Way back in 2004, the first election cycle I was old enough to vote, I’d initially gone all in for Howard Dean and later turned ride or die for Kerry/Edwards.
2016 seems to have caused a major psychotic fracture in our transnational managerial technocracy and their many acolytes all gathered together on the sunny banks of the Right Side of History™.
What I keep trying to express to my friends in the liberal class, who are all so tolerant they can tolerate anything except someone who disagrees with them and so deeply committed to Democracy as long as their side always wins, is more or less:
In 2016 half the country voted for a clownish TV game-show host to be President based almost entirely on one issue: BUILD THE WALL aka stop mass illegal immigration. Instead of heeding the will of the winning side, compromising and negotiating, taking the sane Obama position—“We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country”—they responded with perhaps History's loudest longest tantrum, denouncing everything and everyone for various bigoted -ISMs, and painting themselves into a fantastical ideological corner where suddenly anyone who crosses the border comes with a halo and any American who doesn't want to grant them immediate housing and health care is some species of Nazi who needs to be jailed.
My quick oversimplified summary of the 21st century political zeitgeist is: first the progressive oligarchy hogged all the assets (globalism has been a goldmine for the liberal class, their home values, salaries, and 401ks); then they hogged all the virtue (Social Justice morality has conquered all, is embedded in every movie, TV show, commercial etc, and anyone who dissents is immediately skunk-sprayed with a bigotry accusation); and now they want to hog all the power—by any means necessary and no matter what has to be destroyed in the process.
A psychological fracture is a good way to look at it, the rug got pulled out from under them in such a profound way that on some level you have to empathize with how utterly disorienting the experience was -- Columbia campus was eerily quiet the next day, with people staggering around in a daze -- but had people been a little more grounded and humble they might have been prepared to make some lemonade out of the lemons, instead of thrashing and flailing about to the extent of really trashing their legitimacy including among many long-time Democrats. Joe Biden could readily have landed among America's greatest presidents by using all his blarney to bring people together instead of tearing them apart, his tenure has been tragic beyond imagining.
I had the same level of empathy for liberals in Nov 2016 that I would have for a college girl who thinks she's getting a Porsche for her bday but gets a Toyota—not only no empathy but a big shock at what I was witnessing: staggering entitlement, impenetrable narcissism, and embarrassing cluelessness. I swear I'm not trying to be cruel!
I think it stems from different conceptions of the political: prior to the social media age, politics was understood as one sphere of existence (out of many), where different groups put forward different plans and ideas, where we all accepted that other people had different values, and that elections were a way of taking the national temperature, important but temporary and provisional (I realize I'm generalizing); but since 2016 (our first election dominated by social media), now every election is the most important ever, every issue is a matter of life or death, every day brings us closer either to the Right Side of History or back to Nazi fascism (even if every day and its issues is immediately forgotten) and politics is some combination of church, sports, group therapy, moralistic pissing contest and beauty pageant for performative narcissism.
I apologize for ranting and rambling, I guess what I'm expressing is my deep disappointment in America's liberal class, who could have marshalled some wisdom and dignity and accepted 2016 and heeded the very loud message coming from half the country, but who instead turned en masse into sullen teens wearing pussy hats and Comey is My Homey shirts while lighting votive candles to Robert Mueller.
And it would have taken a leader with much more strength and intelligence than the senile mediocrity Joe Biden to convince his Party to compromise with the Deplorables—his followers don't want to break bread with their political enemies, they want to destroy them. All because they lost one election!
I had no sympathy for them. I was/am a classic liberal, so voted for all the Democrats that lost to everyone named Bush and was from a red state. I grew up knowing that my side lost lots of elections. For all the talk now about Trump, I don't think a lot of millennial progressive Democrats (or Hillary Clinton) understand that elections can easily be lost, by Americans who made up their own minds how to vote.
"2016 seems to have caused a major psychotic fracture in our transnational managerial technocracy and their many acolytes all gathered together on the sunny banks of the Right Side of History™."
I appreciated your whole comment, but the above sentence stands out. You know how to say it, Clever P.
"She’s reminiscent of a ton of people I met in my career as a professional progressive: glib, devoid of any discernible vision or values, and as ambitious as she is vacuous. I don’t know if I’d support her to be my condo board president, let alone Commander in Chief."
Banger. You described most of the PMC NPCs in NYC.
