I’ve noticed something about literary, chattering-class New York: no one really talks about politics anymore. Everybody even seems to be talking about politics less as the election approaches. Political discourse is largely avoided, and deeply uncool.
I think the explanation is simple: generic progressivism is no longer a helpful way to win merit badges, extend your network, and get a book deal. There is a general, if implicit, repressed understanding that many people no longer believe that the Democratic party works for the good, or that progressivism can lead to a series of easy, linear victories against oppression. But at the same time, there’s no socially permissible alternative; and socially acceptable people haven’t authored new ex cathedra rules about how it might be acceptable to talk about this. Socially acceptable people aren’t even sure, secretly, if they’re in the right anymore.
Socially acceptable people aren’t even sure, secretly, if they’re in the right anymore.
Thus, it’s no longer easy for New York City’s meritocratic elite (former prep/Ivy kids in prestige positions in publishing or the arts or in power positions in finance or government or tech) to talk about politics at parties; it no longer feels good. Until recently, there was an obvious, if implied, social and economic logic to lining up with the Democratic party’s politics (while insisting, of course, that more socialism would be nice). The episteme of the 2010s coastal strivers located all the bad stuff over there, with the bigoted, flyover underclass, and all the good stuff, here, with the tolerant, socially concerned urban credentialists. People really believed in NPR and chill, NYT and chill, Obama or Hillary and chill. What might be called the AOC career strategy was paradigmatic of an era and a generation: pay lip service to socialism, tack towards raw power and self-enrichment, receive praise (ignore the haters—they are underclass losers).
What might be called the AOC career strategy was paradigmatic of an era and a generation: pay lip service to socialism, tack towards raw power and self-enrichment, receive praise (ignore the haters—they are underclass losers).
Why should you feel any guilt about mechanically serving your own ambitions and consumerist impulses? You’re on the good guy team! Your friends are on the good guy team! History is moving forward and you’re going with it!
Outside of bastions of the faithful (like the DNC), however, these psychological investments are no longer solvent. TDS is widely acknowledged as cringe; nobody under 50 watches Maddow or CNN; Kamala is plainly a stooge; the Biden Administration—essentially the first Millennial presidency, thanks to his staffers—has left most people with less purchasing power while opening a two-front proxy war abroad.
Being a lib is embarrassing, tonally—but you also can’t be a Republican—not in name—and you cannot say you’re actually going to vote for Trump. Voting for RFK won’t confer prestige either (and that ship has now sailed), so what do you do? You’ve spent your whole life saying the right thing, doing your homework; you masked up and you got vaxxed; you voted for Biden; you voted for Hillary; you voted for Obama. You can’t break the streak. You’ll lose your credentials; you’ll get fired or shunned.
You’ve spent your whole life saying the right thing, doing your homework; you masked up and you got vaxxed; you voted for Biden; you voted for Hillary; you voted for Obama. You can’t break the streak. You’ll lose your credentials; you’ll get fired or shunned.
Cocktail parties—rarely spontaneous anymore, usually linked to a book launch or gallery event—really put progressive careerists in a bind: they’re smart enough not to be flag waving DNC seat fillers; they have advanced degrees—but breaking ranks has, since 2016, meant possible firing and social exile. So even if Kamala is a moral coward, clearly in the pocket of the System, incapable of public ex tempore public speech (just like Biden), it’s too dangerous, personally, to consider political alternatives. To even think, for a second, of rebelling, like Milton’s Satan, would mean being cast out of yuppy heaven.
Credentialism—the religion of my generation (I was born, like Taylor Swift, in 1989)—is morally repugnant: it means joining whatever social contagion or political fad is required to make enough money to live a proper coastal lifestyle, and to feel justified in doing so; to feel good about it. Credentialism is also repugnant because it means ignoring evidence that the state war apparatus—which was demonstrably Republican-coded between 2000 and 2008—slipped into the semiotic skin of social justice, into the Democratic party machinery, and bred: a Xenomorph.
The laptop class played the game; they won; they didn’t feel they had to take any questions. But it’s increasingly hard not to. Paradigms have shifted; the old structures of knowledge are rapidly crumbling. But there’s nothing else to do but cling to those old structures.
