Fundamentally, conservative donors focus on issues. Liberal donors focus on people.
When you’re focusing on issues, you’re taking a basically VC like approach in which impact replaces profit. When you’re focusing on people, you’re like: is this a person I want to own?
So for a liberal donor, what matters is the scale and quality of their private army—and scale is more important than quality. This is the Mackenzie Bezos vibe.
For a conservative donor, philanthropy is about specific objectives, and (as in VC) quality is the most critical thing
Jul 30 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Imagine thinking you could change this without plenary authority.
Conservatives used to think they owned the country. Then they thought they had to stop the train. Now they think they have to just give it a nudge, and the wheels will go back on the track. My brother in Christ
Conservative billionaires be like: freedom of speech will solve it! We’ll just have a big New England town hall, but on the Internet. And reason will prevail.
You haven’t lived till you’ve had to nag a billionaire to pay a $5000 research tab to some broke grad student. Seriously
Jun 5 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
You can’t even tell if these people:
(a) deny that civilians were held in fields behind barbed wire for months
(b) believe they flourished in these conditions, with suburban death rates
(c) believe the stats are a lie but only by 10x, not 100x
They can reason logically through these points, but it makes no impression, because it does not match the vibe—their narrative of 1945.
Nothing like this could happen in their Marvel-movie 1945. I might as well have Logic that says a man-eating rabbit ate a million people
Jun 4 • 33 tweets • 9 min read
GM are you ready for some Content. Special welcome to New Yorker readers. It’s Wednesday but this Wednesday won’t be like the others.
I would like to experiment on your brain. A very special History—made from just one Wikipedia page.
You will be the same, but better. Thread
It’s the Wikipedia page titled “Rheinweisenlager.”
DON’T read it until after the experiment. We’ll be using only screenshots. Elon won’t let me link.
Also it just messes with the procedure. (Don’t worry I’ve treated many IRL. All still living)
May 12 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
“Evil.” Reminder that your institutions killed 20 million people and then covered it up. Spare me the pearl clutching.
What I learned: actually, no one cares enough ABOUT POWER to create alternative institutions, then install them. Like you, they would rather just preen
The big lie from your fishwrap masters is that the libertarian billionaires they hate—because they are the only threat to the system—only care about power.
This is libs, who only care about power, projecting.
If I was trying to look good, I would be selling the same lie as you
May 11 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
I apologize for my ad hominem attacks on Scott Alexander.
I should not chastise him for once editing me out of his blog. I should praise him for mentioning me at all, thus unavoidably enduring a vast multiyear crapstorm. It’s Sunday and this is what Jesus would say.
Also
Scott asks a perfectly fair question: why I used to pearl-clutch so hard about authoritarian populism in 2008, but am perfectly okay with the Trump administration in 2025–despite all its manifest errors, incompetences, and even cruelties?
Surely the answer is that I’ve Sold Out
Mar 16 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Old regimes, like the Bourbons and the USSR, develop a suicidal energy. Nothing can harm them physically, yet they seem to want to harm themselves
Glasnost was a terrible idea, for the USSR. So was calling the Estates, for the Bourbons. Many obscure regimes also die in this way, eg, Greek colonels
