Oct
17
2025

Oh, to be Young and …

Vile?

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A few months back, I purchased a book by Andrew Heaton, Tribalism is Dumb. And it finally worked its way through my non-fiction to-be-read stack, so I'm reading it now. And to what did my wondering eyes should appear, but this paragraph (pp 65-6):

Meanwhile, alt-right trolls perform a variant of virtue signaling called “unvirtue signaling,” where they flout the social norms and manners of pearl-clutching liberals. Saying terms that are offensive to or forbidden by the politically correct displays both contempt for the enemy tribe as well as bravery in combating it. Trolls one-up each other on message boards by seeing who will say the most offensive thing, thereby ratcheting up perceived boldness and status among their peers.

As the kids say in these modern times: Whoa. Or, as we geezers say, if we're feeling snooty: On the nose, Andrew!

What I'm talking about is how well Andrew captured the mindset behind what was recently reported at Politico: ‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat. The current edition of National Review's The Week (NR gifted link) summarizes:

A Telegram group chat maintained by the leaders of certain chapters of the Young Republicans has since become a scandal of their own making after Politico published its contents. In it, these self-anointed shapers of young minds on the right casually indulged in racial slurs and stereotypes, mused noxiously about the virtues of Hitlerite extermination programs, and may have even confessed to criminal wrongdoing. Many Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, dismissed the concerns this chat raised as “pearl-clutching” over “kids” doing “stupid things.” (Many of these “kids” were in their thirties.) Democrats were quick to assert that the vile and impossibly stupid exchanges were indicative of a toxic culture that is especially pronounced on the youngish right, and they denounced the GOP lawmakers who had associated with these mid-level functionaries. Both sides accused the other of hypocrisy for sheltering their co-partisans from criticism while castigating their opponents for doing the same. And both sides have a point. But Republicans who must submit to the voters’ verdict this year showed none of Vance’s apathy. “Easy,” Virginia gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears replied to a statement from Old Dominion Democrats demanding she call for the resignations of these Young Republican leaders. “They must absolutely step down,” Earle-Sears said. She then challenged her opponent, Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger, to join her in calling for Virginia attorney general nominee Jay Jones to exit the race for having indulged in murder fantasies on a separate text thread. As of this writing, Spanberger has yet to take up the challenge.

Also taking Vance to task, even more thoroughly than NR is Jack Butler, in his debut column (I think) on the WSJ editorial pages. Vance’s Bad Excuses for Young Republicans. (WSJ gifted link)

There is nothing conservative about prejudice and crudeness. But you wouldn’t necessarily know it from some of the reaction to Politico’s reporting this week on a vulgar text chain involving members of the Young Republicans. The messages—exchanged on the encrypted Telegram app—revealed that some of the GOP’s youthful operatives find it funny to trade in racism, misogyny and antisemitism, at least when they think nobody is watching.

Many Republicans and conservatives condemned the messages. Some of the chats’ participants have also apologized. Yet some on the right believe the young Republicans did little if anything wrong. “The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys,” Vice President JD Vance said. Telling “edgy,” “offensive” and “stupid” jokes is “what kids do.” Mr. Vance doesn’t want ours to be a country where doing so “is cause to ruin their lives.” The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh noted that the left fails to police its own and asked why the right should.

Messrs. Vance and Walsh are deeply misguided. By treating actual adults—the chat participants weren’t teenagers—with kid gloves, they contribute to the cultural malady of infantilization. Mr. Vance in particular has blown an opportunity to set a good example for Republicans young and old. Excusing such behavior will only get us more of it. That’s how people actually ruin their lives.

Looking forward to hearing more from Jack.

Finally, a current NR guy, Charles C.W. Cooke has some helpful hints for the young and stupid: How Not to Be Caught Saying Hideous Things: A Primer. (archive.today link)

CNN reports that Graham Platner, who hopes to be Maine’s next senator, has a record of declaring himself a “communist,” of describing “white rural America” as “racist and stupid,” and of calling all cops “bastards.” The comments were made on Reddit, going back to 2021.

