Back in August, I wrote about how the explosion in woke politics is something to pay attention to. It has since taken over major media institutions and tech companies. America is becoming a surreal place as these corporations are passing up on profits so that they can persecute their customers for wrongthink. There is also a growing cultural movement that views the destruction of Trump supporters’ lives as virtuous; the politician AOC openly calls for the suppression of political views on Twitter. What’s happening isn’t normal and will get a lot uglier. Most investors don’t understand the cultural shifts because most mainstream media outlets spread false propaganda and are participants in the culture wars.
The culture wars will likely lead to:
- A continuing boom in gun demand (RGR VSTO SWBI).d
- Potential catastrophe for journalistic institutions like the New York Times (NYSE:NYT) and Thomson Reuters (TSE:TRI).
- Splitting of the economy into a woke and anti-woke economy. Many corporations with dominant market share will see their earnings take a hit when they jettison their customers for having non-woke political views.
Understanding the unintuitive ideology of the illiberal left
In the past, supporting free speech was a traditional liberal value. Nowadays, Democrat politicians are openly calling for censorship and suppression of political viewpoints. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez suggested that her Twitter followers boycott Goya Foods because its CEO praised Donald Trump.
There is a huge disconnect between the values of traditional liberals and illiberal/”woke” left. Traditional liberals value free speech while the illiberal left practices censorship. On the issue of racism, the illiberal left promotes racial segregation (e.g. Ibram X Kendi) while some extremist Black Lives Matter activists shout racial slurs at black police officers. Here’s my attempt at explaining the wacky world of the illiberal left.
The dominant worldview is that the world is a power struggle between different identity groups. The dominant identity group is responsible for the oppression of the identity groups beneath it.
- European colonialists are responsible for oppressing Indigenous peoples, e.g. through stolen land.
- Whites exhibit racism towards BIPOC bodies- Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.
- Capitalists oppress the working class.
- Men oppress women.
- Straight cisgendered people oppress gender and sexual minorities.
Those participating in illiberal/woke ideologies are heavily exposed to stories about oppression that confirm their biases. The extremists among the illiberal left believe that the oppression is so great and the threat of future oppression so dire that extreme tactics are justified in fighting oppression.
Antifa activists promote the idea that inaction will lead to fascism, which will then lead to violence against oppressed identity groups. Taking that ideology further, Antifa groups consider the exploitation of workers to be a form of ‘violence’. This ideology drives them to smash store windows and burn down businesses, thus “preventing” the violence that the capitalist class would inflict on communities.
Racial segregation is justified through equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity. The ideology is that BIPOC individuals are so disadvantaged by systemic racism that they require reverse discrimination to put them on a more even playing field. This is done by protecting BIPOC from ‘inherently racist’ whites (through the use of racially segregated “safe spaces”) and by giving BIPOC groups preferential treatment. However, this ideology is only invoked when BIPOC communities are disadvantaged. No attempts are made to impose equality of outcomes in professional basketball, which is not considered to a bastion of black supremacy.
Most of the people on the left believe in far less extreme versions of these ideologies. Many ideas are ‘sanewashed’ into something that is more moderate and more in line with mainstream views. The slogan “defund the police” does not actually mean the de-funding or abolition of police; it merely refers to police reform. Moderate illiberals condemn violence, mistakenly believe that Black Lives Matter activists do not use violence as a tactic, and view Antifa as “just an idea” rather than a collection of independent cells. They downplay the prevalence of racial segregation in university settings and woke activists using racial slurs. Or, they are simply unaware about this new form of racism in America.
The overarching worldview is that the political left consists of virtuous people who are fighting systemic racism and police brutality while the political right consists of people doing the opposite. Illiberals see themselves as enlightened people who are knowledgeable about social injustices; when their social circles consist of like-minded people, they have little reason to question the consensus. Many illiberals are well-meaning people and actually believe that they are doing the right thing.
There is no standard definition of what is and isn’t woke. Many liberals will use the word woke to insult other liberal ideologies that are too extreme for their tastes. The same applies for the word “illiberal”. While some supposedly traditional liberals use the word “illiberal” to describe more extreme versions of left-wing ideology, they themselves engage in illiberalism. These people spread misinformation about Donald Trump being racist and engage in mild social ostracization of “racist” Trump voters. In reality, Trump is to the left of Joe Biden and the Democrats on the issue of racism. Trump signed an executive order banning racial stereotyping in the government while Biden is expected to reverse that EO. Trump’s policies will likely be less racist than Joe Biden’s.
Currently, traditional liberal values are mixed with illiberal values because illiberalism is fraudulently dressed up to look like liberalism. Most of the mainstream media will not report stories on pro-BLM activists yelling the n-word at Black police officers. Instead, all BLM protestors are portrayed as “mostly peaceful” protestors who don’t burn down black-owned businesses.
Over time, the co-mingling of opposing ideologies will almost certainly disappear as woke mobs will push their preferred ideology onto others and try to eliminate traditional liberal ideologies.
Social justice bullying tactics lead to extreme views
Many Westerners have legitimate fears of being accused of racism or transphobia- such accusations can lead to being fired or socially ostracized. These fears can be exploited for social and political gain. A small minority of people can band together and attack their enemies with (false) accusations of racism to destroy a person’s life. This quickly makes the majority afraid of standing up to a vocal minority. The intimidation campaigns can include other tactics such as physical violence. On Evergreen College, students armed themselves with baseball bats and patrolled the college’s campus.
There is a tendency for woke-dominated cultures to gradually adopt extreme viewpoints, tactics, and ideologies. Those supporting the less extreme version of a viewpoint face a small risk of being cancelled and being attacked by woke mobs. For example, the celebrity Terry Crews publicly criticized the extreme components of Black Lives Matter as black supremacist (“Black Lives Better”). This led to a backlash against him, which is evident in his appearance on CNN. While woke politics may start off as something fairly harmless, it often morphs into something that is highly divisive and ugly.
Divisiveness
The current incarnation of woke politics that is sweeping America is incredibly divisive because woke activists do not allow for neutrality. For example, woke activists are trying to cancel Chris Pratt because he did not attend a fundraiser for Joe Biden. The message is that neutrality is unacceptable and that people need to bend the knee to woke politics- or else. After Zoe Saldana publicly defended her colleague Chris Pratt, she was attacked with racial slurs.
The inherent divisiveness of woke politics will likely polarize most of society into a woke coalition and anti-woke coalition. Woke politics inherently gravitates towards destroying people’s lives or forcing them into exile. Mobs of social justice bullies understand that their power depends on instilling the fear of cancellation. Vicious attacks are needed to establish credibility, to eliminate ideological opposition, and to bully the majority into accepting woke politics.
When woke mobs make a mistake and attack completely innocent people, the mobs will often continue the attack because any opposition to bullying tactics will hurt the cause. A truck driver working for a California utility was fired because he cracked his knuckles; the person harassing him claimed that this driver made the OK hand symbol 👌 and is therefore a white supremacist. Woke bullies don’t just destroy the lives of their political enemies- they also try to destroy the lives of innocent people.
Woke ideology is evolving
Ideology constantly evolves to fulfill the interests of those practicing that ideology. In a university setting, race-based hierarchies (racism) are incentivized by economics. Wokes push for race-based hiring practices that favour BIPOC individuals (Black, indigenous, people of color) over whites. In my opinion, this racism is unlikely to become a dominant force in the mainstream because BIPOC wokes have less power in the broader white-majority society.
The focus of woke ideology will change to reflect the interests of powerful new allies: major media outlets, tech companies, and most Democrat politicians. The shift in ideology can be clearly seen in the racism allegations against Joe Biden. Wokes from a university environment would consider Joe Biden to be racist because of his key role in passing the 1994 crime bill. According to woke logic, the crime bill institutionalized systemic racism and therefore makes Joe Biden a racist. However, after Joe Biden won the Democratic primaries, media outlets suddenly stopped running stories about Joe Biden’s alleged racism. Instagram in particular censors speech relating to this topic. The new social rule is that ideas about systemic racism (and the fight for racial justice) don’t apply to woke journalists’ preferred politicians.
Going forward, the woke ideology will likely favour the interests of establishment Democrat politicians. The right-wing fear of a socialist government will not materialize because Joe Biden and other establishment Democrats will never allow for Medicare For All (single payer healthcare) to pass. The woke coalition will likely embrace heavier discrimination against conservatives and Trump supporters. Many woke journalists/propagandists are in favour of destroying the people who constantly point out the journalists’ lack of integrity and factual accuracy.
The conflict will be ugly
It seems unlikely that the culture wars will end in a negotiated truce. Both sides believe that they have the moral high ground. Both sides believe that their enemy is racist and employs fascist tactics.
On the political left, social justice bullies will never allow a negotiated peace because peaceful resolution would take away their social power. Their toxic bullying behaviours are needed for them to maintain their social position. Because a negotiated resolution would be disastrous for their social position (e.g. accountability for their past bullying behaviours), they will actively use their power to avoid a peaceful resolution.