Great essay, TIE. What I appreciate most is your instinct to continually test your 'priors' and make sure they still deliver. When they don't, you adjust course accordingly, and calmly. Once that approach catches on there'll be no stopping us!
"The unfortunate reality is that many, and probably most, avowedly progressive institutions have over the past decade or two betrayed much of what they’d traditionally stood for." In that case, Exile, why did this happen to so many, probably most, avowedly progressive institutions at the same time? If there is a common cause, what was it?
Some of it was the generational change of a bunch of silent generation eminence grise's retiring and/or dying at around the same time, some of it was the shift away from newspapers and network television to blogs and partisan outlets online, some of it was Bush-Cheney seeming to discredit any and all things right of center even before Obama glided onto the scene. In general, people migrated from an analog system in which they were accustomed to the idea of compromise with others being an intractable fact of life to a digital fantasy of being seamlessly pandered to at all times, with any unwelcome stumbling blocks always being the opposition's fault. Things had been trending that direction institutionally for a while, but it was the shift to targeted national/international online media that made the most dramatic difference.
I loved Obama, and still do. Obamacare quite literally saved my life. I went from sick person with no insurance, to sick person with insurance. Never before has a candidate’s policy so directly affected the trajectory of my life. Word.
I don't necessarily hold Obama totally responsible for many of the worst aspects of his Presidency. Sure, he leaned into the messianic thing, but only after it had organically burbled up from people looking to conflate politics with spirituality and religion, and you can't blame the guy from giving his public what they wanted. But it might ultimately have been a more successful administration, and not led to the Trumpian backlash, had he been treated and scrutinized as a politician in the vein of other politicians rather than as a transcendent superhero.
All these people — and this is now happening to Kamala — reach a point where no one has the guts to say no to them. We should bring back court jesters.
We never get the president we want, but if one of them happens to save your existence by spending the majority of his political capital on a policy, other abstractions cease to matter.
Let's not oversell Obamacare. Obama entered into office with a huge majority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, Wall Street begging for rescue on any terms, Team R in disoriented shock, and the biggest popular appetite for reform since arguably 1932. Oh, and a media that was unironically likening him to Jesus Christ and also Neo from "The Matrix".
And all he could manage was a giant gimme for the insurance industry.
It can be hard to suss out the plusses and minuses of any complex policy, but particularly when it involves life and death. There's no doubt in my mind that Obamacare has added many years to many people's lives, and for them that's priceless, but it's also lowered the average general quality of care compared to what it had been (potentially shortening some lives) while blowing unbelievable amounts of money on administration. It covers expensive things that it shouldn't, and it acts as a further magnet attracting migrants from around the world who are a net burden on the system. I don't think even the most sophisticated actuary could really calculate years of quality time gained by the additional coverage compared to those lost in terms of the downsides and the opportunity costs of burning so much money that could have been spent on research or housing or other priorities that also improve and extend lives. My sense as a policy person of sorts is that a more rational system could have done at least the same good for less money and with less disruption.
Good article. Thanks for letting me read it. I found it on Deboer's monthly writer-submission links. FWIW, I stopped being a paid subscriber to DeBoer for reasons I won't bore you with, but he is nice enough to allow non paid subscribers access to his monthly writer-submission links, which is the best part of his substack IMO. And, at least so far, yours is the best thing linked.
So, it's a little over three weeks since you posted this article. Much as Trump can be a real asshat, I think another dose of him is safer than the Harris-cypher. Whoever is running the Biden administration (it can't be Joe Biden) will keep running the Harris Administration. "They" will IMO cause far more damage than Trump possibly can.
Thank you and glad you found it edifying! TBH I am not a paid Freddie subscriber either and it is incredibly gracious of him to make his subscriber writing round-ups open.
Much as it pains me, I tend to agree with your assessment. The Biden administration presented such a golden opportunity to get back to the boring mushy middle, and instead whoever's running the show opted for exploiting their non-existent mandate to the maximum hilt. The feint to the reasonable center seems purely rhetorical, and victory with such a lemon of a candidate as Kamala would no doubt embolden the worst elements of the administration to even further overreach.
I deeply appreciate your honesty and you said with more conviction what I equivocated, which is that Dems are as contemptuous of the rule of law as Republicans, and it absolutely was lawfare and conspiracy mongering. The one thing I’d have added is about gender extremism among the educated classes. but that could be a whole other essay.
