I have to think that a big part of the problem with the Left is its inability to recognize when it has won and then act like gracious winners. Culturally and institutionally it is dominant. It might not be for very long but this is a fact. You fall into this trap too. When you are in a good mood, you and yours are eternal plucky underdogs, when you’re in a bad mood, “screaming losers.”
I get that sense that these people sort of vulgar idealists (if that's the right term). Someone who murders the convenience store clerk hurts someone in the material world. But, like, whatever, that's just the material world, who cares? That's the one where they have no power. Meanwhile, another guy has the wrong opinion or uses the wrong word. That's an offense in the world of ideas, which is the one they really care about.
i think the issue here is the prevalence of feelings over analysis. so you get incoherent responses like
1) putting ppl in prison is bad
2) ppl should be punished for bad things
i mean, some of the social justice ppl want to rehabilitate those who commit capital murder (and yes, this should be on the table imo), but also seem to totally want sexual harassment to be a black mark on someone forever.
one thing that comes to mind is that someone like jessica valenti is unlikely to ever be murdered due to her demographics, so murder is kind of an abstract crime. but she has almost certainly been subject to sexual harassment.
No, it isn't. Not by any standard definition of the word, or at least not one that isn't so broad as to include Freddie himself.
But Freddie will continue to do his part in the great war against liberalism, one waged by the unholy alliance of woke totalitarians, christianist fascists, and socialists/communists, all of whom want to impose their precious crabbed little visions of paradise on the rest of us, though of course those visions are as mutually incompatible as they are individually incoherent.
It’s weird — and this is no slight against FdB — that we live in such times that you can build a franchise as a maverick simply by pointing out that compassion is good.
I read that article today and felt a sense of chaos engulfing the kid who made a mistake.
Proust put it well about adolescence, except in this case, what the kid learned from his lapse in judgment may be to no avail:
“[In adolescence] one lives among monsters and gods, a stranger to peace of mind. There is scarcely a single one of our acts from that time which we would not prefer to abolish later on. But all we should lament is the loss of the spontaneity that urged them upon us. In later life, we see things with a more practical eye, one we share with the rest of society; but adolescence was the only time when we ever learned anything.”
I recently read 'Legal Systems Very Different from Ours,' and I can't recommend it enough, but the parallels between the modern 'cancel culture' system and some other informal ones are pretty striking – especially those like the Amish and certain Roma communities that use ostracism as a primary form of punishment.
Especially interesting is that the systems need ostracism of those that fail to ostracise to survive, otherwise defecting is too easy and the punishments don't happen. You see a lot of that dynamic in left spaces – people who are 'tainted' can spread it to others, so it's best to avoid them so as to avoid it yourself, like the kids in the New York article. Of course, most of these societies had a formalised way back through either contrition or just passage of time, which is precisely the forgiveness the current culture lacks.
The section on informal systems within prisons is also definitely relevant, making the reasons why picking fights constantly may be necessary in an environment where the formal rules are barely enforced. Great book.
"is really much less about a particular ethic of caring and much more about simply nominating a communally-approved target for progressive anger."
"there is no path to dismantling the prison industrial complex that does not let out a lot of people guilty of “identity crimes” like sexual assault, hate crimes, or domestic violence."
I think these points are ubiquitous with respect to the agenda of lefties. First, rage based on some basis of resentment seems to be their primary energy source. They are educated malcontents with a victim mentality… and are rhetorically armed to the teeth. I don’t think they care much for their claimed care subjects. Their motivation is clearly intended to be nihilistic. It is like the boyfriend agrees that yes those jeans make her butt look fat, and so she burns down the house they live in and then sues him for her emotional trauma.
And related to this, please name any current prominent political pursuit by the left that is not fraught with copious negative consequences.
So long as liberalism continues its relatively new schtick as a movement fighting *against* rather than fighting *for*, the Left's future political prospects are murky at best.
The answer that these same liberals -- or if the commenters here prefer, "pseudo-liberals," or wokelords, or woke leftists, etc -- so often provide when faced with the inconsistency that Freddie highlights is that as long as justice is not being meted out in a court, due process is not a prerequisite. I mention this not because I agree with it. As Freddie so cogently notes, it is totally inconsistent with the *spirit* of an ideology that, in theory, celebrates murderers getting second chances. It is just a particular kind of sophistry that we need to be prepared for when confronting these interlocutors.
Another thing: Liberals and leftists who poo-poo pieces like the one in New York magazine exhibit such a frustrating lack of self-awareness. "We are absolutely not close-minded pieces of shit, but this article is a crime against journalism and the person who wrote it is the very picture of white privilege" ["fuck"/"shit"/other profanity added for good measure].
Maybe these pieces would be less in demand and novel if the reactions weren't so predictably hysterical?