Past and ongoing social justice conflicts
Historical experience suggests that social justice activism will divide existing communities into a woke community and anti-woke community. The relative split between woke/non-woke has varied widely. In the gaming and atheism communities, the anti-woke side is much larger. These communities may not tell us much about the broader culture wars because the social justice activism was more about virtue signalling than it was about cancelling ideological opponents. Members of those communities simply were not afraid of being cancelled. The knitting community is a different story as people’s lives were destroyed and the fear of cancellation continues to be very real. The knitting world closely resembles the current culture wars in mainstream society, except that the knitting wars are in a more advanced stage.
While many people would assume that the knitting community would have very little drama, social justice bullying took over the community. Bullies first made a major cultural impact when they attacked Karen Templer. Her “crime” was that she blogged about her excitement about going to India. I am not joking. The social justice bullies fabricated bullshit about her supposed racism, which you can see for yourself in the comments section of her blog post (search for the word Alex to see when the mob first turns against Templer).
Karen, I’d ask you to re-read what you wrote and think about how your words feed into a colonial/imperialist mindset toward India and other non-Western countries. Multiple times you compare the idea of going to India to the idea of going to another planet – how do you think a person from India would feel to hear that?
While the attacks on Templer were illogical, Templer legitimized them by acknowledging them and apologizing for her “racist” behaviour.
Later on in the knitting wars (June 2019), the website Ravelry decided to ban conservatives and Trump supporters from using their service. This virtue signalling action was obviously bad for business but that was the path that Ravelry’s founder chose. Ravelry’s founder later transitioned from male to female and became Cassidy Forbes. I mention this because it did not help her avoid becoming the victim of cancel culture herself. In June 2020, woke mobs fabricated lies about Ravelry’s new website design causing epilepsy and RSI (repetitive strain injury). Nobody is safe from being cancelled. Ravelry decided to bend the knee to the mob and acknowledged accessibility issues that don’t exist. Cassidy Forbes’ mental health presumably suffered; she decided to delete her Twitter account and turn off comments on Ravelry’s Instagram account. The knitting community’s experience with social justice suggests to me that tribal unity will be very weak. Many of the people who are on the woke side don’t want to be there even if they have plenty of income, wealth, and social influence.
While social justice bullying is not good for profits and not good for the welfare of the people on the woke side, it has been surprisingly resilient in the knitting world. The discrimination of Trump supporters has spread and has become even more popular. On Instagram, knitters are openly talking about telling Trump voters to “get fucked”.
Ignoring the vocal minority, there is an apolitical segment of the knitting community that is confused about what is going on. If you simply read the screenshot above without understanding the social context and the knitting wars, you would be confused as to why somebody would openly engage in virulent discrimination against Trump voters. There are many knitters who simply knit and don’t spend time on Instagram (and Youtube and blogs), where the knitting wars have taken place. Many people simply have low awareness of the culture wars in their community. Others in the knitting community are well aware of the knitting wars but choose to stay silent. Some people like The Blue Mouse Knits have decided to quit the knitting community due to its toxicity.
Let’s turn to the anti-woke side. Anti-woke businesses in the knitting community draw most of their customer base from anti-woke knitters, who view economic support of anti-woke businesses as a contribution to the fight against bullying. Some customers publicly campaign against an anti-woke business while they privately buy goods or services from that businesses; these customers do not practice what they preach. Aside from the hypocrites, many knitters with a public profile will avoid associating with anti-woke businesses (e.g. by buying dyed yarn from them) because they don’t want to be cancelled.
At the moment, the two sides are largely ignoring each other and are not waging warfare against the other. After the initial cancellation campaigns have succeeded or failed, the woke side eventually realized that further attempts will not succeed and will hurt their cause. Failed cancellation attempts show the world that standing up to woke mobs is possible. So, the woke side simply moves on from instances where their tactics did not work. This pattern likely will not replicate itself in the broader society. Currently, those who campaign against wokeness and social justice bullying regularly criticize woke activists like Nikole Hannah Jones. Jones deleted all of her past tweets after facing criticism from anti-woke activists and historians who wanted her Pulitzer prize revoked. The two sides openly fight each other and don’t ignore each other.
Establishment politicians
Another major difference between hobby communities and broader Western society is the presence of establishment politicians, who tend to care far more about money than their social/cultural standing.
