AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
Just Another Alt-MSNBC Guy. Find me at Substack: https://alexanderturok.substack.com/
User ID: 3346
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
3d ago
So, to sum up, the accusation that a project of this sort is "LARP-y" is kind of irrelevant. Yes, it'll be LARP-y to start with; it kind of has to be. That's how things work. It's a phase — a necessary phase in the process of becoming something more, and if the people involved stay determined enough, and keep it up long enough, that phase will pass, and it will become something more.
It really depends on whether there's an actual conceptually sound plan to take it from the LARP stage to the actually done stage. Take the white nationalist mass-migration to Idaho thing. There's an actual plan to do it, see:
Contrast that with the "repeal the 19th" people on Twitter. I've never heard any of them outline how the 19th is to be repealed. It's just empty venting.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
4d ago
Many websites auto-censor or downrank posts that have bad words, so it's a good habit to get into to always use ***.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
5d ago
White nationalist James Kirkpatrick is complaining about how Indian slop accounts are taking his job:
Won’t change my posting as it was always just a bonus but payouts have been gutted even after biggest month ever. Foreign slop merchants really have nuked it for all of us.
Notice that Richard Hanania isn't having this problem. Much easier for some Bihari peasant to grok and replicate Trumpism. Something to think about if you want to be the next big populist influencer.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
6d ago
MAGA is not Trump. MAGA became the rallying cry of a Tea Party that is done asking politely and has now adopted the position "Fuck it, we ball". Trump is the avatar of that attitude. The guy who will actually say "Fuck you, we did in fact build that" on behalf of all the construction workers, architects, structural engineers, real-estate developers, Et Al. who did in fact build that, and are fed up with crime, inflation, and constantly being lectured by idiot wordcels about race, gender, and whatever else is on the menu this week.
There's nothing about tariffs here. The architects, structural engineers, real-estate developers of America have been moving away from a Republican party increasingly associated with low-class people. Real-life Howard Roark types are not happy about the tariffs suddenly making the cost of inputs higher. Even Trump slop accounts like Mike Cernovich are having second thoughts now:
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
12d ago
The Virginia Giuffre suicide brought to mind an idea I've been thinking about for a while: populism works best without the people. Rob Henderson and many others have talked about how certain ideas promoted by the upper class disproportionately harm the lower class. In his book Troubled, he wrote:
Many of my peers at Yale and Stanford would work ceaselessly. But when I'd ask them about the plans they'd implemented to get into college, or start a company, or land their dream job, they'd often suggest they just got lucky rather than attribute their success to their efforts. Interestingly, it seems like many people who earn status by working hard are able to boost their status among their peers even more by saying they just got lucky. This isn't just limited to my own observations, either. A 2019 study found that people with high income and social status are the most likely to attribute success to mere luck rather than hard work.
Both luck and hard work play a role in the direction of our lives, but stressing the former at the expense of the latter doesn't help those at or near the bottom of society. If disadvantaged people come to believe that luck is the key factor that determines success, then they will be less likely to strive to improve their lives. One study tracked more than six thousand young adults in the US at the beginning of their careers over the course of two decades, and found that those who believed that life's outcomes are due to their own efforts as opposed to external factors became more successful in their careers and went on to attain higher earnings.
The problem is that people who entertain populist ideas like the above wind up shoved into the same part of the political spectrum as all these people who rave about "pedophile rings." Along with the internet personalities who won't endorse QAnon outright but pander to their QAnoner supporters with equivocating crap like "why can't they release the Epstein documents? I'm not saying there's a conspiracy, I just want TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNMENT. Just asking qwestchins!" The populist movement winds up embracing the same mentality of helplessness Henderson is criticizing. Many of the Epstein victims admit they did it voluntarily for money, but you can't say that because it gets in the way of the narrative of helpless proles victimized by evil sex-trafficking finance guys.*
You can only really stand up for the people by keeping them at arm's length.
