Lost in the commentary about the vice-presidential debate is the looming generational issue haunting the political system. On the stage that night was a member of Generation X and a Millennial. J.D. Vance is not the first Millennial to enter politics, but he is the first one to enter the main stage. At forty years old, he would be the third youngest vice president ever, if Trump wins in November. Walz would become the first member of Gen-X to accomplish anything in politics.
Walz and Vance are good examples of their generation. Gen-X was known as the slacker generation, mostly because they were not politicized like the two waves of Baby Boomers that preceded them. They just wanted to do what they needed to do in order to get a decent job and enjoy their life. With the massive boomer generation ahead of them, ambition was pointless, beyond the personal. That is pretty much how it has played out for this relatively small cohort.
Tim Walz fits this profile. He kicked around in his youth, unsure what he wanted to do with himself as an adult. After a while he went back to college. He joined the National Guard because his father told him to join. He then got a job teaching because that was available and required the least effort. Serendipity got him into politics where good timing seemed to be his best asset. Like his generation, Tim Walz is a guy to whom life has happened, rather than a guy who attacked life.
In contrast, the life of J.D. Vance is like a well-executed battle plan. Millennials are strivers and box tickers. Encouraged from the womb by their mostly Baby Boomer parents and teachers to attack life with a detailed plan, this is a generation that started building a resume in kindergarten. Everything about their primary schooling was aimed at getting into a good college. College was about landing in the right career and their careers have been the accumulation of credentials.
That describes the life of J.D. Vance. One path out of poverty was the military, so he went into the military. That opened the path to college, so he went to the best college he could and got the best credentials he could get. Those credentials opened the door to a career in the swankiest of careers in venture capital. Unlike Walz, nothing about the life of J.D. Vance is due to chance other than his current position. One does not have much control over the choices made by Donald Trump.
The result of this generation gap was evident on stage. Walz probably would have arrived in his Elmer Fudd costume if they let him, for no other reason that it is more comfortable than a suit. He probably watched sports instead of prepping for the biggest moment of his life. Vance, on the other hand, was a machine. He crammed for the test because it is what he has done his whole life. He went to the debate to ace the exam and that is exactly what we saw.
You can expand this out to the top of the ticket. It is both symbolic and ironic that the race is between an old white guy who speaks for the America that is slowly slipping away and diverse girl boss who exists only in the imagination of the bitter, angry managerial class. Trump is not technically a Baby Boomer, but he is a man with the Baby Boomer sensibilities. He is a guy who thinks the economy is the country, so a good economy means everything is fine.
Harris is a Baby Boomer X’er, but her alien existence places her outside of what most people would understand by the term. She was born and raised outside of the country by parents who were not Americans. If a writing team from Hollywood took a break from ruining classic movies and were tasked with creating a story involving politics, they would make the star a diverse girl boss like Harris. She would be smart and sober-minded, however, miraculously always coming out on top.
The Harris as diverse girl boss from the movies can be taken further by the fact that she has never earned anything in her life. This is the way it works in film. Diverse girl boss never has to struggle and doubt like the traditional white lead. She is just given everything she needs by the writers. That is Kamala Harris. The biggest challenge of her life has simply been showing up without her dress on backwards. Now she expects to be handed the presidency.
The one thing missing from the picture is the hysterical female Millennial. Another feature of that generation is that strivers like J.D. Vance have had to navigate the hysterical female Millennial with a head full of feminist nonsense. Female Millennial hysteria as escapism is probably worth a book treatment. Much of the lunacy of the last twenty years has been driven by childish girls who became girl bosses rather than wives and mothers with a stake in their community.
The absence of this character from the current drama is probably the biggest white pill of this election cycle. Even in the unserious world of modern politics, the hysterical female Millennial is shunted over to the side when the adults are talking. In this regard, the rise of J.D. Vance could be signaling a return to normalcy once the Baby Boomers shuffle off to the shuffleboard courts. Perhaps the answer to the harpy all along was to simply ignore her while getting the job done.
