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On American Political Aesthetics

egon said in #3734 3w ago: received

American politics used to be visually impressive. Today, they are visually ugly. All sides are aesthetically incompetent.

The questions I'm interested in are:
1. Where does this problem originate?
2. What opportunities does it present?

Let's start with a tour of the main teams:

First, the Left. Obesity and visible mental illness everywhere. The trans flag is a graphic-design crime. (The old gay flag was arguably garish but symbolically coherent: "we are the rainbow, all colors are equal, it's a natural phenomenon". The new flag says "all colors are equal but especially Black, Brown and Trans"--symbolically and artistically fugly.) Above all, the modern Left just looks *unhealthy*. Pull up old imagery from Woodstock or a Malcolm X rally, and the downgrade is clear.

Second, the libs. The libs once owned the most aesthetically aspirational era in American politics with JFK and Camelot. Ever since ~2010, the lib aesthetic has been increasingly bad, parasitized by woke. The Obama '08 campaign was the last decent-looking lib effort. Today, the top libs are visibly-insecure DEI people or visibly-declining ancients, epitomized by Kamala and Biden respectively. The WEF prime movers like Gates and Soros got old and fat. Last month's "No Kings" protests were dominated by senior citizens. They have zero percent of the vitality or sexual energy of the Vietnam protests they were half-heartedly reenacting. In short, the normie Dem aesthetic is woke and tired.

Third, the MAGA right. Ignore Trump's personal kino for the moment. The institutions--the administration, MAGA electeds like MTG, and the Bannon-adjacent media sphere--are all producing retarded visuals that hurt their legacy and future electoral success.

For example, why doesn't ICE have clean forest-ranger-looking uniforms? There's an easy layup to have trustworthy-looking men professionally removing face-tatted invaders. Instead we get men in cargo pants jumping out of unmarked vans, their faces covered in balaclavas. This creates an highly counterproductive symmetry: gun vs gun, cartel-looking guy vs cartel-looking guy.

Combine it with idiotic messaging such as the following, and it becomes clear that the MAGA right has no coherent aesthetic and no idea what legitimacy looks like: https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1943073595481063624

Fourth and finally, the tech right. The head guy tweets a stream of epic bacon millennial memes, Ian Miles Cheong and Dogecoin. Enough said.

There's also an tendency toward an alien "how do you do fellow humans?" aesthetic from tech world. See Worldcoin for an extreme example (or anything from Sam Altman, really), or Andrew Yang in politics. The last great communicator in technology was Steve Jobs. He avoided politics and died 15 years ago. A total vacuum.

My contention is that all of this aesthetic decline represents an opportunity. There's latent demand for something that looks inspiring, confident and legitimate. An aesthetic that demonstrates vitality.

We see evidence of this in people who are *individually* aesthetically competent overperforming their party. On the left, you have a few like AOC and Mamdani. Both look young, physically healthy. Mamdani made beautiful, warm, non-WEF-slop video content for his campaign.

On the right, you have the singular figure of Trump, the most talented man in front of a camera in American political history. He produces iconic imagery of himself every few weeks.

But notice how neither of these are able to create any aesthetic message discipline. They present well personally, but their respective teams--MAGA, the "squad", etc--produce a daily firehose of counterproductive slop.

There's tremendous political capital waiting for whoever can pull this crown out of its gutter. Phrased as a prediction: before 2030, we'll have a successful political tribe in the US with a new and iconic aesthetic. We find ourselves in a race for who gets there first.

referenced by: >>3760 >>3761

American politics us received

egon said in #3735 3w ago: received

I now have two requests for our glorious admin.
1. Disable the post button until requirements are met.
2. Support minimal markdown, at last * for italics.
And a stretch goal to support images over 1MB.

I now have two reque received

anon_gymu said in #3738 3w ago: received

Regardless of political affiliation it's just applied Bioleninsm. Many have commented before on how the lumpenproletariat and the elite of our society behave similarly: constant affairs, drug addiction, deficient aesthetic and historical taste, cargo cult materialist Christianity... it's the same blood, it takes the same kind of brazenness.

