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I love how Jordan Peterson vilifies postmodernism via (really bad) postmodern deconstruction of popular culture. Shame on us for not coming up with that as parody before it manifested in real life.

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lot of people seem to think he's saying smart stuff. I confess I haven't done much of a dive, but at a few glances, does not look that way.

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He's a modernist reactionary appealing to the alt-right. The only reason there are people thinking he says smart stuff is because the bar is so low on the right.

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Hard disagree. There are -many- reasons why he gets that effect across, one of the most prominent being that he's very confident in being sort of a douche. But there's a lot of cultural stuff going into this. He is riding a wave. And he is eloquent, even talking out of his ass.

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Oh sure, I don't disagree. He's a product of social forces, not intellectual value. That's was my point.

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Not my only point, actually. I think people either A) overestimate him massively (I have one really obnoxious Facebook friend who thinks he is THE greatest living intellectual) or B) underestimate him or C) mischaracterize him. He is a tabula rasa for people's imaginations ATM.

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I think that's pretty consistent with the social forces idea, no?

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No. I think people are being really unscrupulous with him. Not for the first time. I don't even particularly like many of his ideas, but I think he's said some profound things on *certain topics*. There are a lot of people I disagree with less, that I can't say the same about.

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Did you see his bullshit about the dangers of teachers teaching concepts like "equity"? On that shit, he's as reactionary as fascists. Which in this day and age, makes him dangerous, and doesn't inspire me to cut him any slack.

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Don't cut him slack. Just don't underestimate your enemies. That latter point is what I'm on about. He is not always a bumbling idiot, even if he did try to pick a fight with a Zizek quotes account and he did miss a recent hit piece satirizing him and made an ass of himself...