4 Chan.

[sus]

I'm really mad that I'm stuck batting for new atheists and rationalists right now, I'm hemorrhaging status and aesthetic credibility

 

[version]

 

[linebaugh]

Linebaugh's reading Culture of Narcissism atm.

I dig it so far. the exact same subject, conclusions, and form of alot of mark fisher's writing, eerily so in fact.

 

[beiser]

I can understand batting for the rats but moldbug is like a pt barnum figure. His prose is more inpenetrable than Land's, but instead of that being because he's clever and on amphetamines, it's because he's not even very good at fooling himself. He'll trail off on a tangent just long enough that neither you nor he can remember where he started. Pure innuendo.

I say this as someone who will defend "The Straussian Moment" as a document worthy of study. Moldbuggery is just Xi Jinping Thought for people who are stupid and unsuccessful, I'm sorry to say.

 

[version]

 

[beiser]

I say this even despite Moldbug's putative embrace of the land value tax—he's just not very good at thinking.

 

[linebaugh]

I think moldbug is semi interesting in that same grotesque, car accident way but anytime I sit down to read anything by him I realize this is too online for me and I cant kid myself

 

[linebaugh]

I say this even despite Moldbug's putative embrace of the land value tax—he's just not very good at thinking.

you came in all hot with the georgism in your debut and quickly dropped it. I even spent an odd half hour googling in preparation!

 

[linebaugh]

The Moldbug Variations | Corey Pein

Three years ago, Peter Thiel called me a conspiracy theorist.

thebaffler.com

this was my first proper introduction to moldbug, cory pein is an entertaining writer

 

[version]

That's a great headline.

 

[linebaugh]

hes got another one called Mouthbreathing Machiavellis Dream of a Silicon Reich

 

[beiser]

you came in all hot with the georgism in your debut and quickly dropped it. I even spent an odd half hour googling in preparation!

hmm i've been a bit occupied but maybe a thread on "Georgist Accelerationism" would be good, nice way to scandalize the Europeans while also expanding some minds.

 

[linebaugh]

whats the Georgist relationship to electoral politics? if one exists at all. Who do they like, what legislation is approved of and etc.

 

[linebaugh]

@version Moldbug's Open Letters are some of his strongest stuff imo

Here's the short one: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2010/07/actual-letter-to-liberal-friend/

this prose is god awful. the voice of a trench coat

 

[sus]

I'm less interested in Moldbug's ability to argue and more interested in his ability to provide a remotely interesting frame for the American political situation, which is about as boring and worn-out as a discourse could be

 

[sus]

Basically, you will see this in any hieratic system of government which the peasants do not really understand. They feel, somehow, that they are getting jobbed. They are (in my opinion) getting jobbed. But how they are getting jobbed is infinitely more complicated than their simple peasant mind can understand. (Also, the idea that they are in some way jobbing the peasants is the farthest possible concept from the collective mind of the gentlemen.)

Therefore, the peasants open their mouths and out comes rage and nonsense. As a gentleman, you are fascinated and repelled by this extraordinary wave of rage and nonsense. Do I have this reaction right? You may of course feel free to disregard the crude metaphor of medieval class conflict, which is no more than a metaphor. Still, I feel it is a good way to ground the conversation in history.

 

[sus]

There are three basic attitudes toward government in America today. There are people who believe government is there to serve them; there are people who believe government is there to serve others; there are people who believe government is there to subsidize them. In our medieval metaphor, these correspond to peasants, gentlemen, and varlets respectively. The last is the caste Marx called the “lumpenproletariat”—and he was no fan of this group, or of political movements that exploited it. Respectable people say “underclass.”

When gentlemen look at progressivism, they see a movement whose purpose is to help the underclass, those whose plight is no fault of their own. When peasants look at progressivism, they see a movement whose purpose is to employ gentlemen in the business of public policy, by using the peasants’ money to buy votes from varlets. Who, in the peasants’ perception, abuse the patience and generosity of both peasants and gentlemen in almost every imaginable way, and are constantly caressed by every imaginable authority for doing so.

 

[linebaugh]

I feel like everything Ive read in this essay is aplenty in boring worn out political discourse. Ive seen this all on NPR. makes the 'gentleman' talk doubly unbecoming.

 

[linebaugh]

Lasch is great. I haven't read Culture of Narcissism, which is the (for obvious title-related reasons) everyone and their mamas are on about. But True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics is a masterpiece, stylistically and intellectually. It made me really wanna write like him in college, which got me in all sorts of problems with my thesis advisor, ended up not being allowed to write a thesis.

what happened here?

 

[sus]

killing daddy:


domming daddy: