Culture War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
new target is designated
Elon Musk is very bad. Elon Musk is a white supremacist! He is an unperson!
He wasn’t an enemy last month, but anyway. Attack!
This designation of new targets has become extraordinarily efficient, as a standing army of woke trolls assembles in virtual ranks to await their daily OPORD. The army doesn’t need to hear an argument; it just needs to be pointed. Getting a crowd to boo in San Francisco is essentially a push-button operation. Pick someone who’s a woke hero today, and I make you this promise: You could get a woke crowd to boo that person — vigorously — by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. Someone always has to be the enemy, because a fresh enemy is always needed.
I am disgusted and enraged by [name]!
Atomization, in the form of the breakdown of families and neighborhoods and voluntary organizations and communities, empties people who start looking for something to join.
So we have a call:
And them we get the response:
He has spoken in ways that I am told to disagree with! He is unloved as a human being! His existence is vile and intolerable, because the culture assigned me to express that position today. Stand by for new target package.
Lots more of that great comedy on this person’s Twitter feed, if you can handle all the mirth and laughter. Designated target is bad! Designated target will never be loved!
Remember that Stephen Colbert’s audience cheered wildly when Colbert announced that James Comey had been fired; then Colbert reassigned the meaning of the event, and the same audience pivoted to boo — at the one-minute mark, seconds after they cheered:
The opposite is equally true. Hurray for Elon Mu— uh, boooooooo!
Picture them in their ranks, hands poised over the keyboard, awaiting their daily target package. Go search “Elon Musk” on Twitter, if you want to see it in uniform and well-ordered action.
Cadre, ready!
The catch is that this is what Twitter is for. It’s the means by which the daily kulturkampf OPORD is issued. So now the target of the kulturkampf owns the instrument of the kulturkampf, and mocks it, and is attacked for mocking the operation of the instrument that he….hold on, I’m getting confused.
It’s like a cultural M.C. Escher lithograph. The people who need the instrument will work to clear those tangled lines, so get ready for an endless stream of this:
He’s great, he’s my hero, I really like h— I mean, he’s literally Adolf Hitler!
The woke brigades make that turn on a dime, more or less weekly. Imagine living this way.
I subscribe to Robert Reich's substack just to see how older leftist/democrat's think. I try listen to views from people that I don't agree with so I don't end up in an echo chamber. He is a chore to read. I understand he is/was a respected economist/lawyer/author but I can't for the life of me understand why. Maybe his books are good.
What I love about substack is an unknown author can beat an established figure like Robert Reich. Substack may be the best version of a meritocracy so far. I write a substack under a different name that has more subscribers and engagement than Taylor Lorenz's substack. Without the Washinton Post to back her we are the same size.
I think this what men like Robert Reich hate about a free speech driven twitter. Without censorship we are all the same size. Only our ideas matter when their are no guard rails.
Musk is the new Trump. Nobody hated him until they were told to. These people are idiots.
Neither Trump nor Musk is literally Hitler nor Jesus.