Bad Idea, Old Idea

Most Nordic tribes were, in fact, New York Jews.

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Megan McArdle returns to the Remnant today for a discussion that has the luxury of being detached from current events. Things operate at a high level of abstraction throughout—even the rank punditry is more nerdishly academic than usual—as she and Jonah analyze and debate a handful of topics that seem to render him increasingly despondent. Can resentment among elites explain Donald Trump’s success? Do ideas actually matter, or have all intellectuals wasted their lives? Just how ugly should we expect 2024 to be? And can Jonah outrun his ongoing mid-life crisis in a ramshackle RV?

Show Notes:

–Megan’s page at the Washington Post

–Fusion, a new magazine from the American Institute for Economic Research

–The Remnant with Tom Nichols

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Comments (39)
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  1. Tilling

    You talk about demonstrating that criminals like Trump will (IIRC) face trial, and ask who we’re trying to demonstrate it to.
    I want it demonstrated to every young thug who is now thinking maybe they should go into politics.
    I also have a young son, and I want him to know that too.

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  2. Pohl

    Enjoyable pod. I like about any guest who isn’t a think-tank political specialist like Yuv . . . Sorry, I dozed off just saying Yuv . . .

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  3. Bobby D

    I enjoyed this discussion.

    I agree that much of our politics revolves around different groups of elites maneuvering to capture different positional goods. And both groups justify their conduct as being carried out on behalf of some neglected group or noble cause. But, in actuality, their maneuvering does little for the people or causes they profess to defend.

    So, it’s understandable to me why someone like Donny from Queens would be popular among many working-class folks. His rise reflects a kind of middle finger from the Heartland to all of the elite maneuvering for positional goods. Jesse Ventura’s rise to the Minnesota governorship a few years ago reflects a similar phenomenon.

    But I don’t understand how or why Trump supporters moved from their understandable support of him as a middle finger to elite maneuvering for positional goods to an implausible embrace of him as a cult hero. By embracing Trump as the hero he clearly isn’t, supporting him loses its force as a needed critique of elite maneuvering for positional goods. They allowed the messenger to supersede the message, and the message lost its force. Thus, elite maneuvering becomes more entrenched because the legitimate critique has become silenced by the populists’ failure to hold the messenger accountable to the message.

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      C C Writer

      It's because in some situations people prefer to deceive themselves, which discourages a pivot to revising one's opinion to fit the truth and instead constitutes an incentive for a foolish but false consistency. This tendency, as you note, completely overwhelms their interest in achieving any possible goals they may have envisioned beyond belligerent posturing. And when there's a grifter in the mix who is urging them to lean into their foolishness--well, what else can you expect?

      It's time we recognized this predilection, and brainstorm some more effective forms of civic education, some that may not even be recognized as traditional forms.

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      1. Bobby D

        Yeah, it’s almost as though they’re content with the belligerent posturing. If the populists are willing to be such cheap dates, then they shouldn’t be surprised when the people they support fail to deliver the goods.

        Some of this strikes me as a misplaced valuation on feelings and emotions. We live in a profoundly foolish era in which people place far too much value on their feelings and emotions. I’m thankful that my parents taught me to recognize when I was having an emotional response to something and to check that response. You learn to step back from the situation, separate the facts from your emotional response, and develop a reasonable response that’s calculated to resolve what gave rise to the response. Leaning into your emotions is profoundly foolish. Perhaps it feels good in the moment. But it rarely resolves the situation in a favorable way. In fact, emotional reactions generally cause people to turn against you and legitimizes the situation that led to your emotional response.

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          C C Writer

          Yeah, I think you are right about feelings being too highly valued or considered the only thing. Jonah talks sometimes about this being the essence of Romanticism. But feelings can come from the primitive part of our brains and they can be based on misapprehensions, so even if they are in some sense authentic, they are not necessarily helpful if your intent is to be an evolved human functioning effectively in society.

          The way I look at my feelings is that they can give me clues that something is happening that I need to get a handle on, but, as you say, they're only part of the picture and you have to fill in the rest and approach the thing holistically so you can do the smart thing and the right thing.

          However, if I see a cute video of a kitten or puppy, I will allow myself to just be all "awwww!", and that's fine. Because we have already established that baby domestic animal cuteness is objectively good and can trigger only positive emotions.

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          1. Bobby D

            I’m not sure that our emotions say much more than that someone else has something that we want for ourselves, whether those be material goods or intangible things like prestige and respect. In most instances, the stimulus for the emotional response should probably be resolved in favor of improving yourself and working harder. But we live in a country where people eat whole bags of potato chips and then wonder why they’re obese.

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    Stevenkongju9

    Hutus and "Watusis"???

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    1. Tilling

      Watutsi is an older term for Tutsi. I think it mean “the Tutsi”.

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    Mjturosz

    Ted Baxter is the fictional character portrayed by Ted Knight on the Mary Tyler Moore Show.😑🚩

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    1. Pohl

      Have you ever seen Back to the Future where Alex P. Keaton plays Marty McFly? Totally normal way to talk. (smile)

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    Bel

    Ideas are important, for sure. I think the relationship between ideas and psychology is self awareness or lack thereof.

    If I'm triggered by an idea it's often because it's rubbing gainst something psychological. If I can notice that and back up and take the emotion out then I may be more open to the idea. Or at least less reactive, less threatened.

    If I'm trying to sell an idea it helps to understand the psychology of the audience, to try and frame it in a more receptive way.

    Unfortunately self awareness is difficult, prompting others to be self aware is even more challenging.

    I can imagine if your in the business of ideas it can feel like banging your head against a wall

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    Charley Warns

    I'm interested in the connection between Deism and libertarianism that Megan started talking about at the end. Deism is the idea that God is not actively intervening in the universe, but that the universe is a clock God designed and wound up, letting it run on its own. Nothing needs to be revealed to me via religion, tradition, government (i.e., authority) as I can REASON out God's existence on my own. ("Reason," in fact, is an American libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation ... revealing the connection!) Yet Russell Kirk wisely sees it otherwise:

    "Even the wisest of mankind cannot live by reason alone; pure arrogant reason, denying the claims of prejudice (which commonly are also the claims of conscience), leads to a wasteland of withered hopes and crying loneliness, empty of God and man: the wilderness in which Satan tempted Christ was not more dreadful than the arid expanse of intellectual vanity deprived of tradition and intuition, where modern man is tempted by his own pride."

    I should come up with a closing point as I need to get to bed. It's like not taking a guide book, instructions, and a map (each describes the Bible) when I embark on my journey ... but rather to rely on what I can figure out in my head on my own. It would be difficult for society to advance with that attitude.

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    Ben Connelly

    Always good to have on the guest who has the most combined EconTalk + Remnant appearances.

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    CarsonJ

    Re: the word "thing". My understanding is that the original meaning in English used to mirror the Norse/Danish/"Viking" meaning of a specific kind of meeting, but at some point it started to shift to meaning specifically what was discussed at such meetings, and eventually broadened down to what we have now. It's been a hot minute since I learned this so probably missing an important detail or two, but you get the idea.

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    CynthiaW

    Excellent chat. I got a lot of stuff done in the kitchen.

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