Thank you! While I was working on this I was reading the new Musa al-Gharbi book on wokeness and in my review of the book I get a bit more into that angle. https://ivyexile.substack.com/p/how-woke-is-woke
"... but their intellectual incuriosity tended to be as impressive as their self-regard." It reminds me of what Barbara Tuchman, in "The March of Folly", called the real cause of the American Revolution. It was the attitude of the British upper class. "Their sense of superiority was so dense as to be impenetrable." If the self-regard of the people you're talking about is so impressive, what is the source of this arrogance?
First of all, from the moment students arrive at very prestigious schools they are constantly bombarded with messaging that they really are the global meritocratic elite and have the duty and responsibility to lead, and that messaging is even more pronounced at elite law and policy grad schools.
In the longer view, I'd say the rise of mass media and particularly the constant stimulus of visual mass media has gradually eroded attention spans to the point where even (potentially) highly intelligent people are accustomed to having information boiled down into easy little pellets that go down smoothly. So the idea of intelligence/eliteness has become more a social performance of regurgitating the heppest memes and namedropping fancy credentials while dressing the right way. A midlevel political apparatchik who went to Columbia and hasn't read a book in years because they're so into trashy reality TV, but dresses in expensive clothes with an expensive haircut, is officially Smart in a way that a state school educated accountant who reads James Joyce for fun but goes to Great Clips can never be. The performance and pose are more important than competence, as any failures or shortcomings can always be blamed on the barbarian non-meritocrats spoiling best-laid plans.
Alissa Heinerscheid is a good example of what you're talking about. She was the woman who approved Bud Light's disastrous transexual sales campaign. She had gone from Groton to Harvard to an MBA in marketing from the Wharton School, eventually becoming vice-president of marketing for Bud Light beer. She decided that Bud Light's image was "too fratty" and "not of a good humor." To change that, she got a female impersonator as a spokesman for the brand, resulting in a 28%, $20 billion drop in sales for what had been the best-selling brand. This by far outstrips Gillette's $8 billion loss in sales of its razors after their "Toxic Masculinity" Super Bowl ad four years ago. She went to all the right schools and impressed all the right people but she hadn't the slightest idea how to sell beer. The reason people with prestigious marketing credentials lead their companies into these woke marketing disasters is ultimately their contempt for their customers.
Yes, exactly, and there are thousands of new Heinerscheids minted every year while the old guard of the croaking frogs and dogs in sunglasses retire. The Bud Lite thing was emotional for me, I agree that the video showed a fundamental lack of respect for its culturally traditionalist customer base. I was never a huge Bud Lite person but would often use it for cooking if a recipe called for some light beer, and didn't feel that I could support Budweiser anymore after that display of contempt. On the other hand, Budweiser is a major employer in my hometown and I know people who work at the brewery, and it was such a shame that these blue-collar joes' livelihoods were put at risk by this silly Ivy League society lady's self-indulgence.
I’m reminded of Susan Estrich (Kennedy school) as one of the bigwigs on the Dukakis campaign. They had to decide how much to spend on ads during the World Series. Estrich reportedly said, skeptically, “Who watches the World Series?” 😹😹😹
I think I get it, Exile. Having won the credentials race all their lives, they expect people without similar credentials to take their credentials as seriously as they do.
I don't know enough about Harris to form much of an opinion at all. I never lived in California, and she was seemingly sidelined during her VP term.
if she was running this campaign based on her 2019-20 policy positions, I would not vote for her. I didn't in 2020. (she dropped out before my state's primary)
OK, so she's supposed to have moved to the center, reportedly. (me shrugging my shoulders) Who knows?
I agree that a shift back towards federalism/subsidiarity would be a positive, and there's an extent to which the metastasizing incompetence of federal institutions may drive some de facto decentralization, but one-size-fits-all global consolidation is the dominant ideology of the governing classes and what technology is pointing towards. So I'm not hugely optimistic that lumbering, corrupt institutions will be dissolving any time soon rather than becoming more arbitrary and abusive.
Is that the "Trump preparing to wage lawfare" one? Kinda wild to see them project on Trump what some of his supposed targets have literally been doing to him already.
