19 Comments

Chuck's analogy that culture is a deck of cards used to build cultural products that we stopped adding to at some point in the later 90's/early 2000's feels so true. I've had SiriusXM since 2006 (back then it was just Sirius) but it's shocking how many of the same stations sound almost the same now in 2022 as they did back then. Maybe hip-hop has done better in terms of evolving but pop hasn't and definitely not rock.

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I am listening to this podcast and Klosterman is attempting to make an argument that the 2000 election was consequential, acting like people were nuts back in the day to thinking Bush and Gore were not that different. Is this real? Does anyone else think this?!?!

I thought all liberals thought Bush W is a swell guy now. I think it is clear that we have had basically a uniparty rule from 1988 through 2016 with the two bushes, clinton and Obama. All pro-corporation, pro-military complex, eager to demolish the middle class with “free-trade.”

George W basically nominated a liberal judge in john roberts.

Bush also had the highest approval ratings of any president for the period after 9/11.

The only reason we are whipped up now about politics is that it is necessary to distract the populace while blackrock and vanguard turn 99% of us into peasants and serfs.

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Just finally got around to listening to this interview. I read The Nineties, and I really enjoyed it, and I enjoyed this interview.

However, just after the 34 minute mark, during the discussion of post-modernism, you say that David Foster Wallace "wrote a book about how all of the great math geniuses went crazy. They all went crazy or committed suicide, as he [DFW] lamentably did, because they didn't know that their feet were going to hit the floor when they got out of bed in the morning. And apparently to make a great discovery you need to be of that mindset."

You're referring to Everything and More, and DFW basically argued exactly the opposite of what you remember him saying. Here are some relevant bits:

"The cases of great mathematicians with mental illness have enormous resonance for modern pop writers and filmmakers. This has to do mostly with the writers’/directors’ own prejudices and receptivities, which in turn are functions of what you could call our era’s particular archetypal template. It goes without saying that these templates change over time. The Mentally Ill Mathematician seems now in some ways to be what the Knight Errant, Mortified Saint, Tortured Artist, and Mad Scientist have been for other eras: sort of our Prometheus, the one who goes to forbidden places and returns with gifts we all can use but he alone pays for. That’s probably a bit overblown, at least in most cases.1 Cantor fits the template better than most. And the reasons for this are a lot more interesting than whatever his problems and symptoms were.2"

"1. IYI [If You’re Interested] Although so is the other, antipodal, stereotype of mathematicians as nerdy little bowtied fissiparous creatures. In today’s archetypology, the two stereotypes seem to play off each other in important ways.

2. In modern medical terms, it’s fairly clear that G. F. L. P. Cantor suffered from manic-depressive illness at a time when nobody knew what this was, and that his polar cycles were aggravated by professional stresses and disappointments, of which Cantor had more than his share. This is, of course, makes for less interesting flap copy than Genius Driven Mad By Attempts To Grapple With ∞. The truth, though, is that Cantor’s work and its context are so totally interesting and beautiful that there’s no need for breathless Prometheusizing of the poor guy’s life. The real irony is that the view of ∞ as some forbidden zone or road to insanity—which view was very old and powerful and haunted math for 2000+ years—is precisely what Cantor’s own work overturned. Saying that ∞ drove Cantor mad is sort of like mourning St. George’s loss to the dragon: it’s not only wrong but insulting."

These bits and plenty of surrounding context (including the stuff about not knowing if your feet will hit the floor when you get out of bed) can be read here: https://www.conjunctions.com/online/article/david-foster-wallace-09-18-2003

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Such a good interview! Ethan, you could totally parlay this into a great article with Mark Fisher as a central character. Totally a must listen pod.

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Jesus- now i am listening to you fucking up the narrative on George HW Bush. Perot made Clinton President. Without Perot, HW wins easily. Fuck man.

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Perot probably hurt HW, but HW also got his ass kicked. I'd say his weaknesses were exposed but I was also 7 years old at the time.

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HW didnt get his ass kicked. If not for Perot, HW would have cruised to a Victory with around 53%. The only major problem he had was self inflicted. He ran on “read my lips, no new taxes.” And then raised taxes. Other than that, he was just there.

The fascinating item that hasnt been explored in books or media enough is what really made Perot quit in july of 1992. Perots explanation of messing with his daughters wedding never made much sense. With what we know of how far the FBI worked againsy trump, it is likely that our intelligence community had a major hand in it.

