USA Politics

[milk]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/9/14543938/donald-trump-richard-rorty-election-liberalism-conservatives

Richard Rorty's prescient warnings for the American left

"The super-rich will have to keep up the pretense that national politics might someday make a difference. Since economic decisions are their prerogative, they will encourage politicians of both the Left and the Right, to specialize in cultural issues. The aim will be to keep the minds of the proles elsewhere – to keep the bottom 75 percent of Americans and the bottom 95 percent of the world's population busy with ethnic and religious hostilities, and with debates about sexual mores. If the proles can be distracted from their own despair by media-created pseudo-events...the super-rich will have little to fear."

[SimonNZ]

I would have thought that if "master bedroom" were bad it would be for gender issues rather than race.

[JBS]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/9/14543938/donald-trump-richard-rorty-election-liberalism-conservatives

Richard Rorty's prescient warnings for the American left

"The super-rich will have to keep up the pretense that national politics might someday make a difference. Since economic decisions are their prerogative, they will encourage politicians of both the Left and the Right, to specialize in cultural issues. The aim will be to keep the minds of the proles elsewhere – to keep the bottom 75 percent of Americans and the bottom 95 percent of the world's population busy with ethnic and religious hostilities, and with debates about sexual mores. If the proles can be distracted from their own despair by media-created pseudo-events...the super-rich will have little to fear."

That presumes there is some coherent group of "super-rich" who maintain a consensus among themselves about economic decisions and can control politicians to maintain those decisions.

The available evidence suggests that's a false narrative.

[Christabel]

There's Joe Biden telling the world that over a million people have died from Covid-19.  The poor man has huge cognitive deficits and I feel sorry for him.  He will be manipulated by the far Left puppets in the 'swamp' and that's why they want him, of course.  The far left has colonized the Democratic Party.  No more mavericks who make their own decisions.  The swamp claims its own. 

[Todd]

There's Joe Biden telling the world that over a million people have died from Covid-19.

And a lot of people – you have, unnecessarily, now we have over 120 million dead from COVID.

That has caused carnage on our streets. 150 million people have been killed since 2007 when Bernie voted to exempt the gun manufacturers from liability. More than all the wars, including Vietnam, from that point on.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., the 46th President of the United States of America, will be razor sharp when it counts.

[Gurn Blanston]

There's Joe Biden telling the world that over a million people have died from Covid-19.  The poor man has huge cognitive deficits and I feel sorry for him.  He will be manipulated by the far Left puppets in the 'swamp' and that's why they want him, of course.  The far left has colonized the Democratic Party.  No more mavericks who make their own decisions.  The swamp claims its own.

That would be a distressing turn of events (the 'colonization', that is) if the Far Right hadn't already, and earlier, done the same with the Republican Party. I am not assuming you are casting stones here, but if you are, you need to look in your own house first. I know, I used to live there....

[Gurn Blanston]

An overlooked article from last year, dealing with a leaked meeting at the NYT over the transition in reporting from Russia to Racism and the struggles about reporting on race, specifically Trump's unique brand of so-called racism:

" Now, Baquet continued, "I think that we've got to change." The Times must "write more deeply about the country, race, and other divisions."

"I mean, the vision for coverage for the next two years is what I talked about earlier: How do we cover a guy who makes these kinds of remarks?" Baquet said. "How do we cover the world's reaction to him? How do we do that while continuing to cover his policies? How do we cover America, that's become so divided by Donald Trump?"

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/new-york-times-chief-outlines-coverage-shift-from-trump-russia-to-trump-racism?_amp=true

The implication that The Trump/Russia story was not true is ludicrous. Barr/Rosenstein killed that investigation and it is still being sorted out today. Just because the Justice Dept. succeeded in having it quashed (for the time being) doesn't make it untrue or a non-story.

That said, tell me sincerely that you are surprised that a newspaper, or any other organization which looks past tomorrow doesn't hold planning meetings. I'm sure even the Washington Examiner does, although their lack of Pulitzer's might argue that they need to get better at it. I see now where certain argument styles stem from: you can't prove it so it didn't happen. In the long run, the truth will come out though, it always does. Maybe not in time to oust him from his position, but the voters are going to do that anyway, he is so abysmally sorry at what he does that even many in his own party aren't going to be voting for him. I'm beginning to see Biden's strategy: sit at home and keep your mouth shut and let Trump destroy himself. It's working, so that's all good.

[Karl Henning]

The implication that The Trump/Russia story was not true is ludicrous. Barr/Rosenstein killed that investigation and it is still being sorted out today. Just because the Justice Dept. succeeded in having it quashed (for the time being) doesn't make it untrue or a non-story.

Indeed, the larger story of the stooge DOJ is growing by the week.

[Karl Henning]

There is fear, confusion, misinformation, and so much we still don't know about the coronavirus. This is why national leadership is essential, why sober and honest messaging is essential. Instead we have a yawning vacuum filled by pettiness, incompetence, incoherence and deceit.

[drogulus]

     Liberal academics did more to undermine the illiberal left in academia than all the right wing concern trolls who don't share the values that were under attack.

     From my own shelves there is Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, and Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science.

