If you would like to read a thread that is almost impossibly pretentious, a thread that pushes the boundaries of what you thought unearned self-importance could look like, Eric Weinstein has you covered.
Just imagine offering Ben Shapiro as a tonic for culture war excess. Mate, he's its apogee.
Just imagine suggesting Tulsi Gabbard and Dan Crenshaw as examples of politicians who exist outside the reality of partisanship.
I really need to expound on this because it's about as surreal as it gets.
Eric Weinstein advises us to "draft" those who "stood outside THE DUOPOLY." Cool, cool. Let's do it.
Okay, nice, he's given us a list. Who is on it?
Why, it's Ben Shapiro.
Ben Shapiro is on the list.
Ben Shapiro is on the list of people who have exempted themselves from the left/right binary.
This, my friends, is galaxy.
I'm not trying to be mean-spirited here. But, speaking as the pluralist/centrist/moderate that Eric relentlessly projects himself to be, Eric's shtick is deeply offensive to me.
Eric styles himself as someone who stands outside THE SYSTEM, observing its decay as a concerned, reasonable onlooker. But to follow him is to find yourself knee-deep in culture war ephemera. In one-sided analysis. In reactionary politics masquerading as above-it-all centrism.
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1: In a much-discussed essay, @ezraklein argues that @JoeBiden is too cognitively compromised to run an effective campaign for reelection.
I think Ezra’s wrong, but even if we grant his argument, the media deserves a significant portion of the blame for getting us here.
🧵
2: Before I set out why the media’s to blame, I want to respond to Klein’s contention that Biden’s camp declining primetime interviews is necessarily indicative of a fear that his interview performances would indelibly confirm he’s in steep decline.
3: Another possibility is that Biden’s low-profile strategy isn't primarily due to fears he may fall flat on his face; it’s possible this is a deliberate strategy based on who his opponent is—a strategy Biden would be implementing even if he were in his 50s instead of in his 80s.
1: A couple days ago, the @Chiefs won the Super Bowl.
@JoeBiden, activating the Dark Brandon meme, alluded to an internet conspiracy theory that is brain-meltingly dumb.
Here’s a very quick account of why conspiracies this preposterous are proliferating on the right.
🧵
2: This particular theory, pushed by right-wing dimwits like @VivekGRamaswamy, @bennyjohnson, and @JackPosobiec—who collectively boast 6.5 million followers on here—is that Taylor Swift and co. are a deep-state psy-op to re-install Biden.
Why did they go full Tinfoil Mode here?
3: At one level, QAnon taught us there’s no conspiracy too dumb to believe. But that’s not new.
I remember passing by checkout lanes thinking, “Very cool to be informed that Hillary's dolphin baby was spotted solving a rubix cube.”
It's completely surreal that the GOP electorate is all in on a guy who got himself impeached twice, spectacularly lost reelection, fomented an insurrectionary riot to overturn an election, was recently indicted on 34 felony counts, and has now been found liable for sexual abuse.
The most absurd thing of all is that each of these things has made them love him even more. What a completely ridiculous political culture.
The self-congratulatory tone is well deserved if and only if you believe being able to mobilize your listeners into hysterical overreaction to a beer giant's microtargeted marketing campaign is a virtue rather than an obvious vice.
<vomits uncontrollably all over Walmart's self-checkout lane>
"Let no man deny that I've made a big impact here"
What's funniest about this entire episode is the soft extortionism of Travis and his Merry Band of Beer Puritans.
"Sirs—SIRS—let it be known that we will only stop harassing you from our massive platforms if you pay us a shithead tax. Only then will our calumnies cease."
The DeSantis vs. Disney saga has caught some people by surprise.
Here’s a 🧵 that explains how it is both a genuine departure from, but also entirely consistent with, past forms of conservative activism against a major cultural entity.
DeSantis vs. Disney represents an escalation from past conservative crusades against cultural entities believed to be furthering a “leftist” agenda.