Some bully-dopes, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, opportunity, motivation, low bars and the people who treat them like mountain tops until they forget a couple days later

Thursday 3/27/25

Some incompetent, man-child dopes accidentally texted restricted information to the editor of The Atlantic and you better believe when Jeffrey Goldberg got those texts, he thought, "Fuck yes! Today is my lucky day!" because here was an opportunity for a splash.

We've seen in these pages exactly how The Atlantic works. What it's about. The discrimination, the shitty writing. People like Scott Stossel and Ann Hulbert.

Look at these people. It's sickening, isn't it? Everything in this journal is true or else there'd be some push back, wouldn't there be?

Do you think those are good people? Do you think those are intelligent people? Talented people?

Or do you think they're pieces of shit who are up to no good and who've been handed things since they entered the world on account of money, where they came from, who they came from?

Look at Stossel telling me that he couldn't sleep at night on account of how he and The Atlantic treated me, but then adding that if I publicly shared the truth about The Atlantic's behavior, then I'd never write for The Atlantic again, when the fix was already in.

Put another way: An editor at The Atlantic threatened me that I better not tell what we both knew was the truth.

Go read the above Ann Hulbert entry. It's right in there. And every single word is true.

That's some rich irony for you, huh?

But this current episode is most telling in terms of how the world is now, how quick we are to congratulate and reward over nothing--or, at least, nothing anyone has done that takes skill or effort or decency.

This was an opportunity for The Atlantic to trend and that's how Goldberg looked at it. He didn't do anything but get some texts. Here we have a variation of something falling in someone's lap in that it fell into their phone.

But people are so dumb, so gullible, so full of shit, that when someone like Jeffrey Goldberg does what anyone in his situation would have done--that is, state what he received, and, since he's the editor of a magazine, make that content available (behind a paywall, mind you, because this was about getting subscribers and this is how The Atlantic would have to go about doing that) then what they're going to do is say that Goldberg deserves the Pulitzer and the Nobel Peace Prize because people just say shit that they don't mean that they forget about later that day.

People simply talk out of their asses. It's what they do and it's increasingly all that any of them can do, no matter who they are, what their job is, their role. Talk out of the ass. George Saunders? Talk--write--out of the ass. Stephen A. Smith? Talk out of the ass. Some film "expert"--talk out of the ass. Phil from Scituate calling sports radio? Talk out of the ass.

There's no difference between Phil and David Remnick, really, in terms of that ass voice. And when no one knows anything in this cesspool of a world, there's nothing to stop that ass voice or to check it, because who has a clue about anything? Who, simply, is to say otherwise? There's no truth-based intercession on anyone else's part.

Instead, they'll take their turn, have a go, as it were, in sounding their voice from out of their ass. They try to shout louder. Squelch louder. It's why everyone says "literally."They don't have the language skills or the knowledge to say what they think will be important or definitive or correct, so they hammer at the word like it's a magical button that turns their thoughts and words into something they're not, gives them weight they don't have.

It's like pulling at a flaccid penis that will never become erect and not knowing why. That's what the word "literally" now means and who uses it.

But enough of them post the shit that they do, that something trends. Huzzah. You--as that thing or person receiving the approbation--have your day or two or three. A month later? The news cycle has turned over five hundred times, and no one who said what they said even remembers because, again, they just say shit and mean nothing. Goldberg has to get those subscriptions now. They're not coming after.

There's no depth of thought, no sincerity. Nothing is for real. It's about whatever occurs to the people who are like this, whatever their fancy is, whatever garners them points on social media. Those "I'm one of the good ones!" points that makes for the bulk of the posted content of insincere, empty people.

The bar is so low now for what is considered human achievement. You can just receive something, say you got it, and that's enough to make you talked about as a legend, a hero, but again, it's all pretend. Skill, intelligence, hard work, morality--none of that enters into it. Those people saying that shit say that shit about so much shit. They're never sincere, because to be sincere, you also have to think. Sincerity isn't a caprice, it's not about Dopamine.

People will pay for this--a product--within the space of that open news cycle window for whatever that thing is. Thus, The Atlantic is getting all of these subscribers, people who will never actually read it, because that's how human life now works. We don't pay for the product--not a product like this, or a book--to partake of it, for it to be a part of our lives going forward with which we're involved. We pay for it to say that we did for status, clout, attention.

It's why people buy Amanda Gorman books. No one reads them. There isn't anyone who is taking their train home from work on a Friday and thinking, "I can't wait to get in the bath and read some Amanda Gorman poems." Of course not. But they're displaying that book in the conspicuous spot, and they're telling people they have it.

It's amazing that we'll pay money now for such things. We pay for the appearance of something. We don't give our money because of what that thing is, what it adds to our lives, and the use we get out of it. Well, we do for a new roof. But things that can be lumped into this kind of ideological category? That's all pretend and for points.

Ignorance is one hell of an opiate. Imagine if these people going on about The Atlantic had any clue about how this really works? How publishing really works? But they have no more of an idea than my five-year-old niece does.

People are so insincere, so surface level, that it's like the surface and that insincerity has become the whole of them. Some clowns who also have no business having the positions they do sent someone something by mistake. The latter knew that if he referenced this, then the other clowns would say, "You don't have it!"--same type of thing you'd get with second graders on the playground, which is to be expected here--and that would then grease the skids for him to put up what he definitely did have on his magazine's website, stick it behind a paywall, get the influx of attention and subscribers, knowing that The Atlantic is only able to function as it does because it is owned by Steve Jobs' widow, who pays the bills.

You think these places make money on their own by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and their own ingenuity? Harper's has lost money for decades. The New Yorker makes money, but it's not because of the writing--it's because of the tote bags. It's the prestige name. That name has weight. Or should I say cachet? It's the name. As a name. It's not the content. It's what people think the name symbolizes and the attention it can bring them in terms of how they want to be seen--super smart and cultured, when they aren't at all. Really, it comes down to what's encapsulated by those tote bags and their symbolic meaning.

Real ability will make people hate you. Want you dead. Envy you, fear you. It'll make them feel awful about themselves. But stepping over a bar that is a centimeter above the ground? Well, anyone can do that, so anyone will cheer the person who does so because that cheering, in their estimation, reflects favorably on them as well. How can people not understand that this is how it works now? Read that again. It's the entire premise on which success--the kind tied to acclaim--in our current world is now based.

Goldberg's chief interest was self-interest. That was his first and last thought. He knew the attention this would bring, the subscribers, how he'd look. He didn't do anything wrong, but he didn't do anything for some greater good. That wasn't in his thoughts at all. Some idiots basically unwittingly hooked him up and he used what they gave him after making one simple move that he knew would cause those idiots to say what they inevitably would as bully-idiots, without it looking like he was compromising national security. It was like getting a permission slip in the court of public opinion. Then he leaned into his moment with all he had.