One final angle here. J.D. Vance is the full expression of managerial man. The fact that he walked away from that system into the populist revolt against it suggest that managerialism lacks the cultural fulfillment to sustain itself. One reason the media has been told to hate him is that he is seen as a traitor. This is the main reason the system hates Trump; he betrayed his class. This suggests that the new left and right in our politics are managerialism versus culturalism.
The main take away from this election cycle for Baby Boomers and Generation-X should be that your time is done. The people who will be running things starting now are the people in their thirties and forties. That means our politics and culture will reflect the sensibilities of this generation. The least ethically centered generation in American history will be defining the nation. Millennials are an end-justifies-the-means generation and maybe that is what will be required going forward.
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I am at the very leading edge of the millennial generation. Millennials think that having a credential equals competence. Sometimes that’s true, but more often than not in this day and age it simply means the credential holder is good at ticking boxes and following orders. On the whole, my generation is not good at critical thinking or navigating uncertain waters. Even worse, many millennials think that having a magic piece of paper makes them smart. Personally, I’m not excited about my generation taking the helm. All the worst people I’ve worked for have been millennials, and as you point… Read more »
I’m noticing that a lot of older Millennials are finally figuring out that their credentials do not count for much, and that nothing beats experience. Unfortunately, it seems like they are about ten years behind where they could have been. I find they tend to lean on Gen X a lot. The Boomers I worked with really had a hard time letting the Millennials get experience and take on more responsibility. Not sure why, but now that the Boomers are retiring, Millennials seem to be doing better.
Not exactly. We just got tired of their constant absences and “work-life balance” issues, as if we didn’t have to deal with that ourselves.
“Sometimes that’s true, but more often than not in this day and age it simply means the credential holder is good at ticking boxes and following orders. On the whole, my generation is not good at critical thinking or navigating uncertain waters. Even worse, many millennials think that having a magic piece of paper makes them smart.”
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-soler?trk=public_post_feed-actor-name
I’m optimistic, but with a realistic bent. I share your worry about our generation, as they seem to be the living manifestation of an appeal to authority (see above LinkedIn).
I just read an AEI op-ed about the current lack of Navy missile production. This op-ed was written by an early Millennial Karen Swampite with all the right credentials in her bio.
Apparently, having the right credentials absolves one of clicking on the “Spelling & Grammar” button in Word to address incomplete sentences, run-on sentences, poor grammar, lack of punctuation, and obvious typos.
This swill is what our betters in DC are publically posting, yet people still wonder why the GAE is falling apart.
No way Karen Swampite is a real name.
The woman’s real name is Mackenzie Eaglen.
Here is the link to her recent AEI/National Interest op-ed about Navy missile production:
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-u-s-navys-missile-production-problem-looks-dire/
I enjoy the fact there is a typo in the first two characters of the piece. Equally amusing is the fact the first run-on sentence is also the first paragraph of the piece.
Starting with a literal hundred word sentence, bold.
You need Dramamine to read that thing. She must have graduated from the Moldbug writer seminar.
Vance is a perfect example of what you are talking about, which is why Zman’s enthusiasm for him continues to be baffling. Maybe its a generational thing to notice, but everything about JD screams inauthentic managerial box-checker who will say ro do whatever it takes to advance up the ladder. Soft military service bona-fide for admittance to the wing of the uniparty still open to young white guys, check. Diverse lawyer girl-boss wife to verify that he isn’t one of those types, check. Buttboy for Thiel to get his foot in the door, check. Slamming Trump as Hitler when it… Read more »
Come on, man, you’are dulling my buzz, and I would wager that the filtered diverse girl boss (with kids) will do a better job keeping us out of WWIII
If Vance were replaced by someone you would find satisfactory, who would that someone be?
This is a reality based question, so it has to be a real person, not a shopping list of ideas, attitudes and physical characteristics.
Millennials and zoomers are in a two track world at this point. If you are a woman, or a non-white person, then yes, the credential equals competence. As long as you have that piece of paper, the system will take care of you. If you are a White man, well you’re probably not going to be able to get the credential, and even if you did, it doesn’t count for anything. So this means that the most resourceful and hardworking people of this cohort are forced to be resourceful, hardworking, and independent as they know the system and the society… Read more »
But in the trades the blue collar white guy is still 95% plus of the work force. That is one place young white men can still excel. Of course you have to work long hours in shitty conditions, but it is what it is.
