Play Long

and count no man happy until he is dead

Maintain your future orientation, and attacks bounce off.

Let’s go ahead and call this Part Two, and say that Part One was back here.

Returning to Sam Harris vs. Bret Weinstein, how and why does someone like Weinstein stand up to the daily drumbeat of you’re-literally-murdering-grandma character assassination? I’m confident I know the answer without asking, because I’ve been in a comparable position. Harris suggests it with his view that Weinstein was right but isn’t right, because he was right when it was wrong to be right, which is wrong.

Quick background:

I’ve written before about the long 20th-century process described by Christopher Lasch, the development of “the intellectual as a social type,” and the definition of overlapping status groups of nominal elites through the signaling of positional contempt: We’re not like these morons in flyover country, we’re important. Lasch: “The new elites are in revolt against ‘Middle America,’ as they imagine it: a nation technologically backward, politically reactionary, repressive in its sexual morality, middlebrow in its tastes, smug and complacent, dull and dowdy.” They’re the new elites because they say so — because they say they aren’t Middle America. It’s a posture dressed up as a status.

Similarly, Angelo Codevilla described the process by which this self-defined new elite developed its secret handshakes, the ways members of the related in-groups (media, government, academia) communicate membership to other members. Becoming supposedly elite by acts of performance and display, the “new elites” developed codes and gestures that amount to a membership card — rituals of belonging. Again, I’ve written about this before, so. See also Luca Dellanna’s description of “mimetic societies”:

Remember #3: “do the right thing” is “perform the right ritual.”

Now: In the long exchange between Sam Harris and Bret Weinstein, as in the long exchange between mRNA vaccine promoters and mRNA vaccine skeptics, the Sam Harrises — performative “expert” cultural actors — were signaling status. They were saying [current high-status thing], the thing that was discussed approvingly in the New York Times and in government conference rooms. Their statements were aligned with cultural and political power, which made them important. They were lawn signing. “I support Current Thing.” They performed the right ritual.

The Bret Weinsteins, being scientists and non-performative experts of the I-know-actual-biology type, were talking about history and experience and their knowledge of previous vaccines, and about the science of vaccine development.

So the Bret Weinsteins warned about the possibility of antibody dependent enhancement, say for example, and the Sam Harrises didn’t have that in their script, so they were outraged by how irresponsible the Bret Weinsteins were being. It wasn’t [current thing]. The Huffington Post didn’t say to say that!

The Sam Harrises heard the Bret Weinsteins going way off script, saying low-status things and not supporting high-status slogans. They heard the Bret Weinsteins being low-status, talking like the poors in flyover country. At no time did the Sam Harrises perceive that they were talking about biology and medicine — they were talking about social class and cultural status, which is why Harris now says that Weinstein is factually correct but “his reasons for thinking what he was thinking at the time were insufficient.” Saying that a vaccine might not work and might backfire is being a mean Nazi, not a statement about the functioning of viruses and vaccines. It was the wrong feeling.

You can go back, if you want — by searching for yourself, or by using some of the links in my last post — to find Sam Harris being absolutely gobsmacked by Bret Weinstein’s INSANE claims about vaccines. What the hell was that lunatic even talking about, exclamation point question mark exclamation point question mark.

But here’s the catch: Bret Weinstein knew what he was talking about. He knew the possibilities and the likelihoods, he saw the trajectory, and he anticipated big portions of the denouement. He knew that he wasn’t saying [current high-status thing] today, and that not chanting the high-status slogan would cost him — at the moment, until the predictable emerging reality finally got around to emerging. He knew what would happen, and on the basis of his knowledge of what was coming on Wednesday, he didn’t have to worry about the slogans being coded as high-status on Tuesday.

1.) He knew;

2.) He stuck to it.

So right now, it’s JUST WONDERFUL to cut off a fourteen year-old girl’s breasts, or to pound a tween body with a flood of manufactured hormone products, or to prepare those children for the glorious and empowering day when their genitals will be severed. It’s [high-status current thing]. Who cares? Do you know what’s coming? Then stick to it. You’ll be a transphobe, because only a monster doesn’t support severing a child’s genitals.

But so what?

I remember my first winter of severe illness and death, when the President of the United States announced that his patience was growing thin for me, and here I still am. The threat of cultural exile escalates, escalates, escalates, and passes.

Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men. Look down the road a bit. See how it ends, and know that [current thing] will pass. Persist, and show [current thing] the contempt it deserves. Somewhere back in the past, someone was dismissed and shamed for arguing with the high status and social esteem of the most respected professor of phrenology. Be that person.