Post-Legacy Ventures, Infrastructure, & Media l @applytoforum l George Washington Fellow, @centerforawl/@claremontinst

Dallas, TX
Joined August 2010
Matthew J. Peterson retweeted
Exactly. In a world where you have the richest man in the world giving you half a billion dollars and you track polling from the time he started deploying capital to now, it's almost directly correlated. I don't know if you could find a more inept group of people than GOP consultants. It really is fascinating, especially as someone who has worked on multiple campaigns now, where I've witnessed consultants being not just a net negative but actually a massive anchor to the candidate's chances to win.
The story of the cycle in November needs to be how Republican consultants get rich pissing away billions on things that make their chances worse. The only way out of this cycle is to spend proactively. And probably dump the people who control how the money is spent.
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Matthew J. Peterson retweeted
If the Bills ever play a game in Brazil and are losing I hope the president extends the game by 2 minutes so we have time for another drive.
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Matthew J. Peterson retweeted
Are you seeing the vision anon?
Rural Pennsylvania nuns are building massive stone monastery by hand: 'We had a vision' trib.al/b9JhQG0
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Matthew J. Peterson retweeted
As general discourse has broken down, and larger movements fracture, particular discourse across coalitions becomes much more important. As society becomes functionally illiterate, and many lose the ability to reason, people who can still think crave argument. @ApplyToForum.
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Matthew J. Peterson retweeted
Is Michael O'Fallon one of James Lindsay's handlers?
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Matthew J. Peterson retweeted
Replying to @docMJP
There but for the grace of God go many of us rejected by the established institutions. Well, maybe not the porn-brain stuff, but the vulnerability is real. One can see how difficult, it is, I think, for the academic-turned-influencer to remain both humble and honest. Indeed, why we need better institutions.
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Not going to say anything about the stuff going around about James Lindsay's personal life, except for the part about him referring explicitly to his "handlers" to a girlfriend. People like him, who become known for saying some true things and have a talent for writing and speaking publicly, build an audience that is notable but not monetized enough to make them independently comfortable, but are also trying to make it financially on their own without a larger organization or network of friends, and have come out of something from which they are canceled and can't do anymore, without experience in another field they can fall back on, are actually extremely vulnerable to be used. Especially the quirky and idiosyncratic ones. It's an online genre or type today, but the same old story. "The talent" gets informally used and abused throughout history without larger structure and organization. Those who want to influence "The Discourse" today prey upon these types daily. And so they get handled. Which I've used the word handler a few times in regard to him. He's not just some kind of victim in this, of course, any more than the rest of the online influencing world. But that's a part of the dynamic. When done informally with solo actors upon the stage, it's inevitably a dysfunctional relationship. For all the talk of the solo influencer or star rising, we are actually craving better and new institutions and corporations that are not as old and corrupt, with truer principles and purposes, and more suited to the current landscape of reality, which would solve a lot of the problems of grift we all see out there. Better structures established by better leaders (education, thinktanks, media, etc.) solves a lot of this.
In the past, there was little reason to deal with cranks like @ConceptualJames and his conspiracy-addled handler @SovMichael. Michael O’Fallon and James Lindsay argue with a straight face that NatCon/Yoram Hazony Jews, the Roman Catholic Church, Peter Thiel, China, Claremont Institute and a host of other NGOs, and anyone who advocates living in red states next to other people of like mind who don’t want to trans your kids are all part of a larger conspiracy to balkanize and destroy the United States of America. At this point, the conspiracy is so large that it seems to include most of those leading on the right. Again, this is all so degraded and stupid I have little desire to speak about it. But these two are vicious and able to put lies together and spend all their time doing so. They tried, unsuccessfully, to get me fired from Blaze Media. No warning. No straight talk with me. They just went around my back, cast aspersions, and strung a narrative that was the same thing as what the Antifa-adjacent Jason Wilson at The Guardian was saying at the time. In other words, it’s clear to me that they worked with the worst of the left to attack me. Lindsay—an atheist math PhD who voted for Hilary Clinton for President, seems happy to distance himself from MAGA now and says he would vote for the Democrat over Vice President JD Vance in 2028, and isn’t sure about Marco Rubio, either—became a supposed fellow traveler on the right a few years ago, which is also when he began reading some political philosophy books and other content about the right on his own for the first time in his life. Instead of gratitude for being invited in for his good work attacking wokeness, which I and others were happy to do for him, getting him speaking gigs, etc., he turned on all of us and now lies and calls us slurs on the daily. The best steelman I can give him is that he saw there were