Considering recent events and the fact that Curtis' subscribers have trusted him with their PII, I think this warrants a little bit more attention than just an off-hand remark in a mostly unrelated post. Not all of us here are hereditary nobility, Curtis.
On closer inspection of Noah's substack... It is total trash.
He's just so very basic. It's just standard smug liberal theocracizing, and the impressive crimestop Moldbug mentions is either not there or fades into the background of the blaring basicness of his thinking.
The idea that he feels he is worth threatening is richly undeserved.
Can you go back to dunking on Krugman? Now there is a fine whale to hunt 🐋.
You know, I think back to how Russia banned NGOs in 2015. I remember being very puzzled by the act - aren’t NGOs good and virtuous? It was before I found _all this_ here and UR and the Mises people and that viral video of Yuri Bezmenov talking about active measures.
This experience of discovery reminds me of the time when I realized that chiropractic and homeopathy were a snake oil - by coming into contact with them. Until then, they had legitimacy in my mind, with their plausibly-respectable names and the imprimatur of the health insurance company.
The peeling-off-layers never ends, does it?
Here’s what I’m hopeful for 2021: that we, who wish to, find it possible to meet each other in person, in a kind of dissident Burning Man or a Hoppe-like conference, in Nicaragua, maybe. Or, wouldn’t it be funny if it happened in Yalta?
I realize that's a broad question, so let me put it more pointedly:
There were a bunch of yahoos who stormed the capitol. Now there are impeachment proceedings against Trump and people want him to never be able to run again. The tech companies got together and made Parler functionally illegal.
Is anything else happening? Like, is this actually a big deal? Does this portend anything?
I don't really follow social media, or the media in general--my wife just informed me that Armie Hammer is a cannibal or something--but what kind of things are people saying that is getting y'all to think that we're at some kind of inflection point?
OK, I looked at Twitter for, like, five minutes and I now know what's going on.
Basically, all the blue checkmarks are saying that these people storming the Capitol is evidence that "Trumpism" -- which can stand in for *a lot* -- is now a huge threat to the continued existence of the Republic.
I see why that's scary: given that so many blue checkmarks and actual politicians are on the same page about this, they now know they can go ahead and do a lot of stuff in the name of anti-terrorism. If you can get your typical American to think of your typical American right-winger as the equivalent of an ISIS member, then you can get your typical American to approve lots of very intrusive, bloody stuff.
I suppose this is why Yarvin brought up Eisenhower's repose at overseeing the murder of at least 500,000 (or as many as 2.5 million) Germans at the hands of the Russians. And why he's trying to get Smith to admit that, yes, he would like to see millions of Americans murdered. The Eisenhower thing is supposed to be evidence that we've done this kind of thing before, and the Smith thing is evidence that we're close to wanting to do it again. Why get Smith to say this, though? I suppose the hope is that if Smith says it, then maybe he'll realize what he's approving of and pull back?
But look, if Yarvin is right about all this (and I don't think he is), then Smith's realizing this won't do a damn thing. First, no one really cares about Noah Smith. Second, if Noah Smith did realize this, it wouldn't make him flinch, it would make him pinch harder. To paraphrase Marlo, Yarvin wants it to be one way, but it's the other way.
In my humble opinion, I think Noah would/will never admit that, at least publicly. It’s his crimestop!
My latest eye opener, that ended me up here, is seeing that there is a credible threat of “conservatives getting treated like Muslims post 9/11”, or that arguing this isn’t detached from what seem to be trends. If I heard any not liberal say something like that just 3 years ago, I’d write them off as a conspiracy “white genocide” whacko. But now, doesn’t seem so crazy. What else were conservatives saying that sounded crazy, told by liberals isn’t even a rational questions, becomes rational?
Smith is the strongest example of the liberal in our head, who can’t, or chooses not to, imagine these fears as legitimate in any way, and chooses to just think they’re a population of largely dumb cows with some nazis hiding underneath waiting to strike.
I think he’s more of an example to be pointed out, but smart enough that you could hope he’ll od on redpills one day.
I'm not a smart man. I mean, compared to the vast majority of people, I'm a smart man, but compared to, say, someone who was a mathematically precocious youth, I'm not a smart man.
That's my caveat for what I'm about to say.
