"His appearance in American politics coincides with a larger trend on the left that now serves to elevate every form of personal disappointment into a symptom of 'systemic' abuse. The result hasn’t just been that my erstwhile friends are afflicted with debilitating persecution complexes: It also has destroyed their ability to exercise independent thought. For free thought requires the free use of language, which is impossible when smart people like Jamie or Daniel are required to push the round peg of art and creation into the square hole of political sloganeering.... Is this process of submission—and the resulting discordance between ideology and one’s own authentic stream of thought—what drove my friends to states of miserable, anti-social agitation? I don’t know, because I am no longer in touch with either of the two men. I also have parted ways with my long-time girlfriend, who got swept up in these same currents, and who once literally wept in my presence because I had made a flattering reference to Camille Paglia."
From "Confessions of a ‘Soulless Troglodyte’: How My Brooklyn Literary Friendships Fell Apart in the Age of Trump" written under the pseudonym Lester Berg (Quillette).
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I think people were damaged long before Trump got there. He only helps expose it...
There was Kennedy worship and Clinton worship and Obama worship. When they weren't in charge anymore the unease amongst the unstable was there. The difference with Trump is now there is the social media outlet to magnify the expression of the crazy.
Far left libruls are mentally ill and what Rehajm said at 6:28AM.
Althouse's most astonishing (and human, I guess) contradiction is that she clearly sees the damage that identity politics inflicts on its advocates... unless identity politics serves her or her families' self-interest, i.e., Marxist feminism and gay worship.
Then, she's all in.
We are all blinded, I guess, when it comes to our self-interest.
There's the added influence of the palpable sense the coup will work.
Change out the faculty throughout our school systems (yes...this will take generations and require first a change out in the administrations of these schools). But in the meantime, dump Facebook and Twitter. These things will teach people how to think independently again people. We've become a nation of clones who cannot think for themselves, let alone think clearly.
Degreed, dumb, and loud is not a particularly good way to go through life.
It also has destroyed their ability to exercise independent thought.
For free thought requires the free use of language, which is impossible when smart people like Jamie or Daniel are required to push the round peg of art and creation into the square hole of political sloganeering....
this is all as spelled out in the instruction manual
We Have ALWAYS Been At WAR With Eurasia
> I think people were damaged long before Trump got there.
Same in the 60's, the left attracted the walking wounded and exploiters.
I hate my boss: Fuck Trump! My spouse hates me: Fuck Trump! No one will buy my book: Fuck Trump! Please, I want somebody to love me: Fuck Trump! Here, at last, was somebody we could freely hate more that we hate each other or ourselves.
That was a really good article!
Jamie needed to get on and stay on his meds.
While I appreciate the author’s story she (?) needs to pull away a bit from her literary view of the world. There’s a lack of the mundane in her world,
I do agree with her that we need to stop with Trump as the starting reference point of everything.
I also have parted ways with my long-time girlfriend, who got swept up in these same currents, and who once literally wept in my presence because I had made a flattering reference to Camille Paglia."
I assume this is an adult woman? This reminds me of a few months back when Norm MacDonald was promoting his then new Netflix show and got into a bit of hot water when he dared to suggest that Roseanne and Luis C.K. should be forgiven. Norm was scheduled to appear on Jimmy Fallon's show, but Fallon had to reluctantly cancel the appearence when people on his staff were literally crying over the mere prospect of Norm being on.
This was not a defence of Trump, whose misogyny and lack of integrity require no elaboration.
So he can't read Trump.
Trump likes women. He takes their side. He just doesn't do boilerplate.
Call it doing the man's job.
He has a ways to go before realizing how pervasive the BS is, but it's a good first step.
We've become a nation of clones who cannot think for themselves
+1
"The dissident temperament has been present in all times and places, though only ever among a small minority of citizens. Its characteristic, speaking broadly, is a cast of mind that, presented with a proposition about the world, has little interest in where that proposition originated, or how popular it is, or how many powerful and credentialed persons have assented to it, or what might be lost in the way of property, status, or even life, in denying it. To the dissident, the only thing worth pondering about the proposition is, is it true? If it is, then no king's command can falsify it; and if it is not, then not even the assent of a hundred million will make it true."
Good article. Interesting comments.
Checkhov, too, wrote about disintegrating communities. That article reminded me of some of his short stories.
Jamie is obviously independently wealthy (a part time lecturer who lives in Manhattan and shops at Whole Foods?!). How, with all this family money, did he happen to be raised in a working poor neighborhood?
In any case, even after years of living in deep blue Brooklyn, while I always had to be careful how I phrased things, I never pretended to like Obama and don't join in Trump bashing, yet have never lost a friend to politics.
Never mind, here it is:
The Manhattan lifestyle of a genius writer was being financed by her full-time job as a teacher, help from her parents, and ballooning credit-card debt.
This has to be one of the best articles I've read in a long time.
Read the whole thing.
Ralph L said...
+1
You are my new hero.
We've become a nation of clones who cannot think for themselves
Nonsense.
It's just his clique of artsy-fartsy scribblers 'n' such; which, though that might be a pretty big clique, it's not "a nation" or even most of a nation.
(Does agreeing with that notion constitute membership in that clique?)
literally wept in my presence because I had made a flattering reference to Camille Paglia.
I laughed.
Well, we have an iatrogenic semi-emergency in progress, bye.
"Trump is as much a symptom as a cause."
Some of us were saying that more than two years ago, except it's not "as much". Trump is almost entirely a symptom, and very little a cause.
I can't think his identity will be secret for long. How many Russian expat writers are living in NYC?
An excellent read, too.
"Less than a year later, I took out loans and moved to Manhattan to peruse an MFA."
How many righty writers in similar circumstances would need a pseudonym?
Can righty writers even encounter similar circumstances?
Trump is almost entirely a symptom,
Trump is different only in that his personal characteristics allow the left to speak openly of what they feel for everyone who isn't left wing. They've been radicalized to believe the only thing preventing the country from reaching its nirvana, and thus their happiness, is political opposition. It's much easier to scapegoat politics rather than admit you have maxed out your ability with disappointing results.
When did people loose the ability to appreciate all that life has to offer, of which politics is a vanishingly small percentage? What has Trump done that has had a direct, personal impact on any of these people's lives?
"...written under the pseudonym Lester Berg..."
Lester Berg birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom.
Cue chorus.
I am Laslo.
We've had a "cult of the presidency" for a long time certainly since FDR (we all know the historical reasons for this development: national crises, wars). This is especially true for people who view the state or the government as an all powerful instrument used to establish social justice and eliminate every wrong in the world. It's why the new media is so hysterical in their reporting on Trump; this is their mindset too.
And this cult like view goes both ways: both pro-president and anti-president. If you think the president represents the country, is a symbol for the entire nation, then if you don't like him you think the country is being disgraced.
Everything is about the president; both good and bad.
Only jerks can get to even part of the truth:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.france24.com/en/20181214-french-author-houellebecq-trump-presidency-good-news-world-harpers
When did people loose the ability to appreciate all that life has to offer, of which politics is a vanishingly small percentage? What has Trump done that has had a direct, personal impact on any of these people's lives?
A good and fair question.
The truth is that these people believe that the future is certain, and that history is moving inexorably toward their utopian goals. Any obstacle to that movement is worse than heresy, and more than a little like challenging a paranoiac on their delusion.
Oh, the poor babies!
It was good enough to read to the end. The tribalism he describes is not unique to lefty literary (I use the term loosely) Brooklyn, nor are the demands to adhere to right-think as a condition of membership in the cult. But it's always easier to see those features of the tribes to which one doesn't belong.
These crybabies literally followed the slogan "The personal is political", making even factual, genetically-dictated gender a political matter based upon (pathological) personal feelings.
Shouting Thomas said...
"Marxist feminism"
ST, I'm still trying to figure out what that means. I'm fairly certain that Marx was no kind of feminist. But are you suggesting that all feminism is Marxist, or that Althouse adheres to a particularly Marxist form of feminism?
(My daughter is 14 now, and she asks me a lot of questions. I am not sure what to tell her about feminism. I tend to think that the feminist question is a good one, but thus far the feminist answers are all bad ones)
It was good enough to read to the end.
Sadly, that's high praise these days. At least, while showing the shallowness of ex-comrades, he does a good job himself.
Conservative Jews who liked his pro-Israel stance; Wall Street workers who liked his business background; rank-and-file police who wanted to stick it to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio; visible minorities who liked his “America First” rhetoric, and imagined that he’d bring back secure manufacturing jobs. These promises may have been empty and dishonest.
Berg still needs to move further out of his comfort zone. Of the list above, which has Trump not delivered on? He has been pro-Israel. His de-regulation has made Wall Street's life easier. He didn't exactly run on "sticking it to de Blasio", but I would guess that the NYC cops imagine that Trump's presence in the WH sticks in de Blasio's craw, so there's that. Trump has stuck to his "America First" rhetoric & does seem, with mixed success, to be working on re-building American manufacturing. It remains to be seen if manufacturing will stay long-term, but that involves economic forces far beyond any president's ability to control. But, Trump's trying.
So, just as a matter of political fact, in the list above, where did Trump lie? He didn't. Not in that list, anyway. Berg's Trump voting friends actually got their goods delivered.
"Marxist feminism"
Not speaking for anyone else, but I think the mental creation of a victim class is in itself a Marxist (perhaps Leninist) tactic. This happened over and over in Russia - first the industrial proletariat, then the peasants, then soldiers and sailors were identified as aggrieved classes. When it became convenient, self-sufficient (10 acres) peasants were split off and demonized as kulaks. For disinformation purposes, they trotted out the grievances of women and (for US consumption) blacks. Then you get the endless array of "concerned" internationalist groups that have served as front organizations. Stalin's bulls**t of 80 years ago found fertile ground among Western intelligentsia, and it's now spitting out victim classes as fast as it can. With the gender groupings, it's not merely identifying groups to class as victims, but probably creating the classes themselves.
This is what happens when politics becomes your religion. You can't handle people that disagree. You can't handle someone you despise (like Trump) being in power. It's just too much. To cry because a friend made a flattering reference to Camille Paglia? Puh-leeeze.
This non-acceptance of differences begins with pre-teen participation trophies. Pampered, equalized, indulged. Everyone deserves respect until proven otherwise, but everyone, I'm sorry to say, is not equal from the get-go, fallopian-wise.
HARRY STEIN YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD!
I finally read this piece. Very good. Instead of realizing how natural it is to have various disagreements, and even to dislike each other--which obviously stands in the way of utopia--progressives are able to give way to unlimited Trump hatred.
A small point: I thought the "impossible" task was fitting a square peg into a round hole, not the other way around.
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