I already watched it this morning. I thought it was great, and great that you did it at the NY Times. We have to stretch ourselves to reach the people who need to hear things, not just confine our messages to the comfort of those who already agree.
Was going to say the same thing. I think my favorite comment was how they need to do it espouse these luxury beliefs (life the people who can’t although the support from those quarters (poorer Americans) is generally pretty poor.
I watched the video a couple of times and I’m wondering what the thought process was behind “Play the Victim” as one of the Golden Rules. Your classic definition has three components: 1. Confers status 2. No/low cost 3. Harms lower class.
It’s pretty jarring to see “Confers status” replaced by “Play the Victim”.
For the highlighted example of student protestors, they’re closely related, but victim status is not at all relevant to a lot of the more classic Luxury Belief examples you mention, where status comes in the form of claimed empathy towards vague other victims.
Honestly this change feels more reminiscent of a conservative pundit paraphrasing your work than something that would have come from you directly. As a longtime follower/fan, I’m curious whether this represents an actual shift in your framework, or it was just an attempt to make a complicated idea more click-baity in such a short-form medium.
The grounds crew cleaning up after private school USC students LARPing is the perfect visual definition of lux beliefs. I hate these children with every cell in my body.
Suburban kids wearing actual navy blazers with jeans and doc martins used to spray paint shitty graffiti in Harvard square when I was young. It enraged me so much that some asshole making minimum wage would have to clean up their shit that I would spend hours hunting down police and ratting on these fuckers.
I've been reading Rob's work for years. I never thought of him as conservative until the NYT and other publications informed me, haha. He's a terrific thinker and writer. Everyone should read his book.
I read some of the comments and am not surprised to see that many missed your point, and I suppose it’s not shocking given that their audience is the Brahmin left. My favorite was the one calling you another JD Vance with a Horatio Alger story, as though economic mobility and its attendant struggles cannot lead a person to reach different conclusions than someone who grew up middle class.
Brilliant essay and impressive it was featured in The New York Times. This is an important concept that deserves the widest audience possible.
I already watched it this morning. I thought it was great, and great that you did it at the NY Times. We have to stretch ourselves to reach the people who need to hear things, not just confine our messages to the comfort of those who already agree.
It’s good that you did this on the NYT. The comments are so binary lol.
Was going to say the same thing. I think my favorite comment was how they need to do it espouse these luxury beliefs (life the people who can’t although the support from those quarters (poorer Americans) is generally pretty poor.
The comments are pure gold. Many of these people are completely unreachable.
I read a bunch of them and had to stop reading for my own sanity.
Oh the irony.
I watched the video a couple of times and I’m wondering what the thought process was behind “Play the Victim” as one of the Golden Rules. Your classic definition has three components: 1. Confers status 2. No/low cost 3. Harms lower class.
It’s pretty jarring to see “Confers status” replaced by “Play the Victim”.
For the highlighted example of student protestors, they’re closely related, but victim status is not at all relevant to a lot of the more classic Luxury Belief examples you mention, where status comes in the form of claimed empathy towards vague other victims.
Honestly this change feels more reminiscent of a conservative pundit paraphrasing your work than something that would have come from you directly. As a longtime follower/fan, I’m curious whether this represents an actual shift in your framework, or it was just an attempt to make a complicated idea more click-baity in such a short-form medium.
Went from being excluded from the Bestseller List to being asked to a video essay?
Outstanding work Mr. Henderson. You are a gem.
Well done.
The grounds crew cleaning up after private school USC students LARPing is the perfect visual definition of lux beliefs. I hate these children with every cell in my body.
Suburban kids wearing actual navy blazers with jeans and doc martins used to spray paint shitty graffiti in Harvard square when I was young. It enraged me so much that some asshole making minimum wage would have to clean up their shit that I would spend hours hunting down police and ratting on these fuckers.
I've been reading Rob's work for years. I never thought of him as conservative until the NYT and other publications informed me, haha. He's a terrific thinker and writer. Everyone should read his book.
I read some of the comments and am not surprised to see that many missed your point, and I suppose it’s not shocking given that their audience is the Brahmin left. My favorite was the one calling you another JD Vance with a Horatio Alger story, as though economic mobility and its attendant struggles cannot lead a person to reach different conclusions than someone who grew up middle class.
Great strategy, Mr. Henderson.
Great essay
...and the working class cleaners clean up the camp afterwards !
Allow me, as someone who spent longer at Yale than you did: “Aww, he had a troubled life.”
Brilliantly written, though.