This reads as an accurate description of what is going on. These right wingers have no principles really--not even positions--because even they don't know when Trump is serious and when he is trolling or if he will flip, so having principles makes it impossible to defend Trump at all costs.
Because they have no principles, the defense mechanisms are to retreat into a game of "guess if I'm being serious, lol" and make engaging them too miserable and unproductive to be worth it.
I like your closing message. I remember the South Park heyday, when Gen Xers grew up with, "Caring about stuff is gay." I made a pact with myself back then to never adopt that cynical nihilism as it just worsens everything it touches.
They really don't believe in anything. My US Rep is a former police officer who regularly writes op eds about supporting law enforcement. He's also a republican who publicly fellates Trump at every opportunity and couldn't even offer a whimper of dissent at the J6 pardons.
I write his office a lot and called him out on that, imploring him to condemn it in some way, but instead of holding to any principles at all, I got a timid response that amounted to, "Trump said he would do it and won the election, so pardoning these people is what America wants."
This is where our leaders on the republican side are at--nothing Trump does can be criticized in any way.
I have an upcoming piece on Neal Stephenson, and follow-ups on Heidegger and Nietzsche: all three saw it coming, and collectively give us a way out of nihilism. I like your view on the problem it poses: apathy.
Although I'm a raging moderate, that feels after reading your post your leaving a lot out of why the Far right (if such a mind set truly exists) is reacting and in rebellion to Most of what the Far Left (if such a mind set exists) they both do! We all have useful idiots
To clarify, I wouldn't say what we're seeing is a particular far right reaction against the far left. The extremes have always reacted to one another. What we're seeing is a broad reaction across most of society, part of which includes the mainstreaming of elements of right-wing troll culture.
It's true that I didn't spend this piece explaining why the cultural left engendered such a backlash, however it's a subject so exhaustively covered (including by me in dozens of other articles) that I felt my audience could reasonably be expected to be familiar with the basic context.
The ‘cultural left’ did not ‘engender’ the backlash. One can find examples of people doing the exact thing in the 1980s what is making people freakout in the 2020s. The causes are material. In the 1980s, there was a stable social structure, and the government was not as weak relative to the corporate sector. There was a fierce culture war going on between the left and the right since the 1970s. It didn’t tip our politics all the way over until there was sufficient accumulation of wealth for these two paths to merge—the culture war and the desire of the wealthy to completely control the government. And it happened as a matter of degree each time, always to the advantage of the wealthy. Of course there needed to be some ‘rationale’ given but the fact that the rationale is ‘women and Blacks got too uppity’ isn’t the main cause of billionaires grabbing control of the government. People were screaming about this in the 1970s. Screaming about something isn’t going to change the entire culture or all political possibilities or the economic system. You need money to do that. And of course people on the left got more invested in small aspects of things they could affect…like that gay people could be married. There was no other thing they could change. They could have no economic effects after Reagan changed the tax structure. People without much money are obviously weaker in American society, so they put all their energy into things they COULD change, which amount to their private freedoms, and personal ideas. So yes, they annoyed you. But it’s ludicrous to blame them for what absolutely depended on an incredible concentration of wealth to occur.
If the backlash against social justice politics was predominantly due to material causes, why did Kamala Harris win the top two income brackets? Why did Trump win the middle class?
The votes are not very far apart among income brackets. I do not say that it’s not helpful to use various resentments arising from these culture wars to garner votes.
But the rich would never have had the leverage they have now if they hadn’t spent 50 years weakening the system and tilting it in their favor.
To say everything political was completely normal as if we had the same pillars of democracy since the 50s, and then suddenly there was a move to fascism because of some language certain people invented in the 70s and 80s that citizens may have come to use more frequently is deeply insufficient as an explanation of what happened.
Of course more among the upper middle-class are going to be less motivated by resentments, so they will be less troubled by various words people speak or the presence of a Black person on the medical staff. They don’t see this as a threat to their interests. More of them will be successful professionals, and happy with their lot in life. They think they are doing OK in the meritocracy. You won’t get as many of them with the idea ‘something has been stolen from you’ if they see a Black doctor. That’s the language of resentment. It’s directed at different people than they are.
We have had a continual hammering at key elements of our political system designed to prevent oligarchy. Mostly, this was concentration of wealth, but there were also ways the Supreme Court weakened the attempts to ensure everyone could vote or participate equally, and state governments also did this. Finally, we got to the point where some billionaires can take the government, and so they did it. Every possible firewall in their way was systematically removed. The ultra wealthy banded together in a very coordinated way to take the state. Now they have it, and God help us.
This reads as an accurate description of what is going on. These right wingers have no principles really--not even positions--because even they don't know when Trump is serious and when he is trolling or if he will flip, so having principles makes it impossible to defend Trump at all costs.
Because they have no principles, the defense mechanisms are to retreat into a game of "guess if I'm being serious, lol" and make engaging them too miserable and unproductive to be worth it.
