The uncool kids

The Sultan of Knish advises Republicans to quit trying to make the cultural powers-that-be approve of them:
The GOP is not the cool party. It’s never going to be. It’s the party of the people who have been shut out, stepped on and kicked around by the cool people. Trump understood that. The GOP didn’t.
The GOP’s urban elites would like to create an imaginary cool party that would be just like the Democrats, but with fiscally conservative principles. That party can’t and won’t exist.

11 comments:

Grim said...

The GOP is not the cool party. It’s never going to be. It’s the party of the people who have been shut out, stepped on and kicked around by the cool people.

That's funny, because if you were to ask the Democrats, they'd have said that they were the party of people who were shut out, stepped on, and kicked around by the cool people. I've read any number of them say that life is like High School, and they're the nerds and minorities being mistreated by the jocks and preps.

It's a sort of arrested development, which is hard to explain except that American life doesn't really require you to grow up all that much. You're welcome to keep dressing like you did as a teenager, and acting like you did in your 20s, for your whole life now.

Anyway, it makes this concept odd. I think this guy you're citing is right: but somehow the 'cool kids' haven't noticed that they've attained to the levers of cultural power. They still think of themselves as the outcasts instead of the core.

raven said...


" but somehow the 'cool kids' haven't noticed that they've attained to the levers of cultural power. They still think of themselves as the outcasts instead of the core. "



Yeah, similar to the racism that keep blacks out of positions of power like the Presidency, Attorney General, Secretary of DHS, Supreme Court Justice,, no black person could ever hope to achieve positions like that with our endemic racism.
There is a cognitive disconnect there that is very hard to comprehend.

douglas said...

I read once a great column about how the whole cultural idea of "the cool" was corrosive to our culture. Can't remember where I found it or who wrote it, though I've tried to dig it up again many times. I've thought that it was further proof that when our grandparents or parents thought that Rock and Roll was the devil's work, maybe they weren't so far off in some ways.

Tom said...

Well, the left suffers from high school PTSD. It doesn't matter that they've been out of high school for a decade or two. Whenever they hear an opinion they don't like they have flashbacks to getting a wedgie in high school.

Texan99 said...

Maybe the dedicated base in each party is always a bit "cool," or at least feeling reasonably good about its ability to do well in a particular system. These swing elections, though, are about attracting independents, middle-of-the-roaders, and low-information voters--not much cool confidence there.

Gringo said...

Tom
Well, the left suffers from high school PTSD. It doesn't matter that they've been out of high school for a decade or two. Whenever they hear an opinion they don't like they have flashbacks to getting a wedgie in high school.

That depends. The regional high school I attended sent about 10 percent of its graduates to Ivy League or such elite schools. My classmates by and large have maintained the liberal/leftist political viewpoints they inherited from their parents. Rest assured none of them suffered from wedgies. Those who ended up going to elite colleges didn't get elected to ALL the student council or class officer positions, but they got elected to enough of them to show that they didn't suffer from a wedgie environment. They were pretty much deferred to, not given wedgies.

I came from a town that was less affluent, more rural, and less educated than the town that hosted the regional high school. Students from the host town often referred to students from my town as "farmers," and yes, as "dumb farmers." [BTW, the host town also had farms.]This viewpoint was not universal, as I was elected to the student council my junior and senior years. Another classmate from my town was on the student council three years. Nonetheless, the "dumb farmer" view was there at my high school- and is there today, multiple sources have informed me.

I concluded from this experience that we all form in-groups and out-groups. We all have both tolerance and intolerance within us. I knew that from elementary school and junior high in my hometown, and I knew it from high school. As such, when in recent years I hear the cry of "You're racist/bigoted/sexist/homophobic/deplorable," a cry that the left appears to use rather often these days, I inwardly laugh. Those who believe themselves to be free of such intolerance/prejudice are deluding themselves.

Moreover, when I hear the cry of "You're racist/bigoted/sexist/homophobic/deplorable," I conclude that those saying are trying to shame you. Just as students from the host town at my high school tried to shame students from my home town as "dumb farmers."

I don't know if this can be called a case of high school PTSD on my part, but it at least illustrates that not only leftists form some of their political opinions from high school.

Texan99 said...

My most unpleasant memories from high school were people confidently informing me of things I knew to be untrue. I don't remember the particulars, and no doubt I often was mistaken. Nevertheless, the "traumatic lesson," so to speak, was that when I was an adult I wanted to have gotten into a position where I didn't have to believe things that people insisted I believe. I'm willing to accept all kinds of propositions on slight evidence if they don't seem worth the extra effort of confirmation, but the minute someone leans on me to believe, I become unreasonably stubborn. The threat of having to go along with other people's notions therefore triggers a lot more high-school-era PTSD (to adopt the usual absurd over-statement of existential threat) than any of the other ordinary traumas of high school, like not being captain of the football team or the like.

Tom said...

Actually, Gringo, I think a lot of them just watched the Breakfast Club too many times and imagined it. Kinda like their heroine dodged sniper fire in Bosnia. The one thing they know for certain is that they are the brave victims, and everything else will be edited to fit that reality.

I think you're completely right about the tribalism, though.

Tex, that is one of the coolest life goals ever. Oh, wait, are we the cool ones this year? Or is cool bad? Is bad cool? I can't keep up.

Grim said...

I don't think I have any especially powerful memories of high school at all. Once in a while I think back on a friend I had, or a girl who caught my attention for a time. But it doesn't mean anything now.

It's hard for me to relate to the people who still organize their lives around it, and some of them thirty, some of them forty, and some of them fifty years old.

douglas said...

Yep, it was like another life- I feel strangely detached from it now, and really have very little interest in reconnecting with it, which might be doubly odd now that my son is going to the same school, and soon my daughter as well. Every time I go there, it's a little surreal for me.

Ymar Sakar said...

I've read any number of them say that life is like High School, and they're the nerds and minorities being mistreated by the jocks and preps.

Which is mostly projection, of course.

I'm sure some bullying occurs, but the reason why they couldn't resist was because their Leftist parents were child molestors, murderers, crooks, and a whole lot of corruption put together. Look at Lena's parents or the Vista Isle shooter's Hollywood parents for case examples.

Leftists are damaged people raising or adopting children to be even more damaged than they are. So sure, they complain about bullies, but their problems are far worse than that. People who get bullied can always choose to forgive or build themselves up. The Left doesn't do that, because they were damaged way before the bullying started.