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Shawn Buell's avatar

What are on here, Sohrab's 6th major transformation? Beginning as a Marxist before performing an about-face to write for Commentary and then becoming an ultramontaine Catholic he's now doing... Whatever this is.

If at some point you've undercut everything you previously believed enough to build a one man debate society people should start to ask not if you're bright but whether the medication needs to be adjusted.

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The Anti-Gnostic's avatar

High IQ people with rigorous ethics are particularly susceptible to ideology. It's a pleasant Gnostic vision, these pure untainted ideas floating above it all just waiting to be implemented by the wise and good. So when the troglodytes come along and say, "Nah it's all just downstream from people," it's not a matter on which reasonable minds can differ; it's a religious war.

That's why Trump blows so many cerebrums on the ideological Right. He had the audacity to realize that democracy is about, well, votes. You don't lecture your base about high-minded Principle; you throw them red meat. And if you can find a way to evict the people who won't vote for you, you do that too. To quote Lee Kuan Yew, "This is not a game of cards; this is your life and mine." Who gets to live where and run things is THE issue.

The good news, we can tell them, is that culture is the feedback loop for genetics. But actually that's not good news, because it means the culture wars really are terribly important, and when Carnival Cruise Line frantically rolls out a code of conduct to avoid becoming the Section 8 of cruise lines (and the white employees run for the exits), it really is racist. How dare you think anything other than that the vuvuzela produces the sweetest, most dulcet tones imaginable.

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