How did so many young and presumably intelligent people fall into such meanness and madness? Can it just be hating woke? But you and I hate woke, and we're not chortling with glee as the barbarians raze civil society.
You don't quite understand what it was to be young and feel completely smothered under what really did look to be a total woke gleichschaltung. Jonah Goldberg likes to tell the anecdote about how the Nazis forced their ideology into everything - even the cat fancier magazines had to be about "the superior Aryan Cat" - and especially in schools that sort of attitude was everywhere with regard to racial, gender, and sex issues. Just about every hobby was forcefully-converged; you couldn't be in a knitting group without "centering the experience of POC [that horrid neologism]-knitters and the oppression inherent in the excessive whiteness of hobby stores." The ever-changing speech policing [EDIT: to say nothing of the actual rampant diversion of educational and professional resources and opportunities away from anything that couldn't claim some special status over white heterosexual male-ness - talk about structural prejudice!] The complete vanishing of traditionally-boyish stories from the YA shelves. And worst of all, the Stasi-esque progressive thought policing and witch-hunts on pre-Elon social media. All delivered with a maximum of smarmy "eat-your-vegetables" condescension designed to infantilize, isolate, and humiliate.
I'm an elder-millennial so I only got the beginnings of it in the late 2000's and early 2010s, but it was bad then and from talking to friends' younger siblings it has gotten significantly worse (though things appear to be swinging back a bit in recent months). That kind of smothering sows quite a lot of resentment, which is now having it's own Langston Hughes "raisin in the sun" moment. These kids have lots of memories of punchable lib faces sneering at them, and now their revenge is exploding indiscriminately all over the place. The libs should have read their own literature and realized that it could happen to them too.
Schmendrick, I do sympathize. It sounds intensely annoying. But does even the experience of condescension and humiliation justify voting for a lying, cheating, ignorant grifter who tried to overturn a presidential election? And for a party that is only interested in shoveling money at the rich and that is happy to strip millions of people of their medical care, allow our infrastructure to fall apart, destroy labor unions, give polluters a free hand, pack the judiciary with rabid radicals, and ignore climate change? Voting Republican seems like a counterproductive way to fight woke.
The vote for Trump is a vote for a brick in the face to the existing system. It is rarely justified a priori on any utilitarian calculus. It is a raw scream of high-ethanol negative partisanship, with some slight rationalization that someone who so clearly has burnt his boats and rendered himself persona non grata in polite society cannot be coopted by the elite blob (the Moldbuggian "Cathedral") as so many previous conservative insurgent groups have been.
Your listing of grievances holds no weight with the right, because they do not believe that you honestly oppose Trump for those reasons. They believe that you will call *anyone* who expresses views to the right of the progressive consensus du jour a racist, sexist, homophobe, liar, cheater, democracy-despoiler, vulture-capitalist, shill for the rich, etc., while you will find unprincipled excuses to justify and support the exact same sins when they crop up on the progressive side of the aisle.
They view doing things that make woke people maximally mad as the definitionally correct way to fight woke, because if the woke people are mad, they are definitionally not getting what they want.
I don't say any of this gleefully, or with any animosity towards you particularly - I don't know you and if you're in a Wisdom of Crowds comment section you clearly have decent taste in podcasts. I only say this by way of explanation, in hopes you can grasp the actual situation and have an accurate view of a prominent perspective on the other side.
Thanks for the explanation. There are some things I still don't understand, though. For example:
"A vote for Trump is a vote for a brick in the face to the existing system." No, on the contrary. The existing system is plutocracy. Plutocracy is the reason millions of Americans have negative net worth, why the net worth of the three richest Americans is greater than the net worth of the bottom 50 percent of the country, why tens of millions of Americans have no health insurace and why millions more would be bankrupted by a serious illness, why millions of young Americans were crippled by student debt, why every wildfire and hurricane season is a nightmare for large parts of the country and will only get worse, why American elections are up for sale, etc., etc. A vote for Republicans is a vote to continue all this. Destroying woke would seem to be infinitely less important than addressing the above.
And what difference does it make whether I and other Trump opponents oppose him for these reasons? These thingsare true, and that's all that should matter to someone with any kind of moral compass. Are you saying that the bruised egos and offended sensibilities of these young barbarians outweigh the plight of their fellow citizens in their minds?