Don’t see any girl bosses or magical nuggras restoring power in the Southeast right now. Sure see a ton of big corn fed white boys busting hump working 20 hour days in the heat and humidity – making 90 dollars an hour or more.
The interactions between Harris and Walz are straight out of a 1980s or 1990s sitcom or TV commercial that was written for Gen Xers and Boomers. On the one hand you have the goofball husband and on the other hand you have the wise and kind wife. The husband screws up and the wife fixes things. The best thing the husband can do is just shut up and listen to his wife and do what she says. Etc. They leaned into a surprisingly old-timey dynamic. I don’t know if this was intentional or just what fell out considering the sensibilities… Read more »
It reminds me of the show The Jeffersons. The neighbor family was a black woman and a goofy white guy. What made the show funny was the absurdity of the race relations. In a better age, our betters could laugh along with the prols about such things. In this age, where our betters are incapable of laughter, the humor for us in the utter seriousness with which they present absurdist race relations.
Nice pull. Totally forgot about that couple, but you’re dead on.
Point taken but the black woman and goofy white guy were the in-laws. The neighbor was a goofy British white guy. I had to include white because these days a “British” guy isn’t necessarily white.
Which is why I use the word “English” to describe such people
Remember the zebra? I never understood that. He was a white guy. Even as a 8 year old I knew that a black and a white priduced a mullato not another white
i watched that and good times and then the Cosby show which was the apex of the black family that “moved on up”.
never did happen in real life did it?
“On the one hand you have the goofball husband and on the other hand you have the wise and kind wife.”
Yes. I’d say about 90% of broadcast advertising uses this template. Once you notice it, you can’t unnotice it. It drives me nuts.
Invariably, the “solution” proffered by the “intelligent” woman is to call some white guy to fix the problem…
White guy?? Please tell me where I can watch this dynamic. Every last ad I see – home center, laboratory, pest control, banking, veterinarian, etc., etc., ad nauseum – depicts a black woman as the problem solver.
Increasingly true, but the template began decades ago with the “Honey, I can’t fix the leaking faucet!!! What will I ever do???”
“Don’t worry, dear. I’ll just call Joe Dickmore Plumbing and Heating, and THEY’LL get it done!”
One of the initial “quirky” conversations between the two released by the campaign was literally ripped form a sitcom, complete with Walz saying he liked mayo tacos.
I think they are genuinely shocked white guys find him repulsive.
Besides coming up from nothing, Vance has two very interesting – and encouraging – qualities. First, despite absorbing the feminine and liberal rhetoric of the establishment (thus his early dislike of Trump), he grew out of it and saw the reality of life. I’d suspect that many Millennial men had a similar experience. Second, as Z notes, he’s rejecting the managerial class that he so desperately wanted to join and that offers him an easy path to fame and fortune. King Cobra is doing the same. I’d suspect that these Millennial men from outside the tribe understand that they’ll never… Read more »
I think the real reason for the class betrayal is that Vance (unlike the Boomers and X’ers) is young enough to spend all day everyday on the internet, and over the past 8 years he’s gradually become radicalized by all of our hilarious memes.
Don’t underestimate mocking.
Interesting take. An an early X-er myself, I grew up in a world defined by the Boomers. By the time I was fifteen I was already sick and tired of hearing Steppenwolf and Hendrix endless shit about how great Woodstock was. Nonetheless, I was a “conservative” because up until that point, The System provided a good life for the white male with a college degree, and even one without. That turned out to be no longer true by the time I got into the workforce. In order to succeed as a white man, you had to be like Walz —… Read more »
“By the time I was fifteen I was already sick and tired of hearing Steppenwolf and Hendrix endless shit about how great Woodstock was.”
I probably will never emotionally connect with the Beatles because my teachers could not shut up about how amazing the Beatles were.
I can look at their music on staff paper and see the harmonic sophistication over what came before.
But those guys irritate the hell out of me, especially John Lennon.
St. Peppers is good. The rest of it is mediocre garbage.
