I tend to view things as culture/counter culture rather than class. During the Covid tyranny, virtually every punk figurehead (and every anti establishment leftist I know) was categorically on board with all the measures.
Jello Biafra for the vax mandate and Big Pharma support... Billy Bragg for bombs on Russia.... Rage against the Machine commanding other bands to mask up and distance while they were taking the stage...etc.
But I'm still a working class white kid, noisy music, etc. and am utterly cast out of the greater "communities" and have been forced to be targeted as "far right" despite not changing any view.
In fact, I feel now like I have confirmed everything I suspected in the 80s and 90s, and can unequivocally say that I have always been correct. And now the left/right paradigm is shown to be utterly useless.
Dick Cheney and Tim Walz can have the Corporate War Left... I'll take my own side, and hope these fucking sheep start waking up.
I just listened to Holiday in Cambodia the other day... I had forgotten what a great song it was, and how it was depressing when Jello got lobotomized by crowd capture. He probably doesn't even recognize himself. People stop fighting for the truth and start fighting for Their Truth.
This is a useful strategy for pilling Leftists. I’ve deployed it and found it to get them to listen to anti-immigrant sentiment without immediately shoving their fingers in their ears and screaming “RACISS!” at the top of their lungs.
Clinton’s NATO and Bush ending the Bracero program (temporary visas for farm workers) also played a big role in increasing illegal immigration. It’s so bad for wages, housing costs, crime, and public spending that you can argue against it from virtually any political position.
Class has ceased to be an issue in mainstream American discourse as journalism has collapsed as a profession, with the few remaining jobs going almost exclusively to the graduates of Ivy League and other comparable schools. As Glenn Greenwald has documented, American journalism was once a working class profession. Now it's quite the opposite. It's not a coincidence that concern for class has been marginalized while race, sex, and (these days) the alphabet people have been pushed to the fore. Rich kids make an ostentatious stink about the downtrodden, but in reality they're protecting their own class interests.
Yes! I worked at the Chicago Reader between 2000-2005 and got to watch in real time as the switchover to online coincided with the complete removal of the working class from journalism. I had the honor of working with some of the last real journalists standing, but those of us who were beginning our careers got our noses slowly, but surely, rubbed deeper and deeper in the fact that there was no future for us.
Comrade! It is nice to actually read what I mostly think is happening.
Unfortunately, I live in über blue California, which seems to be all about GBTQI+ and oppression of BIPOC, ignoring the growing number of homeless people. The more homeless people that there are, the more oppression of everyone else seems to be happening, but not of the homeless, who obviously are all drugged out, insane losers, solely responsible for being homeless.
"I used to think people did this kind of thing out of sheer opportunism, but now that the impulse is occurring to me, it’s so disembodied, I suspect it might have something to do with symmetry and OCD."
Don't waste your life covering anyone's bases.
Nobody thanks martyrs, except before altars when they're already dead, and then what the fuck do you want that for unless you're playing Ascended Master like Adolf?
Excellent essay. Britain gained an empire without thinking, and they're going to lose a country without thinking also. They don't deserve credit for the former, and they will deserve all the blame for the latter.
The Old Labor Leftist (OLL? Ollie? Can I call my inner old labor leftist Ollie?) seems to have been a function of post war prosperity. By the 2000s there was no place for new ones in academia or the NGO sector and journalism died too. No one will pay an Old Labor Leftist to say Old Labor Leftist things, and even he has to eat.
But like some po-mo Joe Hill, I’m glad he still haunts people.
I’ve heard various explanations, even in the comments here, already: the end of the factory worker, the shift in definition of the proletariat (classic Marixism = those who do the work; current race Marxism = see skin color chart for oppression rating), and yours as well sounds like a definite factor.
Like I said, I only just noticed Ponytail Guy is gone, and here he is already, haunting my hambrain!
This was a good laugh, so thanks. There's entirely too much doomer commentary out and about nowadays, and it's nice to read something with a little whimsy. Well done.
There are plenty of mistakes in here ("cn" instead of "can" is one I can't not mention), but I'll not drone on about them, cause, well... you really don't seem like the type to give a shit. That's probably a compliment.
And yes: it's majorly depressing that all the writers out there are forced to play this fucking game. After all this time, I'm sometimes not sure if I have a side either -- if I do, then it's the "Can we please talk about something interesting?" side, and this doesn't gel well with the fact that everyone finds this culture warrior shit compelling these days. The right is having more fun than the left -- that's undeniable -- but it doesn't change the fact that I don't want to follow the news cycle relentlessly to keep up with it all so I can write a hot take and maybe blow up, ya dig?
And I am EXTREMELY tired of all our water-cooler conversation being about politics, but that seems to be what we have settled upon. I guess since we’re all working from home we need a worldwide office to gossip about, but holy crap, is it ever destructive. Of everything from culture, as you well describe, and politics themselves.
The gossipy ape is a fearsome animal, mostly out of bumbling.
Thank you! I actually used to be a proofreader, but then I started going really blind. Well, that and I switch from querty to azerty about ten times a day—but actually, I used to fix all those typos, until I realizes doing so sends spam to your entire mailing list on Substack!
But anyway, thank you! It’s hard to know if humor works without a live audience, so thank you very much!
At some point I gave up pointing out class when everyone wants to talk about race and sex. I’m not sure if it just made me weird or also made me seem like a manipulative bigot.
I think a part of the issue is that most of the shit stirrers are from sufficiently wealthy families that they wouldn’t get victimization points for class. It’s in their twisted interest go downplay class and upplay sex (usually) or other factors that happen to apply to them.
The real issue, the thing that decides who gets more than they deserve and who gets less, is social class... but the people who benefit from their parents placing them on third base and then cheering them on to run for home have watched all the Harry Potter and victim-worshipping media. They half-believe in all this crap which, if they really believed in it, would fully make them the bad guys. So instead of being honest, they decide that gender, race, all these secondary things, are the really important factor in where you end up, all actual stats aside--so they can have their cake and eat it too. Have their privilege and dump the consequences and blame off on some of the very people they are squashing.
It's pretty eerie how you chose the metaphor of needing a new third baseman on almost exactly the day when the Braves lose Austin Riley to a possii season-ending injury.
There was always a little truth to the labor-left perspective. Like all other perspectives that see and project a little truth, it had to be driven to the margins for that reason. Only in the total absence of reality can the empire of lies persist.
I'd say its pretty much all done, and that was the plan all along, by those who hate and have the power to mobilize it. Its pretty impossible to see this stuff and not realize that the ink was barely dry on the bible before the plan unfolded, to steal away spirituality and replace it with material certainty that could be endlessly manipulated.
The labor movement in America was treated to dozens of Ludlow massacres, and I laugh at people who preach to me about a uniquely American, Christian morality.
I think it was Howard Zinn who documented the use of poor whites as wedge interests to go throat to throat with racial minorities in order to outflank them both. Started in the 19th century.
But even Zinn for all his honesty could not see that WW2 was orchestrated, which would have left him in a very odd place when his B-17 napalmed a French village after the war was over. Cuz-reasons.
So I wonder is it really a thing to just pick up history at some random point? Because I do not believe that history is a linear thing any longer.
So globalism destroyed labor, and exported all its super toxic behavior and now banks are international and bugs are in your blood from vaccines.
Sort of makes one wonder about the bodies mangled by machine gun fire won for the horrific crime of demanding humane conditions from the same ones who now tell you that they are here to save the world from the next crisis they invent.
First, great article, and I agree totally.
I tend to view things as culture/counter culture rather than class. During the Covid tyranny, virtually every punk figurehead (and every anti establishment leftist I know) was categorically on board with all the measures.
Jello Biafra for the vax mandate and Big Pharma support... Billy Bragg for bombs on Russia.... Rage against the Machine commanding other bands to mask up and distance while they were taking the stage...etc.
But I'm still a working class white kid, noisy music, etc. and am utterly cast out of the greater "communities" and have been forced to be targeted as "far right" despite not changing any view.
In fact, I feel now like I have confirmed everything I suspected in the 80s and 90s, and can unequivocally say that I have always been correct. And now the left/right paradigm is shown to be utterly useless.