people on the right who are nuts or further to the right than he is, and then decided to attack the lot of us as bad actors, and anoint himself as Gatekeeper King. The claim he and his crazed handler actually make, however, is that there is a conspiracy of a small but powerful group people on the right who are attempting to control and subvert everything to hasten the destruction of America to pave the way for tyranny. They then “just ask questions” and “connect” tenuous dots to slime people. Sound (ironically) familiar? Sadly, we live in a retarded clown world. I don’t wish it so, but it’s true. Myself and my actual compadres aren’t part of some large apparatus that can employ younger attack dogs to defend us against people who have the time and motive to post garbage all day calling us vile names (Nazis and fascists seem to be preferred). These stretched stories are comforting for people who are understandably confused about what’s going on, and desire a simple template to comprehend it. But good people in the midst of doing serious things—people who’ve spent their whole lives studying America and teaching a generation of leaders dedicate to saving it while building new institutions and businesses with the same goal—don’t appreciate being slandered and lied about by grifters who as they speak are actively doing what they profess to be against: which is to rip this coalition apart. The next question is: who’s paying for this divisive op? Clearly, *some* Jewish money is devoted to Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee now. Whatever the intent, it’s going to the worst spokesmen possible for their cause at the worst possible time. This was part of my friendly message to Israel last week. For which, predictably, I’ve been called an anti-Semite by the usual suspects. As I tried to say in Jerusalem: this is not a productive approach. americanmind.org/salvo/israe… But the plump Tweedles' “anti-semitism” campaign is fairly new. There are obviously other, larger forces at play underneath that. Who are they? I would be grateful if some of you could look into it.
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My first thought when I met James was to bring him into more networks of people and groups for the above reasons. I do this all the time, as part of my role. He had done good stuff and demonstrated talent as a solo actor. Needed to take next steps and grow and solidify his place with other orgs and groups. But he was soon activated into opposition by largely fake or confused divisions and categories made up by ideological actors. Handlers. I didn't care too much for the first few years of this, although the hopelessly confused arguments and accusations and mixed up way in which he was attacking people was annoying. But over the last year he's an example of people getting swept up into the factional fights to shape the right post-Trump, with larger forces in play, and more is at stake. So more people up the chain are getting confused about who is who and what is what. In his case, those larger forces are ultimately those on the old, establishment right who don't want to see Vance or Rubio enact the core of that MAGA-America First agenda, who are now using the groypers v. Jews polarity as a wedge against MAGA itself. There's an easy way out of the NAZI! versus ZIONIST SHILL! dynamic, which is why I went to NatCon Jerusalem recently to give my speech and lay the foundation for it: americanmind.org/salvo/israe… But the goal of his handlers is to try to use the division on the right over Iran to split MAGA by calling the MAGA desire to move to a more restrained US foreign policy antisemitism, just as he's been trying for a while to divide the right by creating the confused idea of the Woke Right. The goal of the Woke Right bit by the smarter players behind scene is to slime people as fascists - and now antisemites! - if they don't agree with post WWII-liberalism of the establishment right. Second, there are some Jewish people who want to use him to fight against antisemitism, yes, but also to slime anyone who disagrees with a particular foreign policy stance or a new way of looking at all this. Which is why they are deeply threatened by American MAGA-America First nationalists talking to right wing Israeli nationalists in Jerusalem, and will scream and shout anything disparaging they can think about us to stop it. Which is why I knew I would get "both sides" attacking after the speech. Anyhow, this is all very confused in public, because that's the intent. To muddy the waters. There are some good people, or people of good will, I should say, on both sides. And there are bad actors. And real open questions. And foreign money from more than two countries involved on either side. Nothing new under the sun. Welcome to politics. This is just a telling example of it. xitter.cf/docMJP/status/20886542…
This was the moment when it became clear that James Lindsay was unhinged. I had no idea at the time. I’d recently helped get him a speaking gig in Dallas and invited him to visit New Founding, which he did. Before that, he’d been invited to speak (with many others) at a private Claremont event. He still seemed like an interesting evolving figure then. One of many such cases. But when the moment I joined Blaze he started publicly attacking myself and others I know or have been associated with. Without going into details, he and his business partner/handler? Michael O’Fallon, who is also unhinged, basically tried to get me fired at Blaze early on, weaving together a complicated and ridiculous conspiracy theory to do so. I then tried to clarify a few things with him personally but gave up when it became clear it was a pointless exercise. He was committed to the bit, and most of the bit was lies and the remainder were twisted half-truths. This was before he really got going, which he did soon after, building out Woke Right Theory. It’s all just tiresome nonsense at this point.
