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The Left Has More Social Intelligence
More Republicans need to understand how to deal with the modern media intent on advancing their agenda. They have always been very bad at hand-to-hand combat with media Democrats. But Trump has been doing this kind of thing for his brand for decades.
Maybe that was the ‘signal’ some of the GOPers used to see him as such a Democrat. But he is only using their tactics and weapons, not their policy solutions. Just because the Germans used tanks and blitzkrieg doesn’t mean someone is a national socialist for using the same methods.
Russel Brand is very smart and savvy. I’m not for his socialist outcomes, but that’s not relevant to the main point he’s making.
Actors have a very strong understanding of people that most ‘normal’ people lack.
One of the biggest reasons the left hate him so much is because he’s so effective. Their previous Republican opponents never fought back where they live.
Published in General
Brand is a standup comic, mostly, and a very funny one. Good standups usually see things differently, and that’s where their humor comes from.
He’s making a great argument that Trump uses humor for persuasion.
I’m guessing that most standups would have to concede that Trump knows how to work an audience.
And I was just making the point that conservatives could win friends and influence people better if they made emotional arguments and could be funny. See, eg, Reagan.
He makes some very interesting points but he knows sweet FA about BLM if he thinks their aims are something noble. He’s got the right instinct about identity politics but he doesn’t see that that’s a game invented and played by the left.
Brand is right, but he’s also a leftist so he of course reaches the wrong conclusion. The left only exists in America because it’s been effective operating in the personal and emotional while the right has been absent. Now, he’s correct that President Trump is better than them at the personal. That’s true in large part because unlike the knocks on Trump as some giant liar and snake – he seems real. If he’s just acting then bravo, but I don’t think so.
Brand is right that they won’t beat Trump at the personal. Brand is wrong that relying exclusively on the ideas will gain the left success – because the ideas are ridiculous and dangerous on their faces with little thought required to reach that conclusion! The ideas simply can’t compete which is why they’ve gone all in on emotion, personal attack, and authoritarian control. The entertainment of it all only masks that underlying reality; they have nothing else to offer.
I’m wondering whether actual ideas ever win the day on their own, or they win by passionate persuasion.
Of course, it is easier to passionately persuade if you have good ideas.
Agree with all of your comment but want to expand on this part.
Yeah, if he’s that guy, a manipulative charlatan, he deserves an Oscar.
Does anyone really imagine that a cynical actor, as they portray Trump, who is already a billionaire who can play golf every day, and do whatever he wants, gives all that up for a life of obligation, to sit and more often stand for long periods listening to prayers, sermons, political speeches, shaking hands or saluting at graduations and functions, having other people schedule his every minute, having himself and his children vilified every day etc., all for what?
Some who thought him a cynical actor, speculated he’d never run for a second term because of all this.
Even as a narcissist, if he really is one ( really isn’t everyone who’s famous something of a narcissist?) he’s remarkably able to just stand there through all the pomp and circumstance.
Michelle Obama hated being First Lady because of all these obligations, and I really don’t blame her. That’s been my rationale for dismissing fears she would get in the race from day one. Being President is not an easy job, and there are huge chunks of time that need to be spent are unexciting and taxing, especially for a narcissist.
This, yes. But they don’t always have to be humorous.
It can be multi-pronged, too. Embrace all forms of persuasion. The current conservative zeitgeist is all about dialectic and perhaps a spot of humor. But they aren’t good with rhetoric and they don’t handle observable reality well. Good rhetoric has to accept the reality that their audience sees… that’s part of connecting with the audience.
Freshly graduated college students with no jobs and ended up this way due to a cultural and social push for their entire generation to be college graduates need to be dealt with the reality that exists for them… not on the reality that existed when the 60 or 70 year old graduated in the 70s.
This is probably one of the funniest pieces of celebrity satire since celebrities started…. um…. doing exactly this.
That was great!
I was thinking it’s a little over-the-top, but quickly realized he had to do that otherwise too many would think it was serious.
