Can't say I'm the biggest fan of Unherd - it always seems too pleased with itself and pretentious (starting with the name) but this post hits on an important point.
It's true that the core of the Remoaner tendency is smug, well-off gits who quite like the idea of living in a country where 48 is bigger than 52, providing that it's the right 48 if you know what I mean and I think you do but their yoof wing is full of folks with more debt, less job security and lower wages than most of the people they sneer at as losers.
It's not just that they slavishly follow the attitudes of the elite, it's that their attitudes are the only elite thing about them. It's politics as part-LARPing, part cargo cult.
Back in the day, I heard a cinema manager say that Star Wars fans and Sex And The City fans both came to their respective movies dressed as their favourite characters, but only the Star Wars fans realised they were watching a fantasy world.
Now it's worse than ever. We have a whole demographic of Nathan Barleys trying to convince everyone - most of all themselves - that they're just one retweet away from stardom.
(No one tell them that all those breakout stars who suddenly come from nowhere, you guys, all somehow seem to always be from a very specific demographic.)
They'd be mortally offended if you told them they'd be better off teaching geography in Norwich - but, if they did, they be richer and with better prospects. Instead they stay in a dream world, trying desperately to fend off the cognitive dissonance. Hence the key point:
It's true that the core of the Remoaner tendency is smug, well-off gits who quite like the idea of living in a country where 48 is bigger than 52, providing that it's the right 48 if you know what I mean and I think you do but their yoof wing is full of folks with more debt, less job security and lower wages than most of the people they sneer at as losers.
It's not just that they slavishly follow the attitudes of the elite, it's that their attitudes are the only elite thing about them. It's politics as part-LARPing, part cargo cult.
Back in the day, I heard a cinema manager say that Star Wars fans and Sex And The City fans both came to their respective movies dressed as their favourite characters, but only the Star Wars fans realised they were watching a fantasy world.
Now it's worse than ever. We have a whole demographic of Nathan Barleys trying to convince everyone - most of all themselves - that they're just one retweet away from stardom.
(No one tell them that all those breakout stars who suddenly come from nowhere, you guys, all somehow seem to always be from a very specific demographic.)
They'd be mortally offended if you told them they'd be better off teaching geography in Norwich - but, if they did, they be richer and with better prospects. Instead they stay in a dream world, trying desperately to fend off the cognitive dissonance. Hence the key point:
But millions of young Everywheres are on their way to realising they are not counted among the elite any more. That, in fact, they never were, except on a subscription basis — and even the cost of those subscriptions is slipping from their grasp. We can expect a political reckoning to follow.Yep, it's a £1,000 note lying on the ground ready for any conservative politician who can get these people to look clearly at their lives and what liberalism have actually done to them.
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