A virtue of this profile of
Elise Stefanik by Nick Confessore is that it doesn't describe an ideological conversion.
Rather, Stefanik had no strong beliefs to begin with. Her rise is a simpler tale of ambition— and an emptiness inside. The profile is of the party's direction, as much as the person who went with it.
"Friends going back to Ms. Stefanik’s Harvard days struggled to identify any of her deeply held political beliefs at all."
OTOH especially for a young person in contemporary US its' an admirable sign of confidence (as well as naivete, ofc, but that's a given lol) to delay the age of ideological marriage
OTOH that such intellectual paedomorphosis is so strategicllly valuable (think Musk's play of being "just a centrist") in the Discourse is a sign of profound democratic corrosion.
There is nothing OTOH about it. Nor is there anything . . ."strategically valuable". This isn't serving as sorority house officer. US Congress is not the place to be "finding oneself", On 60 minutes tonight, scientist are telling us that in 10 years we will be seeing mass extinction and a cascading calamities upon humanity we have never seen -- not a great time to be not having any convictions or just nihilism.
yeah it's crazy that we can just go about our lives while we pump more carbon emissions into the air and contribute to more and more habitat destruction. but anything that doesn't immediately threaten our perceived wellfare is pretty abstract and self-delude-able
1
Jay Rosen
b9n10nt
Tasha