This is pretty old too, a clip of it was used in the very popular movie Forgetting Sarah Marshal. I think it came out in 2007. So at the time, it was very over-the-top. A rare moment of prescience from the Judd Apatow camp. The line about “why don’t we get into one big home,” followed by him holding the “Sodomize Intolerance” sign always gets me.
There are some really brilliant observations in this clip of comedians. The chart at the end is precious.
Sam,
Yes,
We have reached total inanity. Contentless emoting is all we have left. Sorry, I keep saying this but apparently “the facts don’t matter.” If the facts don’t matter just what the hell does?
Regards,
Jim
I believe a lot of the Hollywood crowd sees the hypocrisy and the artifice, yet, like the rest of us are pressured to go along. Bullied and shamed.
Most of them know they are spectacularly privileged. Not “white privileged” per se, just very lucky. Except in extraordinary cases, most have talent that can easily be replaced by other talent. They know this well. So they have a kind of nagging guilt. How does someone super rich and famous turn down pleas for money or activism? Not easy.
Further, I’m beginning to believe you can get away with pointing out some of this excess as long as you claim some other strong counterbalance. If you are strait-up conservative like Jon Voight, James Woods, you are fair game for the SJW crowd to pile on.
Camille Paglia who has ideas regarding feminism that are as close to paleo-conservatism as you can get, and is a huge advocate for free speech and thought, still calls herself a Democrat. I get that she’s highly disapproving of the non-libertine wing of the Republican Party, but that shouldn’t make her a Democrat. So I think it’s a political ‘beard’ as it were. That she’s a Democrat is the thread that keeps her from being canceled.
Likewise, actors, comedians, musicians can’t afford to publicly break with Democrats. These are important influential people who must be herded and leveraged, otherwise upstarts will be punished.
So I very much admire Russell Brand, Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappell for their courage as much as their talents. If they have to disparage Trump from time to time and claim they vote for Democrats, true or not, I’ll take it.
They shouldn’t have to get political, but they are forced to align themselves for work.
Like Andy Warhol said, in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. He was only wrong about the time frame. Now, with social media, all of us are facing the same challenges famous people have been dealing with.
Survivor’s guilt?
The message I think that they need to be persuaded to accept are the following:
1) Feel blessed. You have been given a gift in talent and opportunity. Be grateful and show gratitude.
2) The poor will always be with us. Do what you feel led to do to make someone’s life a little better – volunteer at a food bank, donate to causes that are active on the streets with the homeless, support businesses that employ the people in your backyard. It doesn’t take much – personal connection is always better than national and public efforts that don’t see individuals. Look in their eyes and listen to their lives. A lot of them find joy even in the stress of a rough life. Support policies that help the modest among you to build modest businesses so they can make a living.
3) Stop trying to eradicate injustice, because in doing so you simply shift injustice elsewhere. The system is imperfect and always will be. Attempts to make it perfect just changes or alters its victims slightly.
I’m uncomfortable with this kind of talk.
I get the Democrat party needs to be completely wrecked and destroyed, but I am not comfortable with Big Tent republicanism as a monopoly on politics.
I’m ok with it as a temporary stop gap to destroy the Marxist Left, but to me, the end game is the Republican party splits into a new two party system.
Not everyone that’s a moderate or conservative democrat is a republican. They can find a home here while defeating their radicals, but they will need to go at some point. We can’t have what the neo-cons did, dropping in and taking over because they had a tiff with their party. They still behave like that’s their party, constantly trying to work with them while lamenting the R base. If they thought that was workable, why’d they leave in the first place?
Stina can you give me a quick history lesson because so much of this is new to me. Who exactly do you mean by neo-cons?
There was a group of Democrats that left the Democrat party during the Vietnam or Korean War peace movement.
They depended on the war machine in a variety of ways and they held a lot of financial backing, so moving to the Rs gave them a certain leg up in leadership. They’ve largely dictated foreign policy for decades.
