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Ugh. I understand why shouting ten applause lights is effective; it doesn’t make it any more comfortable.
@Eetan mentions the Great Internet Flame Wars. I think that similarity runs deeper than the obvious. Forget the religious claims—you could start an atheism-style fight by dropping any of these into a forum. Even the ones which are, in theory, uncontroversial are flagrantly tribal. The act of publishing such a slate has been unfashionable since the early recession (outside of tumblresque enclaves). I don’t think challenging the social-justice left on those terms is going to pan out.
Note that Trump didn’t have to make statements like these to get attention. He sells a complete worldview in fewer words. Ambiguity in such a worldview is a feature, not a bug.
I can’t tell if Vivek is running this more as a Sneer against progressives or more as a Statement. If the former, Trump is going to eat his lunch. If the latter…well, I still think the FPOTUS will steamroll him, to be honest.
I feel like this is a downstream effect of the eternal September. The internet went from being a specialist thing to a popular one and thus became subject to the same selection pressures that plague other forms of popular media.
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And certain front lawns. ("In this house we believe....")
Oh, that's a good point.
This is going to be one of those Fussell-style class icebergs, isn't it? Nailing your 95 theses to the bathroom wall is prole, smugly baking them into thinkpieces is elite?
I feel like there's something there. The smaller 2000s Internet featured way more earnestness. Then at some point, people decided it was cringe, and spent more effort making their points indirect and plausibly deniable. Or something. I don't know enough about this history to say.
This is something that doesn't get talked about enough. Earnestness, sincerity, seriousness have been destroyed in modern Western culture by the Internet. I'm not sure exactly why or how either but it's something we need to figure out because it's a serious obstacle to getting anything done.
Irony and snark are not the way.
Post modernism became the default.
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Those aren't applause lights, not everybody agrees with them. His supporters do but isn't the whole point of campaigning being in agreement with your supporters? 9 is a statement of fact but it's to be interpreted as an anti-corporatist/deep state message. The US isn't supposed to have Blackrock as a 4th branch, or launder decisions through social media companies.
That's exactly what makes it an applause light.
He's saying it for the supporters, who know the meaning, and know it means he's in the ingroup. Cue applause.
He's not saying it for people like me, since as you note, that's not what campaigning is about. It doesn't matter that I don't like it, or that I don't know the correct bogeymen to fill in the blanks. I understand that.
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