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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29554 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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You think you're a cynic, but you're not nearly cynical enough. Politics isn't about policy or the effects of policy for the most part.

It's about signalling the right things to the right people. Politicians routinely support insane policies that would never actually be implemented or even do anything that furthers their goals on the sole motivation that those policies send the right signals.

"Build the wall", they say, and then don't literally build a literal wall, because what the people heard and care about is "I want to lower immigration", not the thing in itself.

What I'm trying to get at here is what tendency RFK is coming from and whether that tendency is reconcilable with that of Trump's electorate. That his actual policy positions are contradictory with those of Trump, or even with themselves, is immaterial.

RFK is the standard bearer of old school hippie leftists who are skeptical of the government, corporations and buy into every conspiracy theory under the sun, his alliance with Trump is a ritual that consecrates the alliance of that tradition with the generally syncretic MAGA movement. Or at least it's what the Trump campaign is trying to make it into.

"Build the wall", they say, and then don't literally build a literal wall, because what the people heard and care about is "I want to lower immigration", not the thing in itself.

The wall was synechdoche, not metaphor. There is indeed a literal wall involved, but it's also part of lowering immigration.

Well more of a fence. But you get my point.

You think you're a cynic, but you're not nearly cynical enough.

This isn't even cynicism, it's just taking him at his word.

RFK is the standard bearer of old school hippie leftists who are skeptical of the government, corporations and buy into every conspiracy theory under the sun, his alliance with Trump is a ritual that consecrates the alliance of that tradition with the generally syncretic MAGA movement. Or at least it's what the Trump campaign is trying to make it into.

Noted businessman Trump is not exactly the kind of guy who I would say is skeptical of corporations. The argument you are making here seems incoherent - RFK is against corporations, we must imagine Trump is too, therefore they go together. Then you confusingly heap the campaign finance angle on it for some reason even though nobody is talking about that.

Noted businessman Trump is not exactly the kind of guy who I would say is skeptical of corporations

And yet Caesar is no less the ally of the plebs because he is himself a patrician.

The distinction you are not seeing is the one delineated further down in the thread, between public companies as oligarchies and private companies as monarchies. Trump is a champion of the latter, of personal power and individualism.

This is compatible with old hippie individualism to some degree. It's also contradictory of course, but that doesn't and has never prevented syncretism. All that needs to happen is a depersonalization of the robber barons. Which is effectively what comes out of RFK's mouth when he wishes death on abstractions instead of specific names.

nobody is talking about that

Everybody is talking about that.

There is a specter haunting the Western world. And his name is Managerialism.

All political conversations are ultimately about the ruling class and its enemies. Or they're not political conversations.

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