I have developed a strategy to avoid being caught saying that I hate all cops, am a communist, or believe that all white, rural Americans are racist idiots, and, in my infinite benevolence, I would like to share it with Platner — and others — for free. My strategy is that I don’t say those things in the first place. The technique is actually quite simple. In some circumstances, it involves me not placing my hands on a keyboard and typing those sentiments out; in others, it involves not saying them aloud. When practiced concurrently with another useful strategy — not believing any of those things in the first place — it is almost foolproof.

Charlie goes on to recommend this approach to the Young Republican Nitwits, too.

I've been hitting keyboards with my opinions for a few decades, and I can't say I've never typed things I've regretted, but I think I've minimized that sort of thing. But if you ever find yourself asking: Should I broadcast irrefutable evidence of my bigotry to the world?, go to this website for AI-assisted advice.

Also of note:

  • Not uniformly interesting, but Noah Smith posts At least five interesting things, and I liked number one:

    1. Doomerism is so passé

    I don’t see nearly as many pessimistic screeds these days as I did a couple of years ago. But every once in a while, one pops up on my screen, and it’s invariably just as maudlin and overwrought as they all are. The latest example is an essay in the New York Times by Andreas Reckwitz from Berlin, entitled “The West is Lost”.

    Why is the West lost? Well, fairly predictably, he starts out with climate change:

    The most dramatic loss is environmental. Rising temperatures, extreme weather, disappearing habitats and the ruination of entire regions are eroding the conditions of life for humans and nonhumans alike. Even more threatening than present damage is the anticipation of future devastation — what has aptly been termed climate grief. What’s more, mitigation strategies themselves promise losses: a departure from the consumer-oriented lifestyle of the 20th century, once celebrated as the hallmark of modern progress.

    Look, climate change is obviously a bad thing, but let’s not exaggerate. The notion that runaway climate change was going to make the Earth uninhabitable was always highly dubious; in 2021, the author of The Uninhabitable Earth wrote an article entitled “After Climate Alarmism”, in which he embraces more balanced, reasonable forecasts. Thanks to the amazing progress in renewable technology, and China’s gung-ho willingness to scale that technology rapidly, the world will probably be spared the worst. And the idea that climate change is going to be solved — or even meaningfully altered — by pious Europeans eschewing modern consumer lifestyles is just numerically illiterate. Technology is solving the problem while German intellectuals wring their hands.

    Beckwitz also refers to "economic devastation", which Noah rebuts with words and…

    Worth a thousand words, if not more.

  • Shocker! John Aziz points out that Hamas Doesn’t Believe in Peace.

    Two years of war had left Hamas weaker than it had been in decades. Israeli bombardments had shattered the group’s military capabilities and depleted its arsenals. Many Hamas tunnels had been abandoned or destroyed, and most of its senior leadership killed in battle or assassinated. In many neighborhoods, control had drifted to local clan networks and tribal councils. This fragile, improvised form of governance, formed in the desperation of war, hinted at something that could one day replace Hamas’s iron grip.

    But even cornered and diminished, the Islamist movement that started this disastrous war remains as determined as ever to cling to power. Within a day of the ceasefire taking effect, Hamas’s internal security forces were staging public executions. Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel were dragged out and shot or hanged from lampposts in Gaza City’s main squares. There were no trials, no evidence, not even a pretense of due process—just a crude display of terror meant to remind everyone who was still in charge. Soon after, Hamas gunmen turned their weapons on powerful clan militias that had filled the vacuum during the war, sparking running battles in Shuja’iyya, Sabra, and beyond.

    These actions exposed a critical truth: Hamas never viewed the Trump deal as a real step toward peace or coexistence, because that is just not how their framework for understanding the world works. Peace is not their aspiration. For their purposes, the ceasefire is a temporary reprieve: a chance to regroup, rearm, and prepare for the next round of fighting, which could start in five days, five years, or 50 years. In Islamist political thought there’s a word for it—hudna—a temporary truce with non-Muslim adversaries that can be discarded as soon as the balance of power shifts. Then the time for jihad against the Jews and other non-Muslims will arrive again.

    </sarcasm>I'm sure this will cause the scales to drop from the eyes of Hamas cheerleaders here.</sarcasm>