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“I thought I'd share this Boris Johnson story with you”

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Re: “I thought I'd share this Boris Johnson story with you”

#101

Post by dTal »

neonate wrote: post #34
Arbalest wrote: post #18

He must have recognised the seachange of populism and created a persona to suit. Reminds me of the BDG video on Polygon on how to create the perfect E3 presentation. Particularly the part about Gaffes. I suppose this was a long time coming, in marketing circles, it is agreed that "Generation X" was the first "Jaded" generation, and I feel like there's some link there. Marketing to that generation often involves takin…

> He must have recognised the seachange of populism In 2006? That seems far fetched. Your point about cynicism and politicians of his generation being the first to ironically cater to it seems more solid to me.

I don't think it's that far-fetched. The creeping beginnings of populism were detectable in the unusually emotionally-charged election of Obama (Change posters and the like), and that was in 2008.

Re: “I thought I'd share this Boris Johnson story with you”

#103

Post by hardlianotion »

probably_wrong wrote: post #69
Apocryphon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been said that George W. Bush already did that decades ago, shedding his New Englander blue-blood upbringing for Texan rustic.

Here's a first hand account from a former member of his staff, in an article aptly titled "George W. Bush is smarter than you": https://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/

Tony Blair claimed that George Bush was a very smart guy

Re: “I thought I'd share this Boris Johnson story with you”

#104

Post by rjf72 »

te_chris wrote: post #88
andy_ppp wrote: post #53

In some horrendous nihilistic way we seem to get the politicians we deserve. Hopefully Boris and Trump are the end of this mess and after they screw everything we get something better, but I fear it’s just the start. It really does feel like we live in the hunger games right now.

It’s literally a certain portion of boomers and above who are these people’s main constituency. TPUSA et al can try and claim there’s a silent minority of youth for these proto-fascists, stats would disagree though. It’s the boomers mostly, whose elected political representatives have spent their whole lives running down the state, making things easy for themselves, and now they expect to retire and cost a fortune in…

Here [1] are some data on this exact topic. Pew broke down ideology by age. While it's true that older individuals tend to become more conservative, this is a not a new phenomena and has been observed and commented upon for centuries. Of course when young we know there is no chance we could ever 'compromise' our views as the years pass. Nonetheless, life experience changes us in ways we often could never have predicted. Ok, but in spite of this there's no crystal clear correlation. In particular the split among ideology on the 65+ group that most consistently votes one way or the other (representing about 66% of the entire population) is split 50/50. And similarly there is also much more diversity in views among younger individuals than is typically represented by e.g. social media.

The one interesting correlation they did observe is one between your cohort's (by age group) voting tendencies and whom the president was when your cohort turned 18. Like you mention the Greatest generation who turned 18 under FDR lean heavily democratic. Though contradicting your hypothesis is the fact that you're presumably referencing WW2. And the Silent generation served extensively in this war. And they lean heavily republican.

One interesting thing I've observed (and wrote in a post a little above in a peer to this comment chain) is there tends to be a periodic shifting of ideology, that in general just tends to be against the status quo. And Pew's data provides some really interesting insight there. For instance they broke Boomers down into three 5 year groups. The groups are divided based upon who was president when they turned 18. Those 3 presidents were Kenny/Johnson, Nixon, and Ford/Carter. The Ford/Carter combination is frustrating for data, but regardless the results we get:

- Kennedy/Johnson - lean heavily republican

- Nixon - lean heavily democrat

- Ford/Carter - lean heavily republican

Not easy to classify things in a straight forward way, but interesting data nonetheless!

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/09/the-politic...

Re: “I thought I'd share this Boris Johnson story with you”

#105

Post by benj111 »

Arbalest wrote: post #96
benj111 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean Generation X, or Generation Y (Millenials)?

I do mean Generation X, 1960s to early 80s

Fair enough, its just Gen Xers are starting to retire, which doesn't jive with "number of good working years". And surely your mid 30s is when you start climbing the greasy pole enough to wield significant power?

