Concept Journal

The conventional wisdom is the same as it ever was, but with a fresh twist: the Republican Party under the former president is now a working-class party. The twist is that this working-class coalition is multiracial. The evidence for that claim is the small percentage of Hispanic voters, in places like Texas and Florida, that sided with Donald Trump first in 2016 than in greater numbers in 2020.

Being known as the party of the working class has been desirable since at least 2011 when Rick Santorum ran for president. That he drove around rural Pennsylvania campaigning in a “beat-up pickup truck” was taken by columnists like the Times’ David Brooks as a sign of the former senator’s “working-class vibe.” That “vibe” was highly coveted, as it signaled authenticity and “real America,” rather than the effeminate wonkiness of the liberal technocratic establishment.

Fact is, “Real America” is what you say when you think Americans living on the coasts or in big urban centers like Atlanta or Chicago or Philadelphia are for some reason not quite American enough, similar to the way a certain president wasn’t quite American enough the same year Santorum was campaigning to unseat him. There was just something about those cities and that president that didn’t make the cut. As far as the GOP goes, it’s a mystery better left unsolved.

Santorum might have had that “working-class vibe,” but he was hardly representative of the working class. His parents were highly educated professionals. He himself has advanced degrees. And anyway, he grew up in a house in the suburbs, for God’s sake.

But his biography wasn’t why Santorum failed to gain necessary traction among white working-class voters. It’s the same reason former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney failed. Neither was openly hostile to people on the political margins of society. Neither enjoyed meanness. Neither spoke explicitly in the language of white power.

Donald Trump, however, did.

He was authentic.

He was a real American.

This is the proper context for understanding conventional wisdom that tells us that the GOP now has a “multiracial working-class coalition.” This is the proper context in which to begin a corrective.

First, the Republican Party’s multiracial working-class coalition isn’t working class. It’s middle class, indeed upper middle class. It’s long been established that the 2016 revolt against the effeminate liberal establishment was really the revolt by the petty bourgeoisie. I’d add that it was a revolt against the forces of liberal democracy that created conditions to elect a not quite real American as president.

Second, the Republican Party’s multiracial working-class coalition isn’t multiracial – unless we mean the equivalent of one nonwhite person in a room full of white people. To be sure, the Republicans have attracted a greater share of the Hispanic vote in places like Texas, but that’s not enough to justify saying that the Republicans are multiracial compared to the Democrats, who are in fact multiracial.

The Democrats have a genuinely multiracial working-class coalition on account of its base being majority nonwhite (and female) and on account of nonwhite people (and women) doing the most working-class work for working-class wages under working-class conditions in which working-class workers are bossed by petty bourgeois bosses.

In that coalition are white people who earn working-class wages – a national average of $50,000 per year per household. Of these are white working-class women who, if they vote, don’t vote for the GOP. They vote for Democrats, because their policies tend to help white working-class women who are bossed by petty bourgeois bosses.

Republican policy is absent – I mean, totally absent – from the conventional wisdom about the GOP having a multiracial working-class coalition. It’s one thing to say the working class is too busy worrying about the cost of gas and food to worry about policy addressing, say, climate change. It’s another to say that the working class wants policies that the GOP is offering. It’s offering nothing.

The Republicans are, however, offering the politics of white power, which is to say, the politics of the wealthy white Christian men who dominate God’s “natural order of things.” If the GOP has any policy concerns, they are for the protection of their white power.

This is what attracts to the GOP some white working-class men. The politics of white power promises the opportunity to ascend the racial hierarchy – to reach the heights of their social betters so that instead of getting bossed, they can be the boss, instead of being white, they can be one of their superwhite petty bourgeois bosses.

This is what attracts to the GOP some Hispanic voters, too. The politics of white power promises the same opportunity to ascend the racial hierarchy, but with a big difference. While white working men can become superwhite (highly unlikely but still), Hispanic voters can never be superwhite. They can, however, become white under strict certain conditions by internalizing the politics of white power – by betraying their cultural identities for a shot at the American dream.

The peddlers of this conventional wisdom with a fresh twist tell us the Democrats are in trouble in the run-up to the midterms. The problem is a matter of class, they say, not a matter of race. That sounds convincing if you don’t understand that we all live in the political reality that white power created. We are its inhabitants.

