Here is a link to some newspaper summarizing that timeline. I thought all of this was obvious obfuscation at the time and I only feel more vindicated now that nothing more has come of the case: https://t.co/jjnAnqI3pv

Evident in this story is the same tendency for different parts of the left to, on one side, support violence, while another side accuses the right of responsibility for that violence. Unfortunately, that worked for them then, though it shouldn’t work now.

Last I checked, the modal social media user who speaks on this topic still seems to think that the Floyd Riots were started by a white supremacist. I suspect the MPD intentionally over-publicized this suspect as he was a good scapegoat narratively.

The day after that, people online accused an MPD officer, which was disproved a couple of weeks after. Several weeks later, a cop accused a specific (then unnamed) white supremacist of being responsible and despite that leading nowhere, that is as far as the case has gone.

It’s worthwhile to remember that in 2020, some of the first instances of looting in Minneapolis followed the so-called “Umbrella Man” breaking the windows of an AutoZone. Keith Ellison accused him of being a provocateur the very next day.

Great societies (also like great men) depend on natural quality as well, and refusal of this recognition is a meaningful part of how we got here, but instinct can only get us so far, especially as the prevailing instincts become more degraded and low.

“Why don’t we just dispose of our enemies?” is an immediately appealing thought, but if you reflect you can see that that thought, sufficiently generalized, constitutes a state of war.

Great societies (like great men) depend on a high level of internal sophistication and differentiation grounded in a self-conception that extends beyond the present. What we are witnessing is a the breakdown of higher things into a more disordered (i.e. homogenous) state.

If embryo selection ever leads to a non-negligible number of births then it seems likely that a significantly more imbalanced sex ratio could result. Moreover, I don’t expect a natural equilibrium would be able to gradually assert itself given current sociopolitical conditions.

None of the institutions went for Trump and most basically or overtly opposed him, but now their representatives are shocked that they have little buy-in. If you want to pressure Trump you need to be able to credibly commit to support him at least under the right terms.

Similarly, a lot of economists are now suffering from TDS. Trumpism overtly opposed certain elements of economic orthodoxy (support for immigration and offshoring), but if mainstream economists didn’t want the baby to go out with the bathwater they needed to give Trump something.

RFK Jr. now leads a US department despite only tenuous ideological links to Trumpism because he wanted something from Trump (an appointment) and could give something (his support) in return. The centrists were less coordinated and also less willing to actually play politics.

The snippets I saw of that self-flagellatory AstralCodex piece on edgelord centrism did seem to merit the criticisms over that faction’s inflated self-importance, but their actual failing is that they rejected being part of the only available path to reform (Trump).

“its the ASMR part”

A lot of the media institutions viewed Trump as a threat, so they had very good reasons to not “normalize” Trump via hiring people who liked him. It’s harder to suppress a viewpoint when you’ve hired someone to explicitly and publicly explain why they support those views.

Opposing other men for their romantic success would be pointlessly self-degrading unless you’re prepared to establish new norms patently opposed to the prevailing sexual liberalism. It’s not mysterious why feminism opposed collective male self-interest!