I definitely need to have a whole episode and/or post on Freddie (you’re right about the one name thing). I’ve long been fascinated by him.
Didn’t know he’d left notes but thank God. He wasn’t handling it well.
I’ll probably leave too at some point. It’s totally seductive at the moment, in what is almost certainly an unhealthy way. I’ll have one or two bad interactions and realize it’s time to go.
Freddie and Richard Hanania play roughly the same role in the discourse- gadflies who are able to act as incisive critics of laptop class progressivism because they don’t care about their esteem, even as they are fatally flawed thinkers in their own right.
Isn’t Hanania more pernicious though. I feel like there’s some dark racial and sex shit there that I have a harder time overlooking than Freddie’s flaws.
You’re absolutely correct about Hanania, he’s a bigot and misogynist. He genuinely thinks that more intelligent peoples lives are more valuable, and that race can be a useful proxy for intelligence. If I believed in hell, I think that’s where he’d belong. I certainly wouldn’t say the same of Freddie.
But they are called devils advocates for a reason, and because he doesn’t give a good goddamn what people like me say about him we will occasionally say things most people know are true but are too polite or scared to say, like “the performative asexuality demanded of laptop class straight men is weird and neurotic” or “progressive institutions are dysfunctional partly out of a misplaced sense of chivalry”. As you said yourself about Rush Limbaugh, you can be a vile person and still occasionally have your opponent’s number.
Totally true. I'll come across his posts sometimes and find them genuinely interesting. He's vexing in that way. I'm very much on the anti-cancelling side of things, but he's someone I'd be happy to see more canceled than he seems to be right now. I don't want him legitimized. But I can't deny that he can be interesting.
Great point about the folly of resenting someone without stopping to think what exactly they have that you lack. Alas, envy has never been the most rational of emotions. In most populist contexts, "elite" has the same basic meaning as "lizard people". Though the rationalisations differ somewhat between left and right, it seems to have something to do with the perception that someone has achieved a degree of social status without merit (ie its a question of thymos). Progressives resent the fact that Musk, who by all appearances has the emotional maturity of a thirteen-year-old, has access to so much wealth and power. Conservatives resent the fact that someone can receive an award for "genius" for arguing one cannot be racist against white people. Once these unsavoury characters are established in the mind, projection season is open. The last thing a populist thinks about is what it is like to be an elite.
I just brought up thymos in a response to another comment. Great mind. Do you think it is only status without corresponding merit that is so resented, or is it status period, even if it's earned?
I remain unclear about whether the thing that some people have that is resented by others actually feels like anything to the people who have it. What does it feel like to have status. Is it deference from others? Or is it the absence of having to defer to others, or the lack of a feeling of inadequacy or insecurity in the presence of others?
Thinking about it, merit is the wrong word. I think people are much more comfortable with "natural" hierarchies than many egalitarians would like to admit. And often there is no question of merit (take the British monarchy as an example), but people do expect a sense noblesse oblige. When Queen Elizabeth II died, Louis Jebb called her "one of the greatest performance artists of all time" and I think there is some truth to that: she treated her subjects with unerring dignity. Compare this to Hillary Clinton's remark about "a basket of deplorables".
We don't seem to mind the success of others as long as we don't feel less worthy in comparison (“Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little" as Gore Vidal said). But if we feel that we've been unfairly treated in life, it is easy to resent those who have been more fortunate and are lording it over us.
As for the feeling of status itself, the lack is probably felt more acutely than the presence ("Do you know who I am?"). I think you are right that it is pursued as a way of getting rid of a feeling of inadequacy or insecurity, but we have plenty of historical and literary examples of how this is a vain pursuit: uneasy lies the head that wears a crown...
I’ve never understood why “school shooting” is the default pro-phones argument. I would rather my child be situationally aware in a circumstance like that, not distracted by texting with me.
100% agree. No idea what the actual theory is of how it would keep your kid safe. I think it's just entirely visceral. Parents imagine a shooting, and how they'd want to be able to get in touch with their kids as quickly as possible to make sure they're safe. The idea of not knowing in that situation is intolerable. I get it, but it doesn't feel like a rationale that remotely outweighs any of the anti-phone arguments.
Three types of capital: financial, intellectual/cultural/self-awareness, and social, meaning your network. Being "elite" in all three is rare and takes effort. What does it get you? Security and far greater agency than others.
Interesting to think about it in terms of agency and security. Are you saying that it provides than in each of these realms independently, or only in combination. I mean, financial capital seems to provide both on its own, but not as clear to me that, say, intellectual capital meaningfully increases both agency and security. Thoughts?
