European politics

[Dolan]

@fightinfrenchman
He's the Romanian RFK, he even wrote an intro to one of RFK's books that's gonna be published here.
All the institutions here have been in a frenzy since this guy shot up to the 1st position in the first round of elections.
There's talk of suspending Tiktok in the country until investigations show what happened. Suspicions that algos and bots have been used to drive his viewership sky high and so reach a disproportionate audience compared to other candidates. Also that his TT account wasn't registered to belong to a politician so his content wasn't scrutinised according to electoral campaign rules.
Unrelated to this, the supreme court demanded a recount of the vote, due to reported mistakes made when allotting votes to certain candidates from others that had pulled out of the race but their names were still on the ballot. The court postponed a decision until Monday, after general elections that will take place tomorrow.
It's a shitshow and there seems to be genuine shock among institutions and pundits because nobody knows where did this guy pop from.
It seems most of his voters are young and from abroad and his Tiktok account had lots of comments typical of Tate followers.
Which makes sense because he used campaign clips with him riding on a horse dressed in national attire, running on a treadmill and showing off his jiu-jitsu moves, taking a bath in freezing weather outside in a lake to prove this will make him stronger and he won't get Covid.

And yeah he speaks using this kind of hyperbolic language that plays into people's kooky beliefs about plant remedies, spiritual healing, heroes from the past, etc. A lot of pompous words said in a plain voice, like he's speaking for a National Geographic channel show. This was enough for people who hate the mainstream parties and yearn for someone that speaks in a simple way and gives them soothing assurances the country will be led with patriotism, we will be proud again, we won't kowtow to these foreign EU and NATO globalist dens and we will build a local economy of small farmers and become self-sufficient, living in harmony with nature and the earth's magnetic poles.

[Dolan]

His wife was whispering to him during the campaign: "tell them about Jesus Christ, Romanians love hearing about Jesus".
So it seems what they've been doing is very calculated, they don't really believe everything they say.
It's a cynical and manipulative use of whatever people trust more now, anything anti-mainstream, anti-vax, pro natural remedies, spiritual healing hooey, appeal to past historical figures and a promise of rebirth through ourselves, through a big national stiffening.



Both he and his wife seem to be more like New Agers who are into plant remedies, she quit her banking job to sell plant-based products that claim fantastical healing properties.
So they're trying to meme themselves into becoming some kind of cult leaders using politics. She's probably already cooking some plans on how this will boost her plant-based and vitamins business, and she will sell more thanks to all this media exposure.

[Goodspeed]

The anti-science populists are winning everywhere. It's weirdly consistent in a chaotic world of many different cultures. They all have something in common though: Social media

[Dolan]

I wouldn't say they are anti-science. He has a degree in earth science.
They're defined more by what they're for rather than what they're against. Rather than outright denying science, they're more like sceptics who doubt mainstream scientific consensus and will quote some fringe studies that support their claims.

This is more of a cynical exploitation of that idea that if something is currently the prevailing accepted view then it's most likely wrong and the truth is always something yet to be discovered and the direction should be found among the fringe researchers that everyone shuns and considers crackpot. After all, they dismissed Einstein too when he came out with the new theories, until experiments confirmed his predictions. Then he became the new mainstream view and quantum theory played the role of the new contrarian view.

But these 2 aren't really big on anti-science, that's not a subject to gain votes on. They're serving normies these feelgood ideas about anti-modernistic lifestyles, rural economy, plant remedies, staying connected on the astral plane with Jesus (because that's what most believe in, not that they're Christians, they're actually new agers), focusing on strengthening the country through our own resources reducing dependency on any foreigners or globalist institutions. They're not anti-science like atheists are anti-theists, they're anti-modernists. There's some degree of intersection between this new vibe in the political mindspace and Kaczynski's anti-technologism.

[Goodspeed]

What is earth science? You mean geology?

I don't mean he's anti-science himself, these politicians generally aren't. They can still run on that kind of message though. That's what you seemed to be describing. Populists famously just say whatever they think will stick.