It occurred to me just now that it could be that democracies do genuinely elect people who represent the people, and our current predicament is the result of mass franchise + Amerigoblinization, but I think it's more complicated than that. Among serious people there is a widespread dissatisfaction with the options on the menu, and a simultaneous, implicit sense that there's something wrong with you if you aspire to be a politician, podcaster, or really anyone with a huge public following.* The way our current online experience caters to these people's egos obscures that fact.

*= A clarification here that a musician or writer's audience is secondary to their actual interest, which is their art, whereas the modern media environment turns politicians into podcaster types whose primary interest is having an audience or platform.

referenced by: >>3746

Regardless of politi received

egon said in #3746 2w ago: received

>>3738

Not sure what "applied Bioleninism" means, but it sounds defeatist. We're doomed to ugliness because of biology and demographics? I don't buy it. Maybe that's true somewhere, but not in the United States of America.

I'm pointing out a specific failure of American political organization. We live in a chaotic time of acceleration, and there's clear demand for a positive and confident political aesthetic. People want to feel like things are under control.

And yet, all major political organizations are failing to deliver on this basic demand.

This isn't about policy or governance. I'm talking about the comparatively low bar of *looking* and *sounding* like an organization that can be trusted to run things. We had those until recently, and now we don't. This is a contingent, fixable failure of execution. A single live player with taste could reform one of these political organizations (or maybe create a new one) to great effect.

Here are the specific failure modes:

1. Failure of vision. This happens when the organization lacks a strong leader, or when the leader lacks taste. The org then suffers from tastelessness and defaults to a kind of blank LinkedIn boomer committee aesthetic. The national Democratic Party clearly suffers from this.

2. Principal-agent problems. Now let's look at the Trump Administration, as an org. You have a strong leader. He has a specific and compelling aesthetic vision. His own comms are works of postmodern art. He would've never sent that tasteless DHS tweet. But he hired someone who hired someone whose intern did, and it stinks up the whole org. That is a principal-agent issue.

I suspect that the solution to #2, at least, is a missing institutional practice or social technology. As recently as 20 years ago, visual communication was bottlenecked thru a few big media outlets. Disciplined high quality comms was therefore much easier. Today, every 25yo staffer has his thumbs on the glass.

You therefore need to scale curation and editorial control. New job titles. Movies have a Costume Designer, a Script Supervisor, a Director... what titles should a political org have? You need new tech, too. Maybe major dept comms go into the big man's feed a few hours before they go live, so he can swipe left or right. You must project the leader's aesthetic judgement. If only we had a newly-powerful technology that could help with that. You need Founder Mode for organizational aesthetics. Beauty by any means necessary.

Not sure what "appli received

jewishman said in #3747 2w ago: received

As for the first question, I think the answer would come from the ways that the United States hoped to resist its enemies, who believed in a particular sort of aestheticization of politics and politicization of aesthetics. I'm thinking of the Walter Benjamin line that Avetis Muradyan's article brought up a few days ago. American political aesthetics were about a lack of political aesthetics; politics should appear never to be aestheticized. On the front lines, the American agents fighting the cultural Cold War faced down heroism, romantic realism, and aesthetic discipline with individualism, ambiguity, and experimentation. To put up inspiring monuments, to enforce dress codes, to command the artists to inspire the people—these things are too authoritarian for Americans now to accept. But so, maybe this was fine when there was a literate, well-fed population, and when the culture industry was monolithic and respectable.

I'm not creative enough to come up with solutions that haven't been tried already—namely, remedial education on culture and aesthetics for young cadres, then the entire population, followed by the establishment of a cultural bureaucracy (a revolutionary camp needs this as much as a party-state). I agree with Miklós Haraszti: the artists must run the velvet prison, since they're the only ones that think art actually matters, have firm and serious opinions on these things, and are willing to kill or blacklist their peers often for personal as much as aesthetic-ideological reasons. Let's go back to Maoist principles, if not aesthetics: any program must match local conditions. Start small. Make a beautiful town before a beautiful country. Establish aesthetically-liberated zones. If it's true that American oligarchs are funding dissident artists in New York City, as I read on the internet, I think they should stop, and fund arts academies in the Midwest.

I don't understand American politics well enough, though, to actually suggest a program.

But isn't it a shame that Kim Jong-il was too broke to make the movies he wanted to, but his son has the freedom to turn out wasteful riffs on Chinese patriotic action films?

referenced by: >>3754

As for the first que received

egon said in #3754 2w ago: received

>>3747

Broader Western aesthetic decline is an separate question.