     Science is where you'd expect to see the warfare get hottest. Twenty some years later, socially constructed truth has been taken over by Trumpists and by golly, they've made objective knowledge their enemy in just about every way they can.

[milk]

That presumes there is some coherent group of "super-rich" who maintain a consensus among themselves about economic decisions and can control politicians to maintain those decisions.

The available evidence suggests that's a false narrative.

Maybe. I don't know what Rorty was thinking. Although an important philosopher, his pragmatism is generally incomprehensible to me. On the other hand, look at the Taibbi article I posted. Taibbi is pretty smart and his article has a strange kind of congruence with Rorty. Maybe it's just that these corporate issues are easy to promote while they lobby behind the scenes for the status quo. There's probably a consensus among them that campaign finance reforms are a bad idea as well as corporate tax responsibility? Come to think of it, I bet the global super rich can come up with some semblance of consensus without trying very hard.

[drogulus]

The cancel culture is a phenomenon of the Left, hardly one with serious academic debate, happening primarily at universities and colleges. No matter what the science or statistics say, you violate the ideology (eg, Police shootings, BLM, Abortion, Transgenderism, IQ, etc) you get canceled. Facts and evidence don't matter but radical ideas do.

     Only liberals can fight it, because it's an attack on liberal values.

[milk]

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/29/politics/trump-phone-calls-national-security-concerns/index.html

From pandering to Putin to abusing allies and ignoring his own advisers, Trump's phone calls alarm US officials

The calls caused former top Trump deputies -- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials -- to conclude that the President was often "delusional," as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.

[greg]

I would have thought that if "master bedroom" were bad it would be for gender issues rather than race.

Hopefully that's not a future issue, let people do what they want, I say.

[milk]

The cancel culture is a phenomenon of the Left, hardly one with serious academic debate, happening primarily at universities and colleges. No matter what the science or statistics say, you violate the ideology (eg, Police shootings, BLM, Abortion, Transgenderism, IQ, etc) you get canceled. Facts and evidence don't matter but radical ideas do.

I wanted to add cultural appropriation and "believe all women" to your list.
Sadly, I think there's a lot of truth to this. It's shocking to see what's happened. I remember when I was a university student in 1986 and a feminist teacher of some kind told the class that physical differences in size and musculature between men and women were a social construct. That was Gen X and we were mostly wide-eyed and not questioning this kind of thinking.

I bopped around to another university in the late 80s where we protested and took over the admin building over a hodgepodge of issues. I look back and kind of cringe because I think us kids were not going to be reasonable. We were just too young. A 20-year-old is not really an adult. I'd like to blame it all on millennials and I do think that social media is the catalyst to this toxic soup (excuse my probably nonsensical metaphor) but it probably started with Gen X and third-wavers.

I think this identity ideology is intoxicating because it sounds great while not requiring much rigor. It's not only that students seem to want pre-approved ideas coming at them, they have all these triggers and intellectual safety violations now and they are able to destroy their teachers' careers. They can get the school to even go after the community as they did at Oberlin.   
I'm not a conservative. I think this whole thing is NOT "liberal" because it stifles inquiry. Above all it's so boring. It takes all the fun out of learning if there's nothing "dangerous" or "adventurous" in it.
It's also illiberal because it's unforgiving, cruel and flagellating.   

[Daverz]

I wanted to add cultural appropriation and "believe all women" to your list.

For someone who is not a conservative, you seem to be very animated by all the stereotypical right wing culture war resentments.  And all this stuff you whine about is a huge nothingburger, just another reactionary moral panic with no substance.   

[milk]

For someone who is not a conservative, you seem to be very animated by all the stereotypical right wing culture war resentments.  And all this stuff you whine about is a huge nothingburger, just another reactionary moral panic with no substance.   

I try not to accuse people here of anything, though I'm sure I have in the past. Anyway, as I said before, I've recently been interested in a spectrum of voices on this, including Glenn Loury and John McWhorter. Both of them are very worried, though I don't think I'm panicking yet. They might be. I don't think my views have ever been conservative: Pro-gay marriage, pro-national healthcare, pro-tax-the-wealthy, pro-campaign finance, Pro-choice, anti-death penalty, pro-gun control...I thought Obama was a great president. I don't see that I'm particularly conservative. Yes, I think the woke stuff is bunk.     

[Daverz]

The cancel culture is a phenomenon of the Left

Tell it to the Dixie Chicks, Kathy Griffin (some people can't take a fucking joke), Keurig (people trashing their own Keurig machines, good times), Disney, Target, Nike (burn your own Nikes...while you are still wearing them!), that donut shop that stopped their police discount, ... that's just off the top of my head, I haven't even looked on google.

[SimonNZ]

Yeah, others have meetings and they found their "new" story to divisively feature: race. In this election year the media really did a number with Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks. Insofar as the NYT, the race slant to reporting was being cooked up last year after the Mueller investigation ran dry.

If that were true then he could have confounded that plan by displaying some empathy.

[Herman]

"Instead we have a yawning vacuum filled by pettiness, incompetence, incoherence and deceit."

You've got to admit, Karl, that's a very full vacuum.

And with better hair!