Luxury Beliefs.

When the upper-class gets status at the expense of the lower-class getting pushed further into the feces of daily existence.

The main guy associated with the idea of “luxury beliefs” is Rob Henderson, who was in 10 foster homes as a kid and ended up graduating from Yale and is now a PhD. Hell of a story, although admittedly some of his stuff on Twitter/X is a right-wing dog whistle, but that’s for a different day.

Here he is talking to New York Times, which ironically is the publication probably most read by those with “luxury beliefs:”

If you are unfamiliar with the term, think of, say, “defund the police.” First off, that’s a horrible semantic example, because what the term really means is “re-allocate money to social services so that the police don’t have to do everything.” That’s harder to put on a bumper sticker, so we messed up and called it “defund,” which hurt liberal causes for a generation. Anyway, we’ll go with this one.

Most people who support “defund” are educated liberals, often white, and many of them make $100,000+. I realize $100,000 isn’t a good barometer anymore, because they (the royal “they”) say “$300,000 is the new $100,000,” but still, six-figure white liberals.

Do you know how often a six-figure white liberal comes into contact with the police? Maybe once every 24 months.

So they push this belief on The Gram and wherever, but people who actively deal with police — i.e. the lower classes of America — actually don’t support any re-allocated funding, because they often (and regularly) need the police to show up.

In other words, it’s an upper-class belief that affords the upper-class some form of status or in-group belonging, but does so at the expense of lower classes.

It’s almost another way to say “virtue-signaling.”

A cousin of “luxury beliefs” is “soft misogyny.” What is that, you ask? OK, let’s sketch it. Have you ever met a “kept” woman, often white, who will blast about BLM and other social justice causes on her Instagram and she has a pride sticker on her car and she talks about Phinneas’ pronouns? (Phinneas is her son.) Lots of women like this exist in the world. And then you meet their husbands, and they are numbers-spewing Trumpers who think all their wife’s stuff is a “fun little thing she does.”

What’s happening in this couple is “soft misogyny.” Basically, the woman wants to LARP at social justice, or cosplay that she cares about everything and everyone, but her entire way of life is predicated on nothing actually changing. Because, if we suddenly got woke as f*ck and evened all the playing fields, her husband wouldn’t make the money he does, and she’d probably have to find an office job, and then the game is a lot less fun.

We call this “the Subdivision Sarah” problem.

Here’s one paragraph from that article:

As Manne points out, “the misogyny of the most powerful white men — who are least subject to moral and legal sanctions and, indeed, may inflict harm with impunity — clearly harms vulnerable women disproportionately. But it is we, as white women, who tend to enable it, in ways that may be more or less connected with the aim of self-preservation.” Ivanka and Melania Trump, then, but also progressive white women who are loosely mad about the patriarchy but not quite ready to dismantle it if it also means dismantling the other hierarchies that privilege them.

You can be mad about things, but if those things were actually shifted or dismantled, you wouldn’t have as cool or protected of a life.

Essentially, performative activism. Luxury beliefs.

Within all the ideological infighting of the last 10 years, this whole concept is something that conservatives try to accuse liberals of, but don’t always do it right and just fall back into “owning the libs.” This is the hardest part about endorsing liberalism in modernity — there’s so much performance to it, and so little actual plan, mobilization, or action.

While these topics are a bit different, even look at Biden right now. No one can plan what to do with him. He should get out, but certain people want power for another half-decade, so they’re propping him up. No real plan.

I’m not saying conservatives have a plan either. They mostly nowadays just appeal to anger and not much more.

But this luxury beliefs thing is interesting. It’s also ironic that probably most of the people who even know the term “luxury beliefs” are guilty of practicing the concept themselves. Brie and chablis crowd is how my friend from college used to define them. I’d mostly agree with that.

I’ve heard “all white people are privileged” as a luxury belief too. I’m not sure that one qualifies, although it might. I think of it more in terms of virtue-signaling and performative activism. Saying all white people are privileged — which is not true, just look at a given Trump voter who isn’t in finance — is virtue-signaling, but I’m not sure it’s performative activism.

I’m probably in the semantic weeds now, so I’ll stop.

What other luxury beliefs do you see?