Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

Don't we

Maybe you do
Maybe none of us really have choices

I've never heard one of their podcasts, so I can't address whatever acerbities they apparently deliver to their fan base, but I can figure out that, unless they move people to do something directed, organized, and politically effective, they are just entertainers who riff on politics, much as Jon Stewart was on the Daily Show. If so, then they are acting more like "fellow travelers" than bona fide socialist activists. Which is OK, but nothing to get excited about other than in a fanboy kind of way.

is he a particularly good one?

if we grade on a curve, he's easily in the top quintile, so, yes.

Which is OK, but nothing to get excited about other than in a fanboy kind of way.

Well, yeah. It's just a good podcast.

Which they explicitly say in today's show, even.

Here, click this; it's a tiny excerpt, just 2:22 long.

https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-70-wills-disclaimer-1417

Hah yeah I was gonna say

(Although i think they are wrong politics really is mostly voting - either by voters or legislatures)

Christman is an absolute master of the rant, even though he has occasionally repeated himself.

Agreed but he needs to work on his mic technique, he always sounds far away

didn't much like the last soundcloud ep but the new patreon one (#70, the one that clip's from), is v good as summation of their ideology and deal, if not unique+informative like their interviews can be. good time to jump on.

gonna have to change my life in 2017 because matt routinely yells into the mic on a ~24hr delay exactly the same shit i yell at my gf while driving (i swear after painstaking disclaimers to the effect of pls tell me to stfu whenever) and i guess he's getting $10k a month for it?

that sounded bitterer than i meant. have found him a fucking relief to listen to tbh.

(note my textbook b-bro behavior.)

the one weird thing to me about the general leftist online community represented by chapo is that their support (that i share!) of bernie sanders has crossed over from "this person would have been a better choice than hillary clinton and represents a better way forward for the democratic party" to a sort of cultish reverence that i find to be like incompatible w/ the way they view pretty much every other politician. like dudes like @crushingbort on twitter (rightly) shit on pretty much every living politician and then genuinely like retweet bernie sanders statements. makes me trust them less.

i'm not on twitter but they don't behave w cultish reverence on the show. i mean they like him. because he stands for left-wing policy and means it, in america 2017. it's not complicated.

they're certainly not expecting any kind of rescue from him.

I simply cannot grasp how a bunch of socialists and social democrats are so seemingly fond of the only national political figure who could be described as either one.

was jesus really that much better than barrabas when u think of it

All that stuff Jesus said on the Mount was really not so different from the things Barrabas would holler at his gf while driving

en revanche tho

would we in this alternate scenario just have made a messiah of barbie, were the barbiebros just waiting for the circumstances

I've never heard one of their podcasts, so I can't address whatever acerbities they apparently deliver to their fan base, but I can figure out that, unless they move people to do something directed, organized, and politically effective, they are just entertainers who riff on politics, much as Jon Stewart was on the Daily Show. If so, then they are acting more like "fellow travelers" than bona fide socialist activists. Which is OK, but nothing to get excited about other than in a fanboy kind of way.

Is anyone excited about them in more than a fanboy way tho? I really can't comprehend how the existence and/or popularity of political comedy or jokey political commentary upsets some of you guys. I listen to this podcast for the same reason I read politics threads on this board, because there are jokes and occasional interesting points, not because I think we're activating change.

I guess it must be the media attention that's getting people up in arms. I mean, The Professional Left podcast has been obsessing over Ron Fournier and David Brooks for 7 years.

if you want a left podcast with actual leftist activists, listen to delete your account

(to the tune of $30k+ per month coming in via Pateron)

i mean they like him. because he stands for left-wing policy

Did they ever address Sanders' "yeah, targeted drone killings, keep going" statement of last spring?

imo whispering "bernie would have won" as a twitter meme is, in part, a reaction to any anti-trump sentiment being replied to with a torrent of "clinton is horrible, dnc is horrible, etc"

it's like some shorthand for a third way

also imo it's a funny meme

I simply cannot grasp how a bunch of socialists and social democrats are so seemingly fond of the only national political figure who could be described as either one.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Thursday, 5 January 2017 08:36 (eight hours ago) Permalink

The point isn't that there are politicians they agree with more, they're hilariously joyless about Bernie in a way that feels hypocritical. If I read another stupid post by the show's acolytes with "the Bernie bro smear" ...

