The Realignment: Eric Weinstein Returns, Plus, Realignments in Tech, Media, and Education

Realignment interviews of the week, show notes, listener mail, and more

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The Realignment on Rising

Marshall was just made a regular panelist on Rising. He’ll be on weekly panels, alternating between Wednesday and Friday. This week, he was today:

And yes, against all advice, he *does* read the comments pointing out that he looks like a 12-year-old on YouTube.

This week, we aired two episodes: Eric Weinstein, host of The Portal podcast and managing director at Thiel Capital; and Erik Torenberg, co-founder and partner at Village Global, host of the Venture Stories podcast, and founder of On Deck.

Also, if you enjoyed last week’s episode with Helen Andrews, her book, Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster, is out now.

Ep. 90: Erik Torenberg on Realignments in Tech, Media, and Education

[Audio] [Video] [Transcript]

Seth Lachman did us the favor of writing up show notes. Follow his thread for all of the books, articles, and podcasts mentioned in the episode.

Seth Lachman @SethLachman

Prescient conversation about the future of tech, media, and education on this episode the-realignment.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-90… from @RealignmentPod with @eriktorenberg. Some takeaways below.

Ep. 89: Eric Weinstein, Reckoning with Capitol Chaos and How to Save America

[Audio] [Video] [Transcript]

Show notes, via Seth:

Seth Lachman @SethLachman

Thought provoking podcast the-realignment.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-89… from @esaagar and @makosloff with @EricRWeinstein. One thing is certain when listening to a podcast featuring @EricRWeinstein, you will need to do some Internet spelunking following the conversation.

Huge thanks to Seth for writing these up. He just started his own Substack newsletter where he’s curating the best writing on everything from culture to technology:

Seth Lachman @SethLachman

Sign up for my new Substack newsletter, Fresh Tracks, where I'll be collecting the best writing across a diverse range of topics, from culture to technology, every week.

freshtracks.substack.comFresh TracksCollecting thoughts that provoke reflection and change.

The Realignment’s Bookshop.org Storefront

As a reminder, we’ve created a Realignment podcast affiliate shop for guest books at bookshop.org. The shop features our guests’ books, including books from Michael Lind, Scott Galloway, Reeves Wiedeman, Ross Douthat, Matt Stoller, and Lisa Napoli.

We’ve built out three Bookshop lists:

1) Our list of the best books we read in 2020

2) All of the books we’ve read so far in 2021

3) Books written by Realignment podcast guests

If you purchase a book using our link, we get a 10% commission, a local bookseller gets supported, and you get an awesome book! Watch this space for new uploads and future lists by topic.

Listener Mail

Adding the Realignment Q’s section was one of our favorite things about relaunching the podcast in July. We take a question an episode, along with the monthly Q&A shows. Still, there usually isn’t enough space to respond to everything, so we’re going to use this space to feature questions and feedback. As with the show, you can reach us at realignmentpod@gmail.com.

Brandon writes:

Wanted to pass some interesting bits regarding the capitol riots. 

Sam Kriss has a pretty good take on the whole thing here. It's rambles at parts, but that's Sam. Thought I'd pass it on. 

https://samkriss.com/2021/01/07/the-old-golden-savages-killed-their-philosophers/

Also, this survey made its way around the Quilette-Intellectual Dark Web sphere of twitter the other day. http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/PBS-NewsHour_Marist-Poll_USA-NOS-and-Tables_202101081001.pdf#page=3
Page 8 is particularly interesting. 7% of whites supported the storming, and 11% of POC, despite the confederate flags, and the vaguely to explicitly stated racism present. I read this as here we see the perpetual underclass of POC from the dead places (e.g. ghettos, southern towns long ago broken) seeing people from other dead places (e.g. flyover states, rural America) doing something they've probably always wanted to do themselves. I have a tentative substack article I'd like to post of my thoughts (mostly for my own catharsis), but the general summary of it is the following:
The capitol storming was the anger of those from the dead places finally boiling over. It was expressed in a way so incoherent and stupid you can't really understand it unless you're in their new Qanon reality yourself, but at it's core was economic anger. The production of this anger would begin mostly in the neoliberal third way era which stripped their now dead places of both their jobs and the factories which provided them. We're seeing people mad at the loss of these places, their dignity, and their importance. The media's been quick to point out that there were a fair amount of rich people in the crowd, trying to frame this as decoupled from economics, but you don't need to be poor yourself to be angry by proxy; and the trip itself necessitated resources. Further still, the media also betrays its own narrative here by gleefully listing the life stories of many of those arrested: drug addicts, 40 year old's living at home, never had a job, multiple run-ins with the law, and many failed lives. The message from the media is clear, "they're losers, liberals please laugh!" To those of us not lying to ourselves we see the people Trump tapped into, the forgotten ones, with a lot of anger, never the vision to see the causes, but easily co-opted by anybody willing to speak to them. Prime recruits for a despot. Indeed this anger, again economic at the root, has been co-opted, by a GOP in the 2000s which sold them it was immigrants that took their way of life, or by the Tea Party in the early 2010s which sold them it was big-government that took their way of life. This anger is now largely independent of the economic conditions which fostered it initially, as few can remember the times before. Now it's chaotic, moving from topic to topic with daily Q posts. It's resembles a Lovecraftian monster twisted together with white identity politics, boomer Fox News "those darn minorities" politics, global conspiracies about pedophiles, and so much more. 
Classically, liberals are looking to explain the situation in relation to race, the only framework they have anymore. I'll argue for another: it's the economics stupid!  These structures which extracted the wealth and dignity from these people are still there (many, yes, created by politicians on their side), and are only bolstering the anger and creating new recruits daily. While we should arrest and try those involved, we also need to strongly consider the economic issues at play here. To me, any analysis which neglects this will find only solutions that will at worst accelerate the situation, and at best commit us to yet another cryptic forever war.

Update:
Things are always in flux right now, so an update point:

The margin of error on that poll is like 4-5%, so interesting trends, but premature to make any inferences I think. 

Also as an explanation for where my summary is coming from, it's basically what I got out of books like Listen Liberal, What's A Matter With Kansas, Deaths of Despair, and Strangers in Their Own Land. So it leans hard on the economic side of things.

See you next week!

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