Introducing the concept of same boat-ism, our obsession with defending bad things, and one of the main commandments of publishing

Saturday 9/26/26

Someone will state an issue with something with which a person of quality would naturally have an issue. It'll be a common sense type of thing. An example I encountered from this morning: a person was at a baseball game, and made a remark about how it'd be nice to go the ball park and simply hear the sounds of the ball park and not be bombarded with constant volume from the stadium's loudspeakers.

You know how this is now: every bit of would-be silence in our world must be filled with shrillness, volume. In between pitches, there has to be the barrage of rap or whatever. We can't have a second away from the ceaseless blasting.

Is that how it should be? Is that better? You'd have to be a low class, uneducated individual to go, "Yes, that's how it should be. Volume, volume, volume, non-stop." You wouldn't even be able to write a sentence like that, but you follow me. It seems a perfectly reasonable expectation that we should be able to go to a ball game and hear the natural sounds of the game and the stadium. In other words, this ought to be a statement that invites scant umbrage.

Wrong.

This person was attacked and attacked and attacked and attacked. Screamed at, shouted down, insulted. Because this person is now one out of every...I was going to say 100, but I don't think it's 100. I think the number is much higher.

I see this constantly. It's not about ball parks per se. It's when someone expresses what should be this ordinary, common sense, bare minimum kind of thing as to how someone should expect something to be, and the vast majority take up the side, the cause, of that which is most grating, most imbecilic, most deafening, most tacky, most immature, most abrasive. I see this in everything. These mounted defenses, by the vocal majority, of stupidity, classlessness.

Another example: someone says they're a writer, blah blah blah. They aren't a writer. There are basically no real writers in this world right now. Then you have these millions of people who don't write a thing even privately, let alone for the prospective reading of others. They don't write pieces, poems, books, plays. Usually, at the most, they'll have this half-hearted Substack with five entries over three years, the bulk of which is comprised of photos of themselves. "Writer" is just this title they append to their Instagram bio or put on LinkedIn.

Let's say they post something on Reddit. Many of the words may be spelled wrong. They won't know how "then" and "than" work. "Anyway" will be "anyways." Now, if someone was to point out the irony of this person saying they were a writer and not having any command over basic spelling and grammar, what do you think would happen? Everyone would gang up on that person who said this thing. They'd be in defense of stupidity, illiteracy, and lying about one's self and what one does. And it's 100% of the time.

Why? Well, in this second example, anyway, it's because those people know, deep down, that they are idiots, that they are uncultured, that they are borderline illiterate, and that they are liars who have no real abilities of their own, so life is all about this lying and faking it. They're really defending themselves, without being smart enough, or brave enough, to understand that's what they're doing. They're a dumb animal, thinking its been wounded, biting back.

The idea is similar to what I believe motivates most MAGA people. For them, in their simpleness, in their lack of education, in their illiteracy, in their perpetual adolescence, a lot of the appeal is about this idea they have regarding "owning the libs." A small child reaches that stage where they just want to say, "No!" to everything. If the thing they'd been presented was the opposite of that thing they'd actually been presented and said "No!" to, they would have said "No!"' the same. It isn't about the thing--it's about the contrariness. For its own sake. Like this is some form of...independence.

Most people have the make-up of small children. Without the capacity for wonder. Their brains largely freeze in place. They are a combination of two-years-old, six-years-old, and some teen year. They don't progress beyond that kind of "lump" age. They get fatter, they have kids, which they often have no business having, because they aren't fit to parent, aren't fit to educate an impressionable human being, aren't fit to instruct an impressionable human being in morality, being what they are, with all that they don't know. All that they don't care to know. All that they never thought was worth trying to know.

But because this came out of their dick and ultimately produced this person, they became the fittest parent in human history. The one who knows and does best and no, you better not, you better not, I'm telling you, because MY KID MY KID and THIS IS MY KID.

Sure.

(By the way: isn't it remarkable that just saying the words "My kid" makes a person correct no matter what?)

