With respect, wrong on the most central point - status anxiety drives Bump and Drezner. All the evidence suggests they do not think. Bump and Drezner sense on the most visceral level that the Queens accent and the movement Trump represents are existential threats to every part of their "essential to society" identities. Both are driven b…
With respect, wrong on the most central point - status anxiety drives Bump and Drezner. All the evidence suggests they do not think. Bump and Drezner sense on the most visceral level that the Queens accent and the movement Trump represents are existential threats to every part of their "essential to society" identities. Both are driven by pats on the head from "authorities." Neither believes important lessons can be learned from the fact that much of what we all believe might be wrong.
Both function to advance blind faith in authoritarian agendas dressed-up as "compassion" and "the science" - and to deflect and discourage critical self-examination, enlightenment, and progress. Both have glimpsed themselves in the mirror and are terrified by what they see. Both understand down to their cores who they really are, and what function they perform. Scares them shitless, as such knowledge should.
Status anxiety is an unhealthy preoccupation with what others think of us - virtually all forms of branding, advertising, and marketing manipulate our fears and desires about our status within a group, before an individual, or a god concept. Old as human history and probably extends to other species - dogs, etc. - hope this helps.
Slightly off-topic - Do animals communicate? Yes. Plants? Maybe. Do either pray?
Obviously I am talking about something which is real and significant to the party that feels threatened by losing it. If you find my choices of words (_class_ and _caste_) I invite you to suggest others. You seem to agree that something real was the subject.
I would've, in fact I tried to, but I apparently slipped a cog while composing what I said before.
It's not a matter of how he's perceived, but his actual, internal ability in conflict with how he gets away with being perceived due to the limits of an inevitably imperfect meritocratic system even when it's working at its best.
Academia SHOULD only reward the truly intelligent - but how does one do that in a manner that everybody can agree on? Consequently, there's a sort of awkward compromise integral to the academic merit system that means not everybody who succeeds within it truly deserves to, nor everyone who fails - this eventually results in a rift between academic "successes" who Get It, and those who Don't Get It, but they APPEAR to be equally qualified since they got the laurels from the same process. We're seeing one of those "moments of reckoning" wherein the bona-fides and the impostors are forced to focus on their differences since something of vital importance has perched upon them.
"The Name that can be named is not the True Name."
You seem to be somewhat ahead of me in examining Mr. Bump and his kind. As a young person I was born into what was to become the PMC (caste?) and so encountered the thing he seems to believe so ardently in at an early age. But in 1960, although we knew very well which side of our bread was buttered, we were smart enough and cynical enough not to worship the butter. It was just _there_ and we happened to be the sufficiently lucky ones to receive it. Of course we were a few years ahead of the Best and the Brightest.... Perhaps Mr. Bump is on the other side of that line, the line of faith.
Glad to see you're reading the Good Book. One of them.
Fredrik deBoer's new book, "How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement" (2023) takes a look at class in terms of various cultural movements. From the Amazon review:
"Hidden beneath the rhetoric of the oppressed and the symbolism of the downtrodden lies the inconvenient fact that those doing the organizing, messaging, protesting, and campaigning are predominantly drawn from this country’s more upwardly mobile educated classes. Poses are more important than policies."
That has been obvious for some time, but the class position of the activist elites doesn't entirely invalidate their concerns or activities. Indeed, their policies and practices may well have been imperial, but you can't run a big empire if you indulge racial, religious, and other preferences before loyalty to the imperium or its current rulers.
With respect, wrong on the most central point - status anxiety drives Bump and Drezner. All the evidence suggests they do not think. Bump and Drezner sense on the most visceral level that the Queens accent and the movement Trump represents are existential threats to every part of their "essential to society" identities. Both are driven by pats on the head from "authorities." Neither believes important lessons can be learned from the fact that much of what we all believe might be wrong.
Both function to advance blind faith in authoritarian agendas dressed-up as "compassion" and "the science" - and to deflect and discourage critical self-examination, enlightenment, and progress. Both have glimpsed themselves in the mirror and are terrified by what they see. Both understand down to their cores who they really are, and what function they perform. Scares them shitless, as such knowledge should.
Status anxiety is an unhealthy preoccupation with what others think of us - virtually all forms of branding, advertising, and marketing manipulate our fears and desires about our status within a group, before an individual, or a god concept. Old as human history and probably extends to other species - dogs, etc. - hope this helps.
Slightly off-topic - Do animals communicate? Yes. Plants? Maybe. Do either pray?
So it's a class thing? Where class is implicit in their personal identities?
Not really; class, like all communicable group identity, is a granfalloon - what Paul's talking about there, OTOH, is something comparatively REAL.
Obviously I am talking about something which is real and significant to the party that feels threatened by losing it. If you find my choices of words (_class_ and _caste_) I invite you to suggest others. You seem to agree that something real was the subject.
I would've, in fact I tried to, but I apparently slipped a cog while composing what I said before.
It's not a matter of how he's perceived, but his actual, internal ability in conflict with how he gets away with being perceived due to the limits of an inevitably imperfect meritocratic system even when it's working at its best.
Academia SHOULD only reward the truly intelligent - but how does one do that in a manner that everybody can agree on? Consequently, there's a sort of awkward compromise integral to the academic merit system that means not everybody who succeeds within it truly deserves to, nor everyone who fails - this eventually results in a rift between academic "successes" who Get It, and those who Don't Get It, but they APPEAR to be equally qualified since they got the laurels from the same process. We're seeing one of those "moments of reckoning" wherein the bona-fides and the impostors are forced to focus on their differences since something of vital importance has perched upon them.
"The Name that can be named is not the True Name."
- Lao Tzu
You seem to be somewhat ahead of me in examining Mr. Bump and his kind. As a young person I was born into what was to become the PMC (caste?) and so encountered the thing he seems to believe so ardently in at an early age. But in 1960, although we knew very well which side of our bread was buttered, we were smart enough and cynical enough not to worship the butter. It was just _there_ and we happened to be the sufficiently lucky ones to receive it. Of course we were a few years ahead of the Best and the Brightest.... Perhaps Mr. Bump is on the other side of that line, the line of faith.
Glad to see you're reading the Good Book. One of them.
"Straight, square, great,
without purpose, yet everything is furthered."
Fredrik deBoer's new book, "How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement" (2023) takes a look at class in terms of various cultural movements. From the Amazon review:
"Hidden beneath the rhetoric of the oppressed and the symbolism of the downtrodden lies the inconvenient fact that those doing the organizing, messaging, protesting, and campaigning are predominantly drawn from this country’s more upwardly mobile educated classes. Poses are more important than policies."
That has been obvious for some time, but the class position of the activist elites doesn't entirely invalidate their concerns or activities. Indeed, their policies and practices may well have been imperial, but you can't run a big empire if you indulge racial, religious, and other preferences before loyalty to the imperium or its current rulers.
I think you are incorrect. I think they are just people who are actually nuts.
Are either Bump or Drezner aware that their Freudian analyst is posting on the Racket News comment threads about their cases?
You agree with bump, so obviously..