My mind knows that they did some innovative stuff, but I can’t get past the smugness. Idiot Ringo still flashing peace signs. I just can’t tolerate it. John’s “Imagine” makes me angry.
If I must listen to the Beatles, I chose Abbey Road.
Musically I liked them better before they became hippies. To my ear they never improved on Love Me Do.
I hear you there. I hate the boomer music you hear playing over the PA in certain restaurants and the like. I do like 70’s classic rock (Aerosmith, Led Zepplin) but rarely listen to it. I also like disco and funk(I know its uncool but I don’t care). The problem with boomer music its usually the soft crap that is neither hard rock or disco/funk. Its stuff like Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, or Elton John. I really hate this shit and hated it even as a kid. If I hear it in restaurant, I will ask for them to change… Read more »
I do respect the boomers in certain ways. I have no knowledge of the 60’s boomers. But I do remember the boomers who came of age in the early to mid 70’s. I admire their dynamism and spirit of independence. They ALL emphatically got their driver’s licenses on their 16th birthdays and youth car culture existed at the time (this died by the early 80’s). They were always going places with their friends in cars. A young guy in Columbus OH in 1975 would throw his kit in the boot and drive out to California at the drop of a… Read more »
Another factor for the future of politics is that for a lot of right-wing millennials is that we remember an America before the time of overt Leftist insanity. Of course, it was still there in the 90s and 00s, but the Left was more secretive about their ambitions. Now it is nakedly put out for many to see. Seeing signs declaring “mass deportation” in the crowds gives one hope that moving forward the ideas of the Right will take more precedence in politics. Time will tell if this creates the changes needed to correct the course our nation is on.
Yes…our millennial kids are just starting to understand what they have gotten themselves into…..,.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BaxchRMuAZg
“Of course, it was still there in the 90s and 00s, but the Left was more secretive about their ambitions. Now it is nakedly put out for many to see. Seeing signs declaring “mass deportation” in the crowds gives one hope that moving forward the ideas of the Right will take more precedence in politics.”
I’m optimistic when I come here (Zblog) and I view more of the above link. Pete Q (Xer), the other guys millennials and zoomers. Maybe the OGC (Old Glory Club) isn’t an answer in and of itself…..but we need to organize.
I just want to focus on Vance and not get into the debate about generations. Vance can process information, probably large amounts of information, and arrive at decisions on that basis. This can’t be done by Biden or by Harris, and probably not by Trump either. This is a key asset. If you’re talking of merit, Vance probably has it.
It’s also weird that the Harris/Walz ticket mentions that they grew up “middle class” every chance they get. A lot of the lemmings on the left are running around saying the Democrats are the party that helps the middle class and the working class. If we go by conventional markers of being middle class up through 2008 (having enough in your savings account to cover the cost of a new transmission, annual family vacations, home ownership etc.), there are far fewer people in the middle class and the concept is on its way out entirely. In the coming US you’ll… Read more »
I’ll be a bit pedantic. Walz is a Boomer. He was born in 1964. Technically, Gen-X starts in 1965.
He’s also older than Kamala. Looks like Gen X will get nothing, again.
You are correct. Harris is an X’er, sort of.
The birth year 1964 shades into both cohorts, I’ve always thought. They’re the latest boomers and the earliest X-ers (a term that never caught on with me, and seems meaningless—although maybe that’s the idea).
For an individual born that year, I speculate that the parents’ generation might speak to whether you metastasized into a boomer or X-er.
People born from 1960 to 1964 are the Dazed and Confused generation. That tiny, lost generation that was in high school from 1974 to 1982, at least outside of the coasts. The 80s didn’t hit the Midwest and South until ~1983.
Thank you. The “Boomer” epithet is sometimes understandable, but it paints with way too wide a brush. In my experience there is a lot of variation within that “Dazed & Confused” group, and not a terribly noticeable amount in common with the Woodstock or Yuppie types.
Trump is also a Boomer, being born in June of 46.
Yeah aren’t Walz and Kamala basically the same age?
Joining in pedantry: Trump, born in 1946, is a Baby Boomer.
Correct. We’re going to get completely skipped over.
