Being the continuation of InstaPunk and InstaPunk Rules
The impenetrable NYC Bubble
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Funny as hell and deadly serious
Let me begin on a note we can all agree on. There is a time in our teen lives when we imprint on popular music. What we were listening to during the dramatic changes in our bodies, social lives, and aspirational identities stays with us, regardless of what we come to value and treasure later in life. Everyone has those certain songs that are foundational chords in their lives, and they respond physically to even a few notes of the recordings that gave rise to their libidos and, well, self. Two not unrelated things. This is a constant and nothing new. There are Sinatra imprints, Elvis, Beach Boys, Dylan, Motown, Beatles, Stones, Who, Doors, Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Pink Floyd, James Taylor, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, James Brown, Rick James, Springsteen, Metallica, and on and on and on imprints. (Apologies to the imprinters in Country, Disco, Jazz, and Blondie/Madonna Pop, have my own chords there too.) I never judge those. We just all have them. We all have more than one. They’re just the nest of emotions that surrounds the most vulnerable early years of our lives. And, obviously not all the imprints are superstars. Everyone also has hits heard too often heard on car radio, bad songs that were too catchy to forget, and what the hell, I liked it at the time and will never forget it.
And, just as obviously, this imprinting phenomenon is not limited to music. It takes in a lot of factors. Especially in closed communities. The movies make this a melodrama for us. The extent to which the years of high school in particular shape our future lives, the continuing hurts and resentments we live down by besting the popular cliques of jocks and cheerleaders who wind up as gas station attendants and fat fussy disappointed bitches we want to show up at the reunion.
I missed all that. This post shows you where I was instead. And the difference is important. It explains why New York thinks it can look down on the whole rest of the nation. Why there is a bubble bringing down the nation without even thinking about it. They are not exempt from the rule cites above about primary identity shapers. What they are exempt from is the comedowns associated by real life as experienced in high school reunions. Their losers are not gas station attendants and fat peevish ex-cheerleaders. They are just dead in place in still perfect clothes and poses. And they are not thinking about it at all.
We have one important clue. A book published back in 1980 called The Preppy Handbook. NYT bestseller. Hilarious. Passed around. You’d think it would still be alive on Kindle at least. No. That would be déclassé. Only available as original copies, ranging from $150 to $500+. Why I have to show you pictures of pages, which will do. They show you a community apart, one I happen to be very familiar with. And why I’m the only one who can explain to you why the NY-centric lawfare against Trump can continue despite the exorbitant costs it will exact on what was once the greatest city in the world.
Here’s the bubble that contains the fiftyish New York elites who live with each other, can afford to buy the essentials and luxuries, and just look down on Trump because he’s about the only punchline they have left in otherwise blank carbon-copy lives of one another. Everything he’s ever done is just not done. He went to an effing military academy before going to the most grinding industrial unit of, uh, Penn…
What you really really can’t have is your own Boeing 757 and a gold plated toilet.
Just so you don’t get the idea They’re uneducated or not well read.
A really big thing is knowing how to look like you’re not trying,
even if you really aren’t. Sweaters are IMPORTANT.
Overall, you gotta look good. In these particular ways…
How else are you going to marry her and live on the Upper East Side.
Not like they weren’t always preparing themselves for leadership…
Born to run absolutely everything with taste and Topsiders.
Yeah. A 40 year old imprint. They’re in their 50s now. Has anything changed?
How do I expect you to look at all this? I was there. The book names names. Lots of them. Not mine. Which helps me define not resent. There is a community of the top 30 or so schools that survives everything. It’s not even Exeter and Andover, the media version of prep school Harvard and Yale. They are, well, not exactly our kind. We’re talking society here. I keenly remember, with outstanding incredulity, a graduate of Moses Brown School(?) in Providence RI calling NJ’s literarily famous Lawrenceville School a “3rd rate prep school” at a time when Lawrenceville had more Harvard admissions than any single Grottlesex School in New England.
The sin? Absence of a magnetic epicenter in the urban northeast, which excludes Philadelphia and therefore U. Penn as well, because, well, you, know, who’s just better? The definition of the Bubble, which is what Fitzgerald was really talking about way back when in Gatsby:
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
What kept them together? Sweaters and shoes and drunk nights on Nantucket and conventions they still believe amount to taste, like no PDOA, but otherwise doing what they want without being indiscreet enough for others to see. And continuously looking down or at least past everyone else whose lives might have a different kind of center.
Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? No. The people described in The Preppy Handbook went to affordable schools in their time. In those days Exeter had a tuition of $1,800. My school had a tuition of $2,700. Today it costs $66,000 to attend my prep school. The middle class is gone from these student bodies. Now we are back to the 1930s, when only the richest and most pampered get to pick which sweaters are and shoes are appropriate for this weekend’s soirées.
I can assure you they don’t care. I can assure they don’t think about why they despise Trump. I can assure you they don’t care about the slaughter on the streets and in the neighborhoods and even the boulevards of New York City. They’ll be in the Hamptons when the bad shit happens. Like as not in unisex salmon-colored cableknit cashmere sweaters atop white Egyptian cotton turtlenecks and whale pants.
The purpose of this post is to remind you that they are also rooted in their own youthful imprints. As a group they have accomplished no great things. They are the lucky parasites they mostly were from the start. They hate Trump for the very small reasons that always obsess untalented snobs. He doesn’t do the right things right. He has unseemly successes. He doesn’t pretend he wasn’t trying. He’s, well, gauche.
