Good observations. Another interesting group is conservative Hicks that make it into the Big City and have a job full of Liberals. That’s where I am. I essentially feel like a spy infiltrating a hostile organization.
That's always an interesting experience if you "pass", it's pretty shocking how common the assumption of shared politics is in such spaces and the things people will just casually say as if they're universal values.
There's almost a word for me now... what do you call someone who looks like a synthcon but then settles into merely wanting everyone to be the best version of themselves so we can steer the ship straight? I'm going to half borrow from you and say SynthMod.
I think there are definitely degrees, I'm using synth con for people like myself specifically who have come to enough reasoned agreement with the right / GOP to support them over the Democrats, at least conditionally. I was really trying to differentiate from libertarians, who are another common result of people with liberal temperaments who come to oppose liberal politics.
Back in the day, one of the visionary RPGs produced by White Wolf which produced a slew of movies, books and TV series inspired by the game with vampires, magick, and werewolves as the subject matter was Mage: The Ascension.
The Left are the Technocracy, an organisation trying to bring about a dystopian stultifying conformist world.
Of the nine traditions standing against the Technocracy, two use a scientific or empirical framework. One is the Order of Paradox, a group of virtual hackers fighting against Consensus. The other is the Society (or Sons) of Ether, steampunk technologists.
It would be really nice if we could somehow work one of these themes into the concept.
Fantastic. 👏🏼 Great explanation for the hicklibs. I had noticed this for years, but couldn't pinpoint what, exactly, it was. If I can afford any generosity to them, may have grown up around genuinely bigoted or small-minded people, or they were misfits through no fault of their own. I grew up in rural Iowa near Omaha, NE. Iowa was purple for a long time, and NE is a red state. But, Omaha has the hicklibs you've mentioned who, all of a sudden, care a lot about Gaza, but for no other reason than rebelling against the conservative culture of NE.
I will say, urban progressive elites really do hate anyone not like them. I have seen this play out almost daily for the past 20 years. They are the mirror image of red state MAGAs, but instead their views are upheld by "polite society."
Synth Cons, as you alluded to, are fairly intellectual, or at least informed in their opinions. But, often their conclusions are, um, off.
I don't know if I am a Synth Con. I was a liberal until about grad school when I started reading Irving Kristol, Milton Friedman, etc. This was the 2010s Jezebel blogging days, and I thought the "feminism" being peddled was asinine at best.
I am conservative (free markets, limited govt), and I voted for Trump as he was the better of the two options. Statistically, my views are probably in the minority, which I am aware of.
It’s just paranoia. If you’ve grown up a lib in a very conservative place and gotten away to the city you’re ultra sensitive about ever having to go back to living under conservatism.
I can at least understand that, even if I think it's an unlikely fear. Having lived in progressive dominated areas my whole life and seeing what's happened to countries like the UK, can you see why I might consider the liberals the greater threat to me?
Virtually all of NYC has been transformed by hick libs and they form 99% of people in the DSA. They are like the shock troops here and they actually flushed the traditional working class almost completely out of neighborhoods like Bushwick.
I am not a true synthcon, because that would imply a different socioeconomic status. I am a guy who grew up in the places Leftist policies created. Drugs killing whites. Blacks killing mostly each other but also whites too. Everyone blaming a rich white guy who I think never gave any thought to any of these people.
Economic policies which didn’t ever seem to work and mostly seemed to be a way to launder money.
So while most of my peers are Left, and while I was able to often ingratiate myself to them, and move up the ladder as it were, I came to despise their politics as it more or less ruined my birth home.
Get to the current year, and I really despise them due to their trajectory and other reasons. But I know some number of hicklibs. My ex wife is kinda one herself.
It is a political philosophy based on seeing dumber expressions of right wing ideas and (with the women) a good amount of “I hate you Dad”…. None of these people would last 5 seconds in the ghetto. Somehow their dad saying “Nigger” when he was drunk became a reason to let someone free for armed robbery.
I dunno…. These social dynamics will likely break the country.
