Michael Hobbes: Finally the Atlantic gives us what we needed most: A Vaseline-lensed profile of a deranged Facebook boomer. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Finally the Atlantic gives us what we needed most: A Vaseline-lensed profile of a deranged Facebook boomer. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

We have had 10,000 of these pieces since 2016, each of them pretending people like Kirn are some kind of ideological enigma worthy of endless consideration and good faith. No, he's just an old guy with old-guy resentments and an internet connection!

Kirn (& TCW) do not give a shit about "elites," they are annoyed at how the world is changing and have turned their low-stakes pet peeves into their entire worldview. Kirn admits this! Pretending he's against "elites" is just a way to convince himself that this is about ideals and not grievance.

I think this might actually be the biggest window into the whole thing: these guys are bored and feckless. That's all of it. That's their entire core.

it's just like the old ladies that show up at school board meetings to yell about books, and suddenly they're important again.

Imagine thinking the solution to “decadent and deceitful elites” is Trump. Hey man, I think I might have eaten undercooked chicken. I think solution to that is huffing VX gas!

Part of the pseudo-logic is accelerationist.... It will speed up the downfall that is already happening, in their minds, so that the next thing can emerge. Nevermind all the people that will die in the interregnum or the fact that lately, elites tend to get richer when shit goes down.

WTF, this guy, this fucking guy, is against the elites. (I can’t believe I’m this annoyed at a piece after reading the first paragraph)

oh, don't worry, they do acknowledge that contradiction upfront, many times, and then, because there is no logical through line or structure in any of it, Chatterton just chatters on anyhow

Love to critique the snobbery of the elites by dropping phrases like "sui generis" mid-sentence.

Me, sitting in the saloon sipping whiskey with my new bestie and his down-home but righteous principles: Don't you find the bourgeois affectations of ruling class serve to undermine the essential claim to authority to which they so precariously clutch? My new bestie: I'm bored

*I'm ennuied

Tangential but it’s always worth remarking how much of the rightwing rhetorical strategy is just about referring to anyone they don’t like as “elites”

Glad the published author who's worked in media for years and the published author who lives in a literal mansion in France are here to tell us that the real estate magnate who was president isn't an elite.

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It's amazing how a literature graduate of Princeton and Oxford universities can position himself outside of "the elites".

I think we all know what type of “elites” he’s talking about.

“Elite” these days means anyone to the left of Jim Jordan

A second Trump term is just too simple for him.

Walter Kirn wrote a whole book about how he was stupid enough to get conned for years by a guy claiming to be a Rockefeller.

thank god someone brought this up (also, IIRC he tried to position it as a thought experiment he was engaged in, versus straight-up being a mark)

Holy crap.

I can't take seriously anyone with an Atlantic byline and a name that sounds like a horny Earl from an English romance novel complaining about "elites"

I speak boomer. What he's trying to say is "I got mine, I don't give a fuck about you"

“All the evidence suggests that progressives are correct. But what if it didn’t? Would they still claim to be right, because that would be annoying to this millionaire. Here’s another five thousand words about how much that annoys him.”

What Kirn’s describing in the highlighted box is Joe Biden.

I sort of disagree in that they don’t care about “the elite” by any reasonable definition, they care about “elites” as this catch-all conspiracy boogeyman, the shadowy cabal that are the ones making the world change in ways they don’t like bsky.app/profile/nste...

“Democratic spirit” as in “for the Real people, against the illegitimate deep state who have usurped power.” Fits with all the talk about “The Regime” and sure enough Schmitz does use that language

I wish you had included the preceding sentence in the highlight: “Why can’t we do two things simultaneously?” The refusal to do exactly that is what sabotages nuance, which underlies much of the current Gaza crisis and probably most problems.

On the bright side, they’re dropping like flies. incendar.com/baby_boomer_...

I'm sorry to let you know this, but even if I and every other boomer drops dead tomorrow, you're still gonna have a nazi problem to deal with. Thiel, Cotton, Vance -- all not boomers.

But the boomers are very disproportionately MAGA. Especially in my neighborhood.

I've seen polls in which the only age group Trump loses is 65+.

Hitler and Mussolini have been dead almost 80 years but there's still Nazis and fascists.

It'll be interesting to see how many heirs to boomer wealth suddenly discover their maganess.

these hipster-fascists like tcw, singal, & weiss always try this rope-a-dope routine, trying to get buy-in with with high-minded, artisanal fascism in order to laundry the pogroms into polite society, & the 💯% pure, weapons grade fascists are always like "we hate diversity, we hate liberated women"

The whole construction of ‘elite’ that doesn’t include a billionaire who owns a bunch of huge buildings with his name on it and was the president of the United States is still baffling Motherfucker is so elite he was pals with Epstein

is it possible to want to upend the power structures of society without being a fascist? maybe, but I'm don't fine not-fascism interesting.

Whoa, this guy is conspiratorial crank.

The constant attempt to proactively rehab the reputations of the worst kind of person to ever exist in this country is so exhausting and gross.

Which he once used to find himself a younger wife. nymag.com/intelligence...

That’s It, We Know Far Too Much About Walter Kirn’s Relationshipnymag.com "Cheap and disposable fishnet stockings in colors other than black," Kirn said.

Used to follow Kirn and subscribed to his newsletter. Watched in real time as he slowly but surely eased into the populist grift, and then just jumped right in as his new audience hung on every dumb, right wing, “that’s how we do things in Montana!” take.

This piece uses a whole bunch of words, when just 14 would have done.

He also never was a counter-culture or eft "boomer." He's always been a rightwing gasbag.

The last time I saw anything by him, it was in eager anticipation of the Nunes Letter (remember that?)

Wlater Kirn, on the case of important stuff

I guess if you don't care about "strict facticity"

I care much more about Strictly Fat City

yeah, but he's not in a diner at least. Progress!

🎯

jesus christ does the crowd ever get tired of jacking each other off

nobody else will, I guess

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