Within both the Democrat and Republican parties, there is a conflict between establishment politicians who use kickback money to get elected and politicians who use popular policies to get elected. Kickbacks and corruption are obviously inherently unpopular with the voting public. Establishment politicians like woke politics because it helps them pass unpopular policies such as America’s various foreign wars, wasteful defense spending, and lax regulation of Internet censorship. If they cloak these policies in social justice, they have the ability to attack critics with accusations of racism. For example, the National Defense Authorization Act was bundled with the removal of Confederate flags from military bases. Donald Trump vetoed the bill. Some journalists defended the bill with social justice arguments, smearing Donald Trump as a racist who wants Confederate symbols on military bases.
Joe Biden and the Democrat party will certainly embrace the woke coalition in the culture wars because it helps them pass unpopular policies. I’m not sure what the Republican party will do. While Donald Trump clearly supported the anti-woke coalition in the culture wars (e.g. through his executive order on combating race and sex stereotyping), the Republican party may not necessarily embrace his anti-establishment and anti-woke policies. The Republican-led Senate voted 81-13 to override Trump’s veto on the NDAA bill. The Republican party may or may not try to adopt social justice as a vehicle to justify unpopular policies.
It is highly likely that woke journalists, domestic intelligence agencies, and law enforcement will all work together to destroy the lives of those who oppose the establishment. They have already gone after people like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden; journalists acted as mouthpieces for smear campaigns against these individuals. It is also known that US government agencies spied on anti-establishment figures entities like Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, and Donald Trump’s election campaign. The rise of social justice bullying and woke politics will allow the bad actors to greatly expand their activities because speaking truth to power has fallen out of fashion. Woke media outlets are employing fewer investigative journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Sharyl Attkisson, partly because investigative journalists greatly value free speech while the woke oppose free speech. The pressure to generate profits in a dying industry also discourages media outlets from supporting investigative journalism. We are entering a journalistic environment where mainstream media will do very little to hold the establishment accountable. This will give the establishment and the so-called “Deep State” greater latitude in imposing their agenda and destroying those who stand in their way. These actors can do far more damage than a small group of social media bullies without wiretapping abilities.
It is possible that the Republican party goes too far in embracing woke politics and corruption. If that happens, there could very well be a problematic level of political unrest in the United States. Any extreme mistreatment can lead to an extreme reaction.
Where the culture wars are headed
While I was previously somewhat confident that the anti-woke side would win with little violence, now I’m not so sure.
The woke ‘virus’ has many more hosts to infect
There are many people who are unaware about the culture wars. Finance Twitter has lower awareness than the general population as I don’t know of anybody on finance Twitter listing their preferred pronouns in their bio. In the past 4 months, I’ve seen finance Twitter become an uglier place as social justice bullying tactics are starting to take root. Here is a screenshot of me getting attacked by the 27th most influential FinTwit account.
FinTwit is only starting to figure out how the game is played and why they should fear cancellation. If you work in the finance industry, you may have very low exposure to the culture wars that are exploding elsewhere.
Among corporations that have gone woke, I expect many of them to pull a Ravelry and tell over 70 million conservatives (and liberals who believe in free speech) to go elsewhere. Twitter and Facebook have begun to do this by purging Donald Trump and people with specific types of wrongthink. For example, Facebook censored the #walkAway movement, which is a peaceful organization of people who no longer vote Democrat. These people have fairly moderate and inoffensive political views. The reason why the woke target moderates and traditional liberals is because they are far more threatening to woke ideology and bullying tactics than actual white supremacists chanting (e.g. Stormfront).
2021 will be far more toxic than 2020.
Violence from the anti-woke side will likely surpass Antifa and BLM
There is a segment of the hard right that has grievances from all of the major issues in the culture wars:
- Social justice bullying
- Extreme tactics from Antifa and other radicals
- Discrimination against conservatives
- Establishment politics
Most of their grievances are easy to understand. Antifa groups will use any means necessary to stifle the political agenda of those who they deem to be “fascists”. Their diversity of tactics includes throwing urine, hurling racial slurs (even at blacks), and physically assaulting people. Because of Antifa’s extreme tactics, non-woke activists now require vigilantes if they wish to publicly demonstrate in the streets. Even with vigilantes, demonstrators are not fully protected from violence. One Trump supporter (Aaron “Jay” Danielson) was fatally shot by Michael Reinoehl, who self-identified as Antifa. Another Trump supporter (Lee Keltner) was fatally shot at a patriot rally.
The discrimination against conservatives is easy to understand if you are willing to fact check news sources. For example, Joe Biden and the mainstream media have been pushing the narrative that the Proud Boys are a white supremacist group. The problem is that the Proud Boys have a racially diverse membership, have an Afro-Cuban leader, and disavow white supremacy.