Gaming this out, I'm beginning to think that there it's more likely than not that conservatives -- let's say, 30 million people -- get some pretty heavy-handed treatment. Here's how I can see this playing out: bills pass that allow for FBI surveillance of "Trumpists" (understood broadly) and incentivize or even require companies to turn in information about the web browsing activities of such people to the powers-that-be. Conservatives' credit scores take a hit, places like unz.com and, well, this substack get shuttered, and connections between, say, Ross Douthat and Steve Sailer are publicized and revealed and people like Ross get discredited.
FBI, police, and homeland security get massively strengthened, and start busting up organizations. Cops like this, because not only do they get a lot more money and the opportunity to bust some heads, but press coverage becomes far more admiring (ACAB is quietly forgotten, by almost everyone). The 30 million or so hardcore Trumpists naturally enough don't like this, and some react with violence, thereby confirming liberals' worst fears and allowing them to double down. You start to get a LOT of violence, but it's put down, quite brutally. Progs win, conservatives are toast, and the historians write about the brave heroes who put down an internal uprising. It's a story that allows America to be proud of itself again, and even gets a lots of wokies on board.
Now, if this doesn't happen -- it probably won't, because my predictive powers are for shit -- why won't it? To pre-mortem it: my best guess is that I, operating under Yarvinite intoxication, am massively oversimplifying the normies. People like Noah Smith do NOT want to have lots of violence; a lot of people will be able to tell that a heavy-handed surveillance program will likely cause a lot of the harm it is supposedly designed to prevent. Leftists really do hate cops, and really don't want to massively increase funding to the FBI, the cops, and DHS. Republicans are clever, and will think of ingenious ways of throwing a marble into the bike wheel. And so on.
You are massively over estimating the competence and effectiveness of our public officials.
The reality is they need both orwellian powers and harsh punishments to be even modestly effective.
If the USA ever has a run on the dollar, the whole administrative system will implode because Uncle Sam's rue goldberg bureaucracy will be too expensive to enforce.
That's a good thought, and to it I'd like to add: exogeneity!
Like, something exogenous will happen. It always does. China, despite what you might hear, is neither omniscient nor omnipotent, and will make a mistake, either in being too aggressive with the USA, or getting so successful that even the libs start to worry about China as something that will undercut them (e.g., China takes over Taiwan or makes massive advances in genetic engineering or finds all the genes for intelligence).
But let's go back to your good thought: is it true that the USA is massively incompetent?
One thing the Covid crisis has shown, as Bruno Maçaes has pointed out, is that the government can get away with crazy interventions and people will accept it, more or less blithely. That is, people looked at China's draconian lockdown and said "that would never work in the west!" They said that, not because they thought the west didn't have the state capital for it, but because the west's populations wouldn't accept it. But, surprise, we *did* have the popular compliance of the Chinese, just not their state capital.
Here's the thing, though: why didn't we have the state capital? Well, one thing is that our regulatory institutions--FDA, CDC--are hidebound: they have certain ways of doing things (not, "do not harm", but rather, "do not approve". The former is said by someone worried about losing his skin, the latter is latter is said by someone who likes forcing people's eyeballs to twitch). Another is that our public sector unions don't have to worry about shit; Cuomo has to choose between having the vaccine thrown away and letting public sector union members get it second, and he chooses putting the vaccine in the circular file. And he doesn't have to worry about anything! This, despite DeBlasio's making a federal case of it (not literally)! It's like, when a Democrat fights with a Democrat, everyone figures they're both super-reasonable, which means everyone thinks they're boring, which means everyone loses interest.
What I'm saying is this: our state capital is "inefficient" only when it's dealing with populations who are utterly compliant. The true masters are the public intellectuals, because they have created a zeitgeist golem: like God, it's invisible, and like God, it's almighty (unlike God, it's not omnipotent). In response to the whims of the zeitgeist-golem, public institutions will step into line, and how.
(Yes, I'm over-writing and overreacting. It's fun to do this. Yes, there is a zeitgeist-golem, but no, it's not as powerful as I'm making it. Yes, the fact that we haven't gotten the vaccine to more blue checkmarks IS a failure of state capital, but the fact that the only people anyone who matters seems to blame is Trump/Republicans is utterly bizarre to me, and suggests that state capital is fine, in that it's being responsive to the people who want it to be responsive.)