I'm talking about something much more specific: the fact that our *political organizations* can no longer muster a coherent and legitimate aesthetic.

Look at the GOP in the 80s. The whole thing made sense. The way Ronald and Nancy Reagan dressed and talked, the Administration officials' news interviews, the RNC, the conventions, the ranch, everything. It drew on a specific combination of anglo and cowboy culture. The idea throughout was rule by self-reliant frontier Americans, allergic to bullshit, that have temporarily accepted the responsibilities of power. "Not an easy answer, but a simple one."

Was this real or fake? Did they do a good or bad job running things? Fine questions, but out of scope for this thread.

My point is that these two organizations, the Reagan Administration and the Republican Party, were *well-coordinated and aesthetically competent*. They sought and achieved a specific look and feel corresponding to a aspirational vision of America.

As recently as Obama 1, the Democrats achieved something similar.

What we see from the Trump Admin and Republican Party today is a hodgepodge of Black Rifle Coffee Company tacti-slop a la Lauren Boebert, a number of undead suit-wearing men like McConnell (literally the same men who were there during the Reagan administration, ancient now), millennial social media managers, and the occasional NFT drop. Trump *personally* looks great and speaks well, but the orgs he runs (the Adminstration as well as the private hotels-and-golf-courses Trump Organization) have awful taste top to bottom. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has bad taste and weak leadership; it's operationally run by a guy named Michael Whatley, ever heard of him?

This are fixable problems. Vance could fix them, though maybe not till 2028. Someone else could fix them. It's an urgent problem in any case. People vote on vibes. If the Left fixes theirs first, the downside is severe: accelerated national Mamdanification. Fix the vibes.

referenced by: >>3756 >>3759 >>3760 >>3767 >>4030 >>4102

Broader Western aest received

xenophon said in #3756 2w ago: received

>>3754
> This are fixable problems. ... People vote on vibes. ... Fix the vibes.

Are vibes in fact orthogonal from the persons and personalities in the sphere?

Vibes may be distinct (JFK presented as a family man and carefully tended his media image, while in fact being an over-the-top womanizer) but I'm not convinced they're anything close to orthogonal. I don't think the best media manager in the world could have given Eisenhower or Nixon the vibes of JFK. The vibes of JFK really did depend on JFK.

So maybe we have a personnel problem that's more coupled to the vibes problem than you would like.

Are vibes in fact or received

god said in #3759 2w ago: received

>>3754
There is only one fundamental aesthetic observation: Beauty, Truth, and Goodness are the same thing. This has a whole host of implications, one of which is that vibes can't be spoofed. 'But information isn't perfect' you say. Okay, fair enough, then just sample vibes in the same way that the verifier in a zero-knowledge proof does: the more the vibes come back good, the more sure one can be that there's bonafide Beauty and Truth. Same holds vice versa for showing the lack thereof.

As always, the goal is never cargo-culting dope aesthetics, the goal is cultivating yourself or the thing you're part of to be more in alignment with the True, Good, and Beautiful. The extent to which you fail is the extent to which people will make posts like OP decrying your lack of good aesthetics.

There is only one fu received

anon_hyze said in #3760 2w ago: received

>>3754
>>3734

I don't really know what's happening to the aesthetics. It seems a species of general collapse of coordination under late stage liberalism. Many are just scamming and looting and self-promoting, and few have interest or ability in trying to run or even participate in a disciplined politics. Something something last man.

But this is a fun prompt: what is the political aesthetic America needs? What's the aesthetic we would be heartened to see? What can we learn from it?

I envision a movement "the students". It is a network of young men. They read books from the philosophical canon together, primarily political philosophy outside the modern mainstream. They aim for a true liberal education. They do a lot of hiking together. They hold each other to a standard of aesthetic life: being well dressed, fit, orderly, charismatic, successful, and energetic. They practice rhetoric in raucous debates, fitness in athletic teams and contests, etc. In reading and striving for improvement together they first of all become better, but they also form their worldview together and become strong as a group and network.