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Agree on the Perot quitting part being worthy of exploration, but HW got more than doubled up in the EC. I’d say that’s getting your ass kicked

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Perot definitely leeched some support away from Bush, but I'd argue that Bush's tepid response to the LA riots in May is what ultimately sank him in November. It gave Clinton a whole new "America in decline" talking point and helped foster the perception that Bush was remote and out of touch.

SIDEBAR: Imagine if we'd had Twitter when Bush puked into the Japanese Prime Minister's lap.

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The Union busting of the late 1970s under Carter actually made the Democratic Party more corporate and it was starting in the early 1980s where wages really started to stagnate for the middle class. From there we just saw a much wider gulf grow between what CEOs make compared to what their employees make. Not sure how your demarcation of 2016 as being a turning point in American history, at least not for reasons that have any type of broad agreement or buy-in some people of a certain persuasion might be ascerting. Rather it was more of an accelerant than anything. One could also argue that acceleration was truly starting to be most noticeable with the stone walling of Merrick Garland being nominated to the Supreme Court.

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I think 2016 will become a lot more historically significant as we age. 2016 is when the mask fell off. We received a president that was not supposed to have been allowed by the powers that be. We were never supposed to know the lengths to which our intelligence community would go to protect itself.

I think the bickering between left and right; republicans and democrats is nonsense. If you get riled up with that you are a simple mark. Merrick Garland didnt have the votes to be confirmed, period. That has happened throughout our history.

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To your 3 points you just made. Your first point and second point are valid. No debate from me. But, in regards to your last point...You mean the Democrats didn't have the Senate Majority, and Mitch McConnell blocked him from having a vote or even a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee? Because I'm pretty sure there were at least 51 Senators that found Merrick Garland an acceptable choice to be appointed by a Democratic President. He was a pretty moderate choice in relation to all other Democratic appointments to the high court dating back to Bill Clinton's first choice in 1993. Throughout history votes have always been there, but the abuse of the filibuster and politicians on both sides of the aisle throwing away precedent and using arcane rules as a blunt object to make government be more inefficient than it already is has been the norm. And it's somewhat generous for me to say both sides, as more times than not the relationship between making government agencies attempt to be functional versus attempting to make it even more dysfunctional, has been an asymmetrical relationship for some time now.

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Republicans held 54 seats in congress, how would Garland have been confirmed? Look up unsuccessful nominations to the Supreme Court on google. Read the history, when congress is controlled by the opposing party, presidents dont typically get their nominees confirmed. I guess you can be upset that he didnt get voted down… much of the time the nominee is withdraw to save face.

Merrick Garand was not a moderate choice. That is a media talking point. As an attorney general, Garand has proven himself to be a pure political partisan. He is overseeing the jailing of political prisoners forJan 6th, while refusing to share videos that would likely lead to exoneration. This is total banana republic shit. History should remember Garland as a violator of human rights and the constitution.

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That doesn't mean anything. There were a handful of Senators that would have voted Garland on the bench. This partisan brinksmanship with the Supreme Court picks is a new phenomenon. The United States Senate is the chamber where the elected officials are supposed to take the long view and do what is best for the country, not what's best for the party. And the way you speak, its as if that precedent never existed. I find that very troubling for our Country's long-term future. https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/presidents-vs-opposing-senates-in-supreme-court-nominations

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I'd love to know what older and younger generations think of my fellow Gen Xers at this moment in history (assuming they think about us at all). I wonder if those perceptions square with how we see ourselves and whether we stayed within the attitudinal guardrails the demographers stamped us with.

Personally, I still see myself as someone who is cynical by default, distrustful of authority but grudgingly accepting of its power over my life, philosophically liberal but ideologically promiscuous, grimly determined, and secretly optimistic. I wonder if those are common themes.

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I mean based on what Klosterman says I don’t think other generations really care what Gen Xers think. If anything our generation probably has the largest wealth disparity between those born in the early 1970s compared to those born in the early 1980s.

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Apr 6, 2022
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lol I hope that's not because Gen Xers are so "wealthy" and "stable" and "established in their careers."

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Apr 6, 2022
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Totally. I wrote about this here in case you're curious: https://mattruby.substack.com/p/the-most-unbelievable-things-about

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It was certainly nice to come of age in complete anonymity. I don't know how young people handle measuring themselves against one another online all the time. It seems exhausting.

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