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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   13351 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #3

This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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I experience an odd dichotomy whenever I read or listen to something this guy said.

On one hand I find myself wondering how is this guy even in the running? Everything about him just screams sketchy con-artist and not a particularly competent or intelligent one at that. On the other, the devil on my shoulder who always assumes the worst of people is whispering "you know exactly why he's in the running"

Vivek might not seem very intelligent to you because you're not in his target audience, but in my opinion, the things he says and tweets are perfect for appealing to a populist American conservative.

you're not in his target audience

...

the things he says and tweets are perfect for appealing to a populist American conservative.

something must be off then, because if his aim is to capture the unironic MAGA-hat wearing crowd (as distinct from a Twitter-leftist's caricature thereof) he's going about it wrong. His base of support within the GOP is not the populists, it's the east coast patrician types.

Wrong how?

For me, anything this guy says will be colored by the way I first heard about him: some dude on this board getting way too excited. A red flag if I ever saw one.

His job is to say things white Republicans can't say.

I disagree, Vivek is the queer theater kid candidate for queer theater kids.

Trump and to a lesser degree DeSantis who are the "Says what we've all been thinking but were too polite to say" candidates, hence the human trafficking charges.

There's some truth to that too I think. He comes off as a theater kid doing a bad job playing a character in bad high school play. I think an even better analogy is he is in debate class assigned to argue the right wing side but clearly doesn't truly believe it.

Why?

This might just be culturally specific to @JTarrou's violent class but the dude's whole vibe is very "used car salesman on 32nd street trying to sell a Ford Mustang to a PFC at 69% apr"

...and the why is basically that secular liberals, being the dominant ideology lack the memetic antibodies required to recognize hostile action even when hostile action is brazen. Dude has screwed over everyone who's ever invested in him and yet the idiots on the in the professional class remain enamored "he's so intelligent and androgynously pretty, how could you not vote for him?" easily actually.

I think most of the professional class thinks he’s a scammer. The only Vivek fans seem to be the WallStreetBets types who idolize Leo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort and for whom a sleazy scammer image is attractive.

Maybe I'm misreading the room then because my impression is that populists hate him while the more liberal leaning members of the managerial class think he's amazing because they fancy themselves as "Jordan Belforts" themselves

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