We can look forward to a knock on the door by a nice Millennial who explains that we are old and expensive, so we must get into the suicide pod for some Canadian health care.
Canada leads Texas in lethal injections by probably two orders of magnitude. One interesting difference is that you have to be convicted of aggravated murder in Texas. No such fuss in Canada, being depressed is plenty qualification.
It is hard to overestimate the wickedness of what is happening in the West these days
Canada has doctors literally suggesting that people kill themselves instead of billing services to their health care system. Sarah Palin was prophetic. Of course, this was always the plan.
And people think you’re exaggerating. Mind-blowing times…
2023 “MAID” stats should be coming out soon, but my estimate is that Canadian doctors have humanely murdered about 15.5k people that year, which would rank it as the 4th leading cause of death.
I have no doubt my Millennial son-in-law would gas me to death quicker than you could say “Doctor Mengele.”
(He’s attending an elite med school, BTW…)
Look to see if their anesthesiologists are trained in using Zyklon-B. Traditional medicine is important!
Yep. The Boomers will push the debt to GDP up to a point that even the bond market can’t handle it. Just as we retire and the Boomers die off, the debt crisis will finally hit. Social Security and Medicare will be in tatters.
I don’t think it’s technical at all. He doesn’t have a genx vibe.
I haven’t been able to get past the manufactured nature of Vance. How his memoir, when he was an unknown nobody, instantly became a glowingly reviewed NYT bestseller, with a movie version directed by Ron Howard. You might have noticed the NYT ignores big selling conservative books of which it disapproves. Perhaps there was a shortage of memoirs written by unknown, self absorbed people (that’s a joke). How he somehow became a venture capitalist with no evident prior experience in finance. His backing by certain people in the national security state/globohomo tech panopticon. His first job out of Yale, working… Read more »
Trump was born in 1946, which makes him the first of the boomers. The Clintons (both) and Dubya were all born in 1946. The people born in the 1940’s had the world handed to them on a silver platter, and for the most part, they pissed on it. Walz’s problem is not that he is a Gen X. Its that he is a lazy leftist. He is a lot like Sanders in this regard. Most Gen X’ers are very individualists and, thus, not susceptible to the leftist collectivism espoused by Walz. Millennials are mediocre at best. They are the “follow… Read more »
The “greatest generation” would be more accurately called the most obedient generation, because the thing it was greatest at was following orders. Sometimes that was good, and sometimes it wasn’t.
Yes. My father was WW2 and mother the first of the Silents. I agree they were the obedient generation. They clicked their heels. The only generation I ever liked was my grandparents generation (born around 1900). They really were out on their own and did what was necessary to create their own lives. They were probably the last generation in this boat. The Silents were OK. I’m known many successful Silent entrepreneurs and business owners. They tend to be quite”Heinleinian’ in their style, politics, and worldview. Gen X’ers have some Silent vibe in them, but not as much as I… Read more »
But where does his novel Hillbilly Elegy fit into this picture? Vance is an unusually talented millennial it would appear….
I think one reason I have always been warm to Vance is that he is an outlier. As an outlier, I appreciate what that means at a personal level. It has taken an extreme amount of self-discipline for Vance to get to this point.
Yeah, you’re kind of the JD Vance of the Dissident Right, except you weren’t the pudgy kid but the wrestler, which is why you saw through the shit a lot earlier than Vance.
Coming from nowhere towns gives some of us a power than people who grew up upper-middle class in nice suburbs generally don’t possess.
“kind of the JD Vance of the Dissident Right”
Z Man seems to be an inveterate bachelor so we probably don’t have to worry about any unsavory suprises about who he marries and reproduces with.
Although I do wish there were some little Zs running around… Maybe he can swing something like Peter B did, late in life…
Z would be a great father. He’d have a tough time being a husband with today’s women though. Born 50 years too late. He’d have been a great family man in 1935. The wife happy to, you know, be a wife and mother with a solid man for a husband. The kids wrestling in the small living room while Z drinks a Scotch and reads some book.
If I recall correctly, when he first moved to his mountain lair, Zman’s realtor and decorator were conspiring to find him a lady friend.