The world is full of people like this. There basically is no other kind of person. The exceptions are so rare that it's like you can't even count them. On account of this being how people are, with maybe, I don't know, a thousand exceptions in the entire world, these people have the jobs they do, and the houses they do, the lives they do. This isn't a competition, may the best person win. When all you have is one type, that type has to fill all the parts of society. The wealthy class, the owners, the workers, the "experts," the award winners, etc. etc. etc. You can't leave the entire society behind.

There aren't "leaders." There isn't anyone fit to lead in any capacity. There are people from the throng who were made to fill the posts and positions of leaders. Because, again, it's that process of filling. There's just one thing here to work with. This is the material. These are the holes that have to be filled. If we ran life again, but with the same people who are here this very minute, like you run a basketball game back, all the "leaders" and "stars" and the heralded and whatever, they'd be different people than the ones occupying those posts and positions now. None of the results would be the same, but they'd also all be the same in that those people would be mediocre, seen as "achievable" by the others, and like the others who didn't have that post or position.

The person who is left behind is the person of ability, of individuality, of intelligence, and, more so than anyone else, the person of greatness. That is the "student" who is kept back again and again, while the morons, the frauds, the bad people, are advanced. The better, smarter person isn't kept back because they are lacking; they are kept back because they reveal how much others are lacking. And those others determine who advances. Because, again, mob rule rules, and they have filled all the seats of the governing boards because they fill all parts of society. See? This shouldn't be hard to understand. And it explains everybody. You don't know why Pat McAfee is everywhere, as people say? This is why. It isn't about him. His success in this world isn't about him. That guy. It's about this idea. These other things. It's about what he represents. What he allows people to think about themselves.

And also that people can barely think. They're just these crude lumps of flesh. There's barely a brain in any of them. So, something dumb in this loud manner, shouting at you, well, that's like prodding the fat flesh lump, giving it a jolt with some rod in a lab. It kind of twitches, right? Has this response? We don't respond to anything normally because we are fucking dead. We are mentally dead. Thus, the prod. And that wiggle of gelatinous flesh...that's life for people. That's as far as it goes for most of them. McAfee's number was called, his chance came, and someone had to fill this hole, because all the holes get filled, and so you have him and he has what he has.

When people have reduced themselves, devolved, to such a point that this is the only life there is for them, that quivering that comes from the rod, this is all there can be in society. Anything that is more advanced, anything more substantial, anything better, it flies right past the lump. The lump needn't even like that which makes it quiver. But it's between that...and nothingness. The lump made itself that way, and the world is now in the image of the lump.

Look at anyone "successful." They're mediocre. They have nothing to say, never mind a special way of saying it. They don't know anything that anyone else doesn't know. That is their "appeal." Their skill isn't their appeal. They don't have any. If Taylor Swift wasn't mediocre, no one would like her. The people who do like her don't even really like her. They like this idea that they can in turn fit their idea of themselves into. It's just a projection on a blank screen. Mediocrity provides that blank screen for people. They then use that screen as they see fit, to feel best about themselves. But it has fuck all to do with someone else's skill, brilliance, genius.

I've talked about my experience in going up the Bunker Hill Monument with a group of people. A bunch of us went in at the same time. There are seven people in front of me, eight behind me, and I'm sort of stuck. We ascend together. These people make their bad jokes that never vary ("Hope there's a bar at the top!"), they congratulate themselves on this "workout" they're doing, without any irony intended.

To them, I'm one of them. We're in the same boat. That's what I call this, by the way: same boat-ism. The social phenomenon. How the world works. What people want. Same boat-ism. These people in the Monument usually aren't smart enough to be able to figure out, or even suspect, that I'm perhaps doing something different than they are, despite being oddly not breathless and dressed as I am: workout attire, headband. They like me. I'm one of the group. Huzzah!

We get up there, after taking an age, and they're out of breath, but still trying to self-congratulate between gasps. They collapse on the benches at the top to begin an extended period of recovery. I immediately turn around to go back down. They see me again in six minutes when I return to the top and they are still sitting there. They don't like me as much now. Those songs of self-tribute don't work as well as they did just a few minutes ago. I get the looks. Same thing happens again six minutes later, with worse looks and some muttering, and I've become an outright enemy in their minds. We are no longer same boat buddies.