Anyway I've never listened to this show but the people who follow them are super annoying

Judging something by its fans is silly... having said that, super irritated by Will's fucked up pronunciation of "hilarious" in latest episode ("hiLAHrious")

he also pronounced the adjective "august" like the month about five closely spaced times in a row

... how else do you pronounce august

aw-gust (as in gust of wind)

emphasis on the second syllable

i never use it tho cuz it normalizes

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Augustus_Bevilacqua_Glyptothek_Munich_317.jpg/220px-Augustus_Bevilacqua_Glyptothek_Munich_317.jpg

The point isn't that there are politicians they agree with more, they're hilariously joyless about Bernie in a way that feels hypocritical. If I read another stupid post by the show's acolytes with "the Bernie bro smear" ...

...

Anyway I've never listened to this show

Re: "Bernie Would Have Won"

Is it? It seems pretty expressly synonymous with "we were right"/gesture of dismissal, this is based on who I've seen use it. Part of the joke is to keep repeating it after someone tries to debate with you. A third way would be "Bernie 2020" or something like that (granted it's not funny or not funny because it isn't mean). I could understand it as a reply if someone was blaming Bernie or definitively saying "Bernie wouldn't have one", neither position I agree with.

the real needle in "bernie would have won" is that it means "hillary could have won"

imo the joy is realizing there's very little hay in that needlestack

it's just a bit of a laugh, bit of a joke. "Bernie Would Have Won," at least used by the Chapo guys, is not some hectoring catchphrase. remember these guys are deep into weird twitter where stuff like "hope jobs cash" and @KattWillFerrell were born.

I don't know those dudes really hate Hillary. I'm glad going forward we're free of the Clinton baggage and not having to defend them anymore but this year seeing the left I was just like "holy shit can we walk this back a bit?". Will Menaker actually told Adam Curtis "hey to should make your next movie about the Clinton campaign!" and I starte to wonder are they going to reach back to complaining about stuff like Lena Dunham doing some campaign video barely anyone knows about throughout the next 4 years?

It seems pretty expressly synonymous with "we were right"

yeah that's what it means. it matters who was right about democratic party political strategy in 2016. the party is going to have to have an argument with itself and decide who was right, so that it can decide what to do. "bernie 2020" is a goofy wish for the future -- i certainly hope bernie's not still the only left dem choice in 2020 and i certainly hope the left doesn't spend four years sitting around hoping for bernie. "bernie would've won" is an assertion about the past. making those is how you decide what to do. xps

Judging something by its fans is silly...

But this is what the Chapo bros do with Hamilton

Not really, they mostly made fun of the play itself and its shitty, unlistenable music.

fu

I am pro-Hamilton as a musical but anti-Hamilton as a thing pols and libs cite seriously as An Inspiration so their hatred of it kinda warms my heart tbh

I love when people rap about dead presidents, but for some reason not into a show based on one president performed as rap

President Hamilton yo

Did they ever address Sanders' "yeah, targeted drone killings, keep going" statement of last spring?

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Thursday, January 5, 2017 6:08 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sry morbs i've been ignoring this only because i hoped someone else would remember. i meant left econ policy of course. there's a good ep w jeremy scahill that's plenty caustic about drone policy and that i don't remember having too much fucking around in it, maybe there's a mention in there.

suspect yr implication is correct and that they more or less let it pass, but that's because their wing's support for bernie at this point is not based on his singular personal moral purity or even the moral superiority of leftism (tho the latter remains regardless) but on his and its ability to win.

I don't think Sanders had a coherent plan as far as what to do about military action. I mean, he went into the primary season not expecting to do as well as he did and was trying to push an economic/social(ist) platform and that remained the focus until he dropped out. I have no clue what he would have done had he actually gotten to the point of having to address it. If you check out his platform, it's under the vaguely titled "War and Peace" 3/4 of the way down the page
https://berniesanders.com/issues/

The general race didn't have anyone pushing the quality of life of people in other countries or the ongoing military presence outside of vague references to Syria and who was for or against invading Iraq (who gives a fuck, it's over a decade later, how about current events). Drones = less Americans on the ground and less questioning whether there should be an American presence at all because no one's on the ground so people don't seem to care

even the plight of people in Syria became a joke (Johnson's Aleppo gaffe) or some sort of token Russian interference implication in the Clinton/Trump debates, which was gross

brb vomiting into my trash can

all otm.

The point isn't that there are politicians they agree with more, they're hilariously joyless about Bernie in a way that feels hypocritical. If I read another stupid post by the show's acolytes with "the Bernie bro smear" ...
...

Anyway I've never listened to this show
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Thursday, 5 January 2017 18:04 (yesterday) Permalink

How is this a contradiction?

And no it's not actually dumb to be dismissive of something bc of how it's followers act