Which is worth sending the entire country to hell. No worse than firing the au-pair for putting the wrong forks on the table for the dinner party last week. Some people have some nerve. Not that we’re noticing.
Thing is. It’s a bubble. An important one. Why you can’t buy this book on Kindle. It’s a grimoire, a kind of magic manual, even scripture. I can tell you about it because I was there, survived and prospered in it, documented it, and went on to new kinds of magic rooted to home and land and Detroit horsepower, bootchains, and real world contests not unlike what Trump has spent his life engaged in.
I disengaged myself. As the rest of us should do. This is not a respectable code of life. It’s a phony, made more corrupt every day because actual merit has left the process. When I went to my school it cost $2,700 a year; now it costs $66,000. Same with all the other preppy schools. All that’s left is the children of the pampered class, the only ones left who can afford this level of affectation, however it’s accoutered itself in fashion terms now. What do they do? Not much. Why do they hate Trump? They don’t know. They just do. Trust me. I’ve talked to them. They’re just better. And they will never learn. They concentrate in New York and all the plush environs of their class, where they feel permanently safe. Our job is to make them feel less safe. New York? Drop dead.
How should we envision the current crop, failed parents and stoned progeny? Try this glimpse of the Harvard Legacy Class of 2024:
But the Grotties and Choaties are still producing Muffy’s and Buffy’s to
marry the Chips and Trips and Skips who will win at Nantucket softball.
Ontogeny recapitulates philogeny. There’s an intensely contemporary reason for taking a close look at Scientology. The Swamp is so huge it seems like the Borg. But what are the stripped down essentials of the Borg? Here’s a look at a laboratory example, a microcosm if you will. In the interests of full disclosure, I did encounter Scientology back in the weird year of 1968. I was in Boston, got scooped in to a “Dianetics” exercise, and got speedily thrown out for having too much “charge” to participate. The one in charge was blond, bland to the point of creepy, and I almost (but not quite) succeeded in making him lose his temper. In further interests of disclosure, I spent years on Facebook, debating Trump-haters. They did lose their tempers. But they also exhibited the exact same repetition of Talking Points the lefties (and Scientologists) employ. Exact. Same. Words. How I made the cult connection. Overview Like it says. Troublemaker. Destroy Utterly Horror Show Squared More ... More
Everybody rushed in after the fact to be first with the goods on how Trump pulled off the biggest electoral upset in modern presidential history. I was already ahead of them though. I had been covering the political briar patch with a steady diary approach for four presidential election cycles, both terms of W, the meteoric rise and weird re-election of Barack Obama, and of course the first flutterings of the Republican country club riot over replacing him. I had three blogs to draw from over that time, and a couple+ books out of it, including one demonstrating that I had Obama figured out long before even his fiercest beltway critics caught on. Here’s another relevant book . I recognized the unique potential of Trump to win the whole thing early, in June of 2014. I could prove it. Why has it taken me this long to do my own book about the most spectacular politician of all our lifetimes? Two reasons. I didn’t realize I had produced so much material about Trump, the blog in whic
As you work your way through the links here, don’t be shy. Get ‘Click Happy.’ Even on pics. FIGHTING BACK ONE FILE AT A TIME … How bad has it gotten? I uploaded this video from the old Instapunk at YouTube an hour ago. It has already been removed for violating YT Community Standards. There’s a pdf version, just published, of the post from Instapunk.com the video above was created for. Nobody censored it 15 years ago. Back then, it was unquestioningly covered as freedom of expression. Here’s my pdf file of ‘ The Goosestep Enigma ’. This was by no means the most controversial post or graphic included in Instapunk’s 2,000+++ posts over the years. Now I’m going back in time to make pdf versions of the key parts of that website, meaning the most comical, controversial, reflective, insightful, and graphically provocative. But why reinvent the wheel. It’s all still there, isn’t it? The sad fact is that the truly huge resource called Instapunk.com is facing a ticking clock. The original site
Cover of U.K. Edition, 1991 Manuscript Submission, The Boomer Bible It is time to republish The Boomer Bible. The book is more relevant to the body politic now than it was even when it was first published. Your instructions call for complete manuscript submission. Here that is, in three forms, plus a depth backgrounder: The Boomer Bible (Full screen view available, May load slowly) http://TheBoomerBible.com (Three testaments including LIVE Intercolumn Reference) The Boomer Bible (physical hard copy; Amazon sells them as they periodically acquire them) The Boomer Bible Website (The original archived background site, not originated by the author but by students of the book) The Boomer Bible is officially out of print, no longer offered for sale by the original publisher, who offered the book for nearly 30 years, selling out the the original 88,000-copy print run before withdrawing the title. The rights have therefore reverted to me, the author. The important point is that The Bo
There’s a Mighty Old Name on the Scene For the past half century or so, the University of Pennsylvania has not been treated as an equal in the Ivy League, let alone the CHYOS Club. Here’s a telling true story. At a recent Penn-Princeton basketball game, the Quakers had an insurmountable lead in the closing seconds, and the girlie-boys of Princeton started chanting, “Safety School…! Safety School…!” For many years, the preppy feeder schools for the Ivies with the toughest admissions standards had reliably used three schools as fallbacks (i.e., Safety Schools): the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Penn. A similar discrimination situation obtained with law schools. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and later Stanford got first pick, and Penn somehow occupied a lower rung. Here’s a direct quote from the website ‘wordhistories’ about the mutating epithet “Philadelphia Lawyer”: The proof of this evolving lack of respect can be found in the history of the Supr
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