Pongalh
1mo ago
A hereditary union (not officially) segregated along racial lines. Sounds right up the alley of some of the folks here, interestingly.
In what ways could these unions be considered EHC? I mean they've clearly managed to get one over on all of us. That takes skill.
I love that the Motte has broached this subject. If you're not familiar with comedian Justin Whitehead, his whole shtick is essentially watching My 600 Pound Life and tearing into the people who appear on it. Not a particularly admirable way to get laughs, but it's a guilty pleasure: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4GLent9Zk6E
He went viral a while ago when a big guy started following him through a Walmart, knew who he was, ending in a confrontation in the parking lot.
Pongalh
2mo ago
My sister likewise has no intention of having kids. She just recently got to the other side of 40, so I'm extremely certain it's a permanent decision.
And indeed she moved to England years ago, has a great job in the arts, married to a great guy. Loves to travel as well.
(I feel like for women, if you don't have a great career, have a family. Men have to have a good career to have a family, otoh.)
Pongalh
3mo ago
Really? The biggest relationship of my life was with a black woman. Reasons to get an "ick" vibe from RH #398
Pongalh
6mo ago
I pulled an Altman with Anna Khachiyan's voice, incidentally: https://x.com/DainFitzgerald/status/1791195409383292992
Pongalh
9mo ago
On the other hand he's anti-Christian, anti-populist and pro-euthanasia.
(His dismissal of the Palestinian cause stems from lacking any bleeding heart Abrahamic universalism.)
Pongalh
9mo ago
Indeed. The movie Blown Away with Jeff Bridges covers some of this territory actually (lol, I know)
Pongalh
9mo ago
I alluded to that same point regarding Israel vs. US interests/American people with a conservative on Twitter named Katya Sedgwick (who I interviewed a while back partially in the topic of the Ukraine proxy war, which we were both against, but October 7th has put us at odds).
The argument of cultural affinity and geopolitical good sense was the answer I got, to differentiate Israel/Jews vs. Somalia/Muslims. Highly questionable in my opinion, both as far as blowback and a Jewish ethnostate not particularly resonating with Americans on the ground nor their interests.
Pongalh
9mo ago
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?
Pongalh
9mo ago
"jealousy is the core of privilege discourse..."
Interesting. This seems at odds with the analysis of someone like Wesley Yang, that privilege discourse is a rhetorical weapon of the strong, a clever and perhaps counterintuitive domination of the weak. The "successor ideology," or the new way the upper class advances itself.
So, a jealous upper class?
Pongalh
10mo ago
Wrt the advertising industry, there was an amusing but brief series with Steve Coogan on Showtime years back, called "Happiness" iirc, that depicted the downside of becoming middle-aged in advertising.
Pongalh
10mo ago
The "lying flat" movement in China would seem to buttress what you're saying.
Pongalh
10mo ago
Some of these reasons sound like just-so stories. When Ron Paul would routinely wear an oversized suit I could say something like, "That's relatable, it's like your cousin Joe who has that one imperfect suit he wears for special occasions!"
But RP went nowhere with most.
Pongalh
10mo ago
Sure, my mom likes her. Boomer Republican, doesn't miss a 49ers game. Not Waspy rich or Jewish or anything like that. My mom works at Home Depot.
Pongalh
10mo ago
From years of reading fact checking sites for my job, this seems true. Snopes liberals fend off right wing accusations implicating and sullying Antifa with incredible regularity. Meanwhile something like smiling Covington kid, Damore and other stores that take off on the right isn't really their beat.
Pongalh
11mo ago
In the popular imagination "grooming" is a conspiratorial right-wing thing, but it's true it's actually quite normative among younger people in general, that theme and accusation.
Colleen Ballinger aka Miranda Sings was accused of that and I'm pretty sure it wasn't coming from the right, who were never paying much attention to her.
Pongalh
11mo ago
The Italian School-loving New Right which seems to have a lot of sway here is quite overt about putting status and cool above any kind of lame moralistic principled considerations. There is only health, wealth, power, consequences, and demographic blocks determined by great men, not corny meditations on the morality of any given act - in war, or backroom political dealings - driven by resentful leveling.
Of course whenever it clashes with the east coast journalistic establishment it's shown up to be quite cringe and uncool. Maybe the tech/coastal crypto-right being so adjacent to edgy and cool - unlike the flyover populists who are distant and hopeless - makes them value it more than even the official culture industry, who take it for granted because they're directly at the center of it.
Pretty convenient that elite realignments are cool and edgy (edgy though really?...VC and non-profit realignments as edgy?) given that's the easiest thing to get behind. Relatedly, inequality soars... inequality is actually cool!
And how about simply being not anti-semitic, not philo-semitic? In fact philo-semitism seems a good way of generating more anti-semitism.
Pongalh
11mo ago
Right. How many wealthier conservative white men who aren't particularly culturally aggrieved - but are economically savvy - have attained that status, indirectly, by advertising (read cultural) trends that do not put the likes of them front and center?
Pongalh
11mo ago
"This is to say there are literally no white men in TV commercials..."
I saw a Liberty Mutual ad 30 minutes ago on tv with two white men appearing to play '70s style cops
I think it's part of the optimization of everything. Increasingly, if you're about X, you need to have been about X for as long as possible. People who are constantly going from one line of work or lifestyle to another are slipping through the cracks and becoming sort of invisible, on the outside of success looking in. It's associated with being kind of a loser, relative to decades past. Indeed it's kind of a Boomerism, to have worked in e.g. a department store and then one day a guy comes in who makes movies, you hit it off, and a few years later you're firmly ensconced in the movie industry with some success.
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