Excellent summary. I look forward to reading more, as an ex-HickLib turned (maybe) SynthCon (if that applies to someone who went from right to left to right again). I could tell you stories about HickLib ex-homeschool kids who grew up to be pansexual witches.
I was going to mention the once-popular YouTuber "Beau of the Fifth Column" as a HickLib influencer, but when I looked him up just now, it turns out that he was accused* of past involvement in a human trafficking ring in March of 2024, and he stepped down from making YouTube videos in July of that year. Now his wife "Belle of the Ranch" runs the channel, but she doesn't seem to have the same charisma AFAICT. Then again, HCR has anti-charisma but 2.7 million subscribers on here, because she punches them in the amygdala every week.
OK, dang, I think I'm the second one. Though growing up in a big city and seeing the crime fall in the 90s had a huge effect on my politics--going from being afraid in childhood to not afraid in adolescence meant I could never really become a man of the left.
'Synth Cons' has the amusing advantage of alluding to the 2010s synthwave popularity among the far right.
I've also seen 'Metro Con', I think the original was in an article in National Review in the 90s I read back in the day but seems to have gotten some play:
You're probably underestimating the role of fashion. All the beard oil, cigars, trucks etc.
Lot of what you call "hick libs" around me. It's also easier to be a lib in a well functioning rural area because you don't have to pay the price of your dumb ideas as would riders of Chicago transit.
My experience in the Pacific Northwest is the hicklibs get tired of the crime and disorder of the city. They then move to semi-rural places and vote and organize for exactly the same policies that brought about the dismal condition of the place they just abandoned.
Huh, I'm a little confused. Red states are dependant on blue ones for their financial functioning, rural areas on urban cores for economic viability. Do you think the economic differences are solely in spite of rural policy and Republican policy being functional?
Cities generate huge revenues in spite of their poor governance, not because of it. The only thing that's saving them is that we can't do everything 100% remote, and smart people still like to live there, even as they lie about being cool with all the crime and disorder.
Huh, in international comparisons, I generally expect good governance to lead to good outcomes. I'm at least somewhat surprised when the reverse occurs, and would be more surprised the more outcomes of interest this was true for. Why do you think blue states outperform red ones so thoroughly?
It's not the blue states, it's the cities, and that's due to the nature of American business, which requires smart people who tend to lean left and have cosmopolitan values. These same people however, are absolutely terrible at governing themselves, kind of like the archetype of the absent minded professor, but at scale. This is also where my hick libs fit in, their anger at red America turbo charges bad left wing ideas in cities, as they're reflexively opposed to things like law enforcement that they associate with conservativism.
I think my mom is a Hick Liberal. And reading what you wrote about Synth Cons, I recognized myself. I guess I’m somewhat disagreeable. Though mainly stubborn. Certainly, I piss everyone off.
Maybe some of them, I think a lot more are rebelling against what they saw as the stifling culture around them, more like teenagers rebelling against their parents than someone trying to avoid a stereotype.
This is just epic sigma male (the author) vs anonymous soyjak archerype that manages to defy stereotypes by being everything bad at the same time AGAIN
No, those were former leftists who turned right because they wanted a more muscular foreign policy, some of them were actually Marxists in their youth. Synth cons are people with a liberal temperament who choose right wing beliefs because they reason their way to them rather than being religious or traditional.
Good observations. Another interesting group is conservative Hicks that make it into the Big City and have a job full of Liberals. That’s where I am. I essentially feel like a spy infiltrating a hostile organization.
That's always an interesting experience if you "pass", it's pretty shocking how common the assumption of shared politics is in such spaces and the things people will just casually say as if they're universal values.
There's almost a word for me now... what do you call someone who looks like a synthcon but then settles into merely wanting everyone to be the best version of themselves so we can steer the ship straight? I'm going to half borrow from you and say SynthMod.
I think there are definitely degrees, I'm using synth con for people like myself specifically who have come to enough reasoned agreement with the right / GOP to support them over the Democrats, at least conditionally. I was really trying to differentiate from libertarians, who are another common result of people with liberal temperaments who come to oppose liberal politics.