*The QAnoners are convinced that happens ALL THE TIME but Epstein is the only example they can point to, which is why we're still hearing about it five years after Epstein's death and will probably keep hearing about it for decades more.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
15d ago
He's a college educated white man and college educated white men have moved away from the Republican Party over the last decade. See Hanania and Spencer for other examples. On the other hand, the Right has gained no-college whites like Tim Pool and Joe Rogan.
Maybe, instead of complaining about being betrayed, you could modify your political platform to make it more appealing to high-income, educated white people?
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
15d ago
To make a silly example, if Trump stopped deporting illegal El Salvadorian gangbanger wifebeaters
The woman went back to the man who allegedly abused her, resumed having sex with him, and doesn't think it's a big deal. I don't understand why internet people care so much.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
20d ago
confidential informant
Very likely a criminal.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
20d ago
gangster himself.
Pics or it didn't happen.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
20d ago
NGL I'd still hate the "parents" more
Think a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment is rightists taking out their anger at blacks, Jews, feminists, and white liberals on illegal immigrants because the latter are a more socially acceptable target.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
20d ago
Not true.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
22d ago
HAT-BAT, taken to scale, would result in many "lesser" men not able to find wives. You could justify it eugenically, but the lesser men could just say "you want a premoral, survival-of-the-fittest world? Let's put aside morality and fight!"
Realistically, Musk's behavior won't scale, it'll just make pronatalism look low-class.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
27d ago
I wouldn't worry too much about a "brain drain." It's telling that their go-to example of "brain drain" is a European who came to America and is considering returning. Here's what he says:
Now Die Dejean is applying for positions in Europe.
"I want to work wherever they allow me to do the research," said the scientist, who studies fish stocks to ensure tuna is being fished sustainably.
"I'm eagerly waiting for some of the things that are coming from the European Union...increasing the opportunities for scientists like me to come back," said Die Dejean, who was born in Spain but has spent most of his career in the U.S. and Australia.
Sounds to me like there aren't many such positions in Europe, he's holding out hope they create them. I've heard IRL from scientists that it's pretty difficult to get jobs - many wind up writing apps as a result. Maybe that's a failure of society, if so, it's not one that can be placed at Trump's feet. (I say this as someone who doesn't like Trump.) It's not just tuna researchers either, see this video about astrophysicists, which is clearly a market where the supply of astrophysicists far exceeds the number of astrophysics jobs society is willing to fund:
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1mo ago
Why don't you tell me an issue you think no-college, Fox-News watching boomers are wrong about?
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1mo ago
The mainstream media is untrustworthy and should be replaced with what, Catturd?
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1mo ago
Telling his voters not to vote by mail.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1mo ago
Total -public, corporate, private - debt in 2000 was 28 trillion. Now it's 93 trillion.
Numbers not accounted for inflation don't mean much. Why is corporate debt a problem?
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1mo ago
Have you considered that maybe the Republicans are indeed dumb?
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1mo ago
I encountered a mentally ill homeless man ranting about Russia and Putin. I couldn't understand most of what he was saying but I'm sure he was on the Biden administration's payroll too.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1mo ago
I do not see a way for either you or the author to argue that it is less of a problem for the previous uniparty regime. Afghanistan in particular and the GWOT generally seem like really good examples; for the Afghan war, we have the documents now and can confirm that the entire two decades of policy was founded entirely on lies, that no one ever actually had a plan, and that the entire procedure was built around concealing this fact to the public as extensively as possible to maintain the flow of resources and human lives. The more one listened to "the most informed about policy and current events, like journalists and academics," the worse one's fundamental understanding of that conflict would be.
The large majority of salt-of-the-earth no-college white people supported the Iraq war. The Iraq war should have reduced the confidence people put in the media and the CIA. (though not "the experts" in general) It should not lead one to adopt the attitude of many people here that the army of Fox News watching no-college boomers are never wrong on any issue.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1mo ago
It also makes me wonder where the GOP can go when Trump finally kicks the bucket, a lot of candidates who try to emulate the man aren't doing well electorally. The electoral magic exists in Trump himself, not an idealogy.