If it was "lawfare is bad" and Trump should not pay his enemies back in kind then I think that would be a reasonable argument. Instead it was a bunch of bullshit about that evil orange man introducing the concept of lawfare against his poor innocent progressive enemies who have never done anything like that. It is the end state of the phenomenon our favorite exile was talking about.
Heh heh, yeah.... I started scanning it and bounced off pretty hard. Sounds like I saved some brain cells by not reading the whole thing.
People keep telling me this election is a choice between Hitler 2.0 (on one side) or Mao 2.0 (on the other side). I would like to hope our system of government is more resilient than that.
The idea of comeuppance only makes sense from the right-wing perspective. From the left-wing perspective, who gets to abuse whom is the whole point of politics. "You wouldn't like it if they did that to you!" is a meaningless criticism when directed at a left-wing person; you might as well direct it at a boxer about to punch his opponent.
"Much of that entailed glowing write-ups of networked progressive technocrats in the vast revolving door amongst government, Biglaw, academia, NGOs, and elite influence peddling—fancy folks who in their upscale workaholic ways really did mostly mean well, and fancied themselves fair-minded experts shepherding the peasantry for their own good. If the little people had views worth considering they’d have gone to the right schools and/or been there hobnobbing in the ballroom, or at least be more grateful to we the selfless meritocracy.
The essential outlook of such imperious Masters of the Universe had become largely post-national and fundamentally dismissive of the notion of representative governance. Global challenges took global solutions that could only be masterminded by the vanguard of visionaries like us, and the stakes were too high to let ignorant electorates stand in our way. As such, it was incumbent upon we sages of the managerial class to move as many issues as possible out of the political realm, where ordinary voters had some say, toward the purview of courts and diplomats and international institutions where the right sort of people would decide. I wish I could say that they were on to something, that the alleged meritocrats truly deserved the last word, but their intellectual incuriosity tended to be as impressive as their self-regard."
Money quote, there. I so am lifting this.
"I can’t say that I particularly like or dislike Kamala Harris—I’m not even sure if there’s enough substance there to form an opinion. In the same way that people felt George W. Bush would be a fun guy to share a beer with, I don’t doubt that she’d be pleasant enough company over a glass of wine. She’s reminiscent of a ton of people I met in my career as a professional progressive: glib, devoid of any discernible vision or values, and as ambitious as she is vacuous."
Harris, like most politicians, Team R or Team D, is simply a sociopath, The Will To Power personified. Whatever It Takes to get power, she will do it.
With people like that, once you pull back the mask, you will truly stare into the abyss, because, strip away The Will To Power and there is nothing else there.
Thanks, I’m honored! I think even the term “Will to Power” sounds too cool, like swinging a sword in a video game, while Harris just has awkwardness and mediocrity and going along to get along. She’s grasping, but not in any sort of inspiring or impressive way.
I enjoyed reading your personal political journey. I appreciated reading as well your rationale for not supporting Harris in this election. I reach a different conclusion but it's healthy to hear a well reasoned argument on the other side of this issue.
I would be surprised if the Senate does not flip R, even if Harris wins. In any case, I think doing away with the filibuster would be dangerous and foolish.
Thank you, David! One of my hopes for this piece was to help demonstrate to people who've arrived at a different conclusion how decent fellow citizens could disagree with the very best of intentions, so that we can all try to move forward together regardless of what happens in the election. If Kamala wins, nothing would please me more than her moving towards a more constructive and conciliatory approach.
And if Trump wins, I would be equally pleased if my fears are unrealized. Whoever wins, I am hoping for an uncontested election, i.e., a clear result, as well as a divided government so that one party needs the other to get things done.
Great piece, I am with you all the way.
2016 seems to have caused a major psychotic fracture in our transnational managerial technocracy and their many acolytes all gathered together on the sunny banks of the Right Side of History™.
What I keep trying to express to my friends in the liberal class, who are all so tolerant they can tolerate anything except someone who disagrees with them and so deeply committed to Democracy as long as their side always wins, is more or less:
In 2016 half the country voted for a clownish TV game-show host to be President based almost entirely on one issue: BUILD THE WALL aka stop mass illegal immigration. Instead of heeding the will of the winning side, compromising and negotiating, taking the sane Obama position—“We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country”—they responded with perhaps History's loudest longest tantrum, denouncing everything and everyone for various bigoted -ISMs, and painting themselves into a fantastical ideological corner where suddenly anyone who crosses the border comes with a halo and any American who doesn't want to grant them immediate housing and health care is some species of Nazi who needs to be jailed.
