I agree fully that the iteration of discourse seems to be the point of articles like the one Kat wrote. I made a series of attempts toward good-faith debate with Kat in the comments of her piece, but she refused to admit any kind of premise that would explain the dismissive language she uses to describe Pretti and Good’s killings. Instead the best she could do was bizarrely claim that her post “isn’t about politics,” that she’s somehow “not writing about ICE, or the protesters, or the clash between the two.” Instead, she claimed to be writing about the vagaries of the “contemporary media landscape,” which (and this is exactly her strategy) is broad to the point of meaninglessness. She’s not interested in discussion because, like you said, she’s figured out she can churn out arch drivel to launder right-wing arguments with faux-liberal sensibility.
You're right about all this. There are so many lines here I want to remember forever:
"I have to do something they refuse to do with so many of the subjects they write about: I have to be interested in them."
"It is easy to believe that people perform these acts of bravery because they are uninformed, or deluded, or because they think they’re in a Marvel movie and would like to be a star. It’s easy because it turns your abstention from these messy acts of politics into an act of moral and intellectual clarity"
"to feign a middle ground by acknowledging the feelings of the left while accepting the policies of the right."
The rhetoric that there's "someone" who pits normal good people against each other only sounds good to people who see these things as having no real stakes.
This is great thinking and writing.
I am als, interested in the Free Press and I don't want to be, for a different reason: Good's story is not one of them, but there are some "Ok, people on our team did a bad thing/was wrong" stories that are being funnelled there because respectable sources aren't ready to print them.
I’ve only skimmed this, but thank you so much for talking about the depravity of The Free Press in this much detail. I occasionally check in on their ig page out of morbid fascination, and even just the snippets there from Kats article made my blood boil. And the comments section was even more sociopathic.
"For every hundred mistakes we commit, and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys (including our own Mensheviks and Right Socialist- Revolutionaries) shout about to the whole world, 10,000 great and heroic deeds are performed, greater and more heroic because they are simple and inconspicuous amidst the everyday life of a factory district or a remote village, performed by people who are not accustomed (and have no opportunity) to shout to the whole world about their successes"
1 - As someone who's spent almost two decades as a non-professional/hobbyist researcher of left radicalism and counterculture (radicalism's more diffuse, frustratingly exploitable/whimsical, but probably inextricable cousin), your middle part about loving leftists despite everything is one of the best I've ever read.
2 - I know you're not on Bluesky (at least in a public facing account), but you should be able to read this anyway: it's a post of mine with two screenshots from the great music historian Elijah Wald's book on Dylan at Newport that I think are directly relevant to your feeling strangely apart even in a crowd with the same broad goal - the latter ultimately being a good and necessary thing, as you say, but the former being something you shouldn't feel too guilty or isolated about either https://bsky.app/profile/electriceden92.bsky.social/post/3lc7qymhs7c2a
« The centrist pulls you down to the level of discourse and beats you by wasting your time. » is fantastic. One wonders, in these times, if the only remaining alternative is to spew radically-far-left bs if only to bring the political average marginally closer to the middle
There is something so impressive about reading something that arouses the emotions but never dips into sentiment. This essay really does remind me of how Gornick talks about feminism, specifically in "what feminism means to me". I think an essay about the life built around revolutionary politics would always call to me but there is a sense of real moral urgency imbued into every line of this essay—like your Heard essay, if the culture could’ve learned what it needed to from that piece we wouldn’t be in the same spot three years later. The moral urgency gives this piece a timely quality-like it could’ve only come at this terrifying moment where it really does feel like we are living at the edge of history-but on the flip side this response feels like it has engrained in it a timeless love for street politics. The moral urgency and the general disgust you have for people who pretend to know street politics lays side by side underneath the analysis.
The thing that stunned me the most with this piece was the portrait of leftism you painted out of the disgust that these writers inspired--you really did show them what they were missing.
Incredible piece, perfectly captures the disconnect of media elites who fundamentally believe themselves to be the voice of reason for believing nothing.
Also just fantastic writing. Clear in a way that everyone should aspire to.
Great piece. I’m not deeply familiar with the Free Press, but morbid curiosity got the better of me and I read her recent article on the murder of Alex Pretti.
Based on it and the way she engaged with critical comments on the piece, the most useful way I could think of that sort of work is as part of a specialised ‘zone flooding’.
The Free Press seems to have a particular role as an extension of Trumpian ideological engineering that extrudes itself into spaces like Substack. Here, it filters for people that find things like what’s happening in Minnesota confronting, but who are open to being convinced that, somehow, it’s not as straightforward as people say it is. They don’t have to be convinced that they should be buying MAGA hats, but even if they’re just dissuaded from splitting away from the comfortable ‘middle’, it’s still valuable to the greater project.
And as you say, it soaks up the time of people who might otherwise be more directly and effectively engaging with the audience.