This is how the world works. Whether it's people in the Monument, Taylor Swift, whatever. Same boat-ism. And for that boat to float, she needs to be built of mediocrity.

That idea of "owning the libs" is what motivates the MAGA person. That "No!" and this idea of "Ha ha ha, showed you!" Then, these same people, with the Bible quote in their Instagram bio--you know, that book they've never read, because they've never read a book, and could never read a book if their life depended on it, or at least not read one and comprehend any of it--use the r-word to further, in their pea-sized brains, own that lib.

Then, they feel good about themselves. A healthy, whole person wouldn't. But if you're this sick, empty, shriveled husk-human? This is what counts for feeling good. Feeling proud. Because you're warped. Broken. You never developed at all.

When you don't know what you don't know, you often have no clue how wrong you can be. Ironically, little gets in the way at that point of you thinking you know it all. This is partly how people become as stupid as most people now are.

And you don't have any pushback in the form of self-awareness. You never ask yourself if what you're doing and is it right, is it worthy of you or the person you wish to be or should be. You're not dealing with that kind of thing. It's a completely unexamined life. That person doesn't possess the tools to examine their own life. If they once did, they left them out for the trash man long ago. They're just shit moving through shit. Full shit ahead, if you will. Their "pleasures" are base. Owning that lib by calling them some name involving the r-word, shouting down that smarter person.

I'm not suggesting our insistence, our obsession, with defending that which is stupid, over-loud, immature, tacky, uneducated, at all costs, no matter what, is some republican thing. I'm talking two separate things here, in a sense, but with overlap. You can say the most common sense thing on the side of the good, and everyone will oppose you for it. No matter how seemingly benign. "It's better to spell words correctly." "No it isn't!!!! FUCKKKKKKK YOOOOUUUUU." Anything.

"I went to a concert to hear the band, but I couldn't because everyone around me was screaming out the words drunkenly and that was too bad."

"FUCK YOOOOUUUU Stay HOME RETARD."

Right? Is that not how it goes every time?

Maybe you click on that page for that person who posted such a comment. You see that they're fifty-four and a father of three. But they could also be a blue-haired twenty-something with photos of herself at assorted political rallies. There is scant variety in people. They are mostly all the same person now. They even all talk the same. Could anyone speak now without using the ready-made word modules? No notes, hot take, I'll die on this hill, fight me, literally, objectively, chef's kiss, etc.

It's baffling, and well past absurd, the loyalty that people have not only to things that suck, but to things that make things worse for them, too. This is akin to publishing in a way. In publishing, all these bad people, criminals, rapists, racists, sexists, bigots, classists, plagiarists, are blindly loyal to each other, including when they don't personally know each other. They just know to be loyal to fellow system members.

Part of that is because whomever the person in question is is absolutely filthy themselves. They have done bad, bad, bad things, and they're a fraud. That is, it'd be an issue for them if you actually looked at their work with an eye to seeing it for what it was. Go ahead, you write me and you tell me how George Saunders is a genius after looking at one of those prose offs on here. I'll be waiting for you. Want me to dare you? Surely someone should have stepped up by now, right? But it's never going to happen. I wish it would, because what could be easier than then exposing that person and lighting them up? But even these people know you can't publicly defend the indefensible.

Defend it in private in darkened back corridors? Or, rather, make like it's something else, and turn that blind eye. Sure. But out in the open, with your name on it, for others to see? No. The thing is, they know it's wrong, you know it's wrong, and they know that you know it's wrong and that they know it's wrong...and they will absolutely hate you and want you dead because of that. Not for anything you did wrong.

Their loyalty to the system and the people of it is often about this fear they have that they could be outed. So you have Lorin Stein-like people automatically countenancing other Lorin Stein-like people, defending them, being more loyal to them than they would their first born, without necessarily knowing that person. But they know how to behave. What is expected by the system.

Don't say the truth, and no one will say the truth about you.

That's one of the chief commandments of publishing. Let's repeat that:

Don't say the truth, and no one will say the truth about you.

We see the overlap here: the MAGA people, the perpetual children in the (oft-swollen) adult bodies (who can be of any persuasion), the publishing system people. So much commonality aboard one big fucking boat.