Doxxing is the internet practice of revealing the identity of an anonymous social media account and/or digging up controversial or offensive social media content in order to get someone fired or worse. It's nearly universally viewed as a shady practice, but is a common technique for cancellation today. In this month's newsletter I provide a primer on doxxing: what it is, who does it, what the consequences are, and how it is perceived. I also provide some practical insights about how to respond t...
Dec 12, 2022•22 min
Change, whether in personal self-improvement or social evolution, is not linear. There are quantum leaps and discontinuities. This can be deeply unsettling and render obsolete previous ways of doing business and operating in the world.
Dec 05, 2022•19 min
Companies have long used aggressive sales tactics to maximize units sold and prices charged. Customers have long tried to get the best deal. With the rise of digital technology and financial disparities, these conflicts are highly asymmetric to the disadvantage of ordinary consumers. It's similar in competition for many essential goods like housing, where the equation for the average consumer has been re-written to favor those with large amounts of money. WSJ: If the Price Ended in 99, You Proba...
Nov 28, 2022•31 min
Gambling, drugs, loan sharking, and sex used to be the province of the mob and other shady characters. Now they are big business, legally sanctioned by governments which often profit from them, and in which even major institutions and respectable figures profit. This is a perfect microcosm of the decline of American leadership. NYT: Key Findings From The Times’ Investigation of Sports Betting: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/sports-betting-investigation.html The Observer: Game, set, ...
Nov 21, 2022•35 min
Online or other criticism, combined with receiving support from unexpected quarters, is one of the most powerful dynamics promoting political realignment today. I discuss these, why you need to protect yourself from them, and why you should be careful about how you criticize people on your own "team" online. Twitter thread on career selection: https://twitter.com/aaron_renn/status/1590715709612433408 Twitter thread on presentations: https://twitter.com/aaron_renn/status/1589635724164288512 Subsc...
Nov 14, 2022•13 min
Thoughts on the midterm elections in 2022 and why you should get out and vote.
Nov 07, 2022•17 min
With the ongoing flight from the label "evangelical", I will discuss the various meanings of this term and why, rightfully understood, there is no escape from the name.
Oct 31, 2022•20 min
There's an increasing consensus that elements of the Covid response went way too far - especially long term school closures. It's also clear now that many things that were said turned out to be untrue. For example, vaccine efficacy was clearly overstated. That may have been an honest error, but it was still a serious one. Our society seldom holds people in leadership positions to account for their screwups or the failures that occur on their watch. I share thoughts on this, including a specific ...
Oct 24, 2022•37 min
The question of the vocation of masculinity today is not what it is but whether it exists. I examine how traditional societies, and texts like the Bible, assumed pervasive gender polarity that's greatly attenuated today. I discuss what would have traditionally been common attributes of masculine vocation, and how they relate to contemporary society and ideology. The key point of conflict is over the traditional idea that men needed to over-produce in order to provide a surplus beyond their own n...
Oct 17, 2022•14 min
Videos from the 1980s show a vanished America. You see the near total absence of the detached, ironic, cynical tone that characterizes the country today and which came to the fore in the 1990s. It's largely a pre-obesity. And it's still a mass culture America. Despite its flaws, the median American today might actually be better off in that era than today.
Oct 10, 2022•21 min
Conservatives bristled when President Obama said "You didn't build that." But they should understand that theologically and practically, we did not actually build all that we've accomplished by ourselves. We benefitted from good fortune, and often especially from networks and access to capital. Paying it forward in terms of helping be the network for others is one of the way we show gratitude for what we've achieved and been given.
Oct 03, 2022•24 min
Conservatives tend to view the media as leftist. Due to certain experiences of the Reagan and Bush II administrations, they also seem to believe the media tries to undermine a muscular foreign and defense policy. In fact, on matters of foreign policy and reporting on foreign countries, the media should largely be seen as supporting whatever the US policy towards those nations might be, policy that is typically quite bi-partisan in nature. Subscribe to my newsletter at: aaronrenn.com ....
Sep 26, 2022•30 min
There's an element of social contagion in divorce. We are more likely to get divorced if our friends and associates are divorced. Hence, we should carefully monitor both our own and our spouse's friend networks, keeping an eye out for divorces.
Sep 19, 2022•9 min
A Dutch soldier in Indianapolis for training exercises was murdered downtown, creating an international incident with global press and cabinet level officials in both the Netherlands and the US having to address it. And yet local Indianapolis leaders, in contrast to the abortion issue, can't talk about the role of crimes like this in our business climate and reputation. From crime to the water crisis in Jackson to drug abuse to our electric grid to elections to health care, Americas leaders cann...
Sep 12, 2022•21 min
Andrew Tate, Kevin Samuels (RIP), the FaZe Clan and many others online figures most Americans have never heard of have no become the decisive influence on Gen Z. While all of us know this at some level, few appreciate the full reality of it in practice. This feeds off of, and accelerates, the decline of trust in institutions. NYT: Can FaZe Clan Build a Billion-Dollar Business? - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/style/faze-clan-house.html...
Aug 29, 2022•22 min
Some observations on the way evangelicals leaders have been speaking of "violence" as distinct from injustice, and present it as if it were a natural force like thunderstorms rather than a product of human agency.