I think it’s important to separate the sincere leftists who hate the police and capitalism (Occupy Wallstreet) and the people who have power and the normal people who support them. The latter group either know or feel instinctively that the theme of fighting racism is a very useful one and is what gives them power right now. They don’t notice or find significant any hypocrisy coming from their side. There is always a spin and an explanation, and I see them eagerly repeat it once they hear it. For this, the social media is an excellent propaganda amplifier
I want to say something hopeful, but I just can’t think of anything. I feel hopeful, but that feeling isn’t backed by any story
That’s a good doomsday theory, I’m going to have that in mind in case it all ends up happening. Or, I think a good amount of it will happen and lend itself to a possible self own.
But I think like you said, leftists really do hate cops. I don’t think ACAB can quietly go away. I think super normie libs that’s true for, but a lot of the hip young people I know are still on board with it. Maybe I’m mistaken by overestimating how much they matter.
Anyway, I think they may have set up for the self own by wearing acab 6 months ago, and wearing bush/Cheney now. It’s going to clash too much for a New Yorker reader to ignore. Unless shit gets wild
Readers of this comment section, may I bring your attention to "Domination and the Arts of Resistance - Hidden Transcripts" by James C. Scott. Almost everyone likes to reference "Seeing Like a State" by Scott but Domination and the Arts of Resistance is for dissidence.
"In this book, renowned social scientist James C. Scott offers a penetrating discussion both of the public roles played by the powerful and powerless and the mocking, vengeful tone they display off stage—what he terms their public and hidden transcripts. Using examples from the literature, history, and politics of cultures around the world, Scott examines the many guises this interaction has taken throughout history and the tensions and contradictions it reflects."
I'm waking up every day to this and drinking my coffee. Things could be worse, Comfy Curtis.
All right I finally pulled the trigger and subscribed. Please do not send me to Noah smith's substack again.
Curtis, you are annoying sometimes, but you very well might be the best writer on planet earth.
Wait, Curtis' bank account got closed? Uh oh.
Use Monero, Curtis.
This also raised alarm bells. What happened, exactly?
I’m guessing it was in the past but possible it was recent.
Considering recent events and the fact that Curtis' subscribers have trusted him with their PII, I think this warrants a little bit more attention than just an off-hand remark in a mostly unrelated post. Not all of us here are hereditary nobility, Curtis.
How long can you keep this hot streak going? Im not saying the siege was worth it for this content...but im not not saying it...
The States is a series of coups for transmitting Moldbug.
Moldbug is Q and "The Plan" was to make a giant fuss for him to go off over
Is there room to fit "sordid, barely-legal edgelord subliterati" into my twitter profile? Don't want to lose "philotyrannical intellectual"
On closer inspection of Noah's substack... It is total trash.
He's just so very basic. It's just standard smug liberal theocracizing, and the impressive crimestop Moldbug mentions is either not there or fades into the background of the blaring basicness of his thinking.
The idea that he feels he is worth threatening is richly undeserved.
Can you go back to dunking on Krugman? Now there is a fine whale to hunt 🐋.
I laughed out loud at least three times reading this.
This article reminds me of the old lounge singer ploy of inviting the audience to "give yourselves a round of applause."
Have we become so cynical that we won’t accept flattery, even from lounge singers??
You know, I think back to how Russia banned NGOs in 2015. I remember being very puzzled by the act - aren’t NGOs good and virtuous? It was before I found _all this_ here and UR and the Mises people and that viral video of Yuri Bezmenov talking about active measures.
This experience of discovery reminds me of the time when I realized that chiropractic and homeopathy were a snake oil - by coming into contact with them. Until then, they had legitimacy in my mind, with their plausibly-respectable names and the imprimatur of the health insurance company.
The peeling-off-layers never ends, does it?
Here’s what I’m hopeful for 2021: that we, who wish to, find it possible to meet each other in person, in a kind of dissident Burning Man or a Hoppe-like conference, in Nicaragua, maybe. Or, wouldn’t it be funny if it happened in Yalta?
Singapore or bust. We can play 'spot the fed' too, I'm sure it'll prove very fruitful.
Who would have thought Noah would be Mr Yarvin’s muse.
Odd couple-style podcast when?
Contra-Noahpinion
OK, could someone educate me -- what's going on?
I realize that's a broad question, so let me put it more pointedly:
There were a bunch of yahoos who stormed the capitol. Now there are impeachment proceedings against Trump and people want him to never be able to run again. The tech companies got together and made Parler functionally illegal.
Is anything else happening? Like, is this actually a big deal? Does this portend anything?
I don't really follow social media, or the media in general--my wife just informed me that Armie Hammer is a cannibal or something--but what kind of things are people saying that is getting y'all to think that we're at some kind of inflection point?
