With competent execution, this could be a great children's book! The premise is not realistic—no sane parent would conclude their child is _literally_ a walrus _because he said so_—but it's a kind of non-realism common in children's literature, attributing simple, caricatured motivations to characters in order to tell a silly, memorable story. If there happens to be an obvious parallel between the silly, memorable story and an ideological fad affecting otherwise-sane parents in the current year, that's plausibly (or at least deniably) not the _author's_ fault ...
-But Matt Walsh completely flubs the execution by making it a satire rather than an allegory! The result is cringey right-wing propaganda rather than a silly, memorable story that I could read to a child without feeling ashamed. (It's well-known that the left can't meme, but that advantage doesn't secure the outcome of the culture war if the right can't write children's literature.)
+But Matt Walsh completely flubs the execution by making it a satire rather than an allegory! The result is cringey right-wing propaganda rather than a silly, memorable story that I could read to a child without feeling ashamed. (It's well-known that [the left can't meme](https://unherd.com/2021/08/why-the-left-cant-meme/), but that advantage doesn't secure the outcome of the culture war if the right can't write children's literature.)
Rather than being a silly non-realistic children's-literature grown-up, Johnny's mother is portrayed as being duped by social media. ("But Johnny's mom's phone said it's not just pretend / 'Only a bigot would say that! How dare you offend!'", with angry emoji and inverted Facebook thumbs-up icons bubbling out of her phone into the scene.)
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Michael 19 April 2019—
> Intellectualism to survive, has to distinguish between having been betrayed and having been defeated. The difference is frequently known as "courage". It's absence causes people like Aaronson, without ever becoming complicit, to nonetheless transition directly from denial of a crisis to advocacy of "The Kolmagorov Option".
+
+during the dispute with James, Jonah said it seemed like the future beyond a year wasn't real to me (this also explains my behavior in college)
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-Timely—
-_ Multi-Product Review: Various AGP Erotic Aids
-
pre-memoir—
_ I'm Dropping the Pseudonym From This Blog
_ Reply to Scott Alexander on Autogenderphilia
_ (pt. 3) A Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning
_ (pt. 4) If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them
_ (pt. 5) Agreeing With Stalin in Ways that Exhibit Generally Rationalist Principles
-_ (maybe) Why I Don't Trust Eliezer Yudkowsky's Intellectual Honesty
Big posts—
_ Beyond the Binary
_ Happy Meal
_ Elision _vs_. Choice
+_ Multi-Product Review: Various AGP Erotic Aids
_ Book Review: Johnny the Walrus
_ Comments on the Conspiracies of dath ilan
_ Beckett Mariner Is Trans https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/in3g92/was_mariner_a_teenager_on_the_enterprised/