The Afro-Cuban chairman of the Proud Boys is on the right.
Actual white supremacists using the online forum Stormfront do not see the Proud Boys as a white supremacist group. Here are some of their vile comments:
The Proud Boys allow [disparaging term for gays] to join.
I have zero pity for Gavin. He did nothing but badmouth white nationalists and he’s a race-mixer.
While the Proud Boys could certainly be criticized for their use of violence (e.g. 2 members received 4-year sentences for a Manhattan assault caught on video) and burning a BLM banner, journalists spread brazen lies about the group to smear them. As woke journalists are becoming increasingly extreme, they are now smearing all Trump supporters as fascists and white supremacists. They equate Donald Trump and his supporters with the white supremacist Proud Boys.
The anti-establishment views among the hard right may be foreign to you if you do not read the work of independent journalists, much of which lacks the pro-establishment bias of mainstream news. The hard right is aware of instances where RINOs (Republican In Name Only) work against everyday people by opposing $2,000 stimulus checks, keeping America entrenched in costly foreign wars, allowing Big Tech censorship to continue, and sabotaging Donald Trump. Many on the hard right feel like their tribe is under attack by Antifa/BLM, corrupt Democrats, RINOs, the Deep State backing the establishment politicians, Fake News, and hateful libs. (There is also a conspiracy theory about globalists which I won’t get into.) The reality is that their jobs, ability to enjoy free speech, physical safety, and freedoms are under attack.
Currently, some of the activists in patriot rallies have been growing tired of peaceful protesting. The Proud Boys, one of the most notable vigilante groups protecting demonstrators, are fighting Antifa violence with Antifa-style violence.
One of the issues with the Proud Boys (and others with beliefs more radical than the Proud Boys) is that peaceful protesting has become less rewarding. Their tribe members have been stabbed and fatally shot. The major cable news networks no longer run balanced profile pieces on the group like this 2017 NBC piece; instead, the group is continually smeared as white supremacists. The Proud Boys have watched the Washington police behave irresponsibly when they forced Trump supporters to walk through a mob of Antifa and pro-BLM activists where the Trump supporters were harassed and beaten (in front of the police). As the political environment has become far more dangerous for Trump supporters, the Proud Boys have escalated their violence to pre-emptively punish Antifa.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the violence on all sides escalates. The violence from the anti-woke coalition will likely overtake the violence from the woke coalition because the anti-woke coalition has real grievances motivating them. Antifa and BLM extremists are simply looking for social status from their non-activist peers. Antifa activists dress up in black bloc and de-arrest their comrades (interfere with police arrests) because they don’t want to go to jail. The Proud Boys are willing to go to jail and have a culture that rewards such sacrifice. The Proud Boys or some other set of vigilantes could very be responsible for more violence than Antifa and BLM.
Gun demand
Gun demand remains elevated due to coronavirus fears and the political unrest sparked by George Floyd’s death). The chart below shows NICS background checks, which correlates with gun purchases.
December 2020 finished with a +34% year-over-year increase in NICS background check while the full year finished with a +40% YoY increase.
In 2020, violence from Antifa and other activists exploded after George Floyd’s death and has declined in the past few months. I am betting on elevated gun demand continuing into 2021. Antifa violence likely will not disappear with Trump leaving office because Antifa groups care about social status from their woke peers. Perceived levels of fascism affect the popularity of Antifa groups. As the culture wars ramp up, there will be more woke people who believe that fascism is an existential threat. That being said, the level of Antifa and radical left violence could be lower in 2021 because Democrat voters don’t like seeing their neighborhood burn to the ground. Liberal voters are changing their tune and now have negative views towards Antifa and BLM extremists. The users of the subreddit r/Portland, which leans heavily progressive, has many threads criticizing the Red House Autonomous Zone and the “Portland Protest Industrial Complex“.
I think that there will be a lot of gun demand created by a small segment of the anti-woke side that will be extremely angry at establishment politicians and willing to bear arms against “tyranny”. The activists will likely go further than storming government buildings like they did in Oregon (to protest lockdowns) and Washington. This type of political unrest will make others want to buy guns over fears of a civil war.
Recap
You might have a hard time believing that for-profit corporations will intentionally tell a large portion of their customer base to get fucked. But this is actually happening with companies like Ravelry, Amazon Web Services, and tech giants (Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft’s Linkedin have all been censoring its users for wrongthink). As goofy and surreal the culture wars appear to be, let me tell you that they are real and that they are going to explode.
