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Thread: "The Kanye West Delusion"

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    Default "The Kanye West Delusion"

    I like some of Kanye's music. The guy is unbelievably talented. I don't care about his politics one way or the other. But reading this makes me wonder what it's like going through life never having an artist you like having different politics than you. Talk about living in a bubble.



    The Kanye West Delusion

    What happens when an artist you love loses the plot


    No one wants to deal with this. There’s no golden arrow, no silver bullet for the social media unraveling of a celebrity. There’s no good feeling to be won by correctly identifying that, in fact, Kanye West has not been red-pilled but is actually just marketing a new album. There’s no power in denigrating his praise for President Donald Trump and Peter Thiel, nor is there meaning in providing the empathy earned from an artist we’ve come to love. There’s nothing to do, really, other than watch and wonder.

    Like thousands of people my age, Kanye West acted as a kind of a mirror. Sometimes, it was the type you’d find in a department store dressing room, tilted, slimming, aspirational. Sometimes it was the kind the Evil Queen in Snow White would gaze upon — a mask for the hideous. It felt like the mirror shattered today. Across 15 years, Kanye has been a maker of things that people love and a maker of statements people love to hate. But his music — the thing that keeps his followers invested — has routinely been coronated as innovative, rewarding, exciting, incisive, delirious, vulnerable, ferocious, and restorative. He’s a waterfall — a sight to behold and dangerous. In the days since he returned to Twitter, a social media application that has changed the world and makes people feel miserable with a grave profundity, Kanye has clipped the barbed wire around his mind and begun espousing the empty phraseology of alt-right thinkers who rallied around President Trump.

    This isn’t exactly new — Kanye visited Trump Tower shortly after the 2016 election and was photographed with the president. And Kanye has always fancied himself a seer. “They made us hate ourself and love they wealth,” he rapped on his first album. He has a self-possession and certitude that is easy to fall for and even easier to turn on. This string of recent statements — including a show of support for the conservative commentator Candace Owens, misinterpreting the message of Get Out, sporting a Make America Great Again hat alongside two wealthy middle-aged media executives, and plainly praising the president’s administration and his ideology — has been delivered in the same style of all of his previous “rants.” Brisk, erratic, propulsive, dubious statements that are both enthralling and worrying.

    From 2013: “No matter how they try to control you, or the motherfucker next to you tries to peer pressure you, you can do what you motherfucking want. I am Picasso. I’m Walt Disney, I’m Steve Jobs.” From 2010: “I feel very alone very used very tortured very forced very misunderstood very hollow very very misused. I don’t trust anyone but myself! Everyone has an agenda. I don’t do press anymore. I can’t be everything to everybody anymore. I can’t be everybody’s hero and villain savior and sinner Christian and anti Christ!” From 2008: “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ll let you finish, but Beyoncé has one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!” From 2006: “If I don’t win, the awards show loses credibility.” Simply Google “Kanye rant” and “[year]” and you’ll find numerous examples expressed on his blog, his Twitter account, at awards shows, during telethons, on stage, and from the bowels of his home. Kanye West is very online.

    But this feels different and more damaging now. The intellectual parameters of his new approach are rigorous and unfair — if we don’t have the same point of view, the rest of us are just sheeple. This is a uniquely 2018 vision of dialogue — agree with me or you are a deluded fool. Is it silly to feel sincerely bad about the way a musician is communicating on a social media platform? Perhaps. It could indicate a descension further into the ravine of confusion and obsession that constant connection allows. But that same connection with Kanye allowed for a great deal of joy in my life.

    I’ve interviewed and spoken with him several times in my career, profiling him for magazines and watching him present his music in private settings. He has been, by turns, kind and inattentive, despotic and thoughtful. He has asked me detailed questions about the origins of my socks and also about my mother. He has yelled at me and fallen asleep in the middle of one of our conversations. Most of these interactions were nearly 10 years ago, and people change. His story was extraordinary to tell, and his willingness to perform his life in interviews is an undeniable element of his rise. He willed it with words. As Kanye became the centrifugal force of modern celebrity culture in the past decade, marrying the princess of that same culture, he amplified every aspect of his persona — louder, more fearless, more aggrieved. He is impossible to look away from, unable to be reconciled. We can coyly say we miss the old Kanye, but he never really left. He just grew more defiant.

