It's a clever conceit but the actual entries are kind of a mixed bag so far. More real stuff with a tangential right-wing connection and fewer hilarious pipe dreams than I would have expected.
That didn't go the way I thought it would. I assumed it would be stuff like Elon Musk's flamethrower.
The one about the guy who culturally appropriated rocket technology from India is fascinating, though.
I've only read #s 4-7 so far, but so far I agree with 2. The transistor and the wheelbarrow with a ball for a wheel seem like big reaches, as entries go.
The internal combustion engine would be a good pick, I think.
The good news is that Camestros isn't a particularly problematic figure - I've been reading him ever since his commentary on the Puppies and their attempt to take over the Hugo Awards back in 2015. He's recently self-published a much longer history of that attempt and its connection with the rise of the alt-right in politics, titled "Debarkle": https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/debarkle/ His introduction starts with the events of January 6th, 2021, and how those events were publically reacted to by various figures that had been involved with the Puppies' campaigns. Highly recommended, if you have the time and the interest.
Agreed - the weird mouse and the CueCat seemed to fit very well with the model, but the others seemed less so. I think because they lack that element of fraud that one associates with the right wing? Congreve and Shockley weren't nice men but their inventions actually worked pretty well.
Ì guess most right wing grifts don't even get as far as creating something that works.
The whole of the last ten years are probably going to be explained by someone at Fox or the RNC getting a copy of the Enzyte purchasers list.
Thanks for linking to my mini-project. Yes, the transistor and the ball-barrow are a stretch but I'm trying to include edge cases and examples of specific types as well (eg Shockley as an example of Nobelitis).
Thanks for the suggestion of Elon Musk's flamethrower - I'll put it on the list but other suggestions are welcome. L Ron Hubbard's e-meter and the so-called "freedom phone" are forthcoming entries, for example.
11.2: great - will look forward to that! I'd heard of the e-meter but not of the freedom phone.
The edge cases etc are interesting, but the core of the project seems to be getting at something really quite important: the sentiment that "I will buy and use this gadget instead of the normal version, even though it is rare and/or possibly inferior, because doing so is important to my wider political project". Now, that isn't always a bad thing to think: you could easily imagine a left-wing environmentalist choosing to cram himself into a smaller car, for example, because he thinks the discomfort is worth it, both in terms of reduced emissions and in terms of publicly promoting his cause.
In fact, this is really what any boycott is trying to do. If the non-boycotted thing was better anyway, you wouldn't need to advocate for a boycott.
They wouldn't fit into your criteria because they aren't physical objects, but all those terrible right-wing social media sites seem very much along those lines, for example.
The difference between our environmentalist nobly driving his recycled Honda Granola rather than the Ford Kissinger that he would find far more comfortable, and the right-wing user of a right-wing gadget, is I think the element of fraud. (The sort of medical product that advertises on NewsMax would probably be a rich seam to mine.)