Chapter 2: Politics on the Ladder
Here, we get to some major problems. It's clear that the author seems to believe that high-rung politics means not being subject to an ideological framework. But everyone is subject to one, and the author's becomes pretty clear: enlightened centrism. The groundwork was already laid in the interlude, with its veneration of liberal democracy and defense of property ownership. In this chapter, it is stated in no uncertain terms that high-rung thinking correlates to being in the political center. (Urban allows that there are radical high-rung thinkers, only to condescendingly dismiss them as "wrong most of the time".)
The Left versus Right divide is framed as a "progressive" versus "conservative", which I think is a very flawed lens of analysis because it is so relative to the status quo. It would mean that if a US conservative were living under a socialist system, they would fight to preserve that system. Under this lens, you would be forced to conclude that the Nazis were left-wing, because if nothing else they certainly had their foot on the gas pedal (no pun intended). But this framing is necessary for Urban because otherwise his main thesis would fall apart: The assertion that high-rung left and right are working towards the same goals.
What follows is a fairly useful analysis of fallacies and media bias. There is one off-handed remark about how this media landscape is incentivized by "market forces"; I wish that was explored in more detail. For the most part, Urban seems to believe that biased media are just an emergent property of low-rung thinking and if we all just thought harder the golems (and thus the biased media) would disappear. This ignores the strong incentives on the media landscape to defend the status quo. Also, enlightened centrism rears its head again in the assertion that being unbiased is the same as being in the middle between left and right.
We haven't gotten to any examples yet, but I am interested to learn what Urban believes is the hihg-rung right-wing genie, because I am doubtful such a thing exists.