Mixed Nuts

The GOP has the lion’s share of macadamias, pistachios, and cashews, while the Democrats have mostly peanuts.

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Dear Reader (Including the dude in Brazil who hasn’t changed jobs since 1922),

As at least one working woman with a riding crop probably said to Roger Stone, I’ve got to put a clock on this one. 

So, I’m going to do this “diarist” style (where a bunch of mostly disconnected thoughts and observations are connected by the chewing gum, baling wire, and duct tape of stylistic legerdemain and poetic license). I call it diarist style because I think the old New Republic’s diarist columns, at their best, managed to pull this off.

I’m not sure that Elon Musk is going to pull off this Twitter thing. I wish him luck and, contrary to an amazing number of people, I don’t think this is the biggest deal in the world. In fact, I think the most significant thing about Musk’s (very likely) acquisition of Twitter is not the acquisition of Twitter itself but how big a deal people are making of it. Abe Greenwald over at Commentary said it best a couple weeks ago, “People believe Twitter is the real world. They therefore believe that Elon Musk is buying the world.” 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    I will point out that Brazil nuts are probably the most expensive nuts in the mixed nut can. Maybe I read you wrong but it seemed like you were suggesting the opposite.

    “So, I’m going to do this “diarist” style (where a bunch of mostly disconnected thoughts and observations are connected by the chewing gum, baling wire, and duct tape of stylistic legerdemain and poetic license). ”

    That’s what I come here for.

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  2. Kurt Von Fuchs

    For a guy who claims, correctly, the Twitter isn't real you spend an awful lot of time and I mean an awful lot of time talking about it interesting weird can't think of anything else to talk about?

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  3. Kurt Von Fuchs

    Well you did ask so yep you're crazy

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  4. Avatar photo
    Jeff Walden

    "Including the dude in Brazil who hasn’t changed jobs since 1922"

    Mild correction to the throwaway line, but he's at 84 years and change working -- the article was about his 100th birthday. :-) I had to check the link, as 100 years at one job would almost have to mean he was 110+, and such folks are vanishingly rare compared even to bare centenarians (who are themselves pretty uncommon).

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  5. Jonny

    A common trope I hear from members of the Dispatch when they discuss the respective idiot class on the left and the right is, "well the right has MJT and Madison Cawthorne," to suggest to a right of center audience that the right has its share of destructive social influencers as well.

    While this isn't an inaccurate refrain, and is of course an important facet of the polarization topic, the fact is that these two do not have anywhere near the sort of social influence enjoyed by the likes of AOC and her co-squadrons (let alone near 2x Democrat presidential nominee Sanders and similarly minded Elizabeth Warren). To use social media following as a heuristic to this point, AOC alone has about 6.5 times more Instagram followers (8.5MM) than MJT (<600K) and Cawthorne (770K) combined. AOC and Bernie sanders (6.7MM followers, btw) are bona-fide celebrities who control massive spheres of influence that in and of themselves shape the political landscape and stretch the relative space between ideological poles on the political continuum. This isn't even close to true with any of the crazies on the right (save, perhaps, the Tucker Carlson's of the world).

    It seems to me that the only reason we talk about MJT et al. is because their views are amplified by left wing media precisely to serve as a foil to the (far more influential) left wing crazies, and plant the seeds for a bothsideism narrative. Again, that's not to suggest we shouldn't publicly expose right-wing morons. It isn't even to suggest that Jonah's point about nut quality is wrong. I am suggesting, however, that the effect of each party's nuttery on the *global polarization* and shift toward one side or the other is orders of magnitude different. It therefore strikes me as not terribly useful to point out that certain positions espoused by certain members of the right are in and of themselves crazier than that of the left, as the main people channeling these views into the mainstream are the people who specifically *disagree* with it and want to use it as evidence for how deranged the right is. MJT's views effect the political mood only insofar as they are amplified by platforms whose goal it is to cast the current right wing as a group of crazies. This fundamentally is not the case with left wing crazies who have the sway to advance their own narratives at whim.

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  6. Jeffrey.B.Pearson

    I appreciate the question raised in this article, “Ask yourself this: In your day-to-day life over the last 20 years, how have things become more “right wing” for you? How many have become more left wing?” Very thought provoking for me. As someone who is moderate politically and a registered independent, I feel a growing alienation from both the right and left. For me what has changed over the last 10 to 20 years isn’t the “nuttiness” of the right or left but the tribalization of our politics so that the “nuts” on the right and left are now celebrated as tribal warriors who are fighting for the survival and victory of their tribe.

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  7. Avatar photo
    CJ Klein

    Regarding that cartoon Musk shared, I think it more appropriate to view the state of politics in two dimensions: left-right based on what Johnathan Haidt described as the moral virtues the left and right prioritize, and up-down based on how people want to address problems in society - (stealing from Reagan's 1964 speech) up toward a maximalized classically liberal structure of government (maximized individual liberty with enough order to keep society peaceful), or down toward totalitarianism and authoritarianism (of which populism is one such version). This makes the left-right trends toward extremes on the first dimension not so worrying, while both lurching downward toward their versions of totalitarianism the critical and detestable element that must be addressed.

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  8. Dave Rogers

    Here's the change over the past 20 years (approximately)

    Abortion
    Dems 20 years ago - The ideal was "safe, legal, and rare" and 1/4 of the Senate conference voted for a partial-birth abortion ban. Simultaneously, they defended the Casey precedent protecting the right to an abortion before viability. This Congress passed the first budget bill in almost 50 years that excludes the Hyde amendment.
    Republicans - Since 1976, the first presidential election post-Roe, the Republicans have opposed the decision in Roe v Wade. Their position hasn't changed.

    LGBT
    Dems didn't support it until 2012. Now the Biden administration supports puberty blockers.
    Republicans vehemently opposed it pre-Obergefell. No Republican in 2002 would expect their party's 2016 nominee to go around waving a pride flag, but that happened.

    Gun control
    Democrats supported indefinitely extending the Feinstein "assault weapons" ban past 2004. Obama legalized concealed carry in national parks pursuant to state laws. Now they support confiscation.
    Congressional Republicans defeated the extension of the assault weapons ban in 2004. Fifteen years later, Trump's DOJ mutilated the congressionally-set definition of a machine gun to ban bump stocks by executive order. McConnell didn't even bring up pro-gun bills regarding concealed carry reciprocity and removing certain items from the NFA for a floor vote.

    Immigration
    Enforcing any immigration laws at all became racist sometime around 2017. Gorge Bush pushed for amnesty in his 2nd term. Trump's signature campaign promise was to build a wall and deport illegal immigrants. This is one of the few areas where the GOP "moved to the right", but it was mirrored by a move "to the left" by Democrats.

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  9. Buck Black

    Is it so much that there is more craziness on both sides or that more of it is exposed these days by social media? There has always been dark and crazy thinking back through the ages. To some extent, more of it is simply being exposed.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Benjamin, J

    How about a different rule: you cannot run for a different federal office than you currently hold. Meaning: no House rep can run for Senate while holding a House seat. No Senator can run for President while being a Senator (or VP), and no VP can run for president while holding the office?

    That sounds more reasonable to these eyes.

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