Re: “I thought I'd share this Boris Johnson story with you”

#106

Post by sidkshatriya »

riffraff wrote: post #91
gexla wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most were not idealists despite what they said IMO, I suspect many if pressed to change their positions did not really care about the issues outside of a couple topics at most (and due to the winds of change in US politics most actually supported surprisingly different issues over time). They represent the views of the people who vote. Those views change over time. This is much like me doing what my employer asks f…

I think this point of view is arguable. First, politicians may be considered as representative of either _only the people who voted for them_, or as _representative of everyone_. Secondly, many politicians do not really change their point of view, the change in people's opinion is expressed by voting different people.

Must this be a binary choice? Both effects are at play here.

Politicians will often adjust their publicity stated views to match their electorate to be more electable. As the electorates opinions change over time, the publicly stated views of the politicians also evolve. Occasionally politicians who want to bring about a certain kind of change they believe in passionately are able to shift the views of their electorate also. This happens rarely but it happens.

In other words this business attracts people of all kinds: the cynical kind that just wants power regardless of policy and the kind that wants to bring about the kind of of change they think will take society to nirvana regardless of what people think. Usually each politician has both sides. It’s a continuum.

Re: “I thought I'd share this Boris Johnson story with you”

#107

Post by Sammi »

cachehit wrote: post #92
HenryBemis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great article, thank you. As for BoJo, he is smart as a fox. Trump is the same. They make 1-2 stupid things, so people call them stupid. On the back side they scheme and plan. Haters see the stupid actions and hate. They play a game of chess, sacrificing a pawn (some 'credibility' by saying something stupid), and while people are getting tired of their artificial stupidity, they march on doing their thing left alone.…

I am not sure about Boris, but I am 100% certain that the narrative about Trump playing 4D chess is bullshit. I believe that George Bush may have had a persona to some degree ( https://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/ ) because it pays off to speak like a man of the people. But everyone who's worked with Donald Trump and spoken out afterwards tell the same story about how utterly stupid he is. In Denmark, we on…

My favorite promise of his is "more tailwind on bike paths" because it's so utterly danish :)

Re: “I thought I'd share this Boris Johnson story with you”

#108

Post by dr_dshiv »

This was a fun read. My take is that politicians showing up to random award ceremonies and giving a canned speech is a normal situation, though. That he can give a canned speech in a way that seems self-deprecating and authentic, in order to entertain and connect with the audience, is impressive. I can understand why someone would feel that this is a form of lying.

He is an entertainer and capable of manipulating crowds. My concern is the lack of people like this who share my own politics.

Re: “I thought I'd share this Boris Johnson story with you”

#109

Post by magpi3 »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #108

This was a fun read. My take is that politicians showing up to random award ceremonies and giving a canned speech is a normal situation, though. That he can give a canned speech in a way that seems self-deprecating and authentic, in order to entertain and connect with the audience, is impressive. I can understand why someone would feel that this is a form of lying. He is an entertainer and capable of manipulating cro…

> He is an entertainer and capable of manipulating crowds. My concern is the lack of people like this who share my own politics.

The creepy part for me was not the canned speech. It was the attempt to manipulate the people at his table. The last minute arrival, the shock at finding he is the speaker, forgetting his speech at the table... I would also feel like I am watching a fraud

Re: “I thought I'd share this Boris Johnson story with you”

#110

Post by m-i-l »

doesnt_know wrote: post #24
Apocryphon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been said that George W. Bush already did that decades ago, shedding his New Englander blue-blood upbringing for Texan rustic.

I dunno, I don't think it's very healthy that when presented with a bumbling idiot in a position of power you start to think it's a big ruse and they are actually a genius. It's best to just assume they are in fact, a bumbling idiot.

That's Occam's Razor. There are all these complex theories that people in positions of power who come across as idiots must in actual fact be master manipulative geniuses given they can so convincingly fake blithering idiocy and they can't possibly have got to where they are by being so clueless. But the simpler solution is that they are just idiots. Remember also that Eton has a reputation for drumming into boys on a daily basis that they are born to be future leaders and have to be confident of their superiority irrespective of competence or abilities. BTW, has anyone seen Being There?

Edit: Maybe we need a corollary to Hanlon's razor - "Never attribute to genius that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

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