They apply themselves to getting involved in civics and local affairs, striving to be helpful to good things, broadly well respected as a group, and adaptable to local conditions. They exercise their capabilities by organizing events and projects that others will appreciate that also advance their goals. They maintain a moderate level of controversy, pushing boundaries and being willing to get into political fights and be censored and occasionally marginalized, but staying disciplined around what exactly they are fighting for, exercising tight messaging discipline on the party line, and constantly rehabilitating themselves.

Politically they focus on a vision of doing what is necessary for the country and nation and especially the youth: enforce singapore-tier order against criminals and antisocial subpopulations, re-institute de-facto meritocracy, remove pointless red tape burdens that prevent abundance, invest in economic productive fundamentals, cut down entitlements and adi of various kinds as unsustainable and distortionary, de-financialize housing and the economy, remigrate recent unassimilated immigrants, disentangle from pointless foreign wars and "aid" for an "america first" stance (no more unreciprocated subsidies, even for israel). The point isn't to be popular, it's to be right and to signal that they have the courage and vision to go for what matters, and discipline to avoid retardation.

Their image is classically American, with adjustments for local conditions and modern demographics. They are whoever shows up for America and meets the quality bar, which is competence, good faith, and aesthetics. They are not racialist, but neither are they ashamed of themselves or trying to hide behind diversity or kowtowing to anti-white trends. They do not tolerate ethnic special interests, hyphenization, or any of that. I don't see any role for overt religion in any of this, though of course they should be open to more or less all creeds that can agree to play by the rules.

That's the aesthetic (and actual organized reality) that America needs. The question is are Americans capable of it? I question this. There may only be a tiny minority capable of it, and they are put off from the inevitable fight with what seems like every major organized group in america (eg boomers, israel, immigrants, etc), most of which have become parasitic in some way.

So for my answer to "why do american political aesthetics suck" I'll just say that ugliness comes from incoherence, which is the price of cowardice and corruption.

referenced by: >>4024 >>4030

I don't really know received

jewishman said in #3767 2w ago: received

>>3754
All right, leaving aside broader Western aesthetic decline and so on. I think you're right: "well-coordinated and aesthetically competent" definitely fits the first Obama administration. A great deal of his domestic and global appeal was built on re-aestheticizing American liberal politics—and modernizing and personalizing them—politicizing a century of American aesthetics, and so on, with the banal Clinton and Bush years as a convenient foil. There was plenty of spectacle, tasteful ritual, and a powerful leader with a handsome, healthy family. Fine. Obama is a better model than Stalin.

But I'm skeptical that one should run a right populist campaign or administration with good taste and appealing aesthetics, Reagan or Obama-style. If the goal is taking and maintaining power, why not base the appeal around the aesthetics of the fiend (face tattoos, pajama pants), the megachurch, and exurban country-rap? Is that what JD Vance could do?

All right, leaving a received

egon said in #4024 7d ago: received

>>3760

> I envision a movement "the students". It is a network of young men. They read books from the philosophical canon together, primarily political philosophy outside the modern mainstream.

The Taliban?

> They aim for a true liberal education. They do a lot of hiking together. They hold each other to a standard of aesthetic life: being well dressed, fit, orderly, charismatic, successful, and energetic. They practice rhetoric in raucous debates, fitness [...] They apply themselves to getting involved in civics and local affairs, striving to be helpful to good things, broadly well respected as a group, and adaptable to local conditions.

OK, beautiful. This is the way.

The best answer so far. It still leaves an important question of aesthetics. What *look* are we going for? Which cultural referents do we draw on?

The current default for the tech right is not very imaginative. Pic related.

Look at a Palladium party, SF Freedom Club, TBPN. Look at Peter Thiel in interviews, or the younger administration staff. You see the classic 20th-century wealth aesthetic, straight up, with no mix-ins. Parted hair, button downs, classic suits and blazers, leather shoes.

This aesthetic is OK, but not great. It's not original, and doesn't feel like it's from the future.

referenced by: >>4034 >>4061

The Taliban?... received

egon said in #4030 7d ago: received

>>3760

The most effective political actors create and reference culture for strategic effect.

See >>3754 for an example: the 80s GOP didn't use a straightforward right-wing Patrick Bateman, Willam Buckley default look. Rather, they strategically mixed in a Western cowboy aesthetic, resulting in a fusion with broad appeal and clear meaning. Congressmen wore big belt buckles, boots. Reagan took regular trips to his California ranch.