Don't freak out. I am autistic. These things are not bad. However, can we just...take a second to notice how weird it is that there are entire social media accounts full of 10-second videos of things making crunching noises, people squishing slime in their hands, and objects clacking together, and that enjoying them is mainstream and normal?

It seems that nowadays, almost everyone exhibits sensory-seeking behavior, when just a decade ago, the idea of anyone having "sensory needs" was mostly obscure. It is a mainstream Thing to "crave" certain textures or repetitive sounds.

What's even weirder, is that it's not just that "stim" content is mainstream; the way everything on the internet is filmed seems to look more like "stim" content. TikToks frequently have a sensory-detail-oriented style that is highly unusual in older online content, honing in on the tactile, visual and auditory characteristics of whatever it's showing, whether that's an eye shadow palette or a cabin in a forest.

When an "influencer" markets their makeup brand, they film videos that almost...highlight that it's a physical substance that can be smudged and smeared around. Online models don't just wear clothes they're advertising, they run their hands over them and make the fabric swish and ripple.

I think this can be seen as a symptom of something wrong with the physical world we live in. I think that almost everyone is chronically understimulated.

Spending time alone in the forest has convinced me of this. The sensory world of a forest is not only much richer than any indoor environment, it is abundant with the sorts of sensations that people seem to "crave" chronically, and the more I've noticed and specifically focused on this, the more I've noticed that the "modern" human's surroundings are incredibly flat in what they offer to the senses.

First of all, forests are constantly permeated with a very soft wash of background noise that is now often absent in the indoor world. The sound of wind through trees has a physiological effect you can FEEL. It's always been a Thing that people are relaxed by white noise, which leads to us being put at ease by the ambient hum of air conditioning units, refrigerators and fans. But now, technology has become much more silent, and it's not at all out of place to hypothesize that environments without "ambient" white noise are detrimental to us.

Furthermore, a forest's ambience is full of rhythmic and melodic elements, whereas "indoor" sounds are often harsh, flat and irregular.

Secondly: the crunch. This is actually one of the most notably missing aspects of the indoor sensory world. Humans, when given access to crunchable things, will crunch them. And in a forest, crunchy things are everywhere. Bark, twigs and dry leaves have crisp and brittle qualities that only a few man-made objects have, and they are different with every type of plant and tree.

Most humans aren't in a lot of contact with things that are "destroyable" either, things you can toy with and tear to little bits in your hands. I think virtually everyone has restlessly torn up a scrap of paper or split a blade of grass with their thumbnail; it's a cliche. And since fidget toys in classrooms are becoming a subject of debate, I think it pays to remember that the vast majority of your ancestors learned everything they knew with a thousand "fidget toys" within arm's reach.

And there is of course mud, and clay, and dirt, and wet sand. I'm 100% serious, squishing mud and clay is vital to the human brain. Why do you think Play-Doh is such a staple elementary school toy. Why do you think mud is the universal cliche thing kids play in for fun. It's such a common "stim" category for a reason.

I could go on and on. It's insane how unstimulating most environments humans spend time in are. And this definitely contributes to ecological illiteracy, because people aren't prepared to comprehend how detailed the natural world is. There are dozens of species of fireflies in the United States, and thousands of species of moths. If you don't put herbicides on your lawn, there are likely at least 20 species of plant in a single square meter of it. I've counted at least 15 species of grass alone in my yard.

Would it be overreach to suggest that some vital perceptive abilities are just not fully developing in today's human? Like. I had to TEACH myself to be able, literally able, to perceive details of living things that were below a certain size, even though my eyes could detect those details, because I just wasn't accustomed to paying attention to things that small. I think something...happens when almost all the objects you interact with daily are human-made.

The people that think ADHD is caused by kids' brains being exposed to "too much stuff" by Electronic Devices...do not go outside, because spending a few minutes in a natural environment has more stimuli in it than a few hours of That Damn Phone.

Perhaps Ekko deliberately called Jinx not just to fight, but invited her to play the way they did in childhood. In this way, he awakened certain memories in Jinx that made her use the tactics that she used when she was little, and then her actions became predictable for him. Including this helped Ekko, finally, get ahead of her.

But he didn’t realize that if those memories were still alive in the depths of Jinx’s heart, then Powder was still alive too. And maybe Ekko was ready to take revenge and finish off Jinx…

in another life

Parallels of Arcane (League of Legends)

Parallels of Arcane (League of Legends) - Part 2