I have to think that a big part of the problem with the Left is its inability to recognize when it has won and then act like gracious winners. Culturally and institutionally it is dominant. It might not be for very long but this is a fact. You fall into this trap too. When you are in a good mood, you and yours are eternal plucky underdogs, when you’re in a bad mood, “screaming losers.”
yeah, I was having similar thoughts about this.
Few people have degraded the quality of discourse on the left in the last ten to fifteen years more than Valenti has.
I get that sense that these people sort of vulgar idealists (if that's the right term). Someone who murders the convenience store clerk hurts someone in the material world. But, like, whatever, that's just the material world, who cares? That's the one where they have no power. Meanwhile, another guy has the wrong opinion or uses the wrong word. That's an offense in the world of ideas, which is the one they really care about.
i think the issue here is the prevalence of feelings over analysis. so you get incoherent responses like
1) putting ppl in prison is bad
2) ppl should be punished for bad things
i mean, some of the social justice ppl want to rehabilitate those who commit capital murder (and yes, this should be on the table imo), but also seem to totally want sexual harassment to be a black mark on someone forever.
one thing that comes to mind is that someone like jessica valenti is unlikely to ever be murdered due to her demographics, so murder is kind of an abstract crime. but she has almost certainly been subject to sexual harassment.
Yes! Thank you. I love your characterization of the American left's response to failure in the last paragraph. So much ideology, so little thought.
"But nowadays, it’s liberals"
No, it isn't. Not by any standard definition of the word, or at least not one that isn't so broad as to include Freddie himself.
But Freddie will continue to do his part in the great war against liberalism, one waged by the unholy alliance of woke totalitarians, christianist fascists, and socialists/communists, all of whom want to impose their precious crabbed little visions of paradise on the rest of us, though of course those visions are as mutually incompatible as they are individually incoherent.
It’s weird — and this is no slight against FdB — that we live in such times that you can build a franchise as a maverick simply by pointing out that compassion is good.
I read that article today and felt a sense of chaos engulfing the kid who made a mistake.
Proust put it well about adolescence, except in this case, what the kid learned from his lapse in judgment may be to no avail:
“[In adolescence] one lives among monsters and gods, a stranger to peace of mind. There is scarcely a single one of our acts from that time which we would not prefer to abolish later on. But all we should lament is the loss of the spontaneity that urged them upon us. In later life, we see things with a more practical eye, one we share with the rest of society; but adolescence was the only time when we ever learned anything.”
I recently read 'Legal Systems Very Different from Ours,' and I can't recommend it enough, but the parallels between the modern 'cancel culture' system and some other informal ones are pretty striking – especially those like the Amish and certain Roma communities that use ostracism as a primary form of punishment.
Especially interesting is that the systems need ostracism of those that fail to ostracise to survive, otherwise defecting is too easy and the punishments don't happen. You see a lot of that dynamic in left spaces – people who are 'tainted' can spread it to others, so it's best to avoid them so as to avoid it yourself, like the kids in the New York article. Of course, most of these societies had a formalised way back through either contrition or just passage of time, which is precisely the forgiveness the current culture lacks.
The section on informal systems within prisons is also definitely relevant, making the reasons why picking fights constantly may be necessary in an environment where the formal rules are barely enforced. Great book.
Another great piece.
"is really much less about a particular ethic of caring and much more about simply nominating a communally-approved target for progressive anger."
"there is no path to dismantling the prison industrial complex that does not let out a lot of people guilty of “identity crimes” like sexual assault, hate crimes, or domestic violence."
I think these points are ubiquitous with respect to the agenda of lefties. First, rage based on some basis of resentment seems to be their primary energy source. They are educated malcontents with a victim mentality… and are rhetorically armed to the teeth. I don’t think they care much for their claimed care subjects. Their motivation is clearly intended to be nihilistic. It is like the boyfriend agrees that yes those jeans make her butt look fat, and so she burns down the house they live in and then sues him for her emotional trauma.
And related to this, please name any current prominent political pursuit by the left that is not fraught with copious negative consequences.
So long as liberalism continues its relatively new schtick as a movement fighting *against* rather than fighting *for*, the Left's future political prospects are murky at best.
The answer that these same liberals -- or if the commenters here prefer, "pseudo-liberals," or wokelords, or woke leftists, etc -- so often provide when faced with the inconsistency that Freddie highlights is that as long as justice is not being meted out in a court, due process is not a prerequisite. I mention this not because I agree with it. As Freddie so cogently notes, it is totally inconsistent with the *spirit* of an ideology that, in theory, celebrates murderers getting second chances. It is just a particular kind of sophistry that we need to be prepared for when confronting these interlocutors.
Another thing: Liberals and leftists who poo-poo pieces like the one in New York magazine exhibit such a frustrating lack of self-awareness. "We are absolutely not close-minded pieces of shit, but this article is a crime against journalism and the person who wrote it is the very picture of white privilege" ["fuck"/"shit"/other profanity added for good measure].
Maybe these pieces would be less in demand and novel if the reactions weren't so predictably hysterical?