To be honest, the culture wars probably won’t be the most pleasant experience because friendships will be destroyed. On national television, the CNN anchor Don Lemon has talked about how he ended friendships over politics. The woke mobs also try to destroy people’s lives. Somebody I know faced a cancel mob that tried to go after his livelihood. Social justice bullying is a cancer that I will unapologetically speak out against. I’m sorry but things are going to get ugly in 2021.
A future blog post will cover what’s happening in the journalism world and what that might mean for publicly-traded institutions like the New York Times and Thomson Reuters.
*Disclosure: I am long SWBI, RGR, FB, GOOG.
Links
Quilette’s excellent coverage on the knitting wars – Part 1, 2, and 3
Instagram hashtags: #tuskenknits, #diversknitty
IG bigotry (the hate is real): @knitboop, @yelleyknits
Evergreen College:
Glenn Chan's Random Notes on Investing 
Glenn,
When did you become a philosopher on racial issues, all the way from relatively egalitarian Canada?
Mate you’re a value investor. Stick the underlying economic facts. If your business is that susceptible to woke politics, have you paused for a second to consider whether that business’ economic moat was always gravely susceptible to that?
Quick segue: Did you actually just say “black supremacy” and “nba” in the same sentence? Do you think the owners of capital in the NBA hire black players on privilege ?
This rant of a post is silly and falls far from the tree that this blog used to represent. You may find solace in adventures in capitalism guy who confuses business and investing with social/politics/emotives all the time. It’s really silly to mix the two.
I anticipate that a lot of companies will yeet a large potion of their userbase. That trend is bad for existing monopolies, and potentially good for non-woke companies with low market share (e.g. Goya Foods).
I’ll probably end up buying the dip on woke companies that yeet their customers, speculating on the customers coming back.
—
Of course the NBA is not a black supremacist organization. But that would be the conclusion if you were to apply woke logic and equality of outcome analysis to it. (Of course this is why the ideology has problems with objective truth and embraces subjective truth such as “lived experiences”.)
Here is my prediction. I recently found out that Joe Biden was a significant author of an earlier bill that eventually became the Patriot Act. The Patriot act enabled the government to indefinitely confine any foreigner convicted of terrorism and deprive them from a day in court. Biden has announced he is going to pass a new domestic terrorism bill to fight domestic terror. I am willing to bet this new bill will extend the Patriot Act to allow U.S. Citizens charged with terrorism to be denied the right to defend themselves in court. This bill will be advertised to fight “Trumpism” and will pass within the first 100 days of his presidency.
Yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if the powers of the intelligence community was expanded. We might see a lot of mental gymnastics arguing that Trumpism leads to “terrorist” violence like Jan 6.
To think all this won’t end in massive, coordinated violence is lunacy. Conservatives control just a single relevant institution: the Supreme Court. Everything else that controls society is completely and maybe irreversibly dominated by woke cult members: the government, education (at all levels), media, entertainment, big business (they’re all phony woke cult members, but still), and arguably biggest of all, the technology companies that all roads lead back to. Conservatives are checkmated, the die is cast. Liberals have a machine that you really have to admire, they’re now practically invincible. (If they pack the court, that’s removes the only safety left)
The woke cult of the left with its upside-down values (ie they invented new social currencies that are far more valuable than actual dollars) now wants their pound of flesh from conservatives after the last four years of Trump. They’re f-ing pissed. What will a group (let alone an arguably insane one like the SJW’s) do with unchecked power? Think they’ll be the benevolent dictator? No, they’re like Clubber Lang – their prediction: pain. Conservatives have literally NO recourse, so what do you think is going to happen here? This spring is going to keep coiling, and there’s only one release.
I forgot to add – how insane is it that despite holding every card but one, woke liberals are still willing to use the nuclear option with the Supreme Court? Really, it’s not enough to control every single institution in the US but one? That’s insufficient? If I had to guess, packing the court will be a huge turning point because that’s when extreme conservatives will realize they’re left with literally nothing.
This is actually one of the reasons I was sympathetic towards the old 99% movement and continue to believe that income inequality is a massive problem. You can’t have a large group of people become systemically disenfranchised and left hopeless. Once people believe that they’re not a part of the system and there’s no chance of being part of it, very VERY bad things happen…this is when things start breaking down.
Yep. America is going to get uglier… but hopefully not too ugly.
Could you look at some social media publicly traded stocks that look intersting in case more people leave facebook and twitter? Th only ones i know are not public.
