The EHC thing seems tailor-made to just farm engagement online via ragebait. What actually defines "being EHC?" As best as I can tell, it means "high IQ" and "neoliberal," to the extent that it means anything at all, which makes it a bit of a recursive label indicating that these two traits basically define the Approved Goodperson who is set aside from and above the unwashed masses. I have yet to see anything new, interesting or insightful derived from this premise. None of the writing about "EHC" that I have seen actually goes in-depth studying the inner workings of institutions, identifying who is and isn't "EHC" within those institutions, deriving further implications from the starting premises, etc.
Instead it's all posts like this one which basically just say "rightoids are dumbstupiddimwittarded." I don't think I've seen a single post about "EHC" which differentiates EHC from the dregs of the left-wing such as sex pest transsexuals or Antifa goons, it's always invective aimed specifically at a certain flavor of right-winger. This suggests that the authors of such pieces know they are likely to be read by the latter group and not the former, i.e. they're targeted ragebait. If this is the goal, you could just explicitly say "I don't like right wingers and I think they suck" without dressing it up in this dishonest "EHC" jargon. DeepLeftAnalysis does this and the honesty is refreshing.
As it stands, Hanania's Substack often comes across as a sort of reverse-LibsOfTikTok, an account that just sits there highlighting examples of a particular flavor of stupidity. There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but it would be laughable to pretend that LoTT is some sort of high-minded intellectual providing us with genius political analysis. That's the mismatch that is rubbing people the wrong way.
I have written multiple times about resistance libs as low human capital. I think that’s much closer to rage bait than this because unlike the rightoids, the leftoids aren’t in the driver’s seat of the Democratic Party, which has more countermajoritarian tendencies, and a culture that’s more trusting of elites, and features like superdelegates that keep low human capital in check. You can’t say the same about the GOP.
The only thing I see targeting libs is a post making fun of Jeff tiedrich. That post looks like it backs up my comment, it's just dunking on tiedrich calling him stupid, and it's ratioed with tons of hostile comments. Textbook ragebait! Don't get me wrong, I agree Jeff tiedrich is stupid, but there's no need to invent new terms for this. "Smart" and "stupid" are words that have already been with us forever, "EHC/LHC" doesn't seem to add anything besides an unnecessary layer of condescension and self-righteousness.
Not only that but their definition of "elite" seems like it's trying really hard to re-invent the wheel. "EHC" just seems to mean mainstream Democrats for the most part. You could just call them that instead of writing a novel about why they should actually be called this new term instead.
EHC has a romance-less, might makes right, proof-is-in-the-pudding notion of favorability in politics that hinges on demonstrable success. If rivals and counter-elites are deserving of being on top, they’d already be there.
If this were the 80s the EHC-ers would probably sing praises for country club Republican types. Now they ipso facto do it for mainstream Dems.
So EHC thinking is undercooked and bad at explaining transitions from one state to another. It justifies the status quo as basically as optimal as it gets. Like an Efficient Market Hypothesis for the ruling class.
(Having said all this, I’m mostly a fellow traveler and think IQ, impulse control and other dispositional traits really are the substrata of so much worldly success.)
IIRC Anatoly Karlin popularized the EHC term in his characteristically tongue-in-cheek way. I don't know whether he specifically influenced Hanania but the two have gone in a similar direction.
Hanania is to rightoids what George Orwell was to Stalinists and Edmund Burke to Jacobins. If you look deeper you could find a curious connection between modern rightoidism and ancient Bolshevism/Jacobinism, though these ones historically belong to the left.
I was going to try to defend Ben Shapiro as someone who has been critical of Trump, doesn't hate immigrants, doesn't engage in conspiracy theories, but to my surprise, the Starbucks I am currently sitting in was suddenly inundated with the sounds of “Facts” by Tom MacDonald. I got so distracted I forgot what I was going to say. The rapping was hypnotic, and I felt a growing urge to loudly declare the collapse of western civilization and blame women for it. The Gribble mind virus has claimed another victim... there is not much time left now... ...
Point A: If the benefit of smart people / EHC is not necessarily providing good governance, but instead making the procedures and institutions of a government durable so that liberals do not undo everything in the next 4 years, then one wonders why so much of Hanania's regular criticism is along the lines of, "Can you believe the dumb rightoid peasant government put this idiot in charge? This is going to be such a disaster, dumb idiots should never be in charge of everything, only smart people."
If dumb peasants can run a government effectively - and it seems they can, given that the Biden administration was a grand opportunity for EHC to show us how it's done and that was a complete shitshow - then Hanania should be criticizing how a peasant government is failing to entrench itself in the long term. Instead he continually tries to reject it out of hand.
Point B: Less intelligent writers, if they ever come up with a phrase or an idea that is compelling, frequently take that idea and bring it up constantly in every conversation or piece of new writing they make, even if it hardly applies and only devalues that idea through repeated overuse. Hanania's most recent hot take of how the CEO shooter was "the most EHC shooter in history" comes to mind.
