20 Comments
Mar 7, 2022Liked by Jeff Maurer

I'm thrilled for a chance to be That Guy!

Your list of firings is surely incomplete without David Shor, the ultimate example of striking someone down only for him to become far more powerful.

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Well said. My mom remembers 1968 well; she graduated high school that year. Says it was as awful a year as they say.

2020 had a long shadow too; its why things didn't immediately "go back to normal" the minute Biden took over in 2021. We still had three trials dealing with prominent killings from 2020 to get through (Derek Chauvin, Kyle Rittenhouse, and Ahmaud Arbery's killers) and all the tense drama that came with it. We had several new variants of COVID and lots of vaccine hesitation. And we had dumber-than-dumb controversies involving Joe Rogan and the movie In The Heights (remember that one?).

But Covid is fading, and Biden gave a very normal speech like you said. And we've got a nice, sane Substack ecosystem that we didn't have a few years ago. And I've finally learned to make peace with Far Left Woke Twitter. Those people will never be happy. NEVER. They would rather see bad things happen so they can be righteous angry critics forever. So fuggedaboutit.

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Good stuff, Jeff. Agree with most of it. It was a transformative year for this country but I see it slightly differently. For me personally it was a huge turning point in my own point of view. I essentially left the Democrats and began looking at the "left" with a much more critical eye. I think it was an actual revolution in terms of Civil Rights but a weird thing happened from 1968. Everything flipped. The 1950s had a solid union of politics and culture. Eisenhower's era inspired a utopian vision of American life. But underneath that simmered so much suffering and frustration such that it al exploded outward in the 1960s. 1968, I think, was the moment when culture went one way and politics the other as Nixon's teeny tiny win would eventually become a much bigger win in 1972 with the silent majority rising up.

As Reagan took power in 1980, conservatism would rise somewhat but the Left still dominated culture. By Obama's rise in 2008, I figure, that is the moment when once again politics and culture became united. Now here we are, on the brink of another explosion because we have a utopia (Woketopia) and we have a simmering underneath. We have frustration. We have artificial propaganda in place of art, comedy, science -- MY GOD SCIENCE. We are at a point where it is dangerous to say that yes, there is a biological difference between men and women. Imagine that - that's the LEFT now.

All of the wealth, privilege and institutional power is on the left. But populism is on the right. Anyone who wants to rebel against any of this madness are among a new silent majority.

Two shots:

1) during the Derek Chauvin trial they showed video of Cupps Foods. Not. single person was wearing a mask. Indoors, outdoors. During that time we'd all been flipping out on complete and total lockdown. But did we do so in a bubble? How come that message hadn't hit that store in that town in that state? It is the same disconnect between what's happening on the streets of Chicago, say, and at the Spirit Awards. The elite class talks a good game but how is that impacting the people they al supposedly care about?

2) Speaking of the Spirit Awards, I watched last night and it was like watching a fundamentalist religion give out its "most devoted follower" badge. The were preaching, they were lecturing, they were educating but they were doing it inside the smallest most elite bubble there is. It was so strange.

You're right, though. Everything feels like it's about to change.

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“ Meanwhile, Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo appeared in a seemingly endless series of interviews in which they were treated as our era’s preeminent thinkers, instead of as the King and Queen of a vast empire of pseudo-intellectual bullshit”

*chefs kiss*

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I'm sorry, but Biden's speech was awful, in so many ways. For a man whose poll numbers are now worse than Trump's, you'd think he would consider a pivot to a more centrist approach, but he doubled down on the Progressive Push that would have, if passed, gotten us closer to the magic bankruptcy point. Gas prices just spiked forty cents over the weekend, with wholesale gas now reaching four bucks a gallon, which means retail prices will soon be at five in most places. The continued narrative that somehow supply chain issues is the real drive of inflation is just as nutty. Flooding the economy with newly minted money is not a healthy approach to tame rising prices, as it will only do the opposite. It is amazing how, like so many at Vox and WAPO, et.al., you know the progressive push is just as stupid as the "defund the police" call, yet you resort to carrying Joe's water by saying, well, gee, the speech was just so normal. When will those on the near left (and I think that is where you are trying to place yourself) actually wake up (oops let's do an opposite WOKE) and call out the Progressives and the true loonies that they are? Joe could easily subsidize fracking, for example, to increase American oil production, but then what would the climate crazies say? He is all tied up with the fringe, and you are just as scared of them.

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I'm slightly younger than you and I don't remember 1992 well, but I sometimes wonder if it's the middle child in a trifecta of "our generation's moment" protest wave years. (24 years after 1968, 28 years before 2020.) Maybe the cold war resolving had a counter-balance effect? I have no clue, I was busy watching Full House.

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I think 2020 will be our 1919- a year that most people try to forget and is not really discussed in popular culture, except in non-specific, vague ways just like the Spanish Flu is almost never talked about and despite being a major plot point in 'A Wonderful Life' is never really addressed. (the pharmacist mis-filling a prescription after receiving a telegram telling him his son has died of the flu).

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Internationally, 2020 and 1968 feel very different. I wasn't alive in 1968, but history describes it as the year of (largely unsuccessful) revolutions. France and Czechoslovakia being the most notable, but also lots of unrest in the US. Here in Australia, 2020 was the year where nothing happened. I imagine it's similar for much of the world.

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Pantera wrote a song about 1968….we’ll see what 2020 brings musically….

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Jennifer Anniston is loathe to admit that best movies she has starred in are Office Space (which really is one of the GOATs) and Leprechaun!

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That Miley Cyrus album is actually pretty good.

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Can't argue with you, though 2022 is certainly off to a violent and very unpleasant start.

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