Dick Cheney and Tim Walz can have the Corporate War Left... I'll take my own side, and hope these fucking sheep start waking up.
I just listened to Holiday in Cambodia the other day... I had forgotten what a great song it was, and how it was depressing when Jello got lobotomized by crowd capture. He probably doesn't even recognize himself. People stop fighting for the truth and start fighting for Their Truth.
This is a useful strategy for pilling Leftists. I’ve deployed it and found it to get them to listen to anti-immigrant sentiment without immediately shoving their fingers in their ears and screaming “RACISS!” at the top of their lungs.
Man... it's so hard to divorce one's own pure opinion completely from the push and pull of everyone's rhetorical games, isn't it? It makes me queasy.
Clinton’s NATO and Bush ending the Bracero program (temporary visas for farm workers) also played a big role in increasing illegal immigration. It’s so bad for wages, housing costs, crime, and public spending that you can argue against it from virtually any political position.
And yet somehow they keep doing it to us.
Class has ceased to be an issue in mainstream American discourse as journalism has collapsed as a profession, with the few remaining jobs going almost exclusively to the graduates of Ivy League and other comparable schools. As Glenn Greenwald has documented, American journalism was once a working class profession. Now it's quite the opposite. It's not a coincidence that concern for class has been marginalized while race, sex, and (these days) the alphabet people have been pushed to the fore. Rich kids make an ostentatious stink about the downtrodden, but in reality they're protecting their own class interests.
Yes! I worked at the Chicago Reader between 2000-2005 and got to watch in real time as the switchover to online coincided with the complete removal of the working class from journalism. I had the honor of working with some of the last real journalists standing, but those of us who were beginning our careers got our noses slowly, but surely, rubbed deeper and deeper in the fact that there was no future for us.
Comrade! It is nice to actually read what I mostly think is happening.
Unfortunately, I live in über blue California, which seems to be all about GBTQI+ and oppression of BIPOC, ignoring the growing number of homeless people. The more homeless people that there are, the more oppression of everyone else seems to be happening, but not of the homeless, who obviously are all drugged out, insane losers, solely responsible for being homeless.
Interesting and strange that.
"I used to think people did this kind of thing out of sheer opportunism, but now that the impulse is occurring to me, it’s so disembodied, I suspect it might have something to do with symmetry and OCD."
Don't waste your life covering anyone's bases.
Nobody thanks martyrs, except before altars when they're already dead, and then what the fuck do you want that for unless you're playing Ascended Master like Adolf?
That is solid advice.
Excellent essay. Britain gained an empire without thinking, and they're going to lose a country without thinking also. They don't deserve credit for the former, and they will deserve all the blame for the latter.
Absolutely! As an American living in France I DGAF, but as a human seeing injustice and unnecessary human suffering…
You wrote for Taki mag! That was a favorite of mine for several years. I was mostly there for Steve Sailer or David Cole, so I don't remember you.
I wrote about books, which, er, wasn’t really their readership’s main interest.
The Old Labor Leftist (OLL? Ollie? Can I call my inner old labor leftist Ollie?) seems to have been a function of post war prosperity. By the 2000s there was no place for new ones in academia or the NGO sector and journalism died too. No one will pay an Old Labor Leftist to say Old Labor Leftist things, and even he has to eat.
But like some po-mo Joe Hill, I’m glad he still haunts people.
PS I think Ollie is a very cute name for him!
I’ve heard various explanations, even in the comments here, already: the end of the factory worker, the shift in definition of the proletariat (classic Marixism = those who do the work; current race Marxism = see skin color chart for oppression rating), and yours as well sounds like a definite factor.
Like I said, I only just noticed Ponytail Guy is gone, and here he is already, haunting my hambrain!
This was a good laugh, so thanks. There's entirely too much doomer commentary out and about nowadays, and it's nice to read something with a little whimsy. Well done.
There are plenty of mistakes in here ("cn" instead of "can" is one I can't not mention), but I'll not drone on about them, cause, well... you really don't seem like the type to give a shit. That's probably a compliment.