They are characterized by being RINOs. They are the ones that consistently have negative things to say about the R base, are comfortable with aggressive foreign policy that languishes oversea, agrees with the left’s moral framework, and largely still see the democrats as a reasonable counterforce (so let’s work with them).
The couple that really jump out are Bolton and McCain.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism
Nah, I don’t think so. Camille Paglia strikes me as very, very brave and unlikely to be cowed by the woke mob. I think she holds to her positions honestly, if incoherently. Even geniuses have areas of weak thinking. We all do.
If she identifies with Democrats, I think it’s because of her a) history (family loyalty, etc.) and b) lesbianism. She sees Democrats as the friends of minorities like her because they gave her SSM (of which she initially disapproved, rightly recognizing male/female relationships as the essential, fundamental social unit) and unlimited abortion. It’s the perpetual tension between natural rights conservatives support and made-up rights because, “I want ’em.”
I wasn’t clear. I have read Paglia’s seminal book Sexual Personae ( and understood at least half…) And listened to many of her lectures and debates. Yes, she’s a legacy Democrat, kinda like how New Yorkers root for the Giants. I didn’t mean to imply she is pretending to be a Democrat, but saying that and describing her background gives her a shield. After all, she’s a true scholar, why should she have to announce her party identification?
And for many, conservatives are still seen as moral scolds and Democrats are seen as standing for the little guy/gal and for classical liberal freedom.
Today’s versions of those party’s is almost the exact opposite. Trump’s position is for all Americans inclusive of LGBT_ _ _, minorities and working class whites as Americans who deserve the dream, while Democrats have morphed into deranged moral scolds with openly totalitarian impulses.
Okay, watched Brand’s video. It’s painful listening to someone so obviously intelligent say such stupid, foolish things. Painful.
Where I agree with him —
Thanks Stina, that was all completely new to me.
I think she would announce it if she switched.
True dat.
I think what’s happening is the old GOP is taking its last breaths and a new party is emerging. There was a separation, and the divorce is about to be finalized one way or the other. The Neos are running off with their new (previous?) lover, the Democrats. We, the somewhat surprised spouse, are nevertheless happy. Good riddance.
The left is splitting also, but the winning coalition is conservatism, non-globalism, the good kind of populism, and non-adventurism.
Sorry, the above quote was Stina not Marjorie
I like to call it privilege pointing, what the vocal ones do. It’s strange that they would act that way, since these really are very lucky people. But I’d guess many of them don’t see it that way. Everybody thinks they are the one who truly worked themselves to the “top,” but since most of these PSA irritants and actor-turned documentarian-turned activists probably envisioned themselves holding Academy Awards, their lack of gratitude might just be a relatively normal perversion. Unfortunately, what they’re left with are fawning people at restaurants who giddily walk up to their table at a restaurant and say, “Hey! I saw you on the TV.”
I was surprised by my own eloquence and political naus
This guy is a dope. He may be intelligent and I suspect he is but every “fact” from which he draws his judgement is wrong…
Kids in cages
Re distributive justice
Improve the lives of ordinary Americans
Joe Biden in government for 8 years
Just and ignoramus.
I remember him starting out on English TV and considering the world he lives in and the type of people he must be surrounded by he’s come a fair distance. But you’re right, he’s not as well informed as he thinks he is. He’s intelligent or at least articulate, but it’s still all half baked sort of thinking.
At the very least, he lacks enough curiosity to verify his facts.
This guy and so many others. They are products of what they are told. We only “know” what we are told, and if we hear the same things from different sources we eventually think it’s true. There are even some real ‘dopes’ who have piles of credentials.
I now just ignore those things and focus on the persons area of expertise. As I claimed, actors know things about people that most non-actors don’t even know exists, so his analysis of Trump’s presentation is confirmed by other experts, myself included.
Gary Kasparov is a great chess player. When it comes to politics he’s a dope. I could give hundreds of examples.
Yes, just like most people. I’m only saying he’s right on a certain point. His worldview is skewed badly. See Gary Kasparov, Bill Gates, Bruce Springsteen…. ad infinitum.