Bret Easton Ellis: political changer
Here’s another changer – a recent one, author Bret Easton Ellis – telling his story. I was alerted to this by a helpful reader:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Here’s another changer – a recent one, author Bret Easton Ellis – telling his story. I was alerted to this by a helpful reader:
My wife and I and all of our friends were instantly attracted to Trump’s tell-it-like-it-is style. With Trump you get Trump, undiluted. He’s a refreshing change from Hillary I-Ain’t-No-Ways-Tired Clinton. I’ve never understood why people get into a kerfuffle about Trump. Who would you rather have when you are in a bind? A reliable, caring person like Trump or Adam “Shifty” Schiff? Yet to many people Schiff is a hero and Trump is evil. Go figure.
I think there is a certain class of powerful, influential people who rely on subterfuge to get what they want. In rough and tumble Jersey City, New Jersey they call it “getting over” on someone. America’s elite are constantly inventing new ways to “get over” on people. It’s what they do, and it’s made them wealthy. Trump calls them out. Bernie may think that he is for the little guy but it is really Trump.
Brian Morgan,
Dennis Miller (comedian/comedian) is fairly practical and level headed. He likes Trump for a similar reason as you and your family; even if you don’t like what he’s saying you know he’s telling you what is in his head.
Miller likes to say; “The difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is Donald Trump’s inner voice and outer voice are exactly the same person. I doubt Hillary Clinton’s inner voice has ever even met her outer voice for a cup of coffee.”
Dennis Miller also often says Joe Biden reminds him of the third guy in the car in a Sonic commercial.
Neo,
This is in my podcast queue and I’m sure I’ll listen to it in the next 48 hours. I was pleased when I saw it pop up as I find both Dave Rubin and Bret Easton Ellis honest and forthright.
If you want to hear more from Ellis I highly recommend this episode of Eric Weinstein’s, “The Portal.”
https://youtu.be/bkAWAJyX0fM
It would take a lot of words to briefly describe Eric Weinstein and how he came to be known as a member of the IDW (Intellectual Dark Web) along with such shady, suspect “right wing” characters as Dave Rubin (a gay, secular jew), Ben Shapiro (a straight, observant jew), Jordan Peterson (a straight, Harvard educated Philosopher of undefined religious beliefs) and Joe Rogan (a straight, atheist mixed martial arts announcer, stand up comedian, huge proponent and participant in recreational drugs and judo enthusiast). Hopefully you already know of Eric Weinstein. He is a brilliant polymath, like yourself. And, coincidentally, spent his formative years in L.A. overlapping with Bret Easton Ellis. As a contemporary he is able to dive fairly deep in the interview.
Here is on audio, for folks who may prefer to download it for audio only.
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kast-media-2/the-portal-2
Just search for episode #7.
And for those of you not in on the joke, I only mention the IDW’s sexual orientations and religious backgrounds as it is a joke among them. News articles keep describing them as “right wing,” “anti-LGBTQ,” and “anti-semitic” which gives them all a good laugh.
The interview is actually a couple years old but Rubin’s brought it back. (I note that this is not made explicit by Rubin.)
Rufus T. Firefly, Dennis Miller is the best. How on Earth he survived SNL amazes me.
Rubin’s got your Dennis Miller interview
Right here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzjEHRpuaZ0
Watching it now, thanks Gerard!
It’s funny podcasts came up here today as I was listening to Miller’s second to most recent offering this morning and thinking to myself, “Self, I think a lot of Neo’s readers would appreciate this podcast as he is discussing similar concern about the COVID cases we are seeing and our nation’s reaction. I ought to recommend it in the comments.”
Then, lo and behold, we’re discussing podcasts. Here is a link to the site where you can find his show: http://westwoodonepodcasts.com/pods/the-dennis-miller-option/
They are mostly all good, but S2 E115 is the specific one I refer to above. The first half is more dour than is typical, and, oddly, he stalls on the math a few times when he is usually super quick with basic math problems. The second half is more how the show usually runs. A slight heads up, he discusses something a bit off color in that half. Dennis doesn’t typically work blue, but he will swear occasionally on his show. I think most would find the instance in question in this episode mildly amusing, or at least understand why it is discussed, and he does apologize for it afterwards. He comes across as a very decent man.