" 'A vote for Trump is a vote for a brick in the face to the existing system.' No, on the contrary. The existing system is plutocracy...."
You and my hypothetical Trump voter are talking past each other here. The Trump voter sees the people he hates getting mad about Trump and goes "good, if they're mad, they're not getting what they want." Meanwhile you're trying to construct a systematic theory. One is personal, the other systemic.
"And what difference does it make whether I and other Trump opponents oppose him for these reasons? These things are true..."
It's a "boy who cried wolf" problem. If progressives have no credibility with conservatives - or even anti-credibility, which is to say the conservative believes the progressive is most likely to be deliberately lying to him or manipulating him somehow - then the progressive has no chance of convincing the conservative that the conservative's positive assessment of Trump is incorrect and the progressive's systemic theory is better.
What I'm saying is that the conservatives don't believe your "plutocracy" diagnosis is true. They believe you are at best mistaken, and at worst lying. That is the problem you have to solve.
@George Scialabba And a vote for the (current, Kamala, 2024) Democratic Party isn't a vote to "continue all of this"??! Honestly the second half of the Biden term and its continuation of the Yellen regime et. al. did not help things at all, if you want to talk about causes and consequences.
And at this point I honestly don't know what the fuck the Democratic party stands for (at the level of leadership and politics, which is the level that actually matters).. even Sen. Chris Murphy who is supposed by some to be the person who "gets it", has reverting to focusing on Trump's perceived corruption and grifting, as if doing the same thing twice will somehow work again. Maybe the Democratic party is just completely 'insane'..
1. Was the "woke gleichschaltung" entirely emergent "madness of crowds" of institutions, or orchestrated by certain elites who knowingly understood at least some of the impacts it would have?
2. Will there be any accountability or reckoning, beyond cynical correction for political expediency, of undertaking not only a deeply unpopular, but also unhealthy and negative externality causing political institutional consensus?
In other words, are there 'skeletons' buried, and if so, may the public finally know 'where' so we don't do this nonsense again??!
It seems like institutions and insitutional governance paradigms don't even have infrastructure to acknowledge and account for mistakes and take responsibility, whether failures were more 'emergent', or more 'orchestrated'.
1. Probably both. There are always factions of elites trying to impose their particular visions on society. I don't claim to have any particular insight over why some succeed at one time, but fail at others.
2. Within the left itself? Probably not. One could argue that the stated Trump/Musk project of defunding progressive-aligned schools, ngos, and other elite institutions is an attempt at this, but I have low confidence that the current administration has the sitzfleisch and focus to actually do this in a systematic way.
I'm fascinated by how the Democratic Party or NGO circus will or won't have a reckoning about this and a modicum of agency (and thereby, responsibility).
And, to push back on one (small) thing, I wouldn't consider them the 'left'- America arguably doesn't really have a left at this point. Arguably the Dems made sure of that in 2016-2020. But arguably they're part of a broader sort of "uniparty" (not to sound like I'm using yesteryear's cliches).
The ascendence of naked Schmittian sovereignty with Trump et. al is equally fascinating, whether or not it's toward 'fascism'.
"I'm fascinated by how the Democratic Party or NGO circus will or won't have a reckoning about this and a modicum of agency (and thereby, responsibility)."
I'm tempted to just quote Upton Sinclair here: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
"And, to push back on one (small) thing, I wouldn't consider them the 'left'- America arguably doesn't really have a left at this point."
Given that the whole "left/right" dichotomy was originally about what cliques sat where in the French Revolution, I think the terms can survive a little ideological malleability to fit with the [EDIT: changing] times.
Beautiful. I was in DC yesterday and the sense of desolation was palpable. The earnest strivers were noticeably absent and, when encountered, had a defeated air.
Reading this post while chipping through Augustine's _Confessions_ gives an eerie feeling. I'm up in New England, so hearing of the gleeful chaos in DC through tweets and a groupchat gives me that distinct sense of learning of the fall of Rome while living comfortably (for now) in North Africa.
A declining order I didn't respect, getting sacked by a potentially more dangerous force. Maybe it'll turn out better. Maybe it won't. At least in Augustine's case, the barbarians didn't get to his house until just after he died.
