Writes Ross Douthat, in "Conservative Thinkers Didn’t Create Trumpism" (NYT).
Here's Nate Silver's piece from last July, "Twitter, Elon and the Indigo Blob/The line between expertise and politics has become increasingly blurry. The demise of 'Old Twitter' could help to reverse that." ("Left-progressives, liberals, centrists, and moderate or non-MAGA conservatives all share a common argumentative space. I call this space the Indigo Blob, because it’s somewhere between left-wing (blue) and centrist (purple). The space largely excludes MAGA/right-wing conservatives — around 30 percent of the country....")
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36 comments:
Why does anyone cite Nate Silver? Wasn’t he totally wrong?
Everything he says, before getting to "placing soulcraft before statecraft," is him reaching to describe the spread of NewAge in society.
Just because you've managed to get to the controls of the bulldozer, doesn't make you competent.
Good ole Ross. Still trying to differentiate himself from those icky Trump voters who really shouldn't have been allowed a vote in the first place because they aren't smart enough.
Not to mention non-Maga conservatives. I was banned from Orangebloods.com five years ago when the owner of the site decided he was a social justice warrior. I was entirely deplatformed at Instapundit, simply un-personed and years and years of comments deleted without explanation. My hat is off to Althouse for her general tolerance of free speech.
Yeah, well. You lefties wanted to play this game, so lt's play it.
"... a center-left network of schools and foundations and media enterprises and human resources departments. It has not really sought power through elections — in part, I would argue, because its project is fundamentally therapeutic and educational, placing soulcraft before statecraft."
Douthat always comes off as naive to me. There is nothing 'therapeutic' about the "long march through the institutions". It is an aggressive, though long played conquest of the system. It is by design. This did not just happen. It more closely resembles a virus that started in our schools, produced more of itself through the schools, created more teachers and professors teaching it, thinking they were doing 'the good', and pumping out brains full of the virus, proceeding to infect every corner of Western society. Which is where we find ourselves now- as we watch our neighbors parade in the streets for people whose actions and responses to their own actions would make the actual Nazis shake their heads.
The other thing Douthat illuminates here is sloppy thinking. Maybe he's just being lazy, or maybe its the hivemind that he cannot break out of. Anyone with even a hint of ability to pay attention knows that what he calls "the earthquake of Trumpism" is something that started long before Trump. Even long before the Tea Party, though you might consider the Tea Party the coming out party for right-wing populism: a pro-US, anti-government edict part of the party that has continued to grow and boil over until the election of Trump showed it was large enough to select a President. Trump is at most a symptom. The Tea Party was the coming out that was ignored and/or insulted.
It won't go away when Trump does. Its not going away. On the other hand, DEI might be. Progressivism might be taking a step back after their Antifa, then BLM, then Hamas parties. Maybe one party too many.
Ross Douthat uses "Trumpism" like he knows what it means, which is interesting, given Douthat thinks kindly of ineffectual conservatives only. To the ruling elite, a conservative with any power or legal authority is a mortal threat to "our democracy" (i.e. the state of things when the left is in absolute control of society) and must be destroyed. So what is Trumpism, one may ask? Let's just say no Trump is needed, anyone right of center with an audience is a Trumpist.
We are not in a battle between the left versus the right. We are in a battle between utopian one-upmanship lefties who refused to accept winning the culture war several decades ago versus everyone else. That group now overwhelmingly depends on state funding and state jobs (i.e., universities, teacher's unions, labor unions, government employees, single mothers, government contractors). They are overwhelmingly driven by politics, power, security, and control, not their ideals as spoken. They split off from left "liberal" ideals such as freedom of speech and freedom of thought and freedom of religion a long time ago.
Today's right are mostly "live and let live" libertarians who accept state funds and subsidies, so they are barely right-of-center. There are some hardcore right wingers (e.g., anti-abortion) but they are a clear losing minority. The military is now fully dependent on cradle-to-crave government payments, and the defense contractors set the model for state support of the tech industry, Wall St., federal housing loan subsidies, federal health/pharmacies subsidies, etc. The right wing is mostly bought off with no ideals per se, just fat, happy, and lazy.
