There are complexities. Sure. Pushing new ideas is always complicated, and shitty people can do shitty things with them.

The Manson family was hoover's baby. Not that they're innocent, but they had help sucking that much.

None of that is this. The counter culture hasn't been there for decades; what's left is aesthetic remnants.

Thiel grew up in a Nazi cult. I think in south Africa? There were swastikas on the flags in his school. Musk is from south africa-during apartheid. They're not from fucking San Francisco. You're trying to make a point about how too much freedom is bad sometimes. I've got complex feelings, but your point is totally unsupported by facts on display here.

The point of what I said is that they're not genuinely from/of there, its just the cultural milleiu they knew in their 20s. They pulled the fucking aesthetics and nothing else, and they're getting stupid(er) because even the fucking aesthetics were too much for them.

How did "the 60s" create the Manson family?

We've had literally countless (often more) grisly and bizarre murders since Manson. No reason it should be any more notable.

But I guess giving it some kind of mystical import helps you make an argument

Well yeah, they need to be the "alphas" and mark everything they like, especially cultural touchstones, as theirs.

Otherwise, those things would be ours , and that's Communism! ("Haven't you read Animal Farm?!" They'll screech, as they use 1984 as a roadmap.)

They can't imagine coexistence without zero-sum Thunderdome-esque competition over who gets to take and hold everything away from everyone else.

Musk once went to a gala where someone told musk about a cool book series with funny ai ships. He then skimmed the wiki page and assumes he understands the book better than anyone else.

No, it was 'the player of games' and he thought the main character was just the coolest guy omg you have no idea.

Stephenson is pretty popular there. The shitheaded casually racist voerhoevenesque pithiness makes them feel smart and cool.

"NeW tReK iS wOkE"

My guy, have you just been not paying attention for the last 60+ years? Star Trek has always been progressive.

I don't know how they can possibly miss that the Federation is functionally a post-scarcity socialist utopia.

Because there's been a decades long effort to make American education really bad. There's very little ability for critical thinking in that group of people.

Fascism is impossible to satirize I think. There is no satire of fascism you could possibly construct that won't have a large subset of the fascists miss the point entirely and unironically endorse the satirical fascism. There were MAGA chuds who didn't realize Homelander was supposed to be the villain of The Boys into like,,,, season 3 or 4💀.

The mistake people make when they try to satirize fascism is that they assume fascists say words to mean things, but they don't. They use words the a feral dog uses urine, to mark their territory and intimidate others. There is no internal comprehension or consideration of their words when they talk about their politics, it's just a stupid, mindless animal making stupid, mindless animal noises.

i used to live someplace where the village sobriquet ended in villain (as in Bostonville and the citizens were called Bostonvillains, although it was not as awkward because it was not a made up place like Bostonville) and i have to admit it's pretty fun

This is a very apt description of it. I remember the creation of Arda, but beyond that, it's all a bit fuzzy, like I read the Wikipedia page half asleep and dreamed the rest.

i used to study religion and it feels a lot like the begat section of the bible. i think that's on purpose.

like, some of the best stories are hidden in there, like the israelites eating so much divinely summoned magic ground bread that they got so sick of it that they complained to their god for divinely summoned meat. and back then their god was not sick to their heart of humans yet so they gave the israelites meat. they gave the israelites so much meat they ate so much they vomited it so violently it came out they noses, according to the bible. no i did not make that imagery up myself. i had the Great Gay King James's Interpreters' help. yeah that's why they stopped using KJV. it was too gay.

In case anyone needs a reminder about Men:

dude i don't do anything straight