My quick oversimplified summary of the 21st century political zeitgeist is: first the progressive oligarchy hogged all the assets (globalism has been a goldmine for the liberal class, their home values, salaries, and 401ks); then they hogged all the virtue (Social Justice morality has conquered all, is embedded in every movie, TV show, commercial etc, and anyone who dissents is immediately skunk-sprayed with a bigotry accusation); and now they want to hog all the power—by any means necessary and no matter what has to be destroyed in the process.
Thanks!
A psychological fracture is a good way to look at it, the rug got pulled out from under them in such a profound way that on some level you have to empathize with how utterly disorienting the experience was -- Columbia campus was eerily quiet the next day, with people staggering around in a daze -- but had people been a little more grounded and humble they might have been prepared to make some lemonade out of the lemons, instead of thrashing and flailing about to the extent of really trashing their legitimacy including among many long-time Democrats. Joe Biden could readily have landed among America's greatest presidents by using all his blarney to bring people together instead of tearing them apart, his tenure has been tragic beyond imagining.
I had the same level of empathy for liberals in Nov 2016 that I would have for a college girl who thinks she's getting a Porsche for her bday but gets a Toyota—not only no empathy but a big shock at what I was witnessing: staggering entitlement, impenetrable narcissism, and embarrassing cluelessness. I swear I'm not trying to be cruel!
I think it stems from different conceptions of the political: prior to the social media age, politics was understood as one sphere of existence (out of many), where different groups put forward different plans and ideas, where we all accepted that other people had different values, and that elections were a way of taking the national temperature, important but temporary and provisional (I realize I'm generalizing); but since 2016 (our first election dominated by social media), now every election is the most important ever, every issue is a matter of life or death, every day brings us closer either to the Right Side of History or back to Nazi fascism (even if every day and its issues is immediately forgotten) and politics is some combination of church, sports, group therapy, moralistic pissing contest and beauty pageant for performative narcissism.
I apologize for ranting and rambling, I guess what I'm expressing is my deep disappointment in America's liberal class, who could have marshalled some wisdom and dignity and accepted 2016 and heeded the very loud message coming from half the country, but who instead turned en masse into sullen teens wearing pussy hats and Comey is My Homey shirts while lighting votive candles to Robert Mueller.
And it would have taken a leader with much more strength and intelligence than the senile mediocrity Joe Biden to convince his Party to compromise with the Deplorables—his followers don't want to break bread with their political enemies, they want to destroy them. All because they lost one election!
Thanks
I had no sympathy for them. I was/am a classic liberal, so voted for all the Democrats that lost to everyone named Bush and was from a red state. I grew up knowing that my side lost lots of elections. For all the talk now about Trump, I don't think a lot of millennial progressive Democrats (or Hillary Clinton) understand that elections can easily be lost, by Americans who made up their own minds how to vote.
Keep in mind that, from the mindset of the PMC, HRC was One Of Us ("The Most Qualified Candidate In History(tm)") to the core.
"2016 seems to have caused a major psychotic fracture in our transnational managerial technocracy and their many acolytes all gathered together on the sunny banks of the Right Side of History™."
I appreciated your whole comment, but the above sentence stands out. You know how to say it, Clever P.
thanks!
(though in fairness i did borrow "transnational managerial technocracy" from our host, however ambient the phrase may be. citational justice! lol)
citation duly noted. ;)
"She’s reminiscent of a ton of people I met in my career as a professional progressive: glib, devoid of any discernible vision or values, and as ambitious as she is vacuous. I don’t know if I’d support her to be my condo board president, let alone Commander in Chief."
Banger. You described most of the PMC NPCs in NYC.
Magnificent chronicle of the last 20 years. What went wrong, what could have gone right, why it didn't.
Great essay, TIE. What I appreciate most is your instinct to continually test your 'priors' and make sure they still deliver. When they don't, you adjust course accordingly, and calmly. Once that approach catches on there'll be no stopping us!
If the priors don't deliver the goods, then nameless Russians somewhere hijacked the shipment with clever memes somehow.
Everyone knows that!
Let's hope so!
