So I read it. Here is the short version: a bunch of "look at me, I'm clever" college kids latched on to some of the language and memes that have been running around the blogosphere for more than a decade and adapted them to their puerile misreadings of the writers of cultural and political coffee table books they have never read.
If any of these guys had actually put in the work to plow through, say, Decline of the West, they would have quickly jettisoned not just their Pygmy socio-political adolescence, but most of their self-satisfied affect. The first causality of a good education is certainty. But far easier to name drop a few titles picked up while reading Andrew Sullivan (before he went all super queer) or John Riley (before he died) and bask in the reflected legitimacy.
The way the authors elide the immaturity and gross misogyny of the Sad Puppies and Gamergate -- two groups I know a little about -- makes me suspect they are also providing cover for a lot of creeps in other nether regions of the web which I don't know about.
These folks construct a paper thin self-image of intellectual depth by throwing around a few quotations and aping the devastatingly off-hand dismissiveness of a Mencken, but at the end of the day they are still only as good as their causes, and they align behind (if not among) some truly disgusting fellow travelers who cantankerous Oswald would not have been caught dead with (let alone Francis -- either of them).
The twin theses of the piece are that these people are both creative and intelligent. I see no evidence of either. Instead, they appear to be toddlers let loose on the enormous playground of philosophy, history, and culture which is far more interesting than their lack of experience or imagination allows them to realize. When they glimpse a beautiful object they snatch it up and brandish it as a weapon. They pis-s themselves in public, as toddlers will, and the authors glorify it as studied irony.
I'll pass.