Anti-vax alone makes you anti-science in my book. Maybe not literally. Anti-truth, anti-intellectual, idk, just this general reliance on the fact that people don't really care about the truth anymore and will respond better to hearing things that make them feel good.

[Dolan]

What is earth science? You mean geology?

Soil science, pedology

[Dolan]

Anti-vax alone makes you anti-science in my book. Maybe not literally. Anti-truth, anti-intellectual, idk, just this general reliance on the fact that people don't really care about the truth anymore and will respond better to hearing things that make them feel good.

That's too abstract a subject for the voting masses. They care about a leader selling them a sunny perspective that can be described in something tangible.
This return-to-the-earth vibeshift started several years ago, when the cottagecore trend appeared among zoomers, then it gradually morphed into a political newspeak as "trad lifestyles".
That's why you see a lot of social media grifters today trad-larping to monetise this new vibe. It's now seeping into politics in the form of sympathy for any anti-mainstream/system forces that want to dismantle the old ways, anything that aims to take down The System, the paradigm of modernity.

It's modernity that is the enemy here for these new forces. Globalisation is just another face of it, just like corporations. All major modernistic political paradigms have died off (Marxism, fascism) and the remaining one, capitalism, is not feeling very well either after 2008. Nobody's enthusiastic about capitalism solving their problems.
The masses are fretting, the beast is swinging in its cell trying to escape the prison of modernism, but there's no new prophet to shine a way out, they're caught between a desire to escape and the lack of a promised new horizon. So they seek solace in premodern lifestyles, return to the countryside, economic autonomy.

[fightinfrenchman]

What is earth science?

I think that's what my science class was called in eighth grade

[Dolan]

After chatting with some Georgescu supporters I'm firmly convinced universal right of vote was a mistake. The democratic experiment is over.
And you can flush the myth of the rational voter down the toilet too.

Political arguments have evolved from
- picking between a screwdriver, pliers or the right wrench to solve a problem
to
- picking between a wrecking ball or explosives to solve a problem

But applied to politics. Nobody has any patience to explain anything, there's no argument, just jumping straight to the solution that demolishes a building because it had a bit of mold in a corner, so that's it, it was compromised, it needs complete obliteration so that I can feel good about it.

[fightinfrenchman]

After chatting with some Georgescu supporters I'm firmly convinced universal right of vote was a mistake. The democratic experiment is over.
And you can flush the myth of the rational voter down the toilet too.

Political arguments have evolved from
- picking between a screwdriver, pliers or the right wrench to solve a problem
to
- picking between a wrecking ball or explosives to solve a problem

But applied to politics. Nobody has any patience to explain anything, there's no argument, just jumping straight to the solution that demolishes a building because it had a bit of mold in a corner, so that's it, it was compromised, it needs complete obliteration so that I can feel good about it.

Welcome to Toon World

[Dolan]

How zoomers here argue why they vote this way...
Let's say the candidate was Jeffrey Dahmer and you told them: but the guy is a serial killer.
They will say: so that makes you mad, right? This makes me want to vote for Jeffrey Dahmer even more!!

Then you could tell them: but dude this won't solve anything, he doesn't have any experience or any party, it's literally useless and he will probably fuck up something.
Their reply: I see this makes you very mad, that's why I'm gonna vote for Jeffrey Dahmer, haha!

That's how zoomers in Romania today think about politics: Jeffrey Dahmer killed people, that means he's fearless, a real man like Tate, so he's super-qualified to be president. That's the level of political cognition of these "rational", "equally worthy of political rights" humans.

Now lecture me how democracy was a great idea and "education will fix this" because they are so equally rational as you are.

[Goodspeed]

Democracy was a great idea, education will definitely not fix this.

Any potential philosopher kings willing to step up?

[Dolan]

It was key for PKs to be reluctant power holders. Great systemisers, who lacked any interest in holding a power position

[Goodspeed]

They would reluctantly step up because we need them to

[fightinfrenchman]

Hmm... #dontmodtheear