The Tyranny of the ‘Not Surprised’ Guy
The Tyranny of the ‘Not Surprised’ Guy
The ‘Not Surprised’ Guy—and his close cousin, the Well, That’s Just How It Is Guy have come to dominate liberal commentary.
Are you a Not Surprised Guy? Are you Not Surprised all the time? Do you go through life constantly being Not Surprised by major news events? If so, you may be a Not Surprised Guy.
The Not Surprised guy wants you to know he’s not surprised. The latest political development, poll, maneuver, triangulation? He saw it coming. He knows the score. He’s savvy, jaded, a disinterested party simply calling it how he sees it.
The Not Surprised guy can’t make meaningful statements because it’s not clear what he stands for, or what he thinks the point of politics is beyond winning. Somewhere along the line, politics veered from a moral enterprise into a form of fantasy football with winners and losers, and the one with the most points at the end of the day wins. Or maybe, for some Not Surprised guys, this was always the case. Pundits have their team and they root for certain players. And the goal, we are told, is to beat the other guy.
One of the most grating Not Surprised guys is Jordan Weissman, who’s made a career publishing largely banal, partisan commentary in Slate, only to be snatched up by Politico clone and climate polluter-funded D.C. insider newsite Semafor. This week, President Biden signaled that we would support efforts to overrule the D.C. council’s efforts to pass limited criminal legal reforms that included ending some mandatory minimum sentences. The president cited the made up fear that prosecutors’ hands were being tied because they can’t lock up people for carjacking for decades on-end. Weissmann jumped into partisan defensive position, insisting all the D.C. autonomy and criminal reform activists were being Unserious:
After pushback and an incoherent, highly speculative defense of Biden’s policy, Weissmann, again, scolded a made up person for committing the ultimate sin of the try-hard Left: being “surprised”:
Of course, no one was “surprised”—they were upset. Being surprised is not the same thing as outrage, a mistake often made by the Not Surprised guy. In his world, caring about stuff or not maximizing partisan P.R. at all times, is viewed as unserious and petulant. It’s not just a glib Twitter formulation: The Not Surprised ethos—and its close cousin, the Well, That’s Just How It Is ethos—is a whole mode of political writing and, indeed, a whole mode of politics. The highest moral order isn’t pushing politicians into doing good things, it’s knowing they Have No Choice, and defending them on these terms. It’s about keeping things in order, batting down harmful meta-narratives, and taking those try-hard activists to task.
Whether or not someone is not surprised is not a meaningful or interesting statement. It conveys no new information, provides zero context or meaningful commentary. Fundamentally, letting the reader know you’re not surprised is entirely about one’s own self promotion—one’s status as someone who Gets It. This thing you care about? They saw it coming. Is it bad or good? This is for all the annoying, unserious Internet Left to sort out.
A variation of the Not Surprised guy is the Well, That’s Just How It Is guy. This pundit engages in what we call on Citations Needed, The Normative Descriptive shuffle: This rhetorical mode is where one simply describes “political reality,” passing off routine corruption as Savvy Politics, and banal observations as backdoor value statements.
Here are some examples from high-status commentators. To begin, the most popular Well, That’s Just How It Is guy, Matt Yglesias, who’s made a lucrative and influential career off this mode of anti-analysis.
The constituency is people who want to moderately pushback on the U.S.’s obscene mass incarceration problem. The constituency is people who care about the moral content of politics.
In response to Black Lives Matter activist protesting Kamala Harris’ horrible record on mass incarceration during her 2019 primary run, long-time Clinton Camp media bag man, Eric Boehlert, insisted it was just savvy politics to lock up the parents of poor students for truancy:
In response to Kamala Harris’ much-criticized speech where she scolded Guatemalan migrants, telling them 'do not come to U.S.', reliable partisan hack Bill Scher, who is Hip and Savvy and Gets It, told these activists to relax, it was good P.R. for Democrats.
Joe Biden saying whatever it took on the campaign trail, while lying about Medicare for All, isn’t seen as a mark of venality or cynicism. No, it’s actually a positive political trait:
Activists getting upset at Democrats for failing to deliver on major promises and sinking the Build Back Better bill? Hey, that’s just the way it is. Do the math.
What was added by any of this commentary? What was its purpose, moral or otherwise? There isn’t any beyond selling one’s brand of Getting It and belittling activists for Not Getting It. When politics is a sport, cynicism is an athletic display, the refined and important skill of predicting and Seeing It Coming. The way one conveys this skill is by not being surprised, understanding the limits of what’s possible, and disciplining those demanding more.
The Well, That’s Just The Way It Is guy and The Not Surprised guy, are, at their core, guys whose job is to have opinions on politics. But they don’t really want politics to do much—they’re mostly happy with the status quo and, to the extent they’re not, they want it to be more corporate friendly. But they’re in no particular rush. Democratic Party squeaking out modest majorities is the alpha and omega of their politics, and whatever serves this end, regardless of whether the policy is cruel, racist, or will result in an increase in real-world harms, is okay by them. After all, that this reactionary policy—we are told—will pay dividends next November, isn’t a surprise. And that’s what matters most.