An excellent article from the NYTs, Liberals, You’re Not as Smart as You Think
This passage stood out, but the entire thing is relevant:
But accusers can paint with very wide brushes. Racist is pretty much the most damning label that can be slapped on anyone in America today, which means it should be applied firmly and carefully. Yet some people have cavalierly leveled the charge against huge numbers of Americans — specifically, the more than 60 million people who voted for Mr. Trump.
I’m kinda amazed the NYTs published this, but kudos to them for doing so. This is part of a recent trend of the intellectual-left self-diagnosing and reevaluating how their party went astray. The very reason why the article went so massively viral and got such strong praise, is the same reason why moderates/centrists such as Jordan Peterson are so popular right now. There is this sudden upwelling of demand, especially since 2013, for nuanced discourse, and a general repudiation by the upper-IQ echelons of society of identity politics. The trend began in 2013 and picked up momentum in 2016 after the election of Trump and mirrors the decline of the alt-right. It’s not that the ‘unite the right’ Charlottesville activists have suddenly become moderates, but rather their views have become drowned out and are no longer getting the same media attention and moving the narrative as much as the right-of-center centrists such as Ben Shapiro are. Related: Rise of Jordan Peterson mirrors the decline of alt-right . Milo has a big Instagram presence, but outside of that his brand has largely fizzed since early 2017, whereas Ben Shapiro’s star keeps rising.
As discussed in the 2016 post Classification of Ideologies, these Jordan-ites and Shapiro-ites fall somewhere between “Leftist Rationalist/Neo liberal/Classical Liberals” and “Pragmatist/Rationalist Right”. They tend to be between the ages of 20-40, individualistic, high-IQ, successful professionally, and well-educated. They tend to agree with the pragmatism and consequentialism of neoconservtism, but are more skeptical of interventionism and open borders. They are ‘woke’ about HBD, unlike most mainstream politicians and pundits. They tend to reject identity politics and tribalism; believe that correctness is more important than consensus; intellectualism culture; shared narratives,etc. They understand that difficult economic issues such as unemployment cannot be solved with bromides and platitudes such as ‘work harder’ or ‘greedy capitalists,’ but rather understand that factors such as IQ are important but neglected by politicians and pundits, who prefer to defer to safe, palatable explanations and solutions that may be wrong or ineffective but are socially acceptable.
From the comments of the NYTs article on Reddit, this comment misdiagnosis the problem:
I cannot stand this absolute propaganda that apparently most people here have been swept up in. Liberal does not equal SJW. How many influential SJW’s can you name? How many major journalists, politicians, academics etc that have an actual effect can you name? Now how many people can you name that do actually have a public platform that rally against this far left? The same people that apparently are actively being silenced, the ones with best selling books and countless interviews on major platforms.
Think about how many left leaning people you know, now consider how many of them are actual SJW’s? Have a quarter of the people on this sub even meet one IRL? How many democrat family members and friends do you have that could even define micro aggressions? While people with huge platforms like Sam and Jordan rally support against this radical left, that are apparently going to take over the country any day now, the radical right runs the government! The EPA has been absolutely gutted and is ran by a science denier and that alone is far more dangerous than any cringy 18 yr olds at a liberal campus.
It’s not just about SJWs but about the arrogance of the left-wing establishment in general, such Hillary dismissing Trump supporters as a ‘basket of deplorables,’ or the arrogance of believing that Hillary was inevitable, or the left attributing Hillary’s loss to a vast Russia-Facebook conspiracy rather than the will of voters.