When anyone speaks of the "indigo blob" they lack awareness that it's power-first statist autocrats sometimes using leftist language in pursuit of control and hegemony. Ideology is a vehicle to increase the range of control. This era changes when a moderate / functional / reproductive future-thinking people break away from the corrupt, power-mad, smoke-and-mirrors, say-anything-to-win, do-anything-to-win, left-and-right regime in power.
We are at a global evolutionary choke point. Only the functional and reproductive sectors move forward.
I vote "Indigo blob" does not take off as a meme.
Please.
It's off to a stupid start.
(1) Indigo blob - definition: Woke progressives management class who demand adherence to DEI bullcrap, and other various boo-hoo victim class BS. (sell pro-Hamas/ anti-Jewish hot garbage, too don't forget)
& "Left-progressives, liberals, centrists, and moderate or non-MAGA conservatives all share a common argumentative space." ... "Indigo blob. "
I don't think moderates are all for the DEI woke they-them your child belongs to the state - crapola. But perhaps they are all for it.
these so called experts don't seem to know anything that is true,
Temujin:
If you live on the same block, all three parties are excessive.
@I stand w Isreal. Leftists, Mullahs, Hamas-Palistinian terrorists can suck it:
Not even all liberals are all for the DEI crapola.
That group now overwhelmingly depends on state funding and state jobs (i.e., universities, teacher's unions, labor unions, government employees, single mothers, government contractors). They are overwhelmingly driven by politics, power, security, and control, not their ideals as spoken. They split off from left "liberal" ideals such as freedom of speech and freedom of thought and freedom of religion a long time ago.
Yes, that is the Democrat Party. The federal government is now the largest organization in the history of the world. It creates its own gravity.
The "indigo blob" is called the "shadow party" in the new book by Judis and Teixeira, Where Have All the Democrats Gone, a follow-up to their 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority.
In large part, they believe the Democratic majority failed to materialize because of the Democratic embrace of cultural radicalism driven by the shadow party (which is why I would never call it indigo). This has caused Democrats to lose a large portion of the working class, both white and non-white.
This leads to the blue-collar shift between parties noted by Cruz and Maher.
The leftwing NGO's don't exclude 30 percent of the country. They exclude 70 percent of the country. That's the 50 percent that suppported Trump, and the 20 percent that vote Democrat but are socially conservative. Anybody who doesn't toe the party line on 96 percent of the issues is labeled a heretic by them and pushed out.
And yes don't blame Conservative intellectuals for Trump. Don't blame them for anything, because no listens to them. They're completely useless and irrelevant. Like Rod "primitive root wiener” Dreher, or Ross Doughnut, or David "The conservative case for JOe Biden" french.
Its interesting how passionless and bland most of them are when discussing USA issues, and how they suddenly came alive and full of fight when Israel-Gaza came along in October 7th. I think the outdid the Israeli Defense Defense department in their hatred of Arabs and love of the IDF.
'... a center-left network of schools and foundations and media enterprises and human resources departments.'
Where's the 'center' part? They're fucking communists.
And yet, conservative causes are only 'right wing' with no 'center.'
Weird...
The right is libertarian. The left is liberal. Progressives are authoritarian. The center is conservative. The far-left is totalitarian. The far-right is anarchist. The left-right nexus is leftist in the governing spectrum.
Progressive... corruption, dysfunction, prices at The Twilight Fringe.
Indigo Blob...kinda like the sound of it. Never heard before. Were they an 80s New Wave band?
Update: The “unexpected” reaction (universities, higher ed) to the attack on Israel is growing this so called indigo blob.
The blob appears to be organic, there are no central figures that could be targeted for cancellation.
Another way of saying the Great silent majority.
"Why does anyone cite Nate Silver? Wasn’t he totally wrong?"
If C**** were here he would tell you that because Silver mumbled "margin of error" when he made his predictions he was not, can not be wrong.
Convenient, no?
The Crack Emcee said...
Everything he says, before getting to "placing soulcraft before statecraft," is him reaching to describe the spread of NewAge in society.
Everybody drink!
these so called experts don't seem to know anything that is true
Yes, this type of propaganda intends to muddy the waters rather than provide clarity...
...and Elon said it best last week- the left/right labels all depend on where you stand. To the Alinskyites ruining the world everyone is far right...
"If in the 1960s we had the sense that fringe groups and communes might offer us a way out of conformity and regularity, in this current incarnation, when cults appear in our everyday lives, they do so highly regularized."
Chandler Bing: Can you BE more regularized than "schools and foundations and media enterprises and human resources departments"?
Douthat: "... a center-left network of schools and foundations and media enterprises and human resources departments...."
Talk about writing for NYT lefties! In what other world would these entities be considered "center left?" They are the core of progressive propaganda.
Silver: '("Left-progressives, liberals, centrists, and moderate or non-MAGA conservatives all share a common argumentative space. I call this space the Indigo Blob, because it’s somewhere between left-wing (blue) and centrist (purple).'
Silver must have a well-defined, if obscure, group of distinctions to arrive at this crap. First, left progressives are loons to whom the Democrats pander for votes. Next, what is a non-MAGA conservative and how did they get left of centrists? What "argumentative space?"
What is a MAGA? I'm a conservative who voted for Trump to impede Democrats from destabilizing the nation. Does that make me a MAGA conservative? I question the conservatism of anyone who votes for Democrats even though Trump is not a conservative.
Douthat's "Indigo Blob" sounds like a mash-up between a linear spectrum with a Venn Diagram.
In law school, I presented a Venn Digram during an appellate oral argument to describe the areas of overlap between a road defect statute and the Tort Claims Act. The judge (the professor's husband, who probably thought "there'd be no math" when he volunteered) was hostile not only to the graphic, but more to the fact that I located the case law as points within each area according to where I was arguing each case fell on the "spectrum" within the group in relation to the boundaries with other groups.
Domestic disharmony ensued, as my professor appreciated the graphic.
Where's Kamala when you need her!
Nate Silver's "Indigo Blog" is not as correct as Ross Douthat would have us believe, particularly in the area of conservatives. Pew Research conducted a study of the political leanings that broke the right wing into categories that define MAGA (Trump-leaning) "conservatives" as 21% of all voters, while all other conservatives equaled 19% of the public. So Trump is favored by just 21% of the general public and 79% are anti-Trump for at least 91 indictable reasons.
"Progressive belief,...is fundamentally therapeutic and educational"
How can we exactly define «alternative medicine»?
“So-called alternative medicine” (SCAM)...SCAM is an umbrella term for a diverse range of therapeutic and diagnostic methods that have little in common, other than being excluded from mainstream medicine."
Who uses it and why?
"Predominantly women! Statistics say about 30-70% of the general population use SCAM. And with patient populations, the percentage can be close to 100%. They use it because they are told over and over again that SCAM is natural and thus safe, as well as effective for all sorts of conditions."
Does it work?
"I estimate that less than 3% of the therapeutic claims that are being made for SCAM are supported by sound evidence."
When anybody believes Nate Silver has "the pulse" of anything beyond his personal circulatory system they will also believe men are women.
rehajm said...
"Everybody drink!"
One reason this phenomena has gotten so out of control is because anyone trying to deal with it will always be attacked waaay more than those promoting it. EVIDENCE: Deepak Chopra is a multimillionaire while I get grief every day.
I am clearly not an effective educator for most. But then neither was Carl Sagan, James Randi, Harry Houdini, or anyone else who ever said we should stop this crazy shit for the sake of mankind. It's just not a popular message.
Poor rehajm is going to drink himself to death.
Michael K said...
"That is the Democrat Party. The federal government is now the largest organization in the history of the world. It creates its own gravity."
Funny, how you understand that when it comes to Democrats and government, but not when it comes to white people overwhelming everyone else with their numbers in this country. Then you're completely oblivious to how "It creates its own gravity."
"Conservative Thinkers Didn’t Create Trumpism"
Did conservative thinkers ever "create" anything?
Anyway, Trumpism is a symptom, but not of a single affliction. It also doesn't solve anything, and in fact misdirects discontent toward the clown who would be savior. Progs like it, and they are rational to do so.
Whether any "solutions" are possible, here or abroad, is an open question. It's not like populism without Trump does better elsewhere. Besides obvious leadership failures, some problems are structural and progs have seized institutional power (except in a very few places, like SCOTUS).
"when it comes to white people overwhelming everyone else with their numbers in this country. "
Gee, sorry…
Systems for deciding political winners and losers, no matter how democratic, are inherently imperfect.
Those imperfections become worrisome when they systematically marginalize people whose assent is critical. That's where we are today.
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