When I go to parties, I know that my peers know, on some level, that I dissent from DNC dictate—they may even have read and enjoyed one of my essays—but I’m still covered in enough, just enough, liberal semiotic goo to pass; I’m still safe because I don’t sound or look like a member of the working/under-class. My politics are mysterious, but not scary, so my peers are emboldened to even express some dissatisfaction with Kamala if they add something like, “but of course I’ll vote for her! The Dems have flaws–but…Trump! God no!”
My politics are mysterious, but not scary, so my peers are emboldened to even express some dissatisfaction with Kamala if they add something like, “but of course I’ll vote for her! The Dems have flaws–but…Trump! God no!”
A few months ago, I ran into an indie filmmaker acquaintance at Film Forum, and we—my fiancé and the filmmaker and other mutual friends—ended up hanging out at his apartment in the village till late, drinking wine (and in some cases smoking hash). And the mood was great; the filmmaker was a fan of my work and even wanted to work with me.
But then, I said the unutterable: I wouldn’t vote for Biden. And the guy and his friend just lost it. They couldn’t believe it. The filmmaker didn’t really have anything approaching a cogent argument, but he was very angry. “So you’re really gonna vote for that narcissist!” I hadn’t said I would; but I had admitted I wouldn’t vote for the Good Guy, and that was enough. I was a fascist enjoyer; I was a narcissist enjoyer.
Oddly, later in the night, the same filmmaker would go on a rant about cancel culture and young people who can’t handle confrontation. He was happy to nurture these radically different world views—Gen X male rage at speech codes alongside TDS—in his mind at the same time. His own identity, clearly, depended on being able to do so. I didn’t argue with him.
The damage was done, anyway; the neutrals in the room were uncomfortable with the mention of politics. The indie filmmaker, I realized, was a bit of a throw-back, an anachronism: naive, even corny in his liberal-ish rage. It was very 2019 to freak out about Trump like that, at least in NYC.
It was very 2019 to freak out about Trump like that, at least in NYC.
2024 election politics is different than the 2020 election, which was co-extensive with Covid politics. People don’t wear ID badges anymore (which is all masks were), and Trump’s not running that far behind Kamala here (New York’s not California): you can’t just assume, statistically, that everyone you know is voting blue.
It’s difficult to try to calculate which ideological fashion is best to align oneself with. It’s not as easy to get a book deal or sell an article via right-think anymore. At least in New York City.
I can only conclude that there are no political beliefs amongst the New York City laptop class, just political poses. They aren’t liberals or conservatives, or socialists, or fascists, or communists: they are complacent strivers trying to keep within the boundaries of whatever ideological herd is socially presupposed. The relative silence this election year, even if only anecdotal, is evidence of this: if the laptop class had real political passions, a real courage, it would not need to follow trendsetters or the path of most positive feedback.
And who are the laptop class really? The class that writes, edits, and publishes books and little magazines; the class that goes on cable news; that gets hired by thinktanks; that writes op-eds. For the most part, they’re also the class that runs marketing and advertising firms; that staffs Congress; that writes speeches for major politicians; that does HR for Big Tech; that works in the Biden administration.
That list is not random: it’s common for elite younger professionals to circulate through these different domains (culture, business and government), accruing status as they go. They are the big winners of the post 2008, post-Obama economy. They don’t want anything to change.
But even putting material class interests aside: if your career is based on selling some kind of vaporware (intellectual, political, corporate), and on being a piece of vaporware yourself (careerist PMC), then it’s hard to summon the courage to not vote for Kamala, the ultimate political vaporware product.
Voting otherwise would mean admitting that your whole life is a fraud: that nothing you do makes anything any better or spiritually richer for anyone else.
Self-enrichment and nervous ladder-climbing were fine if it was all on the right side of history. Laptoppers were Democrats because Democrats were good and because it feels good to be good. Why wouldn’t you talk about how good you are? That makes perfect sense. Why wouldn’t you talk about how bad other people are (especially when they belong to the underclass you escaped by getting a master’s degree)? That makes perfect sense too.
So you just have to invent a new way to be good. You have until November. Anything. Anything that justifies voting for another stooge. You have the power to do this, remember? Generate self-justifying discourse? That’s your job. It’s exciting. Once you do that—you can start policing other peoples’ speech at parties again. It’s just around the corner. Hope! Change! Joy!
