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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   27633 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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It bothers me immensely and I'm struggling to finish an essay trying to explain it clearly.

Do you know Lewis's "The Inner Ring" speech? I think it's related to how concentric rings of social circles form, with people at each layer sneering at those in the outer layer, while apeing the fashions of the inner layer they're desperate to be inducted into.

The other (hierarchy) is not printed anywhere. Nor is it even a formally organised secret society with officers and rules which you would be told after you had been admitted. You are never formally and explicitly admitted by anyone. You discover gradually, in almost indefinable ways, that it exists and that you are outside it; and then later, perhaps, that you are inside it.

There are what correspond to passwords, but they are too spontaneous and informal. A particular slang, the use of particular nicknames, an allusive manner of conversation, are the marks.

It has no fixed name. The only certain rule is that the insiders and outsiders call it by different names...” From outside, if you have dispaired of getting into it, you call it “That gang” or “they” or “So-and-so and his set” or “The Caucus” or “The Inner Ring.” If you are a candidate for admission you probably don’t call it anything. To discuss it with the other outsiders would make you feel outside yourself. And to mention talking to the man who is inside, and who may help you if this present conversation goes well, would be madness!

The "shell game of implausible deniability" is how people advance in leftist circles. The dev I mentioned must affect all the correct mannerisms to be admitted to a higher circle in his ideologically captured industry. But to name that circle would be unthinkably gauche!
To label it with a term like "woke" announces you're an outsider, the worst kind of scum who has despaired of any social advancement, and anyone hoping for admission must publicly shun you.

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