Comments on: They strive to achieve uniformity via exclusion

By: Ash Staub

Ash Staub — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 04:01:21 +0000

On the subject of signs, I heard an anecdote from some podcast whose name I forget regarding the proliferation of lawn and window signs, and bumper stickers, and other forms of signalling. In Communist Czechoslovakia “Workers of the World Unite” signs were in every window as a means of signalling adherence to the party line. These signs were not mandated, but their absence was nevertheless a signal, and social repercussions would ensue, as well as unwanted State attention.

And so my gripe with sloganism is indulgence in simulacra; it’s not that these slogans parade as sincere when they are not that makes them so nauseating, but that they are representations of representations. That the actual substance of what is said is entirely divorced from the emotive content, and therefore the emotion that is intended to be provoked in the reader.

By: RLVC

RLVC — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 23:30:59 +0000

Didn’t your daddies ever learn you, “Never trust a man with the shoulders of a trout.”

By: Harry Jones

Harry Jones — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 13:09:28 +0000

The real point is, all slogans are semantically empty. If it fits on a bumper sticker, it’s probably idiotic.

There’s no point harping on the insincerity. No one will listen who isn’t already converted. What you need to do is mock the slogans. Think Wacky Packages for politics. Visualize whirled peas. Shave the whales. Mockery of the idiotic disrobes the emperor and disarms the propaganda.

Always, always mock kitsch.

By: Ous

Ous — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 12:02:24 +0000

Bryan Caplan is part of the movement he’s criticizing. He supported it until it arrived for the centrists’ necks. This guy is seriously brain damaged.