Hanania, DeepLeft and the like is hated not because of his analysis and him telling people that conservatives are stupid, can't influence art, conspiratorial etc.
He is hated by "rightoids" because he, DeepLeft and the like are basically a repackaged Mencken and similar dysgenic Social Darwinist eugenicons (Hanania is autistic, physically deformed, outlier ethnic status and definitely won't pass any "select the dysgenic" tests, for one) who sees "hobbits", "chuds" or whatever slurs they say as utter pests who has to be stomped out, shilling for a neoliberal system which also utterly hates their guts.
Worst thing about them is that these people - Hanania and the like - are worse than even feudal kings, because feudal kings still nominally have to perform noblesse oblige, while these types of people believe they have a divine right to treat the "dumb" (or whatever slur they want) like garbage.
Their hatred is perfectly calibrated actually. My criticism of the right at this point is that the right does not understand that you are supposed to study their enemy and figure out how to deal against these people. "This is what they believe in, what are you going to do to wreck them?" This question doesn't come into their mind.
What he said is obviously correct. If you disagree, you're just one of those losers who scours Twitter for the dumbest takes from random leftists or whatever.
What is EHC exactly? Is anyone who uses the label a man of substance in the real world? Doing anything worthwhile? It seems to me that they all write completely replaceable Substacks and don't do much else. The one book that has been written in the sphere is an almost plagarized version of what Christopher Caldwell already wrote. They seem much more like Vox Day's Gamma Male (https://sigmagame.substack.com/p/the-socio-sexual-hierarchy), who is completely irrelevant and/or despised yet thinks they are the secret king who's winning even though there's nothing to show for it in reality.
The EHC thing seems tailor-made to just farm engagement online via ragebait. What actually defines "being EHC?" As best as I can tell, it means "high IQ" and "neoliberal," to the extent that it means anything at all, which makes it a bit of a recursive label indicating that these two traits basically define the Approved Goodperson who is set aside from and above the unwashed masses. I have yet to see anything new, interesting or insightful derived from this premise. None of the writing about "EHC" that I have seen actually goes in-depth studying the inner workings of institutions, identifying who is and isn't "EHC" within those institutions, deriving further implications from the starting premises, etc.
Instead it's all posts like this one which basically just say "rightoids are dumbstupiddimwittarded." I don't think I've seen a single post about "EHC" which differentiates EHC from the dregs of the left-wing such as sex pest transsexuals or Antifa goons, it's always invective aimed specifically at a certain flavor of right-winger. This suggests that the authors of such pieces know they are likely to be read by the latter group and not the former, i.e. they're targeted ragebait. If this is the goal, you could just explicitly say "I don't like right wingers and I think they suck" without dressing it up in this dishonest "EHC" jargon. DeepLeftAnalysis does this and the honesty is refreshing.
As it stands, Hanania's Substack often comes across as a sort of reverse-LibsOfTikTok, an account that just sits there highlighting examples of a particular flavor of stupidity. There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but it would be laughable to pretend that LoTT is some sort of high-minded intellectual providing us with genius political analysis. That's the mismatch that is rubbing people the wrong way.
I have written multiple times about resistance libs as low human capital. I think that’s much closer to rage bait than this because unlike the rightoids, the leftoids aren’t in the driver’s seat of the Democratic Party, which has more countermajoritarian tendencies, and a culture that’s more trusting of elites, and features like superdelegates that keep low human capital in check. You can’t say the same about the GOP.
The only thing I see targeting libs is a post making fun of Jeff tiedrich. That post looks like it backs up my comment, it's just dunking on tiedrich calling him stupid, and it's ratioed with tons of hostile comments. Textbook ragebait! Don't get me wrong, I agree Jeff tiedrich is stupid, but there's no need to invent new terms for this. "Smart" and "stupid" are words that have already been with us forever, "EHC/LHC" doesn't seem to add anything besides an unnecessary layer of condescension and self-righteousness.
Summed up, this cohort of writers are simply elitists without any noblesse oblige, whether it be for working class whites or downtrodden minorities.
Not only that but their definition of "elite" seems like it's trying really hard to re-invent the wheel. "EHC" just seems to mean mainstream Democrats for the most part. You could just call them that instead of writing a novel about why they should actually be called this new term instead.
EHC has a romance-less, might makes right, proof-is-in-the-pudding notion of favorability in politics that hinges on demonstrable success. If rivals and counter-elites are deserving of being on top, they’d already be there.
If this were the 80s the EHC-ers would probably sing praises for country club Republican types. Now they ipso facto do it for mainstream Dems.
So EHC thinking is undercooked and bad at explaining transitions from one state to another. It justifies the status quo as basically as optimal as it gets. Like an Efficient Market Hypothesis for the ruling class.
(Having said all this, I’m mostly a fellow traveler and think IQ, impulse control and other dispositional traits really are the substrata of so much worldly success.)