Aug 22, 2022•15 min
Dr. Benjamin Mabry joins me to discuss his essay on anti-managerial aesthetics. We will discuss what aesthetics are, why the approach promoted by "dissident right" figures like Curtis Yarvin won't work, and why we should reject the idea of a top 20% vs. bottom 80% of society in favor of an aesthetic scaled to speak to both the elite and the average citizen. Anti-Mangerial Aesthetics Essay: https://aaronrenn.substack.com/p/newsletter-67-anti-managerial-aesthetics Premium Mediocre: https://www.rib...
Aug 17, 2022•1 hr 34 min
In this month's newsletter, Dr. Benjamin L. Mabry discusses the importance of aesthetics, as well as sharing perspectives on what an aesthetic that would provide a genuine alternative and rival to the dominant managerial aesthetics of our culture today. He describes the aesthetic mode of managerial society, which is based on an imperial mode in which there's a sharp boundary between ruler and subject, in this case the top 20% managerial class vs. the 80% of everybody else. He notes that a top 20...
Aug 15, 2022•28 min
Much of the language we use today can be divided into two categories: compliant and defiant. Compliant language - like DEI or ESG - signals agreement with the current elite consensus. Defiant signals some level of disagreement or rejection of that consensus. Defiant language today often uses terms and imagery that are alien to American to American political and cultural tradition. "Nationalism," for example, does not appear to be a way that Americans have understood their relationship to their c...
Aug 01, 2022•17 min
This month's newsletter explains why American Christians, in particular evangelicals, having been reduced to a disfavored minority in the negative world, need to start acting like minority. That is, they need to focus much more on their own internal community strength and health - their private good. This is how all minority groups have always behaved. This doesn't mean ignoring mission, the common good, etc. But you can't give somebody something you don't have yourself. I examine several case s...
Jul 18, 2022•28 min
I review a few perspectives on strategic decision making, including Jim Wilson's application of the "strategic point." As a bonus, we'll talk about what you can learn from the Big 10 conference signing on USC and UCLA.
Jul 11, 2022•22 min
Some thoughts about the reversal of Roe. vs. Wade. This includes observations on the unintended consequences of violating norms, why the moral vision of the pro-life movement has been more effective than the utilitarian arguments advanced by conservatism generally, the power and importance of a generational perspective, and why a total abortion ban may not be as popular with the American public as some believe.
Jun 27, 2022•24 min
Online men's gurus typically use a version of the "hero's journey" or the "rags to riches" to sell you on their products. They tell you how they hit rock bottom, then transformed themselves, then created the amazing life they have today. You too can have that life - if you follow the same script. This is a powerful narrative structure and completely legitimate to use in marketing, yet it has always left me cold. My personal life does follow something of that storyline, but it was not my efforts ...
Jun 20, 2022•24 min
This month's newsletter is a repost from a new Substack called Kennaquhair on the missing heroic feminine. The author explores the nature of archetypal stories and explains why the feminine heroic archetypal story has been under-developed. He also explores the nature of the heroic feminine through the character of the Biblical Miriam, and gives other examples of this archetype. The failure to have a well articulated heroic feminine has caused problems in our society, and rectifying this is an im...
Jun 13, 2022•31 min
Paul Vanderklay and Bethel McGrew join me to discuss my three worlds of evangelicalism framework and their perspectives on the current state of the evangelical church in the US. This interview will be streamed live in front of an audience at an event in Wheaton, Illinois. Paul Vanderklay's Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGsD... Bethel McGrew's Substack: https://bethelmcgrew.substack.com/ Note: This episode may have audio problems in some spots....
Jun 08, 2022•1 hr 3 min
The desire for a transcendent connection to the past and future is a primal human desire. We want to know where we came from. We want to know that we will be remembered in the future, that the experience and possessions we've accumulated will live on in and with others. Our world, which is explicitly liberationist, attempts to destroy these longings and organic connection to a lineage beyond ourselves. But it hasn't succeeded, as the rise of people doing 23 & Me or researching their family t...
Jun 06, 2022•26 min
Michael Anton has a new essay talking about conservative funding of art and journalism. I discuss this, as well as reiterate my points about conservative organizations not being especially interested in primary or ethographic research either. But even with funding or institutional support, there also has to be the talent to take these projects on, and the desire to seek truth, not just confirm pre-existing biases or dogmas. Michael Anton: The Tom Wolfe Model - https://im1776.com/2022/05/13/the-t...
May 23, 2022•38 min
The idea of American exceptionalism has long blinded us to our country's legitimate faults. Having said that, activists attempt to use America's faults to morally debilitate its people in order to accomplish their own agenda. As Americans, this is our country. We can love it for that alone, without any further justification. We don't have to apologize for America and how we feel about it anymore than a Han Chinese immigrant has to feel shame over what his people are doing to the Uighurs back in ...
May 16, 2022•24 min
Reflections on the differing perspectives of people at the cultural center and the cultural periphery. Very successful people and those in the cultural center tend to have a more positive view of society and are less likely to support fundamental or outside the Overton Window change. The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2022/02/the-three-worlds-of-evangelicalism...
May 09, 2022•27 min
Evangelicals often take a dismissive or even smug attitude towards the decline of the mainline denominations. They'd be will served instead to ask themselves some tough questions like, "Why isn't the same thing going to happen to us?"
May 02, 2022•44 min