Any updates on that front Z? 🙂
That book has always rubbed me the wrong way. His grandmother supposedly set his grandfather on fire for coming home drunk. WHY is that story in the book? It happened long before he was born.
It’s one thing to hide from this kind of thing. It’s quite another to put it on display. It’s not even part of his story.
I remember reading it long ago. Even then, it seemed like it was written by a guy setting himself up for something bigger.
Same. It was billed as a great far-right novel but came off as hick-hating poverty porn. Also, it’s poorly and rather impersonally written – boring most of all. Back then, Vance wasn’t a name in politics, but considering him being groomed by the neocons and what followed since, I now suspect it’s ghost written. Also, and I’m not going to stop mentioning this, Vance wears eyeliner – probably his wife’s kohl. That negates anything based the guy has ever done or said. You want hillbilly porn? Read some of Joe Bageant’s West Virginia old columns, they’ve got a lot more… Read more »
It’s not even part of his story.
The book is about him and his family. His grandparents were part of his family.
Hillbilly Elegy was planned like everything else in Vance’s life (I say this with respect). The guy who got into Yale using a plausibly Jewish surname knew exactly how the liberal literary world would react to a tale of supposed condescension and woe aimed at rural Whites. In reality the story was more sympathetic, but that didn’t stop the gleeful hand-rubbing. Vance played the game for a while, even to making the obligatory Trump denunciation when it looked like he was still a joke. But then he and his near-elite sponsors in venture and tech realized Trump was on to… Read more »
As a GenX with 3 GenZ children I feel qualified to judge GenZ as strange. Not really liberal, but strange, VERY VERY VERY strange. Hanging out on discord playing Call of Duty or Minecraft and calling each other faggots is, apparently, a fun Friday night. Unfortunately, my children also love to send me memes all day every day. Memes that I do not understand, but are, apparently, hilarious.
I have a little hope for the future. The Jolly Heretic often talks about the general lowering of IQ. And how as a result, politics becomes less gentlemanly and more punitive. Like jailing opponents, etc, as we’re starting to see now. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, as in every other era, the younger generations are more leftist, so they always have the numbers in that demographic. But of the ones who are political, on what we call the left or right, are more strident and less gentlemanly about it. So we’re going to get our outrageously retarded leftists, but also our… Read more »
OT, but I thought worth the mention.
I think it was BCE that had a story that related that citizens in the ravaged area of Appalachia, have begun to lynch looters and hang a sign on them reading “looter”.
While I can’t confirm this,(apparently 3 goblins were dispatched), I do like stories with happy endings.
Remember boys and girls, no one (from the G),is coming to save you.
Its going to be you and your neighbors that will get you through the current shit show.
Looting in Appalachia: Hillbilly Roulette
Interesting. Harris “ BORN and raised outside the country”…
if so, we will have crossed a constitutional barrier seemingly without a peep.
I think there’s a very real possibility that’s the case. Here’s an article pointing out that Nikki Haley wasn’t really eligible to be President either under the “natural-born citizen” clause.
https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/01/the-constitution-absolutely-prohibits-nikki-haley-from-being-president-or-vice-president/
The definition’s a little unclear but apparently the term was meant to imply American citizens born to American citizens and not anchor babies like Nimrata and Kamalatoe.
McCain was born out of the US. I don’t believe the issue has ever been fully adjudicated, but jus sanguinis would seem to cover the subject. Now, I don’t disagree with your point – but I would point to a certain Barry as proving this is a decided issue.
But then again, the governor of Hawaii swore he know of His (sic) birth. I believe doves flew, rainbows shined, the very sea parted for His entrance.
Every time Kamala gets up and says “I was raised in a middle class home” I get the urge to yell “IN CANADA.” Spending significant time outside the country you’re running to govern should be counted as a massive negative, and nobody’s been willing to hang that albatross around her neck.
That would mean acknowledging Saint Obama’s own short-comings.
Harris was born in Oakland in 1964 to foreigners. Indian mom and Jamaican dad, both grad students at UC-Berkeley. She has citizenship solely by virtue of being born in the U.S. Spent her teen years in Canada with her mom so not really culturally American.
The Zman is onto something with the managerial vs. cultural divide.
