits to trying to check my own animal instincts by weighing them against the example of Christ-like charity and temperance
We'll probably just hard disagree here, but there is no "weigh against." It isn't okay to be just the right amount of selfish. In the Imitation of Christ, we continually make hard attempts towards sanctification. We can make progress but will always fall short of his perfect example. That's the inevitability of sin. The good news (Good News?) is that through grace we can be forgiven our inevitable sins. But they remain sins nonetheless. I get worried when I see things like your phrasing "weighing against" -- because this can easily become an obstinate habit towards sin paired with a self-forgiveness.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
What actual bad effects would that have on my life?
Probably very little to none, as you've stated before.
The cost would be eternal damnation in the afterlife. Pascal will take your bet, and I'll offer him some default swaps on the side.
Choosing to get baptized into a transcendental faith, especially (a nominally) Christian one, after or because of creating a list of temporal pros and cons is wildly contrary to the faith itself. The whole point is to "hate the world" and constantly seek to prepare for the afterlife.
I don't know enough about Mormon theology to offer any specific guidance or raise any ideas for you here. Personally, I consider it to be basically a multilevel marketing cult.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
Totally agree with this. And young men taking risks is, frankly, how society moves forwards with new discovery.
Right now, however, young men are being told to take zero risk, to artificially castrate themselves, and to enjoy doing it.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
and it is every red-blooded Americans moral duty to resist them.
Below is an aside to @Gillitrut 's comments. It looks like he/she/they (idk pronouns) have decided to flame out in this thread.
Regardless of what "it" is, a blanket statement asserting the "moral duty" to react in any way to whatever "it" is ... is something close to the antithesis of the Motte, I think. People get to voice whatever strongly held beliefs the have here without censure, which is a good thing. The requirement for that is to then explain why they have such a strongly held belief, or, perhaps, their assumed likely outcome should people not share their strongly held belief.
Stopping after asserting "it's a moral duty!" is one of the worst things a person can do to discourse or conversation. You're inviting people to disagree with just so you can then perform all of the complex dance steps of moral outrage, probably, mostly, in order to support your own feelings of moral superiority.
I am the Steven Segal of Traditional Catholicism a practicing Catholic and so a lot of my beliefs boil down to "because God said so." But even in those cases (check out some of my posts on porn from earlier today - and smash that like button) I try to, at the least, outline the doctrinal teachings / cathechesim standard response on why and how "God said so." I don't smash and run, I don't think anyone out to either .... for the reasons stated above :-).
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
I am trying to propose a grassroots way of continuing that decline in violence. I would rather not simply have cops on every corner, even though I am a cringe level of "back the blue" pro-police. Thus, I am suggesting what I am suggesting for young male development.
When you say that providing a pathway for young men into adulthood doesn't reduce violence I am, first, skeptical to the point of doubt and second, curious about what your solution for reducing violence would be (short of cops on every corner).
Remember, the context of my original post was that this seemingly wayward fellow in California burnt down part of a city out of nothing more than a moment of spastic nihilistic rage.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
Is physical violence in society able to be decreased at all?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
Thanks.
I believe that the current liberal order will, inevitably, destroy itself and fall into fundamental illiberalism - actually, something quite close to tyranny or at least a kind of state-corporate oligarch - regardless of any "modifications."
I think that the current liberal order is better on the whole than any new order that is actually likely to take power.
We can quibble about the "actually likely" phrase, but, generally, I disagree with this. I think there are alternatives to the current liberal order - that have existed in the past - that are fundamentally better. No, I am not talking about returning to pre-Westphalian Europe or something. I believe the "Old Right" conservatism that existed in some form or another from roughly the end of World War One to the Civil Rights Act (So, let's call it 1920 - 1965 to use round numbers) was the best political philosophy. It was hugely disrupted by FDR - first King of America - and then eradicated entirely by the 1964 CRA. The Warren Court of the 1970s salted its grave.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
Oh, cool! Yeah, that's my missing the point a little bit. Thanks for writing the clarification.
In that case then, my personal method of thinking about the sacred in the context of the sexual is pretty straightforward:
- God created everything with a purpose in mind. The Thomistic view on this is that everything has a 'telos' or properly ordered end (or goal) to it.
- In the context of man and woman and sex, the telos is eternal unification (marriage) and procreation. This is the Catholic view on not only sex, but marriage. The well ordered purpose and end of a marriage is to create children and then raise them in virtue (Side note: For couples who cannot conceive, a marriage is still good and valid so long as it results in a mutual support for sanctification - 'becoming a saint' - in the course of life. You don't divorce because of problems with conception).
- Sex is a sacred act because it results in the creation of life and is also a manifestation of true feelings of love between man and woman only so long as it is performed licitly in the context of the sanctioned sacrament of marriage.
- To have sex outside of marriage is to violate the laws governing sex.