This was more than superficial. It communicated priorities. It communicated an idea of American greatness rooted in land and nation, not just "GDP go up". Did they actually accomplish that? Separate question. But they communicated it effectively.

What does this mean for us?

First, "the future should look like the future." Our defining reality today is accelerating technological change. We have to own that and look the part.

Second, the future we're presenting must be warm and human, not alien or robotic. This should go without saying. Yet post-Jobs tech world has totally failed, lurching from one offputting inhuman aesthetic (the purple woke blob-people of the 2010s) to another (the black-and-white Harkonnen dystopia of Network State, Worldcoin, and so on).

Third, we represent the West. The neon RBG cyberpunk of Chongqing or Tokyo is cool and all, but it's not us. Maybe we borrow other, warmer elements from the scifi canon.

Ultimately, the look we need is rooted in Western culture. It is human, futuristic, and broadly aspirational. What is it?

referenced by: >>4031 >>4068

The most effective p received

anon_dito said in #4031 7d ago: received

>>4030

How about the neocities website?

https://neocities.org/

How about the neocit received

anon_hyka said in #4034 6d ago: received

>>4024
>Look at a Palladium party, SF Freedom Club, TBPN. Look at Peter Thiel in interviews, or the younger administration staff. You see the classic 20th-century wealth aesthetic, straight up, with no mix-ins. Parted hair, button downs, classic suits and blazers, leather shoes.

This remains the most accessible way to indicate rejection of ugliness culture. It's hard to innovate from aesthetically. How do you add a flare of futurism without immediately becoming SF techbro slop?

At the risk of poisoning the forum with an entirely different form of content, I think it's worth signal boosting any brand that has a coherent aesthetic you like that seems to move in the right direction. Even 10 or 20 people wearing the same new style in a scene can have a huge ripple effect.

>There's tremendous political capital waiting for whoever can pull this crown out of its gutter. Phrased as a prediction: before 2030, we'll have a successful political tribe in the US with a new and iconic aesthetic. We find ourselves in a race for who gets there first.

I predict the aesthetic will come first. Not necessarily on the national stage. But I doubt this new and iconic aesthetic will be developed on the campaign trail. So then the first problem is merely creating the aesthetic and getting people excited about it, and if it's done correctly, the right sort of people will be drawn to it and it will naturally be picked up by a savvy political set.

referenced by: >>4068

This remains the mos received

anon_qyna said in #4053 6d ago: received

I am going to offer an unpopular answer and suggest that a big part of the problem is that so much of right wing aesthetic is downstream 4chan and alt right memes, which intentionally gloried in things ugly and decrepit. All of those young Trump admin men still post ugly in their memes; it is all they have ever learned to do.

Something Awful has much to answer for.

I am going to offer received

egon said in #4056 6d ago: received

> It's hard to innovate from aesthetically. How do you add a flare of futurism without immediately becoming SF techbro slop?

Not with that attitude.

https://cdn.midjourney.com/video/b44e9120-570f-42a1-92e9-9aad924bf5d5/1.mp4

referenced by: >>4059

Not with that attitu received

anon_hyka said in #4059 5d ago: received

>>4056
Srs question, do you think this would look good irl? Part of what makes "classic 20th-century wealth aesthetic" timeless is that it's been refined for so long that it looks good on real people. Lots of fashion looks cool on models, most of it looks goofy on a normal guy. I couldn't pull this off for shit.

The only thing I've ever seen that stays almost in-aesthetic here while being slightly futuristic is the mandarin collar, but it's at most 1:4 reasonable:silly outfits. And according to wikipedia the futurism association comes from Star Wars and Star Trek and Doctor Who.

referenced by: >>4068

Srs question, do you received

anon_hyze said in #4061 5d ago: received

>>4024
>taliban
Thats the joke.
> What *look* are we going for? Which cultural referents do we draw on?
>[tech right] doesn't feel like it's from the future.
I think a lot of aesthetics flows from values and utility. What needs do we have?

One reason the “just wear a suit bro” style works for palladium et al is that it is a reversal of the social disintegration and low-culture individualism that has hit the west coast in particular. It emphasizes a basic level of self-respect, discipline, commitment, willingness to be part of the group, and human quality. It makes a huge difference.