Brian Morgan, you can get insight into aspects of these elites’ subterfuge, from Archdruid J.M. Greer, e.g. at https://www.ecosophia.net/present-at-the-death/ ,
and from Julius Krein, e.g. at https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-real-class-war/ .
Hohoho… IDW FTW. Out here on the ‘Reach for my Browning’ Fringes they look like milquetoast gatekeepers :D.
Still better than Rod Dreher flapping his wings about Muh Orthodoxy.
Trump is like an emotional IQ test. The more people freak out about him, the more it demonstrates their lack of maturity or emotional intelligence.
Or look at the people swooning over Governor Andrew Cuomo. What exactly has he DONE about the coronavirus pandemic that is in any way superior to what Trump has done? But because his performance during his press conferences better fits their conception of how a political leader should behave, they gush over him like besotted school girls.
It’s been touched on before but one of the problems of Western Civilization in the early 21st century is that it produces a lot of adults who are fundamentally not grown ups. Both emotionally and intellectually, they’ve been frozen in adolescence.
Mike
aNanyMouse – fascinating essay at ecosophia; very perceptive comments.
The current crisis seems to have scrambled the Kubler-Ross stages a bit, however.
If the Democrats were edging into acceptance (of Trump’s election) last May, they ditched all of that in November, and seem to be in a whirling free-fall now.
Rufus, Dennis Miller’s quote about Trump and Hillary remind me of one of my own favorite quotes. Allegedly, and ironically, it comes from that most iconic leftist Mao Tse-tung so it may be apocryphal but is great nonetheless:
“I like dealing with rightists. They tell you what they really think, unlike leftists who say one thing and mean another”.
That one really stuck with me, especially after I “changed” politically.
FOAF,
Interesting. Mao certainly didn’t like dealing with academics who said what they really thought, but it’s a good quote.
I think the Mao quote or something close to it was buttering up Nixon, Kissinger or some other Western leader or diplomat he couldn’t just kill off-hand.
For how he treated his own ‘Rightists’, there’s plenty written about the Anti-Rightist Campaign where he purged those folks stupid enough to believe he meant what he said when saying ‘Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom’.
Those of us (of all races, mind you) who live out in the Far East know well that it ain’t just White Man who speaks with Forked Tongue.
The moment “I began to change”–I thought (don’t laugh) that the Dem party was the one that would be serious about deficits, even if that meant a personally inconvenient level of taxation. My liberal law partner tax expert casually mentioned that the new idea that lowering tax rates might increase tax revenues actually had a lot of support, but in his view that wasn’t the important point. The important point was to use tax rates to redistribute income, even if that meant starving the treasury. I also remember being impressed by Newt Gingrich’s comparing the performance of the DMV to that of McDonald’s. Before long I found myself voting Republican, and boy, if you don’t think that makes you unpopular in a law firm–!
Mike, on “Both emotionally and intellectually, they’ve been frozen in adolescence.”:
This is esp. so, for single upper-middle class urban females.
I suspect that 4th wave feminism exacerbated prior trends in this direction.
That “the moment” of change started with the NYT treatment of Trump’s off-hand insult to Megyn Kelly, and other changers have also mentioned that moment, is quite strange to me. They are starting to get the idea that the libruls are lying, er, not quite being fully honest in what they say.
Well, as soon as you accept that they might be lying, and look for alternatives to show that or not, you quickly find that they ARE lying.
Which means most Dems still don’t have the idea of lying Dem media, much less interest in finding out if they are lying. In the second vid he says “92% of liberals would not invite a conservative” … and that’s very sad.
Maybe we need still more destruction of “institutions” … because too many are full of lying Dems who believe the lying Dem media.
Looking at Ellis, I’m reminded old age is near and the end of young adulthood far.
I’ve never read any of his work. I’ve had occasion to like some of his public remarks as he is not intimidated by cultural commissars (for example, his cutting rejoinder to Dan Savage). There are others with some of the same quality (Camille Paglia, Chuck Pahlaniuk, Scott Adams, and the late Elizabeth Wurtzel). Its best when the speaker is not self-consciously contrarian.