To comment more specifically about porn:
-
Porn is a disordered use of sex. It isn't done within the bounds of marriage with the intent of conception. Even in a strange edge case where two married people are filming themselves having sex with the expressed purpose of conceiving, this is still disordered because the specific character of sex reserves it exclusively to the participants - man and wife. Sex is never "shared" with spectators.
-
Masturbation, likewise, is a disordered use of one's sexual organs for the purpose of self gratification rather than towards the well ordered end of procreating (again, within the context of marriage).
A lot of it comes down to what a thing of any kind is supposed to do - what I started with, it's "telos." When you misuses that thing, you're sinning because you're out of concert with the will of God. Of course, there are many different degrees of severity to this. Mortal vs venial sins and all that. But the underlying assumption is that there is a way to all things and that that way is defined by God and also totally knowable by man.
I am allowed to judge people who are having pre-marital sex and using porn because I want them to be in sync with God's natural law and ordering of the universe because it will be to their greater happiness, joy, and benefit.
Translated to the more secular, I don't like porn because I think it's bad for everyone involved - the porn viewer, the porn maker, the porn producer, etc. All of these people will be spiritually worse off for having engaged with what is an intrinsically disordered act.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
Plenty of societies that had/have very clear pathways for boys to become part of society nonetheless had/have horrific levels of violence.
Hell of a stawman!
Do you truly believe I'm advocating for pathways to manhood to include the active cultivation of violence against others (in a non military, State governed sort of way, of course). You immediately jump from my "the boys need purpose" to "YOU MEAN LIKE NAZIs?!" This is a bad faith argument.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
I am begging you for an effortpost on cell phones and criminals.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
I'm sure that that is exactly what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to slip it in. To quote the original post:
Some sort of religious or, at least, high-minded civic metaphysics is a necessary part of this.
I'm not even sure what kind of argumentation you're using here. It's like mini-maxing what I explicitly said as I kind of snide way of cultivating doubt? It's strange, that's for sure.
If you want to get into a discussion about proposed solutions and their cost / benefit profile, I'm all for it! But, cards on the table first - do you see the current "liberal order" of things to be all well and good?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
(Don't) Burn This Fucker Down!
A guy's been arrested for the Palisades fire. Note: link to an article from the Guardian, which I know is goofy, but the details are better in that article than in a few others that I pulled.
Of note:
After dropping off a passenger, according to the investigators, Rinderknecht parked his car and walked up a nearby trail, taking iPhone videos at a hilltop location while listening to a rap song whose music video included objects being set alight. He had reportedly listened to the song and watched its video repeatedly in the days before the fire.
First, I'm pretty stoked that the government went to what seems like a lot of trouble to find this guy. In fact, I can't remember if there was much reporting, at the time, on this being an intentional / negligent fire. This is tempered by the fact that this arrest was obviously only possible by employing the surveillance state to its fullest extent. People get squeamish about facial recognition technology, but using cellphone location data is both less "emotionally" invasive as well as more durable as a tracking mechanism. Maybe carrying around constant location trackers in our pockets is a bad idea?
Second, culture war angle (of course) - Odd and lonely uber driver dude sets something on fire while listening to rap music. Was it truly intentional? Maybe, maybe not. Negligent, yes. What's truly frightening however is that this is literally an almost literary manifestation of alienated male nihilism. Rinderknecht didn't shoot up a school / church/ political figure. He didn't disappear into drugs / porn / 4chan. He didn't commit suicide. He just kind of got pissed off one night and started a fire that deleted a whole section of a city.
We need to give the boys something to do. I've written about this before on the Motte. One of the primary tasks of human civilization has always been to manage, curtail, and, when necessary, punish the violent impulses of young men. War and famine did a lot of the heavy lifting for a while, and "frontierism" helped out towards the end (i.e. the idea that listless young men could at least try to find fortune in physically difficult locations. Not just "The West" but think also whaling ships, mining, etc.) But the world is fully mapped now, more or less. If you pack up your shit and hit the road, YouTube is going to be the same wherever you go. You can't get it away from it all when it's all in your pocket.
The necessity is in developing better pathways for young men to enter adulthood and develop a sense of self paired with durable external meaning. Some sort of religious or, at least, high-minded civic metaphysics is a necessary part of this. Young men, on their own in a truly atomized sense, turn into their own kind of decentralized stochastic terrorism. Stochastic chaos might be the more accurate term.
But this won't be accomplished by TikTok ads (lol) encouraging the boys to man up and / or talk to a therapist on BetterHelp (thank you for sponsoring this podcast, BTW). I think it requires the sincere confrontation of a modern liberalism that prizes the autonomy of the individual above the stability of society. I can see a good argument to be made that liberalism should be about the tension between those two things. But I don't believe we're living in that world. We're in a world where individuals demand acknowledgement, recognition, and validation from all of society all of the time regardless of any conflict between an individual's value system and societies. This is "live your truth" in a nutshell. And when that nut cracks open, it burns down everything it touches - like, literally.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
The Bible is special too. But Christians don't think we should ban the Bible in order to protect it. They think we should disseminate it as widely as possible precisely because it's sacred and it brings people into contact with the sacred. (In fact they arrange regular mass public gatherings where they come together to worship that which is considered sacred. Apply the same logic to sexuality and...)
