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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   34277 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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JD Vance comes off as a normal guy. More normal than Kamala, Trump, Joe, Pence IMO. Obama had charisma, but his artifice was obvious in longer conversations — too effortful. Vance is so normal that if you removed the political parts and told someone Joe picked a random guy off the street, it would be believable. And his audience isn’t some biased conservative audience, it’s about as average Joe as you can get, and the conclusion in the comments is that Vance is just a normal dude. This isn’t always the case — comments often criticize guests for being blowhards or criticize Joe for not letting guests finish.

This cements my thought that the “Vance is weird” campaign is a fully enclosed propaganda ecosystem, as in, it isn’t exaggerating some aspect of Vance (eg “Trump lies”), it is just totally made up. And that’s really spooky, because there’s a section of the public that will believe whatever the DNC wants them to believe. If they can make you believe Vance is weird they can make you believe anything.

This cements my thought that the “Vance is weird” campaign is a fully enclosed propaganda ecosystem, as in, it isn’t exaggerating some aspect of Vance (eg “Trump lies”), it is just totally made up.

Sometimes he has moments where it seems like he is thinking something complex (as you'd expect from a VC who went to Yale) but deliberately dumbing himself down to make himself look relatable. Mostly he pulls it off, but sometimes it's too forced and awkward, whicih can come across "weird."

Vance definitely is not normal. I'm voting for kamala (she reminds me of my mom) but I genuinely like the guy. He's exactly the same sort of weird, intellectual, rationalist-adjacent catholic I am. He's exactly the sort of peerson I'd love to talk shit with at one of our local ACX meetups. His very existence makes me less afraid of a trump victory because I know he's a signal that patriots (of the vatican city) are in control.

But by the very fact that I like him, I know him to be weird. Anyone like us is definitionally bizarre-- conservative motte posters and liberal /r/slatestarcodex posters are more like each other than we are like the rest of the population. I don't care about walz, and actively hate trump. That's how I know they're normal. But Vance-- and to a lesser extent Kamala-- aren't.

This cements my thought that the “Vance is weird” campaign is a fully enclosed propaganda ecosystem, as in, it isn’t exaggerating some aspect of Vance (eg “Trump lies”), it is just totally made up. And that’s really spooky, because there’s a section of the public that will believe whatever the DNC wants them to believe. If they can make you believe Vance is weird they can make you believe anything.

I dunno, to me it kind of makes sense that a normal guy would seem weirder as a politician than an average politician would. It's up to what people expect of a politician. Normal people don't methodically control their actions and words to make everything fit into a neatly packaged personal narrative, so it's easier to cherry-pick examples to craft a different narrative.

This description reminds me of Sarah Palin, who was a remarkably charismatic figure, except that that charisma was a very normie boomer type of charisma that's very vulnerable to attack in our modern political environment. Trump has something similar, but with an extra more unique quality that makes him the defining figure of our times.

Palin has a very polarizing personality. She certainly has charisma, but she’s also abrasive and loud.

she’s also abrasive and loud.

And Harris isn't?

No? Her flaws are completely different.

Abrasive I’ll grant you, but loud?

Harris just sounds xanax-ed out the whole time, she’s rarely loud at all, just weird and empty.

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