I’m lethally tired of conservatives who haven’t been paying attention for the last 50 years. They’re still saying the same two or three Official Conservative Quotes, most of which were wrong from the fucking start even before they turned stale.

Here’s a good example from a respondent in one of Kirn’s twitter threads. (Kirn himself is always up to date and realistic on culture, though he misses techy points.)

Even bad ideas merely fester when they’re hidden from daylight.

This might have been valid in 1960, but it’s backwards now.

BAD IDEAS ARE IN TOTAL CONTROL OF EVERYTHING NOW. WE ONLY HEAR AND SEE BAD IDEAS. THE GOOD IDEAS ARE HIDDEN.

= = = = =

The current situation is familiar if you’ve read the usual dystopias. There’s always an underground where Good Ideas are quietly preserved while Bad Ideas run the world. Huxley’s savages, Orwell’s proles, Bradbury’s oral-memory tramps.