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Oct 22·edited Oct 22Liked by Michael Magoon

Overall this article is amazing and criminally underread,sometimes Magoon writes long paragraphs to get to simple points and might repel casual readers but everything here is very informative and easily digestable

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Thanks.

Subscribership is growing slowly, despite my contrarian views!

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Substack is really cool,it combines visibility/popularity while keeping discussions civil,for now at least.It's a hard balance,i remember small twich streams from my competitive youth past where pro streamers with low views would give very calculated advice to chat questions,but as soon as they got big viewer numbers even with moderation it turned being dominated by extreme takes(also somehow they turned to trolling to keep entertainment high),kinda like twitter.Also your 'contrarian' views are what most people who used data to test the validity of their beliefs would deduce.If anything it shows that even educated people can be swayed by their emotions.

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Mar 27Liked by Michael Magoon

This essay contains one or two dozen great phrasings that merit high lighting or underlining.

But I will just use this one here: "While progress requires that people constantly compare the current situation with the actual alternatives in existence, ideologues compare reality to a pure vision that only exists in their heads. Reality can never compare favorably to a vision that does not exist. In visions, all trade-offs and conflicting interests disappear into the void of perfection."

Lorenzo Warby expresses a similar idea, calling it the "transformational future" where no data exists to contradict the glorious theory being offered by the leftist/Marxist/ Progressive/ Liberal/ indoctrinated wokerati proponents.

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There were and are a number of success routes available to smart and disciplined poor kids - of course, the radicals typically don't like these routes. The armed services provide a valuable route - particularily if you have the foresight to prepare for the asvab test to qualify for a number of specialties. My son in law did the normal combat route through the Marines and then went into the civilian economy. A lot of ex-mil folks head into police, fire, and EMT roles when they get out. But if you do the GI bill while in the military and if your deployments and specialty allow you to take advantage of remote courses, you will be further along. A number of educational programs are very adventageous to smart and disciplined students from poor and mil backgrounds: engineering, logistics, security, ... A number of my daughters classmates in civil engineering had mil backgrounds. Many of my teachers in high school had mil backgrounds.

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The overly cynical view (Rob Henderson also flirts with the idea in his book) is that people demonise the successful in order to be the sole benefitors of copying them.Like cutting the ladder after climbing it,can be beneficial for the individual temporarily but when collectively adopted leades to community collapse.

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Oct 22·edited Oct 22Author

Yes, I agree with Rob Henderson that signaling social status is heavily involved in upper-class people adopting left-wing identitarian terminology, though I do not think that it is a deliberate attempt to hurt the poor and working class. To be honest, I am not sure that Henderson believes it either.

It is more that the upper class can afford to claim that they believe these beliefs, while the working class and poor cannot afford to act upon those beliefs. It is important to note that the upper class often does exactly the opposite of what they say and are often very strict about teaching their own children the exact opposite of what they say.

I believe the social signaling is more like male peacock feathers. The feathers undermine the male's chance of surviving a predatory attack, but it also signals to female peacocks that he is so damn fit that he can afford to have those ridiculous and otherwise non-functional feathers.

The key is that the signal is one where the working class either cannot copy it or does not want to do so.

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