I'll take this in good faith because I think you meant it that way. Obviously, there are different "special rules" for different things. Yes, the mass and general catchesis should be spread as far as possible. No, the same shouldn't be said for explicit sexual relations. Ha.
But I don't actually want to just drop a "This is what the Catholic Church says" style response here. THat wouldn't be helpful. I mean, as far as porn goes, the Catholic response is "100% pure evil, don't engage with it at all." Which I agree with. But I also live in America and do believe in free speech so, while on a personal level I am 100% anti porn, politically I can't just shout "perma ban!" and then walk away.
How do we demarcate the sacred things that need to be disseminated from the sacred things that need to be protected? Do we have a schema outlining the different modalities in which something may be sacred?
At the risk of channeling the spirit of Helen Lovejoy, I think we should think of the children. Meaning, as a rubric, is whatever the "thing" we're talking about something we would more or less be comfortable with in giving to children? So, right off the bat, this means that porn, booze, gambling, drugs, and guns have to have my ill-defined "special rules" consideration.
When I say "children" here I do literally mean minors. More conceptually, however, we can think of "children" to mean people who don't necessarily have the fully developed character or faculties to make generative decisions for themselves. To be clear, I'm not talking about the mentally incompetent or retarded here. I mean "normal" distribution IQ folks who have glaring inabilities to manage their own life.
Another possible rubric could be on "length of time it takes to fuck your life with x." You don't get addicted to porn after a single use. Smoking one pack of cigarettes won't give you lung cancer. On the other hand, you can go down to the liquor store right now and for $50 or less buy a quantity of alcohol that will 100% lead to death. Guns ... I mean, I don't even have to spell that out. I should probably point out here that "special rules" does not mean banning. In fact, "special rules" need not even be particular onerous. For example, I am as pro-gun as they get, but I do think purchasing a gun (from a business, not privately) should require 1) valid and current identification and 2) proof of no convictions for violent felonies (perhaps with some sort of age out provision - haven't thought it all the way through).
I am always suspicious of the State and think it should be as small as possible. I wish a lot more work of social management would be done by local culture. Bring back slut shaming, but don't make laws against being a slut. Bring back social condemnation for being a drunk, but don't make purchasing limits on the amount of booze I can get. Real freedom is preserving the ability to make choices, even bad ones, so long as there isn't an oversized risk of collateral damage to others. I'm not advocating for the freedom to drink and drive, for instance.
So I don't support a State level ban on porn or impossible-to-enforce-and-also-1984-style digital age verification attempts. But I do support the return to the common idea that porn is for weirdo perverts. Trevor Wallace, a comedian I sometimes have pop up on my nonsense YouTube account, often has porn "actors" on his podcast and in his comedic clips. This does make me sad and its made me shy away from his content more because it normalizes the "everyone uses porn" meme. That isn't true. It was never true. Furthermore, on the topic of cultural memes, I think it's pretty easy to draw a line from the sexual revolution of the late 1960s to the ridiculous sexualization of society today along with all of the mental gymnastic that accompany it.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
17d ago
They are angry at Trump. But not in a "bullied kids shoots up a school" way. But in a, "I cry in every therapy session" way.
I like this framing. For goofy effect, I'll boost it by linking this nails-on-chalkboard level of unwatchable Satanic Grotto Podcast.
Timestamps at 22:00, a direct quote:
"When you see is walking down the sidewalk, and we're dressed in all black, you know that we fuckin' mean business.
I'm sorry that Chad McBro was mean to you in the 10th grade, but it seems like you've been holding onto this for too long. No one gets intimidated by people wearing all black. In fact, we kind of think it's sexy. But this is deeply layered performative emotionality; the constant refrain of "hail Satan", the goofy pit-of-fire green screen backdrop.
And I do believe that's what Jay Jones is all about as well. He types out those moronic texts as a way to hyper up his inner bullying victim self. He's never been in a real fight, but he can rhetorically decapitate Trump over and over. Do I think Jay Jones would actually take the opportunity to kill my family the way @WhiningCoil does? Not directly, no, but he might do what a lot of cowards in the past have done; use the state to make my family's life meaningfully worse.
And that's where, although I like @DirtyWaterHotDog 's framing, I disagree with the "harmlessness" of these kind of swamp creatures. The ones that really commit to it can really fuck things up. "Oh, come on, what are they really gonna do?" stopped being easy to say when, in 2020, they started to coerce everyone into getting mystery juice injected into our arms.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
17d ago
Also, I hate The Office and I'm very glad that it seems to be mostly fading as a cultural touchstone
Please say more - because I vigorously agree with you.
Jim Halpert is responsible for more actual work place sexual harassment than Don Draper.
About the 3:30 mark
"Since you keep identifying "me" as "you" would it be fair to say I'm not 5'9""
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