I have been wondering if 47 ever enjoyed a drop of alcohol. It might be an odd hypothesis but I have wondered about people who drink too much just as about people who do not drink at all (if not for health reasons). It is said "in vino veritas" and I wonder if that might explain why Trump has no "veritas" at all. 😎
An important capture of the craven, bloodthirsty anarchic mood/tone/energy... I have one question what did you mean when you said you are not apart from this in some way? Not sure I understand.
Last night’s unpresidential State of the Union Address was a masterclasss in anger, belligerence and manipulation. It might be more correctly named Division of The State Address, or State of Disarray. Barbarians indeed.
Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine and betrayal of our allies is reprehensible. His behavior in the Oval Office is alien to anything I have ever seen or believed to represent my beliefs. This alien New Coach is a disaster. He has recruited the worst players he can find. He persuaded the alumni, small donors and large, to contribute their hard-earned cash to the team and he pocketed the money. Now he is placing bets against the team. The team will lose and he will make even more money. He has thrown the game. Is this the coach for your team? Or is he
Thanks for this raw and honest essay Damir. I think any analogy to the past is somewhat slightly missing the mark. Take your example of the Freikorps, for instance; in Weimar, the traditional conservative authoritarian hierarchy still largely remained. Yes, Weimar was a constitutional democracy, but even in the final few years, many decisions were made via executive fiat.
The demise of Weimar could be pinned down to a few institutional failures, Germany's lack of liberal tradition and its fair share of simple bad luck. Although the Freikorps were used as tools to defeat the spartacist uprising they lacked much shared ideology apart from some general agreements around militarism, conspiracy theories about ww1, and nationalist sentiment. Hitlerism embodied some of these things but was much more uniform and extreme in its ideology.
But I guess my point is that the traditional notions of authority in Germany generally remained pre-Hitlerism. Conservative, militaristic, and nationalist values were found in a conservative majority which without Hitler would, in my opinion, have created the space for a European War in the 20th century, even if it would have been much less destructive than the one we eventually had.
I'm just not sure the same is true of America's politics today. It feels that as Shadi alluded to in the previous episode that the traditional notions of authority and legitimacy in America have melted away. This strikes me as a different kind of crisis and certainly more chaotic in its foundations and a more revolutionary possibility emerging.
I guess that If I was to go with a historical analogy, I'd go to Caesar. The Republic has lost legitimacy amongst the mob and is struggling to assert its hegemony which it once possessed. A fat and idealess hierarchy is being brought to heel by someone willing to take risks and 'represent' the mob with what they really want. Now, we all know what happened to Caesar, but he did essentially re-shape rome. Maybe that is what will happen here....
How could a DOGE appreciation party be the "essence of DC?" DOGE hates DC. DC hates DOGE. And if you think men outnumber women in DC, you're definitely at a GOP event.
I quit watching Fox News during the Obama years because all they did was bash Obama night and day. It was not news but propaganda. It is statistically impossible for one side to be wrong about everything. Now I do not watch the left media for the same reason. I will agree on the tangible arrogance of the right but it is just as annoying watching the self righteous left refusing to at least acknowledge that American voted for many of the things he is doing. Why do they not come along side and help with the cutting of waste and fraud? This should be a non-partisan issue. But TDS keeps you guys stuck from evolving. You will pay with lost elections.
I’m not left wing. I view myself as center right-ish. Anti-woke. Pro capitalism. Pro free markets. Pro free speech. I’m also pro experts (however fallible they may be) and pro civil service.
I don’t care that most people voted for this moronic nonsense. People voted Hitler into power too. So what? The Elon/Trump administration is deranged. But I suspect the morons who voted for this will need to touch the stove before they learn.
Nicely rendered, Damir. Extra points for mentioning Luxemburg and Liebknecht.
How did so many young and presumably intelligent people fall into such meanness and madness? Can it just be hating woke? But you and I hate woke, and we're not chortling with glee as the barbarians raze civil society.
