Elite Morons

The post Nostalgia curdles by Ryan Broderick (Garbage Day) writes,

“I can’t think of anything more ugly and insane than combining American media’s desperate obsession with Trump and the era of politics he created in 2010s with American media’s toxic obsession with high-profile court cases. In fact, right-wing media is already pushing for Trump’s trial to be televised. So if you ever wondered what the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial would have been like if Depp became president at the end, well, now you might have a chance to find out.”

“[…] the idea of giving a tiny blue cartoon checkmark to 23-year-olds with open floor plan jobs that were paid salaries consisting entirely of granola bars, La Croix, and Sixpoint beer caused so much psychic damage to America’s ruling class that it would eventually cause the end of social media as we know it.”

America’s ruling class is composed of fabulously over-educated and stupid-to-the-bone people who can’t stop obsessing over Donald Trump because they’ve been ordered to obsess over him by the deep state. The deep state rejects anything and anyone that does not promulgate it. Donald Trump is an asshole and a liar and a con-man and a showman and a nearly pure creature of ego and vanity and narcissism.

He has committed war crimes. He has ordered the deaths of innocents. None of that is why he is going down. He is going down because he doesn’t fit. He is not chummy with the right people.

You know how Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz and Joe Biden can sometimes all get along? Trump is not like that. He’s not in that club. He doesn’t understand which side his bread is buttered on because his number-one priority is getting attention for himself, no matter what. He has found that promising people stuff that they want gets their attention.

Donald Trump is outside the circle. That’s why they’re charging him with 34 felony counts—all stemming from a single payment. They’re stacking charges like they do against poor minorities because this is how the justice system deals with people that it’s going to punish no matter what, regardless of what it can prove that they’ve done.

George Bush? Bill Clinton? Nancy Pelosi?

No indictments. No talk of war crimes. No talk of treason. Fabulously wealthy. Famous. Accepted. Popular.

All inside the circle.

Donald Trump? Same crimes. Indictments. Uncontrolled.

Outside the circle.

Anyway, the people cheering loudest for Trump to go down are the most highly educated people in America. And they’re all stupid. They allow themselves to be distracted by bullshit while ignoring a million other things that they could expend their effort and attention on.

The article The Club of Rome’s New Malthusianism-Lite Report by Ronald Bailey (Reason) writes,

“What Malthus did not foresee was how modern science coupled with the dynamism of increasingly free markets would produce over the next two centuries what economist Deidre McCloskey has called the Great Enrichment. Entrepreneurial human ingenuity makes it possible to produce food at an exponential rate that outstrips population growth, resulting in more calories per person.”

The article starts out with “Malthusianism is just so damned tiresome.” This line of reasoning that we’re not using things up faster is also tiresome. This is extremely short-term thinking. The humus layer is being used up so quickly that the next generation won’t be able to use it anymore. The massive boom was also enabled by hydrocarbon-based (read: fossil-fuel-based) fertilizers to which we and our awesome process are nearly hopelessly addicted.

But, sure, Malthus was wrong. Just like peak oil was wrong, right? We found more fossil fuels, so fuck you. Of course, we’re getting them with fracking and they’re even more short-lived than previous sources and we’re pouring more CO₂ into the air than we ever have before, but sure, peak-oilers were wrong. Just like Malthus was wrong.

All of these seers that predict that humanity won’t be able to fool itself into doing something medium- and long-term that is shockingly destructive just because it works in the short term—and only incidentally helps people eat while further enriching a relative handful of people—are … wrong.

All of this reasoning is based on Plato’s Philosopher Kings argument where a handful of people know better than anyone else how to run things. We just have to trust that their plan—which is to enrich themselves massively while executing an undemocratic plan to “help humanity” as a side-effect to their wealth—will actually work. It never does. Now, we’re left to watch as Antarctica slides into the ocean even faster than we’d thought it could. These people (like the author of the piece above) are the embodiment of the “this is fine” dog.

This is fine

But I shouldn’t be surprised. Ronald Bailey has proven, again and again, to be a dogmatic ideologue at a magazine that thankfully hosts more reasoned opinions and writing. It’s hard not to escape the conclusion that his ethics amount to: “as long as he and his known cohort are doing fine under the current system, then everyone who isn’t is a whiner and trying to be killjoy about how awesome everything is.”

In the same vein, Roaming Charges: Broken Windows Theory of Political Crime by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch) writes,

“[…] globally new oil and gas projects either approved in 2022 or slated to be approved between 2023 and 2025 “could cause 70 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions,” an amount that is more than 30 times the United States’ total carbon dioxide emissions in 2021.”

Yeah, no problem. Humanity will tech their way out of this one. Look at all the beautiful technology! We have the most beautiful technology.

On AI, the interview Tech guru Jaron Lanier: ‘The danger isn’t that AI destroys us. It’s that it drives us insane’ by Simon Hattenstone (Guardian) writes,

“There’s a lot of cool stuff on the internet. I think TikTok is dangerous and should be banned yet I love dance culture on TikTok and it should be cherished.” Why should it be banned? “Because it’s controlled by the Chinese, and should there be difficult circumstances there are lots of horrible tactical uses it could be put to. I don’t think it’s an acceptable risk. It’s heartbreaking because a lot of kids love it for perfectly good reasons.””

This is the well-informed opinion of hyper-genius Jaron Lanier. Seriously. He sounds like Chuck Todd or Anderson Cooper or Alex Jones or any of myriad other talking heads in the mainstream media.

How can these supposedly hyper-intelligent people live with knowing so little about the world that they inhabit that they end up sounding like the stupidest hyper-jingoistic state senator when they’re asked about anything approaching public policy?

“Because it’s controlled by the Chinese.” Jesus H. Christ, what a knee-jerk, dumb-fuck, American answer. And then “should there be difficult circumstances”. Jesus jumped up, just be a man about it and say “should the U.S. start a war with China.” But, no, he can’t do that. Because he might be a hyper-genius, but he’s an American first, steeped in that miasma of dogmatism, patriotism and vileness that passes for a culture there. It makes everyone stupid.