Back in the day, one of the visionary RPGs produced by White Wolf which produced a slew of movies, books and TV series inspired by the game with vampires, magick, and werewolves as the subject matter was Mage: The Ascension.
The Left are the Technocracy, an organisation trying to bring about a dystopian stultifying conformist world.
Of the nine traditions standing against the Technocracy, two use a scientific or empirical framework. One is the Order of Paradox, a group of virtual hackers fighting against Consensus. The other is the Society (or Sons) of Ether, steampunk technologists.
It would be really nice if we could somehow work one of these themes into the concept.
Fantastic. 👏🏼 Great explanation for the hicklibs. I had noticed this for years, but couldn't pinpoint what, exactly, it was. If I can afford any generosity to them, may have grown up around genuinely bigoted or small-minded people, or they were misfits through no fault of their own. I grew up in rural Iowa near Omaha, NE. Iowa was purple for a long time, and NE is a red state. But, Omaha has the hicklibs you've mentioned who, all of a sudden, care a lot about Gaza, but for no other reason than rebelling against the conservative culture of NE.
I will say, urban progressive elites really do hate anyone not like them. I have seen this play out almost daily for the past 20 years. They are the mirror image of red state MAGAs, but instead their views are upheld by "polite society."
Synth Cons, as you alluded to, are fairly intellectual, or at least informed in their opinions. But, often their conclusions are, um, off.
I don't know if I am a Synth Con. I was a liberal until about grad school when I started reading Irving Kristol, Milton Friedman, etc. This was the 2010s Jezebel blogging days, and I thought the "feminism" being peddled was asinine at best.
I am conservative (free markets, limited govt), and I voted for Trump as he was the better of the two options. Statistically, my views are probably in the minority, which I am aware of.
As a 'synth con', I have never felt more seen and understood. 🫂
‘Siege mentality’ is a good way to describe how liberals from very conservative places view the right.
What's weird to me is that they bring it with them when they move to the cities, like they don't realize that they're in power there.
It’s just paranoia. If you’ve grown up a lib in a very conservative place and gotten away to the city you’re ultra sensitive about ever having to go back to living under conservatism.
I can at least understand that, even if I think it's an unlikely fear. Having lived in progressive dominated areas my whole life and seeing what's happened to countries like the UK, can you see why I might consider the liberals the greater threat to me?
Virtually all of NYC has been transformed by hick libs and they form 99% of people in the DSA. They are like the shock troops here and they actually flushed the traditional working class almost completely out of neighborhoods like Bushwick.
I am not a true synthcon, because that would imply a different socioeconomic status. I am a guy who grew up in the places Leftist policies created. Drugs killing whites. Blacks killing mostly each other but also whites too. Everyone blaming a rich white guy who I think never gave any thought to any of these people.
Economic policies which didn’t ever seem to work and mostly seemed to be a way to launder money.
So while most of my peers are Left, and while I was able to often ingratiate myself to them, and move up the ladder as it were, I came to despise their politics as it more or less ruined my birth home.
Get to the current year, and I really despise them due to their trajectory and other reasons. But I know some number of hicklibs. My ex wife is kinda one herself.
It is a political philosophy based on seeing dumber expressions of right wing ideas and (with the women) a good amount of “I hate you Dad”…. None of these people would last 5 seconds in the ghetto. Somehow their dad saying “Nigger” when he was drunk became a reason to let someone free for armed robbery.
I dunno…. These social dynamics will likely break the country.
Excellent summary. I look forward to reading more, as an ex-HickLib turned (maybe) SynthCon (if that applies to someone who went from right to left to right again). I could tell you stories about HickLib ex-homeschool kids who grew up to be pansexual witches.
I was going to mention the once-popular YouTuber "Beau of the Fifth Column" as a HickLib influencer, but when I looked him up just now, it turns out that he was accused* of past involvement in a human trafficking ring in March of 2024, and he stepped down from making YouTube videos in July of that year. Now his wife "Belle of the Ranch" runs the channel, but she doesn't seem to have the same charisma AFAICT. Then again, HCR has anti-charisma but 2.7 million subscribers on here, because she punches them in the amygdala every week.
*by another leftist of course
OK, dang, I think I'm the second one. Though growing up in a big city and seeing the crime fall in the 90s had a huge effect on my politics--going from being afraid in childhood to not afraid in adolescence meant I could never really become a man of the left.
'Synth Cons' has the amusing advantage of alluding to the 2010s synthwave popularity among the far right.
I've also seen 'Metro Con', I think the original was in an article in National Review in the 90s I read back in the day but seems to have gotten some play:
https://www.aei.org/articles/metro-cons/
Also has the parallel with 'hick lib'.
Wait, found the original! It's from 2003:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2003/05/confessions-metropolitan-conservative-john-derbyshire/
Ironically the COVID/vaccine thing made me switch back to some extent.
Huh, I hadn't realized that NR had already covered this ground 20 years ago! Nice catch.
You're probably underestimating the role of fashion. All the beard oil, cigars, trucks etc.
Lot of what you call "hick libs" around me. It's also easier to be a lib in a well functioning rural area because you don't have to pay the price of your dumb ideas as would riders of Chicago transit.
My experience in the Pacific Northwest is the hicklibs get tired of the crime and disorder of the city. They then move to semi-rural places and vote and organize for exactly the same policies that brought about the dismal condition of the place they just abandoned.
Huh, I'm a little confused. Red states are dependant on blue ones for their financial functioning, rural areas on urban cores for economic viability. Do you think the economic differences are solely in spite of rural policy and Republican policy being functional?
Cities generate huge revenues in spite of their poor governance, not because of it. The only thing that's saving them is that we can't do everything 100% remote, and smart people still like to live there, even as they lie about being cool with all the crime and disorder.
Huh, in international comparisons, I generally expect good governance to lead to good outcomes. I'm at least somewhat surprised when the reverse occurs, and would be more surprised the more outcomes of interest this was true for. Why do you think blue states outperform red ones so thoroughly?
It's not the blue states, it's the cities, and that's due to the nature of American business, which requires smart people who tend to lean left and have cosmopolitan values. These same people however, are absolutely terrible at governing themselves, kind of like the archetype of the absent minded professor, but at scale. This is also where my hick libs fit in, their anger at red America turbo charges bad left wing ideas in cities, as they're reflexively opposed to things like law enforcement that they associate with conservativism.
Thank you for adding some clarity.
I think my mom is a Hick Liberal. And reading what you wrote about Synth Cons, I recognized myself. I guess I’m somewhat disagreeable. Though mainly stubborn. Certainly, I piss everyone off.
What's the portmanteau for a rural dweller with synthcon traits?
NeoTrad, maybe?
Liking the Trad, Neo not so much. The only Neo I enjoy is Matrix Neo.
NovoTrad is another option. It can mean revived as well as new.
Novotrad is a Siberian city that used to be called St. Viktorsburg. I'm sure of it. Or, wait, maybe it just sounds right... :)
Lol.
> The Synthetic Conservative is no more traditional than the Hick Lib is moderate.
He doesn’t dream of rolling back the twentieth century; he dreams of debugging it.
I'm confused, who wants to "roll back the twentieth century" besides some extreme greens and maybe a few extreme "trad" LARPers?
Some leftist like to accuse conservatives of this, it's one of their things, usually trying to imply that they're racist or sexist or whatever.
So hick libs are the people who go hard left to escape the stigma of being a "small town hick".
Maybe some of them, I think a lot more are rebelling against what they saw as the stifling culture around them, more like teenagers rebelling against their parents than someone trying to avoid a stereotype.
This is just epic sigma male (the author) vs anonymous soyjak archerype that manages to defy stereotypes by being everything bad at the same time AGAIN
To be fair, they did soyjak themselves, if anything I toned them down.
Synth Cons are what we called Neocons before that turned into a name for guys who want to bomb Iraq, right?
No, those were former leftists who turned right because they wanted a more muscular foreign policy, some of them were actually Marxists in their youth. Synth cons are people with a liberal temperament who choose right wing beliefs because they reason their way to them rather than being religious or traditional.