You don't quite understand what it was to be young and feel completely smothered under what really did look to be a total woke gleichschaltung. Jonah Goldberg likes to tell the anecdote about how the Nazis forced their ideology into everything - even the cat fancier magazines had to be about "the superior Aryan Cat" - and especially in schools that sort of attitude was everywhere with regard to racial, gender, and sex issues. Just about every hobby was forcefully-converged; you couldn't be in a knitting group without "centering the experience of POC [that horrid neologism]-knitters and the oppression inherent in the excessive whiteness of hobby stores." The ever-changing speech policing [EDIT: to say nothing of the actual rampant diversion of educational and professional resources and opportunities away from anything that couldn't claim some special status over white heterosexual male-ness - talk about structural prejudice!] The complete vanishing of traditionally-boyish stories from the YA shelves. And worst of all, the Stasi-esque progressive thought policing and witch-hunts on pre-Elon social media. All delivered with a maximum of smarmy "eat-your-vegetables" condescension designed to infantilize, isolate, and humiliate.
I'm an elder-millennial so I only got the beginnings of it in the late 2000's and early 2010s, but it was bad then and from talking to friends' younger siblings it has gotten significantly worse (though things appear to be swinging back a bit in recent months). That kind of smothering sows quite a lot of resentment, which is now having it's own Langston Hughes "raisin in the sun" moment. These kids have lots of memories of punchable lib faces sneering at them, and now their revenge is exploding indiscriminately all over the place. The libs should have read their own literature and realized that it could happen to them too.
Schmendrick, I do sympathize. It sounds intensely annoying. But does even the experience of condescension and humiliation justify voting for a lying, cheating, ignorant grifter who tried to overturn a presidential election? And for a party that is only interested in shoveling money at the rich and that is happy to strip millions of people of their medical care, allow our infrastructure to fall apart, destroy labor unions, give polluters a free hand, pack the judiciary with rabid radicals, and ignore climate change? Voting Republican seems like a counterproductive way to fight woke.
The vote for Trump is a vote for a brick in the face to the existing system. It is rarely justified a priori on any utilitarian calculus. It is a raw scream of high-ethanol negative partisanship, with some slight rationalization that someone who so clearly has burnt his boats and rendered himself persona non grata in polite society cannot be coopted by the elite blob (the Moldbuggian "Cathedral") as so many previous conservative insurgent groups have been.
Your listing of grievances holds no weight with the right, because they do not believe that you honestly oppose Trump for those reasons. They believe that you will call *anyone* who expresses views to the right of the progressive consensus du jour a racist, sexist, homophobe, liar, cheater, democracy-despoiler, vulture-capitalist, shill for the rich, etc., while you will find unprincipled excuses to justify and support the exact same sins when they crop up on the progressive side of the aisle.
They view doing things that make woke people maximally mad as the definitionally correct way to fight woke, because if the woke people are mad, they are definitionally not getting what they want.
I don't say any of this gleefully, or with any animosity towards you particularly - I don't know you and if you're in a Wisdom of Crowds comment section you clearly have decent taste in podcasts. I only say this by way of explanation, in hopes you can grasp the actual situation and have an accurate view of a prominent perspective on the other side.
Thanks for the explanation. There are some things I still don't understand, though. For example:
"A vote for Trump is a vote for a brick in the face to the existing system." No, on the contrary. The existing system is plutocracy. Plutocracy is the reason millions of Americans have negative net worth, why the net worth of the three richest Americans is greater than the net worth of the bottom 50 percent of the country, why tens of millions of Americans have no health insurace and why millions more would be bankrupted by a serious illness, why millions of young Americans were crippled by student debt, why every wildfire and hurricane season is a nightmare for large parts of the country and will only get worse, why American elections are up for sale, etc., etc. A vote for Republicans is a vote to continue all this. Destroying woke would seem to be infinitely less important than addressing the above.
And what difference does it make whether I and other Trump opponents oppose him for these reasons? These thingsare true, and that's all that should matter to someone with any kind of moral compass. Are you saying that the bruised egos and offended sensibilities of these young barbarians outweigh the plight of their fellow citizens in their minds?
" 'A vote for Trump is a vote for a brick in the face to the existing system.' No, on the contrary. The existing system is plutocracy...."
You and my hypothetical Trump voter are talking past each other here. The Trump voter sees the people he hates getting mad about Trump and goes "good, if they're mad, they're not getting what they want." Meanwhile you're trying to construct a systematic theory. One is personal, the other systemic.
"And what difference does it make whether I and other Trump opponents oppose him for these reasons? These things are true..."
