re: #52 HappyWarrior

Shapiro is just a slightly above average intellect in the movement that made Rush Limbaugh popular. He’s nowhere as clever, insightful, or witty as he thinks but enough people have told him he’s the right’s new Bill Buckley- another mediocre mind that convinced himself of his intellect by having people jack him off.

He’s got an audience precisely because he’s mediocre and he tells his mediocre audience they’re a priori, universally “smart.”

I mean, there’s geological layers of presumption and base assumptions he’d building on—mostly importantly, who gets to be “rational,” which has no relation to the actual exercise of rationality.

I’m obsessed with the meta trends, but I’d like to note, again, that this is a manifestation of reactionary eschewing the practice of a concept in favor of evoking the authority of a concept. Because stripped down conservatism still is ultimately about the assumption of inherent hierarchy, and justification of inherent hierarchy requires fixed traits.