You've never touched a book outside of fucking kindergarten, yet you think you know more of communism than me, a fucking communist? Do you think im a baffoon?
Some of them are plenty smart - they got good grades and went to good colleges and have professional jobs. They're engineers, teachers, what have you. And they're probably perfectly good at their jobs, and they think because they've made it that far and see so many people doing worse, they assume they're just better.
As said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Building on this, capitalism associates a person's worth to how much money they have, not the fact living things are inherently valuable with their own thoughts and ideas. Libs have completely internalized this idea.
So the lib who is good at their job, makes decent money, and spent a lot on their education sees themselves as valuable not because they're a person, but because they aren't poor. And only smart people become wealthy, so obviously none of the wealthy are fascists or stupid (unlike the poors). This then creates their classicism.
Because they believe they have already won. It really comes down to that. "Why would you pick communism, it lost already?" is what they think. Picking the winning sides makes you smart.
If libs were so smart they'd have the sense to appeal to actual succdemmery. You can probably get an extra 50 years out of this dying empire with that.
ikr lol. Capitalists aren't very good at capitalism. They could easily make it so they stay safe and wealthy for the duration of their lives and their children's lives but instead propel us to either nuclear hellfire, world-ending climate change, or communist revolution that will put their heads on spikes.
They think the "marketplace of ideas" is a really smart idea that produces smart solutions and that by believing in the marketplace of ideas they are smart (because that's what a smart person would believe, obviously)
when the vast majority of libs recede into full philosophical idealism again, materialists are going to seem like they have superpowers for actually seeing the world as it is
Libs becoming COVID deniers probably means they'll lose their grip on reality sooner than we think. People who are still masking up are gonna seem like geniuses with their non-fogges brains.
In the same way that conservatives are animated by xenophobia and racism, liberals are animated by condescension and pride.
You see this in the way that urban dwellers often look down on country folk as dumb hicks. They're backwards savages who vote for the red team instead of enlightened intellectuals. It also helps to justify their atrocities without outright racism. By reducing Palestinian lives to a number and framing it as a tough decision, they can justify war crimes and still feel good. They view themselves as the smart intellectuals making hard decisions because the dumb rabble can't.
I think a big contributing factor is the articles they read are written in a way to make them feel as though they are "intellectually grappling with" the material and developing "nuance" when really it was just a bunch of keys jangling in front of their face. I read a really good essay at one point about how Scott Alexander (the last psychiatrist guy) structures his essays in this way to make you feel as though you're being really thoughtful while not doing any thinking whatsoever. Malcolm Gladwell also has this style. This is a deep cut but it reminds me of this silicon valley triumphalist tweet from 2015:
Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.
Something interesting is happening.
It's all in the end line. "Something interesting is happening" - that is the ultimate vibe of the liberal article. What is interesting about it? What is a tangible conclusion? It just throws a bunch of phenomena at you then does not actually analyze it. But because you learned of all these disparate phenomena then drew conceptual similarities between them you have done a thought. Libs learn that this is what public intellectualism looks like.
I read a really good essay at one point about how Scott Alexander (the last psychiatrist guy) structures his essays in this way to make you feel as though you're being really thoughtful while not doing any thinking whatsoever.
This is like when s feel smart after finishing a video game puzzle that was specifically curated to be solved and make them feel smart lol.
Every time I solve a particularly difficult puzzle in a video game, before I start feeling too big for my britches I remind myself that the hard part of puzzle design is making puzzles that are easy enough to be solved.
reminds me of this line from fancy lad's polemic against The Economist
Here, then, is the problem with the magazine: readers are consistently given the impression, regardless of whether it is true, that unrestricted free market capitalism is a Thoroughly Good Thing, and that sensible and
pragmatic British intellectuals have vouched for this position. The nuances are erased, reality is fudged, and The Economist helps its
American readers pretend to have read books by telling them things that the books don’t actually say.
They only know how to be anti-chud and since they are largely dumb asf you get to automatically feel smartasf with like no effort. It's not about politics it's about dress-up
Yeah I agree, but that's what libs believe them to be. Libs don't want to believe that the call's coming from inside the house and the middle class circles they hang in have as many nazis as a Mississippi bike gang.
a lot of libs who are ideologically committed to being libs were affluent and got good grades in school. being a liberal isn't a reflection of your intelligence it's about socioeconomic status, there are plenty of 'smart' liberals.