When people start halfassing it with no tie, plaid shirts, pants that dont fit, sneakers, etc, those things collapse and it no longer works. Thats a lot of what fails in the tech right. They just halfass it or dont know what they are doing.

I think effort is where the alpha is, not innovation. Just well executed aspirational americana, uniformity, discipline, etc would work fine. Just wear a suit for fancier and business occasions, and luxury leisure americana of the type that evokes Americas remaining beautiful functional towns otherwise.

As for “the future” thats basically a retro concept at this point which is why self conscious futurism no longer works. The future is scary and uncertain. Focus on looking and being good and you will win and become the future.

Thats the joke.... received

anon_hyze said in #4068 5d ago: received

>>4030
I've been enjoying the "greco futurism" work from Peniche. He should post more of that here. It's high tech, humanistic, warm, aspirational, luxury, grand, western, traditional, archeofuturistic. I agree we've got to kill cyberpunk. It's just dystopian and asian at this point.

Harkonnen-core is less clearly bad, actually. I agree with the criticism of what you're referring to (corporate black dystopian minimalism), but imagine we *actually* leaned into the alien barbarism of villeneuve's harkonnen. We must all shave our entire bodies, wear black robes, compete in a cruel agon, practice cannibalism... Ok not really. It wouldn't actually work but it's better than cyberpunk.

>>4034
>I predict the aesthetic will come first.
I don't think so. Aesthetics that really work come from powerful institutions and cultural factions solving the simultaneous problem of their branding and their utilitarian needs. The aesthetic will flow from getting the organization right. "The students" will precede the aesthetic. I agree it will preceed the campaign trail though and in that sense you are right.

To elaborate, I think a big problem with modern aesthetics is precisely that we think of it as disembodied aesthetics by which you can reskin yourself and the world. That detachment just demonstrates the hollowness of that kind of aesthetic, which is why they all fail. The real aesthetics isn't about aesthetics. It's about what is being aestheticized. There has to be an actually existing *what* or it's just another absurdist extension of solarpunk.

>>4059
mandarin collar, along with the whole idea of "doctor who futurism" is stale at this point. I don't think we should worry about looking like the future, or even trying to do anything asesthetically innovative at this point. Just get the basics more right than everyone else does. A well-coordinated synthesis of the best existing aesthetics is plenty innovative on its own. I agree that the American "wealth" aesthetic is fine as a baseline to work from.

The key problem is going to be formality and high style without self-parody. But how much of the lack of that kind of aesthetic is in lack of demand, not in lack of supply? People don't appreciate refined confident styles. They ridicule, tear down, blame, etc. It's a democratic sort of pathology. "Oh you think you're better than us, you want to impose order and manners. You are the hated aristocratic-fascist enemy." I have never been more glared at and even deliberately bumped into or yelled at than when I wear a crisp white shirt in the wrong neighborhood, for example. And I don't mean black people. They actually appreciate confident aspirational style and will loudly let you know it's working. It's the short, beige, gynocratic, college educated in humanities but downwardly mobile leftist types who are the primary enforcers against refined confidence.

Tl;DR: It's the material conditions, stupid. It's the biology. It's about what type of man or unman physically dominates on the streets and in the office. Aesthetics are just representations of types of people and organizations and their confidence and way of approaching the world. The aesthetics that have impact are those that align with actually existing organizations and types of people, declare their confidence and values, and are willing to fight. Who are we and what type of man do we represent? The actually existing civilized productive American. What aesthetic is practical to him? Athletic, leisured, aspirational, clean, disciplined, formal. American "wealth" aesthetic. Most of the aesthetic game is building the organizations and social context through which expectations can be created, enforced, and given confidence.

referenced by: >>4069

I've been enjoying t received

anon_hyka said in #4069 5d ago: received

>>4068
(TBC I also think the mandarin collar ends up being lame because the aesthetic comes from Dr Who etc.)

Whenever I see greco-futurism type stuff I want it to have more texture, more density. The scale and empty space convey power and order but are IMO inhuman.

(TBC I also think th received

anon_fofe said in #4102 22h ago: received

>>3754

> the fact that our *political organizations* can no longer muster a coherent and legitimate aesthetic

“People have been saying this”

https://x.com/MedGold_/status/1950934228792701390

“People have been sa received

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