What does Manhattan Institute pay Colin Wright for?

Apparently Colin Wright's job is to post this emoticon all day on his Bluesky account. He's posted it at least a dozen times.

😘

It reminds me of Wright's buddy James Lindsay, who thought it very clever indeed to respond to people on Xitter with some variation of "your mom."

Wright, former managing editor of racist Quillette, testified on Xitter what a big influence the oafish anti-Semite Lindsay was on his own political views.

Colin Wright and James Lindsay count as intellectuals in right-wing circles. Which is why, I assume, the Manhattan Institute made Wright one of its fellows. Colin Wright is officially on wingnut welfare.

The Manhattan Institute is right-wing trash, and it publishes garbage rag City Journal. I was just talking about City Journal and its connection to Heather "great replacement" Mac Donald a week or so ago.

As readers of Pinkerite may recall, City Journal was sued last year for publishing a defamatory article against a guy who was - and still is - owed money by neo-Nazi kook Emil Kirkegaard. 

City Journal retracted the article.

It seems very likely that either Kirkegaard wrote the article himself, or it was written at his request. 

Now it must have been pushed for publication by an important Manhattan Institute donor (Kirkegaard himself?) because I don't think even the ghouls who edit City Journal are really interested in Emil Kirkegaard's personal finances. 

But City Journal does have alleged editors:

• Brian C. Anderson Editor, City Journal
• Steven Malanga Senior Fellow | Senior Editor
• Paul Beston Managing Editor
• John Hirschauer Associate Editor
• Daniel Kennelly Associate Editor
• Theodore Kupfer Associate Editor
• Jordan McGillis Economics Editor, City Journal

One of Colin Wright's biggest thrills was from his stickman cartoon, which was re-tweeted by Elon Musk. 

Wright immediately tried to monetize it.

I assume that like the oafish Lindsay, Wright thinks he's very clever. But in fact, his cartoon is simply an illustration of what life has always been like for people who are conservative by nature. 

The illustration shows Colin Wright - I assume that's who "me" is. In 2008 he was left of center. But those "woke progressives" ran farther away from the center, somehow causing the hapless Wright to slide to right of center.

Now in this example, this slide happened due to "woke" beliefs - the beliefs that Black Lives Matter and that trans lives matter. 

But I'm sure many "left of center" people throughout human history have gone on the same "political journey" as Wright as they've gotten older.

Take the issue of slavery. Those on the right were whole-heartedly in favor of slavery. But those slightly left of center believed that slaves should be set free some day, maybe when slavery died out all by itself. And once they were free they should move to Haiti.  

Meanwhile the left was saying that slaves had the right to be free, immediately, and live in the United States.

Then one day John Brown came along and tried to start a slave insurrection. Many on the left thought that it was a great idea. That was when the left stretched farther to the left, as in Wright's stick figure graphic - thanks to the hardcore abolitionists of 1859.

They were considered so radical they were even called "Radical Republicans" back in the day long before the Republican Party became the party of fascism. 

But conservatives who thought they were pretty liberal - center left - for believing that slavery should end some day thought the Radicals were crazy, and suspected them of being open to personal, even sexual relationships with Black people, a thought that horrified the "center left."

And so it goes, from one progressive cause to the next - women's suffrage, the labor movement, gay rights, etc. etc. All causes that were once considered radical.

When he was young, Colin Wright approved of things that had been radical twenty years before. But as he got older and was confronted with new progressive causes that he did not grow up with - trans rights and diversity, equity and inclusion - he decided that change should stop.

So Colin Wright's political journey is nothing new. It's the same old same old.

It's just a matter of time before Wright is telling those kids to get off his lawn, like his ideological ally Jerry Coyne.

Compare people like Colin Wright to Abraham Lincoln. Like Wright, when he was younger, Abe Lincoln was center-left - he wanted slaves to be free, and he believed that slaves would eventually be free, maybe in about a hundred years. And he was in favor of "colonization" the term for sending free Black people to Haiti or elsewhere.

When the Civil War came, probably influenced by Frederick Douglass and others, Abraham Lincoln moved towards the left until, at the very end of the war, he gave a speech in favor of Black voting rights, an extremely radical position at the time.

That's the primary reason John Wilkes Booth shot him, according to historian Michael Burlingame. 

I think it's a safe bet that Colin Wright will never die for a noble cause.

I'm reminded of this excellent comic.