"The unfortunate reality is that many, and probably most, avowedly progressive institutions have over the past decade or two betrayed much of what they’d traditionally stood for." In that case, Exile, why did this happen to so many, probably most, avowedly progressive institutions at the same time? If there is a common cause, what was it?
Simple, the PMC cemeneted its role as the hegemonic class.
Some of it was the generational change of a bunch of silent generation eminence grise's retiring and/or dying at around the same time, some of it was the shift away from newspapers and network television to blogs and partisan outlets online, some of it was Bush-Cheney seeming to discredit any and all things right of center even before Obama glided onto the scene. In general, people migrated from an analog system in which they were accustomed to the idea of compromise with others being an intractable fact of life to a digital fantasy of being seamlessly pandered to at all times, with any unwelcome stumbling blocks always being the opposition's fault. Things had been trending that direction institutionally for a while, but it was the shift to targeted national/international online media that made the most dramatic difference.
I loved Obama, and still do. Obamacare quite literally saved my life. I went from sick person with no insurance, to sick person with insurance. Never before has a candidate’s policy so directly affected the trajectory of my life. Word.
Pros and cons!!
I don't necessarily hold Obama totally responsible for many of the worst aspects of his Presidency. Sure, he leaned into the messianic thing, but only after it had organically burbled up from people looking to conflate politics with spirituality and religion, and you can't blame the guy from giving his public what they wanted. But it might ultimately have been a more successful administration, and not led to the Trumpian backlash, had he been treated and scrutinized as a politician in the vein of other politicians rather than as a transcendent superhero.
This is correct: pride goeth before a fall.
All these people — and this is now happening to Kamala — reach a point where no one has the guts to say no to them. We should bring back court jesters.
We never get the president we want, but if one of them happens to save your existence by spending the majority of his political capital on a policy, other abstractions cease to matter.
Let's not oversell Obamacare. Obama entered into office with a huge majority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, Wall Street begging for rescue on any terms, Team R in disoriented shock, and the biggest popular appetite for reform since arguably 1932. Oh, and a media that was unironically likening him to Jesus Christ and also Neo from "The Matrix".
And all he could manage was a giant gimme for the insurance industry.
It can be hard to suss out the plusses and minuses of any complex policy, but particularly when it involves life and death. There's no doubt in my mind that Obamacare has added many years to many people's lives, and for them that's priceless, but it's also lowered the average general quality of care compared to what it had been (potentially shortening some lives) while blowing unbelievable amounts of money on administration. It covers expensive things that it shouldn't, and it acts as a further magnet attracting migrants from around the world who are a net burden on the system. I don't think even the most sophisticated actuary could really calculate years of quality time gained by the additional coverage compared to those lost in terms of the downsides and the opportunity costs of burning so much money that could have been spent on research or housing or other priorities that also improve and extend lives. My sense as a policy person of sorts is that a more rational system could have done at least the same good for less money and with less disruption.
I would say that Obamacare was better than the status quo prior but could have been so much more.
Good article. Thanks for letting me read it. I found it on Deboer's monthly writer-submission links. FWIW, I stopped being a paid subscriber to DeBoer for reasons I won't bore you with, but he is nice enough to allow non paid subscribers access to his monthly writer-submission links, which is the best part of his substack IMO. And, at least so far, yours is the best thing linked.
So, it's a little over three weeks since you posted this article. Much as Trump can be a real asshat, I think another dose of him is safer than the Harris-cypher. Whoever is running the Biden administration (it can't be Joe Biden) will keep running the Harris Administration. "They" will IMO cause far more damage than Trump possibly can.
Thank you and glad you found it edifying! TBH I am not a paid Freddie subscriber either and it is incredibly gracious of him to make his subscriber writing round-ups open.
Much as it pains me, I tend to agree with your assessment. The Biden administration presented such a golden opportunity to get back to the boring mushy middle, and instead whoever's running the show opted for exploiting their non-existent mandate to the maximum hilt. The feint to the reasonable center seems purely rhetorical, and victory with such a lemon of a candidate as Kamala would no doubt embolden the worst elements of the administration to even further overreach.
I deeply appreciate your honesty and you said with more conviction what I equivocated, which is that Dems are as contemptuous of the rule of law as Republicans, and it absolutely was lawfare and conspiracy mongering. The one thing I’d have added is about gender extremism among the educated classes. but that could be a whole other essay.
