āOh come, now, you donāt mean to let on that you like it?ā
The brush continued to move.
āLike it? Well, I donāt see why I oughtnāt to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?ā
That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forthāāāstepped back to note the effectāāāadded a touch here and thereāāācriticised the effect againāāāBen watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:
āSay, Tom, let me whitewash a little.ā
– Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
In 2003, a 19-year-old Harvard undergrad named Mark Zuckerberg had an idea: heād create a website for Harvard students to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of their classmates. He called it Facemash.
Later that year, Zuckerberg changed the name of the site to The Facebook, and, in 2005, the site was renamed, simply, āFacebook.ā
In The Reactionary Mind, political scientist Corey Robin articulates a common thread that runs through all right-wing ideology. Robin starts from the observation that āconservativesā are a coalition of people who believe irreconcilable things: