There was an article recently that basically said lots of moves on the right aren’t strategic they’re ideological. So yeah, I think the right really wants to control media, and isn’t worried about the inevitable backlash.
But I do keep thinking about the fact that the move to the right among young men, will probably pretty quickly reverse itself, if they keep going after media/video games/porn, etc.
I think the problem is it’s not the moderate 80% of each party that’s doing it, so all of the people who might be inclined to a truce are already at the table waiting.
I mean, I often like to say, I don’t need my medication when I’m gardening, but most of us don’t get to control our work or work environments this much. That’s kind of the point. There was much less ADHD when our main jobs were physical labor.
I think I've come to this place where it seems like we live in this meme economy where stock price is separate of any actual value.
Sure I'd prefer a world where money is spread out more evenly. But if Tesla sold say 500 million cars, and Musk pocketed $2,000 each; while yes, I object to any one person having a trillion dollars, if he sold 500 million cars because they really were the best cars available, there was good competition, no monopoly violations, he was just the best, I'd think ok, like no one needs that much money sure, but at least the economy seems to make basic sense. People make money because they create things of value.
But when Tesla's value is totally disconnected from the actual value the products provide, and instead is just based on Musks's ability to hype the stock. It's not great. And we are getting to this place where the wealth is so concentrated in the magnificent seven it's even making trad right-leaning capitalists get concerned. So no, I don't think his pay package should be aligned towards things that are bad for the national, if not global economy.
I do wonder though how much freedom plays into this dynamic. Are young North Koreans “liberal” as much as they’re allowed to be, or does a stranglehold on cultural influences somehow squash organic contrarianism.
One question I have about politics and history, is does politics tend to follow short term events or long term trends. If politics tends to follow short term events then one might tend to assume that a swap of attitude from cancel culture on then left to cancel culture on the right would face immediate backlash, since a sense of cultural overreach and extremism was given as an explanation for Trump, that Trump was a moderating force in society.
I tend to think that long-term trends tends to be a better explanatory factor. There was this interview with this divorce lawyer that really helped shape my view on where we were as a society which basically said we’re in a place with too much post-modernism. The idea of how we imagine the world is just too flexible, there’s too much “freedom” and we’re on a trend back towards a more concrete view of the world. I tend to think this is correct, and that if there is backlash to Trump, or the public and popular notion of conservatism, we’re still, broadly speaking influenced by a group of folks who are ready for a more concrete or “conservative” popular culture. Gender roles, Right and wrong.
But I also think the trend sort of definitionally is already moving back in the other direction, it will just take ~ 10 years to play out as those in their formative years grow into a more liberal mindset(it’s probably just sort of barely impacting a few months of the psyche of the youngest pre-teens now and as that cohort ages they’ll influence the culture back in the other direction)
I think the one thing that I would say in response to this, is that isn’t this an opportunity for Democrats to paint themselves as the moderate party, rather than criticizing the far left? Now that we see right leaning folks dominating the social media space and going on their own cancel-culture spree.
I think this gets to a lot of people’s criticism of Democrats as being perceived as not having a message.
I think the problem with social media is it’s easy to exploit, all the most powerful people in the world perceive themselves to benefit from social media. This isn’t true for something like smoking.
My specific point is there are people in this world with “right-wing” motivation to kill Charlie Kirk, social media has been full of it in just recent weeks, just like if a prominent left winger died there would probably be evidence of left-wing motivation to kill them. Or maybe it’s more complicated than that even!
It would be productive to our discourse if we didn’t automatically see it as two sides.
> he shot someone on the right, which are both strong evidence of left-wing motivation on their own.
I think the idea that there are two sides is one of the most toxic ideas in our politics. We associate with teams and anyone on our side must be good, and ignore things like the tyranny of small differences - the far left hates the center left more than they do the right. And there are similar dynamics on the right. Especially in obscure conspiracy filled corners of the internet.
This doesn’t mean all people on the right are bad, or the right is inherently violent! But to ignore the complex breakdown of political ideologies is to ignore the crazy ways things actually happen, not to mention the fact that generally speaking, people who commit random acts of violence like this are not coming from a politically rational place.
Something I’m coming to realize about the free press is it’s really designed to make the world make sense. To tell a narrative the fits a certain world view.
And I remember when I studied the columbine shootings; what I learned is how broken those shooters brains were. That I think on some level, I imagined a rational anger directed at their classmates, and not the bizzare rantings of a confused adolescent (which of course they were)
So we of course don’t want to introduce the concept of groypers, or 4chan meme culture or the bizarre rantings of a broken mind that probably led to this tragedy, and instead use this opportunity as to continue to perpetuate this neat story that justifies everyone’s priors.
I’m curious if you’ll see more of this as the freshness of tech’s rightward turn wears off and the two sides realize they have very little in common. Money only buys you so much good will.
Right but got caught doing what - trying to build a manufacturing plant that will bring jobs to Americans? It feels like the real loser here is the Americans who would have had jobs after the plant opened. We’re cutting off our nose to spite our face, because people didn’t fill out the right paperwork.
You're argument is that you think it's a good idea to base your intellectual curiosity on the <inverse> priorities of a raving madman? Do you think that insanity is precise enough to understand the truly valuable ideas of the world, it just heads in the opposite direction? Better apparently than other methods of discerning valuable information?
And it turned out to be true? They were wrong? I'm just saying if you were using AI in an attempt to distract from the fact that the president was not available, that would be a different thing from using AI to maximize the presidents message. So I'm not sure what your point is.
But I do keep thinking about the fact that the move to the right among young men, will probably pretty quickly reverse itself, if they keep going after media/video games/porn, etc.