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Matthew J. Peterson retweeted
I would like to thank Leo Strauss and his students, the Straussians, for teaching me the true nature of politics. The Total Boomer Luxury Communism awareness campaign's success is, to a large extent, due to their instruction.
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Matthew J. Peterson retweeted
I love it, but as a North Texan I am obligated to point out that Dallas, not Austin, is the home of Y’all Street: TXSE, NYSE Texas, NASDAQ Texas, the huge new Goldman Sachs campus, the huge new Morgan Stanley campus, new Scotia Bank U.S. HQ, Charles Schwab HQ relocated from SF, major and growing Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and BoA regional hubs, and the “family office capital of America” at Old Parkland. Indeed, DFW now has more jobs in finance than any metro area in the country other than NYC. I love Austin (UT alum and two kids at UT currently) but y’all keep handling the tech, providing the innovative start up scene, and managing Elon Musk, while DFW will take care of the finance side.
More evidence that Texas ( especially Austin ) is becoming the financial capital of America Virtu is one of the worlds leading financial market makers
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Matthew J. Peterson retweeted
There is no such thing as the 'Woke Right' as it is a made-up term by gatekeepers acting woke to shut down conversations they don't like I call these types the Woke Lite...aka Diet Woke
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As general discourse has broken down, and larger movements fracture, particular discourse across coalitions becomes much more important. As society becomes functionally illiterate, and many lose the ability to reason, people who can still think crave argument. @ApplyToForum.
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How people supposedly on the right think that this sort of messaging is helpful in any way whatsoever is beyond me.
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Matthew J. Peterson retweeted
Okay this is incredible,
Happy to announce I built a Greek/English reader site with all the surviving plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, & Aristophanes. Multiple translations for each play; click to parse & define for any Greek word; full Greek & English search. greekdrama.johnhboyer.com
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True.
The 2028 Primary is the series finale of The Apprentice.
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20 years ago, in grad school, we used to go to the library in Claremont on occasion to buy used books (lots of retiring professors, good supply). Soon learned a game—how quick one of us could find a batshit crazy woke book in the kids section. Not some normal squishy lib messaging, but something significantly darker or crazier. It opened our little crew’s eyes up to how messed up things were. And that was then. To this day the libraries are full of this crap. The right has only just begun to grasp the importance of media and education, but this is because the right almost universally bought into the systemic language and neutral camouflage concepts the left hides behind. But hey—that same rhetorical framework has also maybe our society increasingly functionally illiterate, so maybe even without the help of actually exercising the right use of lawful power the problem will solve itself…
Finally got a library card at our public library today so my son could get some books. Husband warned me to screen what books he picked. Obviously said I would but secretly doubted it would be needed. YOU GUYS.
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Could be great. But something like Twitter is a very different animal, in which you don't have to put strictly aligned people (obviously also with good taste and talent) in firm control of everything. Just getting rid of censorship and establish broad parameters goes a long way. Because the users make and choose the content. For news and entertainment media, however, you MUST do something like this. You need people who "get it" in terms of news angles and the big picture as well as culturally and in story telling. And they have to go in with complete confidence to utterly clean house and completely reorient what the company has become. This is very difficult to accomplish in *any* acquisition of *any* sort of company. And since few who really "get it" have experience at the same level at similar companies, as they've been locked out of all of them for a long time, there aren't a lot of obvious shoe-in candidates for higher roles in the eyes of the business types. So we haven't seen a real or full turn around happen yet at any larger media company. For all the talk about Paramount, etc., I don't see it yet. Some good adjustment, and sure, it could happen, and I hope it does - but not yet the real thang that people are pining for without knowing it.
Elon Musk reportedly invests $1 billion in the parent company of CNN and CBS News, gaining an ownership stake in both networks.
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Admin isn't close to over. A LOT will happen post-midterms. And 4yrs was never going to be enough time to solve all the things. But I think Mark is directionally correct. People are losing patience daily. And increasingly ignoring and dropping those who don't understand why.
Trump 2.0 was a last chance, of sorts. It's going to get crazier, fast.
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Matthew J. Peterson retweeted
If you believe in the cause and our model, and the experienced counsel of those who have already been through it on the biggest stage, please consider helping. We are going to raise an army of patriotic lawyers who know now is the time for service. oversight-project.revv.co/do…
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