Or similar ideas?
Yeah I’m not aware of a lot of companies that would benefit from dominant players getting rid of their customers. IAC owns Vimeo, which sort of benefits from Youtube deplatforming the non-woke (e.g. Alex Jones). Banned.video, Bitchute, and others tend to be more popular as Youtube alternatives though.
Liked it more when you were writing about companies and applying fundamental, kind of forensic accounting skills…
Why do Canadians worry so much ?
I actually really like the American stock market. It has a lot of ‘compounder bros’ that I can leverage with options.
That’s true.
I enjoyed the article and appreciate that you’re a voice of reason when Financial Twitter is increasingly “going woke.” I agree that there will be a conservative backlash against the tech/internet giants. IDK how large it will be or how soon it will start, but with the consensus seeing these companies as secular growers, even relatively light disengagement could hurt the stocks.
One disagreement: I don’t think that Facebook, Twitter, etc. are purging Trump because of woke ideology. IMO, they are doing it out of self-interest/self-preservation. There’s been increasing talk of repealing section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which would seriously harm the social networking business model and open these platforms to huge legal risk. To avoid that and other regulatory threats, they’re trying to curry favor with the incoming administration, hence the censorship of Trump and right-wingers in general.
Section 230 is somewhat complicated. Repealing it would likely cause problems such as publishers kicking small players off their platforms, which could lead to less freedom of speech. I don’t think Trump’s advisors actually came to him with a good plan. Trump had a tendency to watch Fox News and go along with ideas that he likes from Fox News.
Establishment politics like Senate leader Mitch Mcconnell talk a big game about regulation because it forces the industry to give them money. If they get sufficient bribes, they will take it easy with the regulation. Otherwise there is an incentive for the regulator to make an example out of somebody, causing the money to flow into the regulator and the political establishment.
Woke journalists just like to hate on Trump and Republicans for some reason. He legitimizes locker room talk and how normal everyday people talk; that’s the opposite of how virtue signalling college-educated people talk. Trump doesn’t buy into progressive liberalism and how everybody is trying to outdo each other in appearing to be enlightened and sensitive to the injustices in the world.
Hmm I should probably do a post about how most of the big tech companies are being overrun by woke ideology. (You have a good point about those companies not wanting regulation. While Section 230 matters because of the backlash against wokeness and the discrimination of Trump supporters, big tech does have legitimate fears of regulation over user privacy and politicians shaking them down for money.)
An interesting discussion, thank you. There is a certain urban/rural element to this, where huge chunks of the rural U.S. are mostly culturally and fiscally conservative and not particularly more favorable to Donald Trump than moderate Republicans like the late John McCain. That is, in those places, you don’t really see the anxiety about culture wars that you would expect, even as the mainstream media cancels Trump. See, e.g., the U Mich maps on this.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/
Certainly in urban areas with 70% plus Democrat support, you will likely suffer professionally if you don’t send the right culture signals, but those places, though culturally significant, may represent a smaller slice of the American experience than many realize.
Yeah I didn’t get into how America is not homogenous. There are some parts of the US where conservatives dominate and discriminate against liberals. Apparently some gun stores will refuse service to customers wearing masks or ask customers to take off their mask (!). There’s also parts of the Deep South where whites are holding onto their local positions of power (e.g. sheriff) and want to perpetuate race-based power hierarchies; there are Youtube documentaries on segregated proms.
The Internet also causes tribalism globally. Certain communities like Infowars, 4Chan, The Donald, the XInAction subreddits, etc. are all anti-woke. My concern is that there are huge divisions because the various woke and anti-woke communities have massive differences in social norms, interpretation of reality, etc. On both sides, many believe that they are virtuous and that their enemies are racist Nazis. So you will have fairly powerful enclaves on both sides that will really go at it with each other.
I haven’t looked into rural versus urban too much. There doesn’t seem to be a strong rural versus urban *identity* in the culture wars, even though rural culture is different from urban culture and their voting patterns are quite different.
You do have a good point about urban voices being overrepresented. Hollywood certainly exaggerates woke ideology because wokes dominate there and celebrities are incredibly scared about being cancelled; their careers depend on public opinion.
Great post. I didn’t know about the knitting wars. Keep it up!
On firearms: I am a “gun nut”, but I am also a cold, “just the facts” analyst. 2020 was a record year for firearms sales, with ~21m NICS checks done. (For what it’s worth, these do not correlate 100% with gun sales. In states where you can get a license to carry, this can be presented instead and a NICS check does not have to be done. For example, I purchased somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five firearms in 2020. None of these are picked up in the NICS check numbers.)