Born in an Oakland hospital to citizens of Jamaica and India on student visa’s —
That says “foreign overlord” is very much a thing.
Ouch, that breakdown of the route Generation X charted through life is unsettlingly accurate.
There is a log jam in the corporate world due to the sheer size differential in the Boomer and X generations.
Most Xers that have effectively bypassed or broken through this jam have adopted very Boomerish attitudes.
Hear, hear. I was four years old during Woodstock, five when the Kent State shooting happened. I wasn’t alive when Kennedy was shot. All those cultural touchstones of the Boomers meant nothing to me.
Consequently I was amazed at how many of my college cohort of the ’80s adopted the hippie/Boomer culture — the weed, the hair, the tie-dyes. Some didn’t and became Yuppies, of course. Some were hippies during undergrad and Yuppies after graduation…
OT but seems to me that the Israel war is being merged into an AI marketing campaign Now that Jews are all over AI in America and seem to have cornered the market, at least in its infant state, their war effort at the direction of their amazing AI tech is on display and on offer to the world’s governments. Any buyers? LOL why it was so great to see Iran zip right past their defenses. A truly emperor has no clothes moment for the whole world to see. Now that Jews are considered losers, watch normie Americans jump off… Read more »
I didn’t read the book, but the Ron Howard movie “Hillbilly Elegy” was unmitigated horseshit. Truly awful episodic sop about his druggie mom and his tough grandma who teaches him, “there are good terminators, bad terminators, and neutral terminators.”
What kind of guy writes his memoirs in his 20s, anyway? He is a Peter Thiel puppet is he not?
Do realize that Kamala is known as “kneepads” because that it how she got to where she is today. The fact that she is the democratic nominee is the surest indicator that the office of president is just a front person. Its the system itself that actually runs things.
I’m a Boomer and I approve of this message. Take over, kids.
I guess boomers and xers are mindsets not dates.
i don’t get this. Vance seems to just be managerializing the populist revolt. There was some dumb movie in the 80s where Chong or cheech dropped out in the jungles of South America and returned to the states to find their 60s “revolution “ to be turned into a brand. That’s what “jd” (yo, jd…still sounds weird to me. Wonder if ootra or oopie or whatever his wife’s name is calls him “jd”) reminds me of.
No mass movement lasts long unless it attracts smart people. The gungho get the party started, but must eventually give way to the smart managers and administrators who make aspiration into policy.
Exactly. People dismiss THE LOTUS EATERS as British Normie Conservatards, which actually has a lot of merit, but sometimes the podcast is really insightful. Carl Benjamin had Ed Dutton on as a guest very recently and they discussed the outlines of the very phenomenon you described here. They noted the Dissident Right started with aggressive, disorganized outliers, then attracted Big Brain folks, and when the smart fraction gave it a structure and a future, women joined and are in the normal process of becoming strident advocates. As the show noted, the dissent had been there for generations but social media… Read more »
“One final angle here. J.D. Vance is the full expression of managerial man. The fact that he walked away from that system into the populist revolt against it suggest that managerialism lacks the cultural fulfillment to sustain itself.” But managerialism is a very large and powerful system, a fat pipeline to power for a particular kind of talent and ambition. It needs no “cultural fulfillment” to go on as a system. Individuals may come to feel shorted by the system, but so long as it exists, it’ll have willing recruits coming in at the low-power end. And as long as… Read more »
You have hinted strongly at a reason why a much better religion is needed to defeat and replace managerialism—and neo-liberalism, Anglo-American imperialism, Israelism, scientism, and globalist unipolarism. (Am I being reduntant here?) Without a proper religion, people are like lost little atoms waiting to be collectivized and degraded into the condition of farm animals, as were Evropean Americans during and after the War of Secession and Yankee Vindictiveness. Many Christians have critiqued those problems, but they operate from a position of epistological skepticism which they have in common with so-called post-modernists. (Notice however that some PM’s flip this skepticism on… Read more »
Left unsaid is that Vance ran for senator because someone(s) in the state wanted him to be senator which is, perhaps, even more interesting as it says something about what those powerful people think of the system.