    I haven’t looked away since his return to Twitter, and have been reckoning with whether a rapper’s personal politics or mental health or private life ought to have any effect on the quality of my day. Put your faith in the famous at your own peril; many of them are horrific people with terrible ideas. But when your work and personal life are bound up in the actions of famous people, you’re bound to be disappointed. The gentler way to view this is to adopt some of the awoken brain chemistry that Kanye has been applying, a through-the-looking-glass ideology that is internet culture writ large. Not “Maybe he’s onto something,” but “Maybe we all need to reevaluate how we see the world.” It’s certainly spreading. Then you see something like this.

    What to do? Watch and wonder. Hope this actually is a simulation. Retweet with a clever emoji. Worryingly text your friends. Unfollow. Earlier today my colleagues Justin Charity and Rob Harvilla sought to unpack everything that’s happened with Kanye in the past week, and found themselves searching for the same contempt and empathy that I’ve sought, in part because both of them have spent a great deal of time watching and analyzing his career. Kanye West doesn’t really care. He’s still got jokes. The bigger worry I have is whether I should.

    I’ve not been discouraged from checking out the album he’s promised for June 1 — if I’m being honest, I’ve never anticipated one of his albums more. How grotesque. The Kanye West delusion is not one from which he’s suffering, but we are. It’s the lie that he — or anyone — is just like us, struggling against a machine, aching to express ourselves as clearly as possible. He isn’t us, but we’re in this together. “My fans are fans of themselves” is as true an aphorism as he’s spun this week. The thrum of captured tweets, aggregated content, aimless think pieces, and random internet ephemera is just another day in a paradise of our own design. When we ask for everything from the famous, sometimes we get it.


    https://www.theringer.com/music/2018...-trump-twitter

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    Conservatives aren't creative or talented people, that's simply a fact. They're the bottom of the barrel. The only reason any conservative would have money is because they inherited it, like Trump.
    "Do not think that I came to bring peace... I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." - Matthew 10:34

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    But this feels different and more damaging now. The intellectual parameters of his new approach are rigorous and unfair — if we don’t have the same point of view, the rest of us are just sheeple.
    talk about ironic..this is Candace Owens point, and it's a good one.

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    I stopped listening to Cat Stevens when he offered to pay whoever killed Salman Rushdie......

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    Quote Originally Posted by PostmodernProphet View Post
    I stopped listening to Cat Stevens when he offered to pay whoever killed Salman Rushdie......
    he did that? I knew there was a fatwa on Rushdie

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    i really just like a high profile african american turning conservative. I really feel the GOP should work on blacks (how illegal immigration hurts them) and asians (how AA hurts them) as a way to turn them against democrats.
    is on twitter @realtsuke

    https://tsukesthoughts.wordpress.com/

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    Quote Originally Posted by noise View Post
    he did that? I knew there was a fatwa on Rushdie

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    Quote Originally Posted by noise View Post
    talk about ironic..this is Candace Owens point, and it's a good one.
    She was just talking to Hannity a minute ago.......pretty smart girl and not bad on the eyes either......

    She made minced meat out of the moron trying to tell her how good Obama was for black America....
    the moron ignored the high unemployment for blacks, record food stamps, 4000 dead blacks in Chicago, etc. and insisted Obama was good for blacks....
    the morons cognitive dissonance was in full bloom.
    Put blame where it belongs
    ATF decided it could not regulate bump stocks during the Obama administration.
    It that time," the NRA wrote in a statement. "The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semiautomatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations."
    The ATF and Obama admin. ignored the NRA recommendations.


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    Quote Originally Posted by tsuke View Post
    i really just like a high profile african american turning conservative. I really feel the GOP should work on blacks (how illegal immigration hurts them) and asians (how AA hurts them) as a way to turn them against democrats.
    I said as much on the other thread.

    Democrats best play is to paint republicans as racist and/or Trump as a white nationalist. Democrats can’t run on what they’ve done for blacks—because they have nothing to show but empty promises. Republicans should hammer on that.

    But you don’t hear much white nationalist talk since Trump dumped Bannon.
    Coup has started. First of many steps. Impeachment will follow ultimately~WB attorney Mark Zaid, January 2017

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    Quote Originally Posted by Darth Omar View Post
    I said as much on the other thread.

    Democrats best play is to paint republicans as racist and/or Trump as a white nationalist. Democrats can’t run on what they’ve done for blacks—because they have nothing to show but empty promises. Republicans should hammer on that.

