david brooks vs. thomas friedman vs. ross douthat

"All my life I’ve been a successful pseudo-intellectual."

his lack of self awareness is breathtaking.

Said forty seconds ago on NPR: "This is the problem with democracies. If we lived in a country run by elites, which I believe we should, we would" etc

woooowwwww

he shd be murdered not because he deserves it or anything just as a prank

"I was speaking out in Minnesota — my hometown, in fact — and a guy stood up in the audience, said, 'Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you’d oppose?' I said, 'No, absolutely not.' I said, 'You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn’t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/friedman-start-up-america-our-best-hope.html

"speaking out"

Minnesota isnt a town iirc

it's a village

it takes a village to create friedmans

unfuckingbelievable

spiritual experiments led by the charismatic and the zealous are essential to religious creativity and fruitful change. From the Franciscans to the Jesuits, groups that looked cultlike to their critics have repeatedly revitalized the Catholic Church, and a similar story can be told about the role of charismatic visionaries in the American experience. (The enduring influence of one of the 19th century’s most despised and feared religious movements, for instance, is the reason the state of Utah now leads the United States on many social indicators.)

challenge for ross douthat: name fruitful change or innovation resulting from outliers jim jones, reverend moon, l-ron hubbard, chas manson

this column is formulaic recycling, cherry-picked from others work (a time honored and lazy journalistic ploy when the till is empty come deadline). no surprise that douthat quotes philip jenkins who dismissed the 70s cult phenomena as hysteria fueled by secular media. i think jenkins argument is disingenuous and politically motivated. what's forgotten in this revisionist argument is the extreme psychological manipulation that was a defining characteristic of 70s-style charismatic cults. the human toll, lives ruined and personalities exploded, not to mention the suicide victims in jonestown who douthat somehow never mentions.

what has happened, from the post-moon unification church to the second-string cult a relative of mine is involved with, seems to be a backing off from the sick controlling nature of the groups (due to decades of bad publicity) and a subsequent mainstreaming of former fringe elements.

Thiel’s argument is broader: Not only religious vitality but the entirety of human innovation, he argues, depends on the belief that there are major secrets left to be uncovered, insights that existing institutions have failed to unlock (or perhaps forgotten), better ways of living that a small group might successfully embrace.

This means that every transformative business enterprise, every radical political movement, every truly innovative project contains some cultish elements and impulses — and the decline of those impulses may be a sign that the innovative spirit itself is on the wane. When “people were more open to the idea that not all knowledge was widely known,” Thiel writes, there was more interest in groups that claimed access to some secret knowledge, or offered some revolutionary vision. But today, many fewer Americans “take unorthodox ideas seriously,” and while this has clear upsides — “fewer crazy cults” — it may also be a sign that “we have given up our sense of wonder at secrets left to be discovered.”

correct implication to draw, that the tech-startup boom has evidently been trying to exploit our latent willingness to follow cults, and that 'managerial capitalism' is becoming (again) a cult that increasingly permeates all interactions at all levels of society

we have given up our sense of wonder at secrets left to be discovered, families left to be abandoned, life savings left to be handed over.

new flavors of kool-aid to have people wonder whether we have drunk

Ross DO THAT

ross DOUBT IT

fuck douting a hat

tricky dick we hardly knew ye

where to begin

reading the headline, i thought maybe ross would call for watergatesque sabotage of trump and/or carson

as if the politics of racial division as practiced by republicans in 2015 isn't 100% pulled from the nixon playbook

lmao douthat is so far out in left field, a devout catholic millennial who hates college but loves philosphy and nixon, this really is what the times shdve been looking for in its token conservative all along total irrelevance

ikr!eagerly awaiting catholic convert ross "defender of the faith" douthat's review of spotlight

Got really depressed when I saw the popup tell me that was my 10th free NYT article of 10 for this month

pray to God, he'll give you an 11th free NYT article. Bishop Doutaht will intercede.

what's with the not-quite-austen first line

I thought it was a truth universally accepted that Democrats who want to be president want to be Ronald Reagan.

nope sorry this human-sized ambulatory scrotum is still The Worst

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/opinion/sunday/from-obama-to-trump.html?mwrsm=Email

Reminds me of Addison DeWitt: "You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point."

no question the Obama people, understanding how social media works, have sold an image of the man that does correspond to every loathsome thing about the imperial presidency since 1945, but boomcrashpow 'that's how we got to Trump' is terrible fiction. I can imagine the delight on Brooks' editors face as they thought of the sharing/click possibilities.

boomcrashpow 'that's how we got to Trump'

IN THAT PRESIDENT...

If Obama proved that you can run a presidential campaign as an aspirational cult of personality, in which a Sarah Silverman endorsement counts for as much as a governor or congressman’s support, Trump is proving that you don’t need Silverman to shout “the Aristocrats!” and have people eat it up.

crazy that political kingmaker Sarah Silverman didn't even get an ambassadorship after all she did for Obama

such a fucking prig

James K. Polk wasn't on snapchat i'll tell you what

Chapo Trap House picking apart Douthat's book is just wonderful.

That sounds fun, there a link?

https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-30-freeway-ross-douthat-pt-2-tha-harvard-plug

Not updated nearly often enough, but hilarious: https://twitter.com/ralphdouthat

They don't get to the book dissection for a little while, but the opening bit is good too.

This Chapo Trap House ep is excellent. Douthat is far more of a hyper-Catholic version of a David Mitchell character than I ever expected.

Their earlier ep covering this is here:

https://m.soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-3-freeway-ross-douthat-sailboat-dope

Yeah listened to that one too, amazing.

Honestly I've been listening to Chapo episodes like every day lately, so going through the old ones when there isn't a new one (I even signed on for the premium eps).

Ever since the internet I've kind of scratched my head at why these particular individuals, of all people, get paid so much money to opine about stuff every week

― Burt Stuntin (Hurting 2), Thursday, February 6, 2014 10:17 PM (two years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol I feel like this kind of gets at what's good about Chapo, actually, it's like there's finally someone giving articulate voice to my bafflement at the punditocracy

Awesome Chapo interview:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/07/chapo-trap-house-are-the-vulgar-brilliant-demigods.html

was considering just starting a chapo thread. I feel like in the current ilx climate it wouldn't be very active though.

Just incorporate it into the comedy podcasts thread? That's what I'm going to do