politics

"Central to narratives of this type is a habit I call moral masturbation. This far-from-solitary vice involves the repetitive stroking of sensitive moral clichés to produce sensations of shuddering delight at one’s own goodness and virtue."

"The laptop class — less colourfully, the professional-managerial caste that took power with Roosevelt’s New Deal — has gone the way of its predecessors, sinking into the usual morass of greed and dysfunction, and it’s being shoved aside by a rising entrepreneurial class that has no respect for credentials and no time for moral masturbation. That transformation is well under way, and Trump happens to be its political figurehead."

"Central to narratives of this type is a habit I call moral masturbation. This far-from-solitary vice involves the repetitive stroking of sensitive moral clichés to produce sensations of shuddering delight at one’s own goodness and virtue."

"The laptop class — less colourfully, the professional-managerial caste that took power with Roosevelt’s New Deal — has gone the way of its predecessors, sinking into the usual morass of greed and dysfunction, and it’s being shoved aside by a rising entrepreneurial class that has no respect for credentials and no time for moral masturbation. That transformation is well under way, and Trump happens to be its political figurehead."
https://unherd.com/2025/07/donald-trumps-ascent-to-myth/