shangtr0n 🟦

Normie. Fukuyama stan. Nuance bro. Believer in pluralism, persuasion, and prescribed courtesy likes.

#keepPounding #BravesCountry #ForTheFaithful

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

the irony of selling $10 ice cream bars so that people can symbolically eat the rich.

[Reuters @Reuters]

New Yorkers can take a bite out of capitalism by munching on popsicles shaped like the heads of billionaires Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Jack Ma, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg near McCarren Park in Brooklyn

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@MauiBoyMacro props on this tweet getting picked up in @GaryMarcus 's newsletter, this was cool to see one of my favorites picked up by another! 🙌🏾

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

I'd love to introduce "based" Mike Lee to the concept of liberalism, a battle-tested guarantor of the interests of minority faith groups, as an alternative to pleading with the sectarian plurality to let him into the in-group.

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@grpwins when are you moving to San Diego bro?

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@RayGQue my in-laws are also in Lubbock (wife is from there).

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@FF_paisan @JakobSanderson https://t.co/0nsa2IxzL3

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@JakobSanderson seeing this list makes me realize just how weak AFC supporting casts are as a whole.

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@JakobSanderson seeing this list makes me realize just how weak AFC supporting casts are as a whole.

[corsaren @corsaren]

There is a common pejorative attack on rwers, hinted at here, which boils down to “they’re just bitter that their liberal friends think they’re scum.”

And sure, there is something very funny and self-defeating about “owning the libs to get them to like you”. Moreover, the typical response pattern is often full of vice-signaling, commons-plundering, and all manner of “I don’t care if this hurts me, just so long as it hurts you more” behavior that simply validates those same negative labels to which they so strongly object.

It’s childish. It’s grotesque. It’s counterproductive and negative-sum. It is ignobility at its most ignoble. And perhaps most of all, it’s just plain embarrassing.

HOWEVER. I think that the widespread appeal of this reactionary behavior ought to serve as a damning indictment of the overall “theory of change” that the 2010s woke movement represented. The theory that, if you leverage cultural power to shun, shame, and banish wrongthink from the domain of acceptable discourse, that this will somehow engender a form of lasting moral and ideological victory—that by making certain viewpoints unacceptable, you would make them unthinkable.

This theory of change, misguided as it was to begin with, culminated in a mass cultural backlash, the first and second term of Donald Trump, and a reactionary movement so hellbent on revenge that they have willingly destroyed an immense amount of valuable institutional capital just for the chance to inflict a similar degree of anguish upon what they see as their oppressors. By any reasonable metric, this must be considered an abject failure.

This failure should have been foreseeable. In a political system in which everyone’s vote is equal and private, and a new media landscape that eschews top-down enforcement of norms, instead rewarding self-radicalizing echo chambers and simclusters, this strategy is predictably disastrous. Ideologies which are not allowed to participate the light of open debate will merely fester in the dark.

Ancient societies that committed wholesale massacre of the defeated, brutal as they were, at least understood this simple principle: if you want lasting victory, your enemies must either be captured, convinced (i.e., integrated), or killed. Silence is not an option. They will not go quietly into that good night. Slaves without shackles will always revolt once they locate the power to do so, and in doing so they will rarely take care to maintain the prudent constructs of their former masters. They will simply burn it all to the ground.

My current theory of politics is that the #1 problem with our system today is the hollowing out of the conservative movement. In a way, the memetic power of wokeness did succeed in vanquishing traditional conservative ideas from the domain of elite discourse. But if conservative ideas are universally treated as vile, stupid, and evil, then the only men who will remain to champion them will be those who embrace such labels. And in the absence of a Reagan or Friedman or Romney to root for, the shunned masses will search for salvation in men like Trump. If they cannot see themselves in Captain America, they will simply embrace Homelander.

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@mario_anchor until seeing this map i had no idea LA had an air force base

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

egalitarianism is quintessentially American. the notion that we should hold someone like Platner to a lower moral standard because he represents blue collar folk is the opposite of that.

[carl @carlmarxpmt]

@polyminnow no, progressives are just class conscious and societally aware; they understand that white/blue collar populations have different priorities and live by different ethical benchmarks.

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@carlmarxpmt Platner is an abusive, mendacious, and bigoted piece of shit. you're exactly proving my point when you defend him by suggesting he in some way typifies blue collar "ethical benchmarks."

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

progressives really do fetishize and degrade working class men as wokes do to racial minorities.

[John F. Morton @musepwt]

If you don't know at least a handful of guys like Graham, you've never done a day of physical labor in your life and you should really think long and hard about your own class position and why Platner is winning Maine so handily...

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@burden_beast @RameshPonnuru @lyndseyfifield @grahamformaine @PostOpinions do the Dems also gain those things if they nominate someone who isn't an abusive Nazi piece of shit, or does it have to be him?

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@Proxy_Tank @AliceFromQueens this is exactly how populism functions.

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@BigBearBummers who the fuck do they think they're fooling?!

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@teafortillerman @tmsilverman @lyndseyfifield same. but i just did.

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@Eltonma keep on survivin, my n word! 🙌🏾

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@Pete_Monahan_JD doing so while reading Hunter Biden tweets, of course!

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@andersleehere @CentristMadness Tara Reade wants Platner to drop out of the Maine Senate race. now do you believe her?

[shangtr0n 🟦 @polyminnow]

@jbarro