Imprisoning black men at a high rate hasn’t solved the problem though. And incarceration and the destruction of families and communities that results has almost certainly made the problem worse. That isn’t to say that murderers should hit be incarcerated. But I don’t think it will solve the crime problem, and the imprisonment of non violent offenders certainly won’t.
Misguided militancy does seem increasingly common on campus. Very tenacious fuckers who view compromise as losing, in my experience. Not leftists, not liberal in the classic sense, more just a culture of the disappointed middle class that doesn't know how to use its anger productively, and weaponizes whatever trends and language they can to get their way.
However, there's lots of good stuff going on at the same time :) . It's easy to forget that, since the bad tends to hit Twitter and the Times.
Dang. My college generally had four print papers at any one time -- the flagship, a right-wing rag, a left-wing rag, and always some new upstart. That, it seems to me, is the healthier way to go. Mad about things? Start a paper!
It seems like the problem is specifically elite universities. You don't see a lot of these controveries coming out of Chico Community College or Appalachian State. Let's just make university endowments taxable.
I went to an Eastern Western State A&M University type of college, and I've definitely seen the woke/PC stuff ramp up in the past few years. It was basically non-existent when I started in 2013* , where the only woke people were the Scientologists.
It's highly likely you and Klaus are correct and I'm oversimplifying. In my limited experience dealing with my non-elite alma maters, I see more of this than I do in the real world but far less than I see online. So perhaps it's happening but not to such a degree?
That said, a friend told me about an absolutely bonkers cancellation story of one of his fellow professors at the non-elite Jesuit school he works at. I saw no coverage of it in the media, so this is perhaps availability bias on my part. The people who produce the media I consume are less likely to cover this because they don't consider these real schools.
Probably has to do with the relative power of the various departments and the ideologies thereof. At my Central Southern Northern State University, the biggest department (by enrollment) was management for a specified industry. We also have growing engineering and medical schools in an effort to diversify the economy (as in, diversity of industries). There's simply a limit in how woke you can get when the pedagogy has a direct application. If you try decolonize your circuit board, it won't work.
As such, I think the woke are winning battles more easily at Oberlin, but they are still fighting the front lines in others.
You might also be seeing a difference based on the fact that most "elite" schools are private, and many less elite schools are government-sponsored. State schools are far more limited in how much they can restrict speech, because any formal restriction on speech by a state school is a restriction by the government, so they can get hit with First Amendment claims. There are certainly some state schools that try to get around this as much as they can (looking at you, Berkeley/UCLA), but generally speaking their lawyers will rein them in after a certain point.
As I watched the conniption fits unfold last week, I couldn't find it in me to get worked up about it anymore. Behavior like that is beneath contempt. My experience suggests more and more people are noticing
I don't know anything about the Wesleyan controversy, but the reaction to the NYT op-ed seems to prove the point. If there were no threat to open discourse in our culture, nobody would care about that op-ed at all. Most of us would not even know it was written. Why are journalists *so threatened* by this idea? Why is there so much vitriol? Do these people really not see the contradiction, or is there just so much pressure to say the right thing publicly they won't let themselves consider what's staring them in the face?
I really wish progressives would have the self-awareness to realize how they sound to conservatives when they communicate in this way, presuming their goal is actually to change conservative minds (and not just farm likes from people who already agree with them). I've seen so many videos about policy issues where I agree 100% with the policy proposals but cringe at the seemingly-obligatory "omg Americans are so stupid, Europeans have been doing things the right way forever, why can't we get our shit together, you're so dumb for wanting to keep things the way you're comfortable with" delivery style (example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcqah8U_uKA)
Don’t forget “While we all intuitively grasp the power dynamic where Walmart suing a small business is TECHNICALLy legal its terrible because of the the uneven reