Sure, the US secretary of transportation has thoughts on building bridges. But infrastructure occupies just a sliver of his voluminous mind.

THE CURIOUS MIND of Pete Buttigieg holds much of its functionality in reserve. Even as he discusses railroads and airlines, down to the pointillist data that is his current stock-in-trade, the US secretary of transportation comes off like a Mensa black card holder who might have a secret Go habit or a three-second Rubik’s Cube solution or a knack for supplying, off the top of his head, the day of the week for a random date in 1404, along with a non-condescending history of the Julian and Gregorian calendars.

As Secretary Buttigieg and I talked in his underfurnished corner office one afternoon in early spring, I slowly became aware that his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers. Other mental facilities, no kidding, are apportioned to the Iliad, Puritan historiography, and Knausgaard’s Spring—though not in the original Norwegian (slacker). Fortunately, he was willing to devote yet another apse in his cathedral mind to making his ideas about three mighty themes—neoliberalism, masculinity, and Christianity—intelligible to me.

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Because Buttigieg, at 41, is an old millennial; because as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford he got a first in PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics), the trademark degree for Labour-party elites of the Tony Blair era; because he worked optimizing grocery-store pricing at McKinsey; because he joined the Navy in hopes of promoting democracy in Afghanistan; because he got gay-married to his partner Chasten in 2018; and because, as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, he agitated to bring hipster entrepreneurism and “high-tech investment” to his rust-belt hometown, I had to ask him about neoliberalism, the happy idea that consumer markets and liberal democracy will always expand, and will always expand together. I was also fascinated by the way that Buttigieg, who has long described himself as obsessed with technology and data, has responded to the gendering of tech, and especially green tech, by fearsome culture warriors, including Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Buttigieg, whose father was a renowned Marxist scholar, was himself a devotee of Senator Bernie Sanders as a young man. He now recognizes that the persistence of far-right ideology, with its masculinist and antidemocratic preoccupations, is part of the reason that neoliberalism has come undone. Not everyone, it seems, even wants a rising standard of living if it means they have to accept the greater enfranchisement of undesirables, including, of course, women, poor people, Black people, and the usual demons in the sights of the world’s Ted Cruzes and Tucker Carlsons.

He also talked about his faith. Lefties these days are said to be less religious than right-wing evangelicals, but between Buttigieg, whose Episcopalianism grounds his decisionmaking, and his boss, President Joe Biden, whose robust Catholicism drives his sincere effort to revive America’s soul, perhaps a religious left is rising again.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46328207)

a certain sort of "rising standard of living" in the west over the past few decades

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46328212)

this is the 'begging for gas chambers' phase.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46328895)

He also talked about his faith. Lefties these days are said to be less religious than right-wing evangelicals, but between Buttigieg, whose Episcopalianism grounds his decisionmaking, and his boss, President Joe Biden, whose robust Catholicism drives his sincere effort to revive America’s soul, perhaps a religious left is rising again.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46330288)

when you don't like the reality you have, write the reality you want to portray

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46330966)

As Secretary Buttigieg and I talked in his underfurnished corner office one afternoon in early spring, I slowly became aware that his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers. Other mental facilities, no kidding, are apportioned to the Iliad, Puritan historiography, and Knausgaard’s Spring—though not in the original Norwegian (slacker). Fortunately, he was willing to devote yet another apse in his cathedral mind to making his ideas about three mighty themes—neoliberalism, masculinity, and Christianity—intelligible to me.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46330318)

agreed.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46330332)

And yeah, no shit, being Secretary of Transportation "requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers." It's a sinecure handed out to him as a political favor.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46331690)

=====

what the actual fuck?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46330326)

i already knew booty judge is an absolute psycho but lmao what the hell

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46330412)

There’s just a lot in the scriptural tradition around journeys, around roads, right? The conversion of Saint Paul happens on the road. I think we are all nearer to our spiritual potential when we’re on the move. Something about movement, something about travel pulls us out of the routines that numb us to who we are, to what we’re doing, to everything from our relationships with each other to our relationships with God. That’s part of the reason why so many important things in the Bible happen on highways.

And then journeys—they’re also just marvels. Every flight is a marvel that pulls us out of that in the same way that religious rituals, holidays, liturgies are one kind of routine that pulls us out of another kind of routine. When you get on a plane, people buckle their seat belts and listen to the flight attendants’ very predictable pronouncements. It’s routine. It’s almost a ritual, right? And yet you’re preparing to fly through the heavens.

Life is a combination of drudgery and miracles. Part of what keeps me at home in the Episcopal faith is that it is liturgically rather conservative. I like that routine.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46330333)

Just look at him. He's like a bad House of Cards episode. There is no human in that suit, merely a means-tested GC robot, a living McKinsey deck. Nothing about his life or "service" seems genuine. Even his faggotry is probably inauthentic, a cynical ploy to inject a folksy, Yellowstone-tier, boomer-friendly buttsex into the heartland. You can imagine Kevin Costner grunting his approval of Mayor Pete: "He ain't no diffrn't than you or me, partner."

Mankind evolved extremely delicate antennae over hundreds of thousands of years to determine when they are in the presence of a lizard person or a demon. Mayor Pete sets off an ten alarm fire for anyone who isn't a bugperson or deranged lib. He's like some sort of test tube baby for the left, a faggot Uruk-hai, birthed singularly to worm his way into traditionally red spaces and lay his evil buttspawn.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46330376)

180

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46330385)

of course, when buttgag doesn't go anywhere, they'll blame homophobia or something (despite the fact that conturds have no problem with santos, milo, etc.)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46331547)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46336521)

C'mon, nobody's "Episcopalianism" grounds their decisionmaking-- not even the Archbishop of Canterbury. That is like saying my country club grounds my decisionmaking.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46330607)

there are no Episcopalian Maltese, just like there are no Episcopalian Mexicans or Japanese

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46330981)

From October 2018, Heffernan was the host of Slate's Trumpcast podcast. In it, she evaluated and critiqued the presidency of Donald Trump, interviewing guests like Yascha Mounk, Fareed Zakaria, David Corn and more.[23] On January 30, 2021, the final episode was released.[24]

In April 2021, Heffernan began a new podcast, After Trump with Lawfare (blog) following on from her work on Trumpcast.[25]

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46331119)

"I am large, I contain multitudes."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46331141)

LLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5342378&forum_id=2#46331435)