Waltz is an old creep but it would be interesting to get a better hold on what Vance is really all about. So far I sense a careerist but not sure
Vance is a striver who is being mugged by reality, but the mugging isn’t over yet. His origins remind me of John Galt in “Atlas Shrugged” (but remember that JG sabotaged the USA to get his hands on the power companies’ distribution networks.) Vance seems to be rising above the mentality of the prideful opportunist who’s obsessed with grabbing everything he can as fast as he can. Read “Hillbilly Elegy”. The pages turn themselves. JDV reveals a tremendous amount about his own low origins and upbringing. There’s considerable historical detail, too, in there about the region he’s from and the… Read more »
I agree. Vance was a smart but poor kid who wanted to get out and succeed. He followed the path but discovered that the managerial class and its rewards didn’t quite do it for him – though I’m sure that he like the money that he already has. A lot of us who come from nowhere towns and reach some success (not his level but some) find that we never quite feel at home with the country club crowd. Ironically, the country club people that I’ve known (I’m not a member, just know them through other venues) have generally been… Read more »
DeSantis seems to have similar attitudes about the managerial class.
There is at least one interview or op-ed where he confirmed that he found the anti-American attitudes he encountered on Yale’s campus repugnant.
Reading the article, I am reminded of a movie trope called “Mary Sue”. I was turned onto it with the Star Wars reboot and the main character is someone who did not train, or know about the force, but was incredibly adept at it. Kamala is a fric*ing Mary Sue. So many wish it…
> One final angle here. J.D. Vance is the full expression of managerial man. The fact that he walked away from that system into the populist revolt against it suggest that managerialism lacks the cultural fulfillment to sustain itself.
Or that he’s a plant
He’s no sunflower.
The power of the Boomers is like that of the undead; seemingly immortal. As a child of the 80s I naively thought a stake had been driven through their hippie hearts with Reagan’s 49 state win and the kids liking Alex P. Keaton instead of his hippy-dippy parents. Finally, we were going to send the Beatles and Woodstock and Hendrix back to hell! We like Journey and REO Speedwagon, godammit! But no! It’s the 80s that got flushed down the memory hole and since the 90s it was boomers resurrected stronger than ever! Still woodstock, still beatles, s still peace… Read more »
Off topic, but so funny that you will laugh tears of paranoia. Danny is becoming a master of AI parody.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcpSOgWsLoc
This is like a detailed analysis of the gang in the Mystery Machine. Shaggy, you see, was just a hippie slacker whose only policies were limits on hits between passes, and tireless advocacy for Salt and Vinegar chips to alleviate the munchies. Velma, on the other hand, had her nose stuck in a book since the time she could crawl. Her exhaustive knowledge of subjects ranging from Botany to Phrenology gave her the intellectual edge to crush Shaggy in their debates about the amount of wood a woodchuck could potentially chuck while the Gang were idling in the Sambo’s parking… Read more »
“Trump is not technically a Baby Boomer, but he is a man with the Baby Boomer sensibilities. He is a guy who thinks the economy is the country …” Ironically, it’s the same reason that some good-faith never-Trumpers (yes, they do exist) hate President Trump. They think that a nation is just an economic subdivision and that human beings are just economic production units. They have no use for patriotism, family, loyalty, or morality; instead, everything is about someone’s financial bottom line. The other day, a never-Trumper who I know personally was ranting that the people of Springfield, Ohio should… Read more »
Productivism is a turbocancer of the Industrial Revolution. Evropean Americans are very slow to learn this lesson, just as they’re slow to learn that a “Land of Opportunity” is a land of replaceable opportunists.
In the era of our ancestral evolution (predominantly small tribal units), the smartest and strongest rose to positions of leadership because that enhanced the survival prospects of the group. Then civilization and modernity happened, and man-made selection gave us Bush-the-Retarded, Fake & Gay Obama, a pedophile dementia patient, and the soon to be elected first Prostitute President. The West has earned its demise, and we cannot talk out way out of this dilemma. Only the resurrection of hard men can save us now.
Great column today, Zman. Insightful about the present and plausibly foresighted about the future. But mostly true to lived experience, I feel.