Anyway, sales for firearms tend to peak in election years. In addition, the Biden administration is looking to pass some (imo) heavy handed laws to regulate semi-automatic rifles under the NFA act, which means they would have to go through a registration process that takes (as of today), roughly ten months to a year to get through. They are also looking to regulate all “high capacity” magazines under this law. While this registration may sound OK to some, all NFA items have required a $200 tax in the past, and they are talking about raising this to $500. If I have to pay $200 or $500 for every, say, arbitrarily defined “high capacity” magazine I own, I am going to be paying a *LOT* of money. I know casual gun owners who make minimum wage who would have a bill easily exceeding $10k.
While I’m not confident they will actually pass laws or executive orders or whatever to do this (it could potentially result in millions of Americans becoming felons overnight, and I’m 99.9% sure it would result in some politician meeting an untimely end), it is a possibility. If it does pass, new firearm sales would absolutely plummet off of a cliff. Today, in free states, you can buy an AR-15 and walk out the door with it within a half hour with a NICS check (and despite all of this, semiauto rifles are used in <3% of firearm based deaths in the US…). Imagine if that took ten months to a year, or longer…
Anyway, I guess the point is I see 2020 being a peak year for firearm sales. Anyone who wanted or felt like they needed one bought one. In addition, election years tend to be "peak sales" years. Finally, if you visit gun shops, inventory is finally starting to show up on the shelves again, after them being practically empty all of 2020.
tl;dr- I definitely wouldn't bet on RGR or SWBI going up from here myself.
Good points, thanks! I’m always surprised by the number of guns that some people own.
Regarding gun control… gun control fears are a trope among some gun enthusiast Youtubers like Colion Noir. My feeling is that the Dems will threaten gun regulation to extort money from the NRA and gun manufacturers. And then they will do little about gun control because Democrat voters lean that way. The media will run hysterical stories about right-wing militia groups and Trumpists with guns… those will displace coverage of tragic mass shootings like Sandy Hook. It seems that the virtue signalling around gun control will become less popular and Dem voters will care more about protecting themselves against the evil racists with guns that they keep hearing about. (There will also be Dem voters who are concerned with BLM and Antifa violence. Portlanders, who are quite progressive, are starting to despise Antifa as much as the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer.)
There’s been surprisingly little discussion about both sides of the culture wars bringing guns to demonstrations and counter-demonstrations. There have been several gun deaths so far. An obvious solution would be to discourage the practice of open carry at demonstrations (both sides do it) and to shame demonstrators who bring guns to demonstrations.
Overall, I see the cultural winds shifting on both sides. The media on both sides will exaggerate the violence from the other side. Both have fear mongering narratives about the opposing side’s extremists taking over. It “makes sense” to buy a gun for self-defence in case of a civil war or extremists from the other side doing something. Whereas liberals stigmatized guns because there was no good reason to own one, liberals are now accepting the idea that self defense fears are real and that gun ownership is justifiable. Conservatives increasingly see gun ownership as a virtuous behaviour; there tribe is under attack and they need to be prepared to fight off their enemies. (Obviously violence from armed militias will not be good for Americans.)
Maybe I’ve watched too much Youtube haha.
I certainly hope you are right that any gun control measures will just be empty threats. We’ll see. The scary thing about the Biden “‘Assault weapons’ should be under NFA” proposal is it appears to be a 100% legal thing to do, as far as legal precedence (all the way up to the Supreme Court) goes.
On owning (too many) guns- They are fun. Kind of like collecting watches or photography equipment or whatever. Plus, from an investment standpoint, there are virtually zero carrying costs (compare to collectible cars, where you have storage costs and insurance). And they tend to appreciate a little bit more than inflation every year.
If you play you hands right with rare models that are being discontinued, you can double or triple your money in a short time horizon. For example, I purchased a Beretta ARX and a Zenith Z43p in 2019 when someone was liquidating inventory (two separate events). They are now going for triple what I paid for them. However, it’s only an “on paper” profit until I harvest the gains, which I have no immediate plans to :). And this is not exactly a scalable (or 100% risk free) way to invest.
On the other hand, politicians have an incentive to killshot a company to establish their ‘street cred’ and really make the protection money flow. Small companies that are viewed as evil by the public tend to be victimized more in this manner. The politicians will probably just vilify the most “evil” gun out there (e.g. MSRs) and allow gun manufacturers to sell other guns. Or they will pick on some evil company.
On owning too many guns: 😀
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