    But you don’t hear much white nationalist talk since Trump dumped Bannon.
    Oh, it’s still there, Stephen Miller is still around, as are a few others, I’m sure.

    There are just so many things to talk about when Trump is the President.

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    Quote Originally Posted by tsuke View Post
    i really just like a high profile african american turning conservative. I really feel the GOP should work on blacks (how illegal immigration hurts them) and asians (how AA hurts them) as a way to turn them against democrats.
    You assholes don't even try to hide your dirty tricks anymore, huh, cumvac?
    TRUMP SUCKS. TRUMP SUCKS! TRUMP SUCKS! TRUMP SUCKS!
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    this is exactly what I have talked about in the past with re: to liberal culture privilege. For a liberal, nearly all musicians, all artists, all actors, their teachers, the media, all back up their viewpoint. They have zero experience listening to a musician who's politics they disagree with. For conservatives, it's par for the course. We consume media and art in spite of almost all of said culture being against our viewpoints. Conservatives are more used to being exposed to ideas they disagree with, and this is why study after study reflects that conservatives are better at putting idealogical differences aside and still being friends with people of different political backgrounds.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Mott the Hoople View Post
    Grind is basically right
    Quote Originally Posted by Phantasmal View Post
    Grind’s got you beat by miles. He is very intelligent.

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    Quote Originally Posted by * View Post
    this is exactly what I have talked about in the past with re: to liberal culture privilege. For a liberal, nearly all musicians, all artists, all actors, their teachers, the media, all back up their viewpoint. They have zero experience listening to a musician who's politics they disagree with. For conservatives, it's par for the course. We consume media and art in spite of almost all of said culture being against our viewpoints. Conservatives are more used to being exposed to ideas they disagree with, and this is why study after study reflects that conservatives are better at putting idealogical differences aside and still being friends with people of different political backgrounds.
    I agree w/ your post for the most part - but can you provide a study that shows that?

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    Default can you dig it?

    Quote Originally Posted by * View Post
    this is exactly what I have talked about in the past with re: to liberal culture privilege. For a liberal, nearly all musicians, all artists, all actors, their teachers, the media, all back up their viewpoint. They have zero experience listening to a musician who's politics they disagree with. For conservatives, it's par for the course. We consume media and art in spite of almost all of said culture being against our viewpoints. Conservatives are more used to being exposed to ideas they disagree with, and this is why study after study reflects that conservatives are better at putting idealogical differences aside and still being friends with people of different political backgrounds.
    Aw come on, grind. Next thing you'll be talking about is how much conservatives dig voodoo.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Thing1 View Post
    I agree w/ your post for the most part - but can you provide a study that shows that?
    Sure, no problem:

    But that doesn’t mean consistent liberals necessarily embrace contrasting views. Roughly four-in-ten consistent liberals on Facebook (44%) say they have blocked or defriended someone on social media because they disagreed with something that person posted about politics. This compares with 31% of consistent conservatives and just 26% of all Facebook users who have done the same.


    source: http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21...-media-habits/

    Liberals were also more likely to drop a friend in real life over politics. Nearly a quarter, or 24 percent, of consistent liberals told Pew that have stopped talking to or being friends with someone over politics, compared to 16 percent of consistent conservatives.


    source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.4d7d077aeb88

    ^ The above two excerpts are from a pew research poll from 2014.

    Updated Trump stats are as follows:

    The poll shows almost half of liberal Democrats — 47 percent — say that if a friend supported Trump, it would actually put a strain on their friendship. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters more broadly, the number is 35 percent. White and more-educated Democrats are more likely to feel that it's tough to even be friends with a Trump supporter.

    ...

    And while partisanship and tribalism are pretty bipartisan things in American politics today, Democrats are actually substantially less able to countenance friends who supported the wrong candidate: Just 13 percent of Republicans say a friend's support of Hillary Clinton would strain their relationship.
    ^ Nearly half of liberals have friendships strained, vs. only 13% of conservatives feeling strain over a friend going with hillary.
    Note that it is actually WHITE liberals that are the group to feel the most strain.

    source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.2a1cf6078a29

    Original study: http://www.people-press.org/2017/07/...y-among-women/
    Last edited by BRUTALITOPS; 04-26-2018 at 10:45 PM.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Mott the Hoople View Post
    Grind is basically right
    Quote Originally Posted by Phantasmal View Post
    Grind’s got you beat by miles. He is very intelligent.

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