OK, I looked at Twitter for, like, five minutes and I now know what's going on.
Basically, all the blue checkmarks are saying that these people storming the Capitol is evidence that "Trumpism" -- which can stand in for *a lot* -- is now a huge threat to the continued existence of the Republic.
I see why that's scary: given that so many blue checkmarks and actual politicians are on the same page about this, they now know they can go ahead and do a lot of stuff in the name of anti-terrorism. If you can get your typical American to think of your typical American right-winger as the equivalent of an ISIS member, then you can get your typical American to approve lots of very intrusive, bloody stuff.
I suppose this is why Yarvin brought up Eisenhower's repose at overseeing the murder of at least 500,000 (or as many as 2.5 million) Germans at the hands of the Russians. And why he's trying to get Smith to admit that, yes, he would like to see millions of Americans murdered. The Eisenhower thing is supposed to be evidence that we've done this kind of thing before, and the Smith thing is evidence that we're close to wanting to do it again. Why get Smith to say this, though? I suppose the hope is that if Smith says it, then maybe he'll realize what he's approving of and pull back?
But look, if Yarvin is right about all this (and I don't think he is), then Smith's realizing this won't do a damn thing. First, no one really cares about Noah Smith. Second, if Noah Smith did realize this, it wouldn't make him flinch, it would make him pinch harder. To paraphrase Marlo, Yarvin wants it to be one way, but it's the other way.
In my humble opinion, I think Noah would/will never admit that, at least publicly. It’s his crimestop!
My latest eye opener, that ended me up here, is seeing that there is a credible threat of “conservatives getting treated like Muslims post 9/11”, or that arguing this isn’t detached from what seem to be trends. If I heard any not liberal say something like that just 3 years ago, I’d write them off as a conspiracy “white genocide” whacko. But now, doesn’t seem so crazy. What else were conservatives saying that sounded crazy, told by liberals isn’t even a rational questions, becomes rational?
Smith is the strongest example of the liberal in our head, who can’t, or chooses not to, imagine these fears as legitimate in any way, and chooses to just think they’re a population of largely dumb cows with some nazis hiding underneath waiting to strike.
I think he’s more of an example to be pointed out, but smart enough that you could hope he’ll od on redpills one day.
I'm not a smart man. I mean, compared to the vast majority of people, I'm a smart man, but compared to, say, someone who was a mathematically precocious youth, I'm not a smart man.
That's my caveat for what I'm about to say.
Gaming this out, I'm beginning to think that there it's more likely than not that conservatives -- let's say, 30 million people -- get some pretty heavy-handed treatment. Here's how I can see this playing out: bills pass that allow for FBI surveillance of "Trumpists" (understood broadly) and incentivize or even require companies to turn in information about the web browsing activities of such people to the powers-that-be. Conservatives' credit scores take a hit, places like unz.com and, well, this substack get shuttered, and connections between, say, Ross Douthat and Steve Sailer are publicized and revealed and people like Ross get discredited.
FBI, police, and homeland security get massively strengthened, and start busting up organizations. Cops like this, because not only do they get a lot more money and the opportunity to bust some heads, but press coverage becomes far more admiring (ACAB is quietly forgotten, by almost everyone). The 30 million or so hardcore Trumpists naturally enough don't like this, and some react with violence, thereby confirming liberals' worst fears and allowing them to double down. You start to get a LOT of violence, but it's put down, quite brutally. Progs win, conservatives are toast, and the historians write about the brave heroes who put down an internal uprising. It's a story that allows America to be proud of itself again, and even gets a lots of wokies on board.
Now, if this doesn't happen -- it probably won't, because my predictive powers are for shit -- why won't it? To pre-mortem it: my best guess is that I, operating under Yarvinite intoxication, am massively oversimplifying the normies. People like Noah Smith do NOT want to have lots of violence; a lot of people will be able to tell that a heavy-handed surveillance program will likely cause a lot of the harm it is supposedly designed to prevent. Leftists really do hate cops, and really don't want to massively increase funding to the FBI, the cops, and DHS. Republicans are clever, and will think of ingenious ways of throwing a marble into the bike wheel. And so on.
You are massively over estimating the competence and effectiveness of our public officials.
The reality is they need both orwellian powers and harsh punishments to be even modestly effective.
If the USA ever has a run on the dollar, the whole administrative system will implode because Uncle Sam's rue goldberg bureaucracy will be too expensive to enforce.
That's a good thought, and to it I'd like to add: exogeneity!