I like your closing message. I remember the South Park heyday, when Gen Xers grew up with, "Caring about stuff is gay." I made a pact with myself back then to never adopt that cynical nihilism as it just worsens everything it touches.
Yeah. I'm reminded the German nihilists from The Big Lebowski. "We believe in nothing, Lebowski — nothing!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUjGMq-2K_g
They really don't believe in anything. My US Rep is a former police officer who regularly writes op eds about supporting law enforcement. He's also a republican who publicly fellates Trump at every opportunity and couldn't even offer a whimper of dissent at the J6 pardons.
I write his office a lot and called him out on that, imploring him to condemn it in some way, but instead of holding to any principles at all, I got a timid response that amounted to, "Trump said he would do it and won the election, so pardoning these people is what America wants."
This is where our leaders on the republican side are at--nothing Trump does can be criticized in any way.
I hate that this feels exactly true. I’d prefer that my waking life wasn’t a giant troll fest. But here we are, living the dream.
Great read, thank you!
I have an upcoming piece on Neal Stephenson, and follow-ups on Heidegger and Nietzsche: all three saw it coming, and collectively give us a way out of nihilism. I like your view on the problem it poses: apathy.
This is excellently done, everybody should read it.
The only thing that can save us now is destroying the internet.
Although I'm a raging moderate, that feels after reading your post your leaving a lot out of why the Far right (if such a mind set truly exists) is reacting and in rebellion to Most of what the Far Left (if such a mind set exists) they both do! We all have useful idiots
To clarify, I wouldn't say what we're seeing is a particular far right reaction against the far left. The extremes have always reacted to one another. What we're seeing is a broad reaction across most of society, part of which includes the mainstreaming of elements of right-wing troll culture.
It's true that I didn't spend this piece explaining why the cultural left engendered such a backlash, however it's a subject so exhaustively covered (including by me in dozens of other articles) that I felt my audience could reasonably be expected to be familiar with the basic context.
Here are a few pieces on it if you're interested:
https://americandreaming.substack.com/p/yes-weve-reached-peak-woke
https://americandreaming.substack.com/p/a-year-of-leftist-anti-semitism
The ‘cultural left’ did not ‘engender’ the backlash. One can find examples of people doing the exact thing in the 1980s what is making people freakout in the 2020s. The causes are material. In the 1980s, there was a stable social structure, and the government was not as weak relative to the corporate sector. There was a fierce culture war going on between the left and the right since the 1970s. It didn’t tip our politics all the way over until there was sufficient accumulation of wealth for these two paths to merge—the culture war and the desire of the wealthy to completely control the government. And it happened as a matter of degree each time, always to the advantage of the wealthy. Of course there needed to be some ‘rationale’ given but the fact that the rationale is ‘women and Blacks got too uppity’ isn’t the main cause of billionaires grabbing control of the government. People were screaming about this in the 1970s. Screaming about something isn’t going to change the entire culture or all political possibilities or the economic system. You need money to do that. And of course people on the left got more invested in small aspects of things they could affect…like that gay people could be married. There was no other thing they could change. They could have no economic effects after Reagan changed the tax structure. People without much money are obviously weaker in American society, so they put all their energy into things they COULD change, which amount to their private freedoms, and personal ideas. So yes, they annoyed you. But it’s ludicrous to blame them for what absolutely depended on an incredible concentration of wealth to occur.
If the backlash against social justice politics was predominantly due to material causes, why did Kamala Harris win the top two income brackets? Why did Trump win the middle class?
The votes are not very far apart among income brackets. I do not say that it’s not helpful to use various resentments arising from these culture wars to garner votes.
But the rich would never have had the leverage they have now if they hadn’t spent 50 years weakening the system and tilting it in their favor.
To say everything political was completely normal as if we had the same pillars of democracy since the 50s, and then suddenly there was a move to fascism because of some language certain people invented in the 70s and 80s that citizens may have come to use more frequently is deeply insufficient as an explanation of what happened.
Of course more among the upper middle-class are going to be less motivated by resentments, so they will be less troubled by various words people speak or the presence of a Black person on the medical staff. They don’t see this as a threat to their interests. More of them will be successful professionals, and happy with their lot in life. They think they are doing OK in the meritocracy. You won’t get as many of them with the idea ‘something has been stolen from you’ if they see a Black doctor. That’s the language of resentment. It’s directed at different people than they are.
We have had a continual hammering at key elements of our political system designed to prevent oligarchy. Mostly, this was concentration of wealth, but there were also ways the Supreme Court weakened the attempts to ensure everyone could vote or participate equally, and state governments also did this. Finally, we got to the point where some billionaires can take the government, and so they did it. Every possible firewall in their way was systematically removed. The ultra wealthy banded together in a very coordinated way to take the state. Now they have it, and God help us.
People took all the wrong lessons from The Watchmen. 🫣