Trump's genius is in combining working-class appeal with generally moderate politics in issues other than immigration and tariffs. But his biggest fans have a psychology inherently opposed to moderation and compromise. For instance, Trump said "My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights." The mini-Trumps would never say that. Even if they don't personally care much for "unborn children," giving their "enemies" even symbolic concessions is "cuckoldry" - totally opposed to their worldview.
There are many people whose politics are entirely based around tribal loyalty and cannot fathom anyone operating differently. So when they see someone agreeing that the mainstream media is right about issue X, they imagine that person must be getting on his knees and deep-throating the mainstream media, because that's what they do with Donald Trump. When shown evidence this isn't true, such as Hanania's right-wing views on crime or race and IQ, they just ignore it.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1mo ago
uppose it gets to the point that their only option is to begin filling the vacancies left by the deportations. Isn't that just... wonderful? Isn't that exactly what Trump's base voted for?
I recall a lot about inflation, crime, and illegal immigration. I don't recall any complaints about fat obese people not working. Think people are projecting their own ideology onto the Trump campaign.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1mo ago
Ending the handouts seems like a better way of dealing with that then wrecking the economy.
There's a big argument on Right-wing Twitter between so-called "classical liberals" and the advocates of Christopher Rufo's aggressive tactics toward wokeness in higher education. I find myself in the middle but leaning more towards Rufo, which was reinforced by a recent Quillette article criticizing him. One paragraph in particular gets to the meat of the disagreement:
"Classical liberals" like to hit sentimental ideologues with cold hard facts. Advocates of the rosy theory of communism are confronted with the reality of communist states. Those with an overly sentimental view of the 1950s are hit with facts about how homes were smaller and most families had no more than a single car. Religious people are shown the evidence that their holy books were written by men, not Gods. But when people point out that their sentimental, idealized vision of "the free and open academy" is not working, they just circle back to the nobility of their vision and chastise people for deviating from it.
A true "classical liberal" would treat his ideas the same way he treats everyone else's, as hypotheses to be tested against reality. "Academic freedom" sounds good and all, but what happens when it's implemented in real-world universities? As the "classical liberals" freely admit, the results are often not stellar. So what's their solution? Doesn't seem they have one. Referring to DeSantis's takeover of the New College of Florida, Jonathan Haidt wrote that, "I am horrified that a governor has simply decided, on his own, to radically change a college. Even if this is legal, it is unethical, and it is a very bad precedent and omen for our country."[2] Haidt seems to object not to the specifics of what DeSantis did, but to the notion that any radical changes could be made to even a single college unless they're driven from within the academic caste. There's nothing "classically liberal" about the notion that an institution is entitled to receive money from the taxpayer while not being accountable to said taxpayers' elected representatives. But that's the "classical liberal" brain-worm.
What is to be done? Critics of Rufo are right to note that in his zeal to, in his words, "recapture the regime and entrench our ideas in the public sphere," he's often vague about what, exactly, those ideas are. The whole conservative movement doesn't know what it stands for. Rufo, who speaks about the importance of "faith" and hired a literal former porn star, is no exception. In my view, the solution is not erecting a franken-ideology of "American values" but doubling down on truly classical liberal /libertarian ideas.
That means austerity and the ultimate goal of privatization. The Quillette author is horrified by the vision of competing universities that market themselves to students on ideological grounds. To my mind, that's exactly what we should want. Just as our free market in food results in much obesity, a free market in higher education will result in many echo chambers. But just as not everyone chooses to overeat, not everyone will choose to attend an echo chamber. The kind of university people like Pinker dream about will be more likely to arise under such a regime than under the current regime of unaccountable institutions flooded with public money and asked nicely to respect academic freedom.
The "classical liberal" recoils in horror at the idea of woke students going to school in an openly woke echo chamber. They should be exposed to other points of view! The result is more often that "classical liberals" are exposed to woke student cancel culture mobs. "Classical liberals" should recognize that they're a minority. They will not win back control of academia from within and are ideologically opposed to outside aid. "Partition" is the solution most likely to give them what they want.
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