Thank you! While I was working on this I was reading the new Musa al-Gharbi book on wokeness and in my review of the book I get a bit more into that angle. https://ivyexile.substack.com/p/how-woke-is-woke
"... but their intellectual incuriosity tended to be as impressive as their self-regard." It reminds me of what Barbara Tuchman, in "The March of Folly", called the real cause of the American Revolution. It was the attitude of the British upper class. "Their sense of superiority was so dense as to be impenetrable." If the self-regard of the people you're talking about is so impressive, what is the source of this arrogance?
First of all, from the moment students arrive at very prestigious schools they are constantly bombarded with messaging that they really are the global meritocratic elite and have the duty and responsibility to lead, and that messaging is even more pronounced at elite law and policy grad schools.
In the longer view, I'd say the rise of mass media and particularly the constant stimulus of visual mass media has gradually eroded attention spans to the point where even (potentially) highly intelligent people are accustomed to having information boiled down into easy little pellets that go down smoothly. So the idea of intelligence/eliteness has become more a social performance of regurgitating the heppest memes and namedropping fancy credentials while dressing the right way. A midlevel political apparatchik who went to Columbia and hasn't read a book in years because they're so into trashy reality TV, but dresses in expensive clothes with an expensive haircut, is officially Smart in a way that a state school educated accountant who reads James Joyce for fun but goes to Great Clips can never be. The performance and pose are more important than competence, as any failures or shortcomings can always be blamed on the barbarian non-meritocrats spoiling best-laid plans.
Alissa Heinerscheid is a good example of what you're talking about. She was the woman who approved Bud Light's disastrous transexual sales campaign. She had gone from Groton to Harvard to an MBA in marketing from the Wharton School, eventually becoming vice-president of marketing for Bud Light beer. She decided that Bud Light's image was "too fratty" and "not of a good humor." To change that, she got a female impersonator as a spokesman for the brand, resulting in a 28%, $20 billion drop in sales for what had been the best-selling brand. This by far outstrips Gillette's $8 billion loss in sales of its razors after their "Toxic Masculinity" Super Bowl ad four years ago. She went to all the right schools and impressed all the right people but she hadn't the slightest idea how to sell beer. The reason people with prestigious marketing credentials lead their companies into these woke marketing disasters is ultimately their contempt for their customers.
Yes, exactly, and there are thousands of new Heinerscheids minted every year while the old guard of the croaking frogs and dogs in sunglasses retire. The Bud Lite thing was emotional for me, I agree that the video showed a fundamental lack of respect for its culturally traditionalist customer base. I was never a huge Bud Lite person but would often use it for cooking if a recipe called for some light beer, and didn't feel that I could support Budweiser anymore after that display of contempt. On the other hand, Budweiser is a major employer in my hometown and I know people who work at the brewery, and it was such a shame that these blue-collar joes' livelihoods were put at risk by this silly Ivy League society lady's self-indulgence.
I’m reminded of Susan Estrich (Kennedy school) as one of the bigwigs on the Dukakis campaign. They had to decide how much to spend on ads during the World Series. Estrich reportedly said, skeptically, “Who watches the World Series?” 😹😹😹
We know how that worked out!
I think I get it, Exile. Having won the credentials race all their lives, they expect people without similar credentials to take their credentials as seriously as they do.
While we're on the subject of Tuchman, "The Proud Tower" also comes to mind.
I don't know enough about Harris to form much of an opinion at all. I never lived in California, and she was seemingly sidelined during her VP term.
if she was running this campaign based on her 2019-20 policy positions, I would not vote for her. I didn't in 2020. (she dropped out before my state's primary)
OK, so she's supposed to have moved to the center, reportedly. (me shrugging my shoulders) Who knows?
Some wag described her candidacy as "five political consultants behind a trenchcoat"...
I liked "The worst peron in a corporate HR Department".
The Democratic Party is disintegrating, taking DC and every National and International Institution and arrangement down as well.
All of this is normal history, all of this is decentralization to our natural and organic federated state.
I agree that a shift back towards federalism/subsidiarity would be a positive, and there's an extent to which the metastasizing incompetence of federal institutions may drive some de facto decentralization, but one-size-fits-all global consolidation is the dominant ideology of the governing classes and what technology is pointing towards. So I'm not hugely optimistic that lumbering, corrupt institutions will be dissolving any time soon rather than becoming more arbitrary and abusive.
