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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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For educated people, the class-enriching position is the default.

Indeed (progressive thought is designed by and for these people). It's worth noting that this also applies to conservatives, but the tension comes from most of the problems they solve not being fake [in the sense that their usefulness/worth/meal ticket doesn't tend to come from artificial structures (regulatory compliance, education, management, bureaucracy)].

It takes a rather unusual kind of person to notice that and reject it, though I think the rejection comes first and the noticing second (I think educated conservatives are most likely to believe their underlying skills will allow them to succeed even if the number of bullshit jobs fell by 90%, and it's more common for men to think this than women). And fixing it is not going to make you money anyway.

And that progressives have a lot of intense fear about what conservatives might do

If I had the sense that my entire sociopolitical salary was built on a house of cards that specifically depends on the welfare of not-my-political class to sustain (and when my meal ticket comes from taxing them, and when new positions open up for my talents it's funded by/in the service of yet another new tax) I'd be utterly terrified too. I think progressives have an innate sense of this (hence the need for the hostility and the suppression); though the capacity for resistance ironically might be conservative propaganda that progressives are buying into.