I agree fully that the iteration of discourse seems to be the point of articles like the one Kat wrote. I made a series of attempts toward good-faith debate with Kat in the comments of her piece, but she refused to admit any kind of premise that would explain the dismissive language she uses to describe Pretti and Good’s killings. Instead the best she could do was bizarrely claim that her post “isn’t about politics,” that she’s somehow “not writing about ICE, or the protesters, or the clash between the two.” Instead, she claimed to be writing about the vagaries of the “contemporary media landscape,” which (and this is exactly her strategy) is broad to the point of meaninglessness. She’s not interested in discussion because, like you said, she’s figured out she can churn out arch drivel to launder right-wing arguments with faux-liberal sensibility.
I have found her twitter persona to be even worse/less precise/more smarmy than her writing persona!
You're right about all this. There are so many lines here I want to remember forever:
"I have to do something they refuse to do with so many of the subjects they write about: I have to be interested in them."
"It is easy to believe that people perform these acts of bravery because they are uninformed, or deluded, or because they think they’re in a Marvel movie and would like to be a star. It’s easy because it turns your abstention from these messy acts of politics into an act of moral and intellectual clarity"
"to feign a middle ground by acknowledging the feelings of the left while accepting the policies of the right."
The rhetoric that there's "someone" who pits normal good people against each other only sounds good to people who see these things as having no real stakes.
This is great thinking and writing.
I am als, interested in the Free Press and I don't want to be, for a different reason: Good's story is not one of them, but there are some "Ok, people on our team did a bad thing/was wrong" stories that are being funnelled there because respectable sources aren't ready to print them.
I’ve only skimmed this, but thank you so much for talking about the depravity of The Free Press in this much detail. I occasionally check in on their ig page out of morbid fascination, and even just the snippets there from Kats article made my blood boil. And the comments section was even more sociopathic.
This moved me to tears, great job Rayne
worth noting that yesterday bowles was revealed to have corresponded with epstein (https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-curious-cbs-boss-wife-nellie-bowles-busted-befriending-epstein/) -- happy pedocracy everyone!
"For every hundred mistakes we commit, and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys (including our own Mensheviks and Right Socialist- Revolutionaries) shout about to the whole world, 10,000 great and heroic deeds are performed, greater and more heroic because they are simple and inconspicuous amidst the everyday life of a factory district or a remote village, performed by people who are not accustomed (and have no opportunity) to shout to the whole world about their successes"
-Lenin, 1918
must thank you bc i don't read
Beautiful read as always
1 - As someone who's spent almost two decades as a non-professional/hobbyist researcher of left radicalism and counterculture (radicalism's more diffuse, frustratingly exploitable/whimsical, but probably inextricable cousin), your middle part about loving leftists despite everything is one of the best I've ever read.
2 - I know you're not on Bluesky (at least in a public facing account), but you should be able to read this anyway: it's a post of mine with two screenshots from the great music historian Elijah Wald's book on Dylan at Newport that I think are directly relevant to your feeling strangely apart even in a crowd with the same broad goal - the latter ultimately being a good and necessary thing, as you say, but the former being something you shouldn't feel too guilty or isolated about either https://bsky.app/profile/electriceden92.bsky.social/post/3lc7qymhs7c2a
Thank you for reading and for the link! Excited to read
wait this is what the world needs
« The centrist pulls you down to the level of discourse and beats you by wasting your time. » is fantastic. One wonders, in these times, if the only remaining alternative is to spew radically-far-left bs if only to bring the political average marginally closer to the middle
Phenomenal read thank you from Scotland
so excellent
There is something so impressive about reading something that arouses the emotions but never dips into sentiment. This essay really does remind me of how Gornick talks about feminism, specifically in "what feminism means to me". I think an essay about the life built around revolutionary politics would always call to me but there is a sense of real moral urgency imbued into every line of this essay—like your Heard essay, if the culture could’ve learned what it needed to from that piece we wouldn’t be in the same spot three years later. The moral urgency gives this piece a timely quality-like it could’ve only come at this terrifying moment where it really does feel like we are living at the edge of history-but on the flip side this response feels like it has engrained in it a timeless love for street politics. The moral urgency and the general disgust you have for people who pretend to know street politics lays side by side underneath the analysis.
The thing that stunned me the most with this piece was the portrait of leftism you painted out of the disgust that these writers inspired--you really did show them what they were missing.
Great piece, I have not read you for political commentary and was expecting to not like this very much, proved me wrong very quickly. Great stuff.
Incredible piece, perfectly captures the disconnect of media elites who fundamentally believe themselves to be the voice of reason for believing nothing.
Also just fantastic writing. Clear in a way that everyone should aspire to.
I like Kat well enough, but this is spot-on and I hope she reads it.
Great piece. I’m not deeply familiar with the Free Press, but morbid curiosity got the better of me and I read her recent article on the murder of Alex Pretti.
Based on it and the way she engaged with critical comments on the piece, the most useful way I could think of that sort of work is as part of a specialised ‘zone flooding’.
The Free Press seems to have a particular role as an extension of Trumpian ideological engineering that extrudes itself into spaces like Substack. Here, it filters for people that find things like what’s happening in Minnesota confronting, but who are open to being convinced that, somehow, it’s not as straightforward as people say it is. They don’t have to be convinced that they should be buying MAGA hats, but even if they’re just dissuaded from splitting away from the comfortable ‘middle’, it’s still valuable to the greater project.
And as you say, it soaks up the time of people who might otherwise be more directly and effectively engaging with the audience.