If you want a nice companion peace to this check out the latest myopic Persuasion bullshit just released Exile. The timing could not be more perfect.
Is that the "Trump preparing to wage lawfare" one? Kinda wild to see them project on Trump what some of his supposed targets have literally been doing to him already.
If it was "lawfare is bad" and Trump should not pay his enemies back in kind then I think that would be a reasonable argument. Instead it was a bunch of bullshit about that evil orange man introducing the concept of lawfare against his poor innocent progressive enemies who have never done anything like that. It is the end state of the phenomenon our favorite exile was talking about.
Heh heh, yeah.... I started scanning it and bounced off pretty hard. Sounds like I saved some brain cells by not reading the whole thing.
People keep telling me this election is a choice between Hitler 2.0 (on one side) or Mao 2.0 (on the other side). I would like to hope our system of government is more resilient than that.
It is projection, and yet, it is not.
The idea of comeuppance only makes sense from the right-wing perspective. From the left-wing perspective, who gets to abuse whom is the whole point of politics. "You wouldn't like it if they did that to you!" is a meaningless criticism when directed at a left-wing person; you might as well direct it at a boxer about to punch his opponent.
"Much of that entailed glowing write-ups of networked progressive technocrats in the vast revolving door amongst government, Biglaw, academia, NGOs, and elite influence peddling—fancy folks who in their upscale workaholic ways really did mostly mean well, and fancied themselves fair-minded experts shepherding the peasantry for their own good. If the little people had views worth considering they’d have gone to the right schools and/or been there hobnobbing in the ballroom, or at least be more grateful to we the selfless meritocracy.
The essential outlook of such imperious Masters of the Universe had become largely post-national and fundamentally dismissive of the notion of representative governance. Global challenges took global solutions that could only be masterminded by the vanguard of visionaries like us, and the stakes were too high to let ignorant electorates stand in our way. As such, it was incumbent upon we sages of the managerial class to move as many issues as possible out of the political realm, where ordinary voters had some say, toward the purview of courts and diplomats and international institutions where the right sort of people would decide. I wish I could say that they were on to something, that the alleged meritocrats truly deserved the last word, but their intellectual incuriosity tended to be as impressive as their self-regard."
Money quote, there. I so am lifting this.
"I can’t say that I particularly like or dislike Kamala Harris—I’m not even sure if there’s enough substance there to form an opinion. In the same way that people felt George W. Bush would be a fun guy to share a beer with, I don’t doubt that she’d be pleasant enough company over a glass of wine. She’s reminiscent of a ton of people I met in my career as a professional progressive: glib, devoid of any discernible vision or values, and as ambitious as she is vacuous."
Harris, like most politicians, Team R or Team D, is simply a sociopath, The Will To Power personified. Whatever It Takes to get power, she will do it.
With people like that, once you pull back the mask, you will truly stare into the abyss, because, strip away The Will To Power and there is nothing else there.
Thanks, I’m honored! I think even the term “Will to Power” sounds too cool, like swinging a sword in a video game, while Harris just has awkwardness and mediocrity and going along to get along. She’s grasping, but not in any sort of inspiring or impressive way.
I hoisted "The Will To Power" from Nietsche.
The irony being that Nietsche imagined his Superman to be, as you inferred, sort of like Alexander The Great or Xerxes or something.
The power-hungry sociopath turned out in actual fact to be a dweeb like Anthony Blinken.
Masterfully done. Quibbles for some other time! Keep up the good work, and thanks.
Thank you, sir.
Good stuff. Thanks for writing this.
I enjoyed reading your personal political journey. I appreciated reading as well your rationale for not supporting Harris in this election. I reach a different conclusion but it's healthy to hear a well reasoned argument on the other side of this issue.
I would be surprised if the Senate does not flip R, even if Harris wins. In any case, I think doing away with the filibuster would be dangerous and foolish.
Thank you, David! One of my hopes for this piece was to help demonstrate to people who've arrived at a different conclusion how decent fellow citizens could disagree with the very best of intentions, so that we can all try to move forward together regardless of what happens in the election. If Kamala wins, nothing would please me more than her moving towards a more constructive and conciliatory approach.
And if Trump wins, I would be equally pleased if my fears are unrealized. Whoever wins, I am hoping for an uncontested election, i.e., a clear result, as well as a divided government so that one party needs the other to get things done.