Without self-awareness, which is part of intellectual capital, even people with great wealth can find themselves captured by their drive to accumulate more. They might feel insecure if they're with someone wealthier, because they've made their own security dependent on the relative level of their wealth. I was there and it took a lot of effort for me to escape that trap. There's also a loss of agency, because w/o intellectual capital, you see only a narrow slice of the world's possibilities. You're confined by your own ignorance.
I don't disagree with this in principle, but I'm not sure that self-awareness constitutes an elite resource. It's available to anyone in the way, say, a four year college degree is not, or a position at a museum or a magazine.
About elites: I think there are basic elements of entitlement, comfort and security — the sense that one’s social position is justified, and society is organized in the right way such that institutions function according to the elite's values and expectations. In (say) traditional Britain, that would mean that the nobility can count on having places at Eton, Oxbridge, the House of Lords, etc.
In the US, having a liberal elite means taking for granted that major institutions (K-12 education, higher education, the entertainment, art, and publishing industries, law, the federal bureaucracy, and generally any institution dominated by educated people) will reflect culturally liberal values and priorities, and seeing it as a gross offense, almost against the order of nature, when that system is threatened. The hate for Orban, DeSantis, and SCOTUS reflects this sense that state institutions "ought" to be the domain of the liberal elite, and it's simply unfair and unjustified to have the other "side" take them over. For the elite, it's simply "common sense" that social institutions reflect one's own values.
A thought experiment would be: "What if the political value in question was 'abortion is murder'?" What if, one year, every NFL team was kneeling to protest legalized abortion, and pro-choice dissenters came under heavy pressure to join the team? What if pro-choice advocacy groups had trouble finding high-powered lawyers to represent them? [1] What if, to get a job as a professor of (say) plant science, you had to submit a statement documenting your support for a "culture of life," and political activists used that as the screen for the first round of the application? [2] Or if you were an astronomer, whose lecture on planets were cancelled when your pro-choice sympathies were discovered? [3] Etc. etc.
Point being that an elite can take for granted the sense of being "at home" in any powerful institution in society, and feels something to be amiss when that is not the case. The non-elite is highly aware that said institutions are not on "their side," are in fact controlled by a "hostile tribe," and forms their judgments with these facts in mind.
That's a really compelling way of putting it. I'll buy it.
In this context, it's weird to be at a university in Texas, where there are all these cross-cutting forces in play. The state is very conservative, and the legislature and highest level administrators at the university are handing down these very conservative, and often rather gross, dictates. Our liberal/left faculty feel under assault, which in important respects they are, but then there's also that "elite" sense they have of the natural order somehow being disrupted, that they shouldn't have to answer to the democratically elected government or their university administration.
So everyone ends up feeling on the wrong side of the power dynamic. The conservatives still feel in their bones that the university professors are the elite. The professors feel under the thumb of the conservatives. etc.
I think this is in some sense what I find so politically frustrating around the elite dynamics. Everyone feels like the other guys are the ones in power. So much of the conservative rage right now seems to be driven by a sense that they used to be ones setting the tone for the dominant institutions, and now it's these other (alien, dark-skinned, commie, gay) people who have the upper hand culturally.
Tying in to your previous (excellent) piece about Rush Limbaugh, I have to observe that the Limbaughian notion of Democrats "buying off" Blacks and others in order to maintain the power of liberal elites isn't too far from a certain Left position that sees identity politics as a liberal distraction from (and undermining of) the class struggle. Of course, what Limbaugh never mentioned was his own putative role, via the culture wars, as a servant of conservative elites. In any case, from this Left perspective (and perhaps Limbaugh's own, deep down), it's all a matter of rival ruling class factions (elites) manipulating the subaltern to their advantage.
He wouldn't have been as effective as he was if he weren't zeroing in on some real vulnerabilities of the liberal perspective. I don't think it's illegitimate, for instance, to ask some hard questions about why Democrats should be able to get away with blaming all the woes of a city like Baltimore on Republicans when it's been run by Democrats for so long (and not just Baltimore but Maryland too).
I think Rush was quite good at identifying our weaknesses and bullshit and evasions, at least in a broad brush kind of way. The problem, among other things, is what you point out, which was that he was doing it all in the service of right wing plutocrats.
I'm not sure if I 100% buy the left wing perspective -- that it's all just cynical elite maneuvering -- but I certainly buy that the Democratic Party has not always been a great steward of the interests of the workers and the truly vulnerable.