It's a "boy who cried wolf" problem. If progressives have no credibility with conservatives - or even anti-credibility, which is to say the conservative believes the progressive is most likely to be deliberately lying to him or manipulating him somehow - then the progressive has no chance of convincing the conservative that the conservative's positive assessment of Trump is incorrect and the progressive's systemic theory is better.
What I'm saying is that the conservatives don't believe your "plutocracy" diagnosis is true. They believe you are at best mistaken, and at worst lying. That is the problem you have to solve.
@George Scialabba And a vote for the (current, Kamala, 2024) Democratic Party isn't a vote to "continue all of this"??! Honestly the second half of the Biden term and its continuation of the Yellen regime et. al. did not help things at all, if you want to talk about causes and consequences.
And at this point I honestly don't know what the fuck the Democratic party stands for (at the level of leadership and politics, which is the level that actually matters).. even Sen. Chris Murphy who is supposed by some to be the person who "gets it", has reverting to focusing on Trump's perceived corruption and grifting, as if doing the same thing twice will somehow work again. Maybe the Democratic party is just completely 'insane'..
The questions I have:
1. Was the "woke gleichschaltung" entirely emergent "madness of crowds" of institutions, or orchestrated by certain elites who knowingly understood at least some of the impacts it would have?
2. Will there be any accountability or reckoning, beyond cynical correction for political expediency, of undertaking not only a deeply unpopular, but also unhealthy and negative externality causing political institutional consensus?
In other words, are there 'skeletons' buried, and if so, may the public finally know 'where' so we don't do this nonsense again??!
It seems like institutions and insitutional governance paradigms don't even have infrastructure to acknowledge and account for mistakes and take responsibility, whether failures were more 'emergent', or more 'orchestrated'.
1. Probably both. There are always factions of elites trying to impose their particular visions on society. I don't claim to have any particular insight over why some succeed at one time, but fail at others.
2. Within the left itself? Probably not. One could argue that the stated Trump/Musk project of defunding progressive-aligned schools, ngos, and other elite institutions is an attempt at this, but I have low confidence that the current administration has the sitzfleisch and focus to actually do this in a systematic way.
I think I agree re: Musk and co.
I'm fascinated by how the Democratic Party or NGO circus will or won't have a reckoning about this and a modicum of agency (and thereby, responsibility).
And, to push back on one (small) thing, I wouldn't consider them the 'left'- America arguably doesn't really have a left at this point. Arguably the Dems made sure of that in 2016-2020. But arguably they're part of a broader sort of "uniparty" (not to sound like I'm using yesteryear's cliches).
The ascendence of naked Schmittian sovereignty with Trump et. al is equally fascinating, whether or not it's toward 'fascism'.
"I'm fascinated by how the Democratic Party or NGO circus will or won't have a reckoning about this and a modicum of agency (and thereby, responsibility)."
I'm tempted to just quote Upton Sinclair here: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
"And, to push back on one (small) thing, I wouldn't consider them the 'left'- America arguably doesn't really have a left at this point."
Given that the whole "left/right" dichotomy was originally about what cliques sat where in the French Revolution, I think the terms can survive a little ideological malleability to fit with the [EDIT: changing] times.
I think he’s half-chortling
Beautiful. I was in DC yesterday and the sense of desolation was palpable. The earnest strivers were noticeably absent and, when encountered, had a defeated air.
Reading this post while chipping through Augustine's _Confessions_ gives an eerie feeling. I'm up in New England, so hearing of the gleeful chaos in DC through tweets and a groupchat gives me that distinct sense of learning of the fall of Rome while living comfortably (for now) in North Africa.
A declining order I didn't respect, getting sacked by a potentially more dangerous force. Maybe it'll turn out better. Maybe it won't. At least in Augustine's case, the barbarians didn't get to his house until just after he died.
I might not be so lucky.
I have been wondering if 47 ever enjoyed a drop of alcohol. It might be an odd hypothesis but I have wondered about people who drink too much just as about people who do not drink at all (if not for health reasons). It is said "in vino veritas" and I wonder if that might explain why Trump has no "veritas" at all. 😎
An important capture of the craven, bloodthirsty anarchic mood/tone/energy... I have one question what did you mean when you said you are not apart from this in some way? Not sure I understand.