Like, something exogenous will happen. It always does. China, despite what you might hear, is neither omniscient nor omnipotent, and will make a mistake, either in being too aggressive with the USA, or getting so successful that even the libs start to worry about China as something that will undercut them (e.g., China takes over Taiwan or makes massive advances in genetic engineering or finds all the genes for intelligence).
But let's go back to your good thought: is it true that the USA is massively incompetent?
One thing the Covid crisis has shown, as Bruno Maçaes has pointed out, is that the government can get away with crazy interventions and people will accept it, more or less blithely. That is, people looked at China's draconian lockdown and said "that would never work in the west!" They said that, not because they thought the west didn't have the state capital for it, but because the west's populations wouldn't accept it. But, surprise, we *did* have the popular compliance of the Chinese, just not their state capital.
Here's the thing, though: why didn't we have the state capital? Well, one thing is that our regulatory institutions--FDA, CDC--are hidebound: they have certain ways of doing things (not, "do not harm", but rather, "do not approve". The former is said by someone worried about losing his skin, the latter is latter is said by someone who likes forcing people's eyeballs to twitch). Another is that our public sector unions don't have to worry about shit; Cuomo has to choose between having the vaccine thrown away and letting public sector union members get it second, and he chooses putting the vaccine in the circular file. And he doesn't have to worry about anything! This, despite DeBlasio's making a federal case of it (not literally)! It's like, when a Democrat fights with a Democrat, everyone figures they're both super-reasonable, which means everyone thinks they're boring, which means everyone loses interest.
What I'm saying is this: our state capital is "inefficient" only when it's dealing with populations who are utterly compliant. The true masters are the public intellectuals, because they have created a zeitgeist golem: like God, it's invisible, and like God, it's almighty (unlike God, it's not omnipotent). In response to the whims of the zeitgeist-golem, public institutions will step into line, and how.
(Yes, I'm over-writing and overreacting. It's fun to do this. Yes, there is a zeitgeist-golem, but no, it's not as powerful as I'm making it. Yes, the fact that we haven't gotten the vaccine to more blue checkmarks IS a failure of state capital, but the fact that the only people anyone who matters seems to blame is Trump/Republicans is utterly bizarre to me, and suggests that state capital is fine, in that it's being responsive to the people who want it to be responsive.)
I absolutely love your thinking and clear-headed explanation(s). Just wanted to say thanks.
I think it’s important to separate the sincere leftists who hate the police and capitalism (Occupy Wallstreet) and the people who have power and the normal people who support them. The latter group either know or feel instinctively that the theme of fighting racism is a very useful one and is what gives them power right now. They don’t notice or find significant any hypocrisy coming from their side. There is always a spin and an explanation, and I see them eagerly repeat it once they hear it. For this, the social media is an excellent propaganda amplifier
I want to say something hopeful, but I just can’t think of anything. I feel hopeful, but that feeling isn’t backed by any story
That’s a good doomsday theory, I’m going to have that in mind in case it all ends up happening. Or, I think a good amount of it will happen and lend itself to a possible self own.
But I think like you said, leftists really do hate cops. I don’t think ACAB can quietly go away. I think super normie libs that’s true for, but a lot of the hip young people I know are still on board with it. Maybe I’m mistaken by overestimating how much they matter.
Anyway, I think they may have set up for the self own by wearing acab 6 months ago, and wearing bush/Cheney now. It’s going to clash too much for a New Yorker reader to ignore. Unless shit gets wild
Readers of this comment section, may I bring your attention to "Domination and the Arts of Resistance - Hidden Transcripts" by James C. Scott. Almost everyone likes to reference "Seeing Like a State" by Scott but Domination and the Arts of Resistance is for dissidence.
"In this book, renowned social scientist James C. Scott offers a penetrating discussion both of the public roles played by the powerful and powerless and the mocking, vengeful tone they display off stage—what he terms their public and hidden transcripts. Using examples from the literature, history, and politics of cultures around the world, Scott examines the many guises this interaction has taken throughout history and the tensions and contradictions it reflects."
Never loved the constant beef in the rap world but am very pleased to get a taste of it in the blog world.
Without a sympathetic Western media the dissenters are...terrorists. Like now.
>> You are all basically the same person: extremely bright, surprisingly social, highly disagreeable verbal nerds.
Sir, I resemble that remark! I am not "social", whether "surprisingly" so or otherwise!
Barnum effect
It wouldn't be a surprise if you thought you were.