We are engaged in the intellectual equivalent of the process described in this monologue, trying to swim upstream of the “clearance bin”, and possibly even determining what is worn by others.
You're going to have to elaborate later on these. Quick thought:
I don't think this is where you were going with Devil Wears Prada, but one of the thing that's fascinating to me about the fashion industry is the degree to which it's selling all these fantasies of elite American (or European) life but is populated by all these refugees from the cultural provinces. It makes sense, of course, that the people who would create the most powerful American fantasies would be those who came from the outside, but it does point to the element of true fantasy in all of it. We're getting our sense of what it feels and looks like to be elite precisely from people who didn't come from the elite and in most cases remain deeply parochial in their worldview even as they ascend to the heights of American fashion.
I’m sorely tempted to follow your writing on Notes, but I think Freddie has it right: He removed himself entirely from the social media aspect of Substack, persuasively arguing that the benefit of Substack’s model is that it isn’t social media. I dipped my toe in Notes, having never tweeted, ever, and ended up snarking/arguing with principals and secondaries to the “Nazi’s on Substack” debate. It seems terribly pointless to me.
Speaking of Freddie, he ought to be a topic of discussion on your podcast! There are a number of his posts recently that read as a declaration of principles: I Think You Should Be Kind, This Is Zion (which I saw your Note to him, ironically), his rules for posting, and his takedown of the contrarian center. Also, the fact that I can just say “Freddie” to you and know that you know who I mean establishes that his work is of consequence.
For myself, his insistence that rape allegations against Hamas on 10/7 as “hasbarah” and blind acceptance of accusations by the Intercept against the NYT coverage force me to ask myself, “Would I accept this delusion of a horrible reality where, at the least, that delusion is tinged with anti-semitism from anyone else? Why do I still read him lovingly?” It may not be the socialist paradise of his dreams, but at least with me Freddie’s achieved parasocialism!
PS: IOU a response on the “race and sports” post. Sometime in May, I promise!
I definitely need to have a whole episode and/or post on Freddie (you’re right about the one name thing). I’ve long been fascinated by him.
Didn’t know he’d left notes but thank God. He wasn’t handling it well.
I’ll probably leave too at some point. It’s totally seductive at the moment, in what is almost certainly an unhealthy way. I’ll have one or two bad interactions and realize it’s time to go.
Looking forward to engaging more on race and sports. I was hoping for more feedback on that episode.
Freddie and Richard Hanania play roughly the same role in the discourse- gadflies who are able to act as incisive critics of laptop class progressivism because they don’t care about their esteem, even as they are fatally flawed thinkers in their own right.
Isn’t Hanania more pernicious though. I feel like there’s some dark racial and sex shit there that I have a harder time overlooking than Freddie’s flaws.
You’re absolutely correct about Hanania, he’s a bigot and misogynist. He genuinely thinks that more intelligent peoples lives are more valuable, and that race can be a useful proxy for intelligence. If I believed in hell, I think that’s where he’d belong. I certainly wouldn’t say the same of Freddie.
But they are called devils advocates for a reason, and because he doesn’t give a good goddamn what people like me say about him we will occasionally say things most people know are true but are too polite or scared to say, like “the performative asexuality demanded of laptop class straight men is weird and neurotic” or “progressive institutions are dysfunctional partly out of a misplaced sense of chivalry”. As you said yourself about Rush Limbaugh, you can be a vile person and still occasionally have your opponent’s number.
Totally true. I'll come across his posts sometimes and find them genuinely interesting. He's vexing in that way. I'm very much on the anti-cancelling side of things, but he's someone I'd be happy to see more canceled than he seems to be right now. I don't want him legitimized. But I can't deny that he can be interesting.
Great point about the folly of resenting someone without stopping to think what exactly they have that you lack. Alas, envy has never been the most rational of emotions. In most populist contexts, "elite" has the same basic meaning as "lizard people". Though the rationalisations differ somewhat between left and right, it seems to have something to do with the perception that someone has achieved a degree of social status without merit (ie its a question of thymos). Progressives resent the fact that Musk, who by all appearances has the emotional maturity of a thirteen-year-old, has access to so much wealth and power. Conservatives resent the fact that someone can receive an award for "genius" for arguing one cannot be racist against white people. Once these unsavoury characters are established in the mind, projection season is open. The last thing a populist thinks about is what it is like to be an elite.
I just brought up thymos in a response to another comment. Great mind. Do you think it is only status without corresponding merit that is so resented, or is it status period, even if it's earned?