IIRC Anatoly Karlin popularized the EHC term in his characteristically tongue-in-cheek way. I don't know whether he specifically influenced Hanania but the two have gone in a similar direction.
Hanania is to rightoids what George Orwell was to Stalinists and Edmund Burke to Jacobins. If you look deeper you could find a curious connection between modern rightoidism and ancient Bolshevism/Jacobinism, though these ones historically belong to the left.
I was going to try to defend Ben Shapiro as someone who has been critical of Trump, doesn't hate immigrants, doesn't engage in conspiracy theories, but to my surprise, the Starbucks I am currently sitting in was suddenly inundated with the sounds of “Facts” by Tom MacDonald. I got so distracted I forgot what I was going to say. The rapping was hypnotic, and I felt a growing urge to loudly declare the collapse of western civilization and blame women for it. The Gribble mind virus has claimed another victim... there is not much time left now... ...
> Where the American flags at?
> Remember when people would hang those?
Truly inspiring lyrics only a Canadian could write.
Point A: If the benefit of smart people / EHC is not necessarily providing good governance, but instead making the procedures and institutions of a government durable so that liberals do not undo everything in the next 4 years, then one wonders why so much of Hanania's regular criticism is along the lines of, "Can you believe the dumb rightoid peasant government put this idiot in charge? This is going to be such a disaster, dumb idiots should never be in charge of everything, only smart people."
If dumb peasants can run a government effectively - and it seems they can, given that the Biden administration was a grand opportunity for EHC to show us how it's done and that was a complete shitshow - then Hanania should be criticizing how a peasant government is failing to entrench itself in the long term. Instead he continually tries to reject it out of hand.
Point B: Less intelligent writers, if they ever come up with a phrase or an idea that is compelling, frequently take that idea and bring it up constantly in every conversation or piece of new writing they make, even if it hardly applies and only devalues that idea through repeated overuse. Hanania's most recent hot take of how the CEO shooter was "the most EHC shooter in history" comes to mind.
Hanania, DeepLeft and the like is hated not because of his analysis and him telling people that conservatives are stupid, can't influence art, conspiratorial etc.
He is hated by "rightoids" because he, DeepLeft and the like are basically a repackaged Mencken and similar dysgenic Social Darwinist eugenicons (Hanania is autistic, physically deformed, outlier ethnic status and definitely won't pass any "select the dysgenic" tests, for one) who sees "hobbits", "chuds" or whatever slurs they say as utter pests who has to be stomped out, shilling for a neoliberal system which also utterly hates their guts.
Worst thing about them is that these people - Hanania and the like - are worse than even feudal kings, because feudal kings still nominally have to perform noblesse oblige, while these types of people believe they have a divine right to treat the "dumb" (or whatever slur they want) like garbage.
Their hatred is perfectly calibrated actually. My criticism of the right at this point is that the right does not understand that you are supposed to study their enemy and figure out how to deal against these people. "This is what they believe in, what are you going to do to wreck them?" This question doesn't come into their mind.
I’d add graph go up belief system without the earnestness.
I’ve extensively outlined by objections to Hanania here though they don’t really match your characterization: https://open.substack.com/pub/fiddlersgreene/p/a-response-to-hanania?r=14efw&utm_medium=ios
Dave, this article seems to be rage bait. It was not written in good faith by someone looking for a real conversation about the issues of today.
EHC has done a terrible job governing and they seem personally depressed the dysfunctional.
Hobbit polities seem to govern well and make hobbits happy.
The most elite of all human capital went hobbit this election.
This is basically the same phenomena NonZionism just described with his piece on 'Left Moldbuggism', only this piece is funnier and more troll-y
https://open.substack.com/pub/nonzionism/p/left-moldbuggism
Nobody likes being called dumb.
" When the Russiagate investigation turned up nothing, the Democrats stopped talking about it."
I stopped reading right there.
Absolutely worthless read.
What he said is obviously correct. If you disagree, you're just one of those losers who scours Twitter for the dumbest takes from random leftists or whatever.
Oh Jesus, he was not correct. Russiagate was a scandal of massive proportions, a thorough corruption of the intelligence services.
The Democrats only stopped talking about it, because it exposed their corruption.
To offer this as an example of Democrat superiority is beyond contemptible.
"If you disagree, you're just one of those losers who scours Twitter for the dumbest takes from random leftists or whatever."
Sickening. Absolutely fucking sickening.
You guys are hopeless.
What is EHC exactly? Is anyone who uses the label a man of substance in the real world? Doing anything worthwhile? It seems to me that they all write completely replaceable Substacks and don't do much else. The one book that has been written in the sphere is an almost plagarized version of what Christopher Caldwell already wrote. They seem much more like Vox Day's Gamma Male (https://sigmagame.substack.com/p/the-socio-sexual-hierarchy), who is completely irrelevant and/or despised yet thinks they are the secret king who's winning even though there's nothing to show for it in reality.
Even accepting this, he’s still repulsive.