And yes: it's majorly depressing that all the writers out there are forced to play this fucking game. After all this time, I'm sometimes not sure if I have a side either -- if I do, then it's the "Can we please talk about something interesting?" side, and this doesn't gel well with the fact that everyone finds this culture warrior shit compelling these days. The right is having more fun than the left -- that's undeniable -- but it doesn't change the fact that I don't want to follow the news cycle relentlessly to keep up with it all so I can write a hot take and maybe blow up, ya dig?
This *is* a safe space for rants, right?
RIGHT.
Keep going. :)
PS But, yeah, rant away!
And I am EXTREMELY tired of all our water-cooler conversation being about politics, but that seems to be what we have settled upon. I guess since we’re all working from home we need a worldwide office to gossip about, but holy crap, is it ever destructive. Of everything from culture, as you well describe, and politics themselves.
The gossipy ape is a fearsome animal, mostly out of bumbling.
Thank you! I actually used to be a proofreader, but then I started going really blind. Well, that and I switch from querty to azerty about ten times a day—but actually, I used to fix all those typos, until I realizes doing so sends spam to your entire mailing list on Substack!
But anyway, thank you! It’s hard to know if humor works without a live audience, so thank you very much!
"Magical Cracker"? Of course I'm stealing it.
At some point I gave up pointing out class when everyone wants to talk about race and sex. I’m not sure if it just made me weird or also made me seem like a manipulative bigot.
I think a part of the issue is that most of the shit stirrers are from sufficiently wealthy families that they wouldn’t get victimization points for class. It’s in their twisted interest go downplay class and upplay sex (usually) or other factors that happen to apply to them.
EXACTLY.
The real issue, the thing that decides who gets more than they deserve and who gets less, is social class... but the people who benefit from their parents placing them on third base and then cheering them on to run for home have watched all the Harry Potter and victim-worshipping media. They half-believe in all this crap which, if they really believed in it, would fully make them the bad guys. So instead of being honest, they decide that gender, race, all these secondary things, are the really important factor in where you end up, all actual stats aside--so they can have their cake and eat it too. Have their privilege and dump the consequences and blame off on some of the very people they are squashing.
It's pretty eerie how you chose the metaphor of needing a new third baseman on almost exactly the day when the Braves lose Austin Riley to a possii season-ending injury.
Oh, wow. That IS kinda eerie. I didn't even know that till now.
I recall your loathing of typos 🙂
Read: "a *possible* season-ending 🤕
There was always a little truth to the labor-left perspective. Like all other perspectives that see and project a little truth, it had to be driven to the margins for that reason. Only in the total absence of reality can the empire of lies persist.
Yep. This is why I’m letting that labor leftist live in my skull. For all I know, it could be smarter than I am.
They want a uniparty. I want a PARTY!
Good essay. I thought you might appreciate a deep-dive on the gang grooming issue.
https://geary.substack.com/p/tinderbox-how-the-british-government/comments
Thank you! I would, indeed.
Vyvyan! (I had to look up the spelling.) Please more of this, Ann.
Thank you! I will make ASSP a regular feature of my online nuisance distribution!
I'd say its pretty much all done, and that was the plan all along, by those who hate and have the power to mobilize it. Its pretty impossible to see this stuff and not realize that the ink was barely dry on the bible before the plan unfolded, to steal away spirituality and replace it with material certainty that could be endlessly manipulated.
The labor movement in America was treated to dozens of Ludlow massacres, and I laugh at people who preach to me about a uniquely American, Christian morality.
I think it was Howard Zinn who documented the use of poor whites as wedge interests to go throat to throat with racial minorities in order to outflank them both. Started in the 19th century.
But even Zinn for all his honesty could not see that WW2 was orchestrated, which would have left him in a very odd place when his B-17 napalmed a French village after the war was over. Cuz-reasons.
So I wonder is it really a thing to just pick up history at some random point? Because I do not believe that history is a linear thing any longer.
So globalism destroyed labor, and exported all its super toxic behavior and now banks are international and bugs are in your blood from vaccines.
Sort of makes one wonder about the bodies mangled by machine gun fire won for the horrific crime of demanding humane conditions from the same ones who now tell you that they are here to save the world from the next crisis they invent.