I don’t want to pretend that I don’t get the thrill. I’m not so virtuous.
oh you understand thrill is an appeal- but you are not into this particular thrill- got it
Nah he’s fully engrossed by the thrill
Yes, that’s how it sounds, here and in previous posts
Very well-written and perceptive bit of reportage —it reminds me of the “new journalism” of old.
"And without a standard to rally around, it’s impossible to organize a resistance."
This explains a lot.
Last night’s unpresidential State of the Union Address was a masterclasss in anger, belligerence and manipulation. It might be more correctly named Division of The State Address, or State of Disarray. Barbarians indeed.
Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine and betrayal of our allies is reprehensible. His behavior in the Oval Office is alien to anything I have ever seen or believed to represent my beliefs. This alien New Coach is a disaster. He has recruited the worst players he can find. He persuaded the alumni, small donors and large, to contribute their hard-earned cash to the team and he pocketed the money. Now he is placing bets against the team. The team will lose and he will make even more money. He has thrown the game. Is this the coach for your team? Or is he
The Enemy Within . . .
I would not be able to get drunk around these people without taking swings. Thanks for the reporting because I don't want to get arrested. Anymore.
Thanks for this raw and honest essay Damir. I think any analogy to the past is somewhat slightly missing the mark. Take your example of the Freikorps, for instance; in Weimar, the traditional conservative authoritarian hierarchy still largely remained. Yes, Weimar was a constitutional democracy, but even in the final few years, many decisions were made via executive fiat.
The demise of Weimar could be pinned down to a few institutional failures, Germany's lack of liberal tradition and its fair share of simple bad luck. Although the Freikorps were used as tools to defeat the spartacist uprising they lacked much shared ideology apart from some general agreements around militarism, conspiracy theories about ww1, and nationalist sentiment. Hitlerism embodied some of these things but was much more uniform and extreme in its ideology.
But I guess my point is that the traditional notions of authority in Germany generally remained pre-Hitlerism. Conservative, militaristic, and nationalist values were found in a conservative majority which without Hitler would, in my opinion, have created the space for a European War in the 20th century, even if it would have been much less destructive than the one we eventually had.
I'm just not sure the same is true of America's politics today. It feels that as Shadi alluded to in the previous episode that the traditional notions of authority and legitimacy in America have melted away. This strikes me as a different kind of crisis and certainly more chaotic in its foundations and a more revolutionary possibility emerging.
I guess that If I was to go with a historical analogy, I'd go to Caesar. The Republic has lost legitimacy amongst the mob and is struggling to assert its hegemony which it once possessed. A fat and idealess hierarchy is being brought to heel by someone willing to take risks and 'represent' the mob with what they really want. Now, we all know what happened to Caesar, but he did essentially re-shape rome. Maybe that is what will happen here....
49.8% are not a majority.
And 22% of adults do not represent the popular will.
Don’t worry I don’t believe in the popular will.
guard goons? stopped reading pretty much after that
Ok…?
As soon as DOGE started its pillage I remarked, “This is what the sack of a capital city looks like in the 21st century.”
How could a DOGE appreciation party be the "essence of DC?" DOGE hates DC. DC hates DOGE. And if you think men outnumber women in DC, you're definitely at a GOP event.
Usual Trump Derangement Syndrome.
What’s deranged about it Janet?
I quit watching Fox News during the Obama years because all they did was bash Obama night and day. It was not news but propaganda. It is statistically impossible for one side to be wrong about everything. Now I do not watch the left media for the same reason. I will agree on the tangible arrogance of the right but it is just as annoying watching the self righteous left refusing to at least acknowledge that American voted for many of the things he is doing. Why do they not come along side and help with the cutting of waste and fraud? This should be a non-partisan issue. But TDS keeps you guys stuck from evolving. You will pay with lost elections.
I’m not left wing. I view myself as center right-ish. Anti-woke. Pro capitalism. Pro free markets. Pro free speech. I’m also pro experts (however fallible they may be) and pro civil service.
I don’t care that most people voted for this moronic nonsense. People voted Hitler into power too. So what? The Elon/Trump administration is deranged. But I suspect the morons who voted for this will need to touch the stove before they learn.
On the civil service, do you think there's any issue with it being dominated by members of a single political party?
I need to think about that. My first thought is that it shouldn’t matter so long as people are doing their jobs.