I remain unclear about whether the thing that some people have that is resented by others actually feels like anything to the people who have it. What does it feel like to have status. Is it deference from others? Or is it the absence of having to defer to others, or the lack of a feeling of inadequacy or insecurity in the presence of others?
Thinking about it, merit is the wrong word. I think people are much more comfortable with "natural" hierarchies than many egalitarians would like to admit. And often there is no question of merit (take the British monarchy as an example), but people do expect a sense noblesse oblige. When Queen Elizabeth II died, Louis Jebb called her "one of the greatest performance artists of all time" and I think there is some truth to that: she treated her subjects with unerring dignity. Compare this to Hillary Clinton's remark about "a basket of deplorables".
We don't seem to mind the success of others as long as we don't feel less worthy in comparison (“Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little" as Gore Vidal said). But if we feel that we've been unfairly treated in life, it is easy to resent those who have been more fortunate and are lording it over us.
As for the feeling of status itself, the lack is probably felt more acutely than the presence ("Do you know who I am?"). I think you are right that it is pursued as a way of getting rid of a feeling of inadequacy or insecurity, but we have plenty of historical and literary examples of how this is a vain pursuit: uneasy lies the head that wears a crown...
I’ve never understood why “school shooting” is the default pro-phones argument. I would rather my child be situationally aware in a circumstance like that, not distracted by texting with me.
100% agree. No idea what the actual theory is of how it would keep your kid safe. I think it's just entirely visceral. Parents imagine a shooting, and how they'd want to be able to get in touch with their kids as quickly as possible to make sure they're safe. The idea of not knowing in that situation is intolerable. I get it, but it doesn't feel like a rationale that remotely outweighs any of the anti-phone arguments.
Three types of capital: financial, intellectual/cultural/self-awareness, and social, meaning your network. Being "elite" in all three is rare and takes effort. What does it get you? Security and far greater agency than others.
Interesting to think about it in terms of agency and security. Are you saying that it provides than in each of these realms independently, or only in combination. I mean, financial capital seems to provide both on its own, but not as clear to me that, say, intellectual capital meaningfully increases both agency and security. Thoughts?
Without self-awareness, which is part of intellectual capital, even people with great wealth can find themselves captured by their drive to accumulate more. They might feel insecure if they're with someone wealthier, because they've made their own security dependent on the relative level of their wealth. I was there and it took a lot of effort for me to escape that trap. There's also a loss of agency, because w/o intellectual capital, you see only a narrow slice of the world's possibilities. You're confined by your own ignorance.
I don't disagree with this in principle, but I'm not sure that self-awareness constitutes an elite resource. It's available to anyone in the way, say, a four year college degree is not, or a position at a museum or a magazine.
true, but it's the combination that does it.
About elites: I think there are basic elements of entitlement, comfort and security — the sense that one’s social position is justified, and society is organized in the right way such that institutions function according to the elite's values and expectations. In (say) traditional Britain, that would mean that the nobility can count on having places at Eton, Oxbridge, the House of Lords, etc.
In the US, having a liberal elite means taking for granted that major institutions (K-12 education, higher education, the entertainment, art, and publishing industries, law, the federal bureaucracy, and generally any institution dominated by educated people) will reflect culturally liberal values and priorities, and seeing it as a gross offense, almost against the order of nature, when that system is threatened. The hate for Orban, DeSantis, and SCOTUS reflects this sense that state institutions "ought" to be the domain of the liberal elite, and it's simply unfair and unjustified to have the other "side" take them over. For the elite, it's simply "common sense" that social institutions reflect one's own values.
A thought experiment would be: "What if the political value in question was 'abortion is murder'?" What if, one year, every NFL team was kneeling to protest legalized abortion, and pro-choice dissenters came under heavy pressure to join the team? What if pro-choice advocacy groups had trouble finding high-powered lawyers to represent them? [1] What if, to get a job as a professor of (say) plant science, you had to submit a statement documenting your support for a "culture of life," and political activists used that as the screen for the first round of the application? [2] Or if you were an astronomer, whose lecture on planets were cancelled when your pro-choice sympathies were discovered? [3] Etc. etc.
Point being that an elite can take for granted the sense of being "at home" in any powerful institution in society, and feels something to be amiss when that is not the case. The non-elite is highly aware that said institutions are not on "their side," are in fact controlled by a "hostile tribe," and forms their judgments with these facts in mind.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/us/politics/26marriage.html
[2] https://reason.com/2020/02/03/university-of-california-diversity-initiative-berkeley/
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/us/dorian-abbot-mit.html
That's a really compelling way of putting it. I'll buy it.
In this context, it's weird to be at a university in Texas, where there are all these cross-cutting forces in play. The state is very conservative, and the legislature and highest level administrators at the university are handing down these very conservative, and often rather gross, dictates. Our liberal/left faculty feel under assault, which in important respects they are, but then there's also that "elite" sense they have of the natural order somehow being disrupted, that they shouldn't have to answer to the democratically elected government or their university administration.
So everyone ends up feeling on the wrong side of the power dynamic. The conservatives still feel in their bones that the university professors are the elite. The professors feel under the thumb of the conservatives. etc.
I think this is in some sense what I find so politically frustrating around the elite dynamics. Everyone feels like the other guys are the ones in power. So much of the conservative rage right now seems to be driven by a sense that they used to be ones setting the tone for the dominant institutions, and now it's these other (alien, dark-skinned, commie, gay) people who have the upper hand culturally.
Tying in to your previous (excellent) piece about Rush Limbaugh, I have to observe that the Limbaughian notion of Democrats "buying off" Blacks and others in order to maintain the power of liberal elites isn't too far from a certain Left position that sees identity politics as a liberal distraction from (and undermining of) the class struggle. Of course, what Limbaugh never mentioned was his own putative role, via the culture wars, as a servant of conservative elites. In any case, from this Left perspective (and perhaps Limbaugh's own, deep down), it's all a matter of rival ruling class factions (elites) manipulating the subaltern to their advantage.
He wouldn't have been as effective as he was if he weren't zeroing in on some real vulnerabilities of the liberal perspective. I don't think it's illegitimate, for instance, to ask some hard questions about why Democrats should be able to get away with blaming all the woes of a city like Baltimore on Republicans when it's been run by Democrats for so long (and not just Baltimore but Maryland too).
I think Rush was quite good at identifying our weaknesses and bullshit and evasions, at least in a broad brush kind of way. The problem, among other things, is what you point out, which was that he was doing it all in the service of right wing plutocrats.
I'm not sure if I 100% buy the left wing perspective -- that it's all just cynical elite maneuvering -- but I certainly buy that the Democratic Party has not always been a great steward of the interests of the workers and the truly vulnerable.
OK, one other thing and then I have got to bounce:
Your question about “elite” brings to mind the “sweater monologue” (or what I just learned is the “cerulean sweater monologue” from The Devil Wears Prada: https://artdepartmental.com/blog/devil-wears-prada-cerulean-monologue/
We are engaged in the intellectual equivalent of the process described in this monologue, trying to swim upstream of the “clearance bin”, and possibly even determining what is worn by others.
Also, for some reason (and I’m really not sure why), this question also made me think of this: https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/us-is-better-than-europe
You're going to have to elaborate later on these. Quick thought:
I don't think this is where you were going with Devil Wears Prada, but one of the thing that's fascinating to me about the fashion industry is the degree to which it's selling all these fantasies of elite American (or European) life but is populated by all these refugees from the cultural provinces. It makes sense, of course, that the people who would create the most powerful American fantasies would be those who came from the outside, but it does point to the element of true fantasy in all of it. We're getting our sense of what it feels and looks like to be elite precisely from people who didn't come from the elite and in most cases remain deeply parochial in their worldview even as they ascend to the heights of American fashion.
I’m sorely tempted to follow your writing on Notes, but I think Freddie has it right: He removed himself entirely from the social media aspect of Substack, persuasively arguing that the benefit of Substack’s model is that it isn’t social media. I dipped my toe in Notes, having never tweeted, ever, and ended up snarking/arguing with principals and secondaries to the “Nazi’s on Substack” debate. It seems terribly pointless to me.
Speaking of Freddie, he ought to be a topic of discussion on your podcast! There are a number of his posts recently that read as a declaration of principles: I Think You Should Be Kind, This Is Zion (which I saw your Note to him, ironically), his rules for posting, and his takedown of the contrarian center. Also, the fact that I can just say “Freddie” to you and know that you know who I mean establishes that his work is of consequence.
For myself, his insistence that rape allegations against Hamas on 10/7 as “hasbarah” and blind acceptance of accusations by the Intercept against the NYT coverage force me to ask myself, “Would I accept this delusion of a horrible reality where, at the least, that delusion is tinged with anti-semitism from anyone else? Why do I still read him lovingly?” It may not be the socialist paradise of his dreams, but at least with me Freddie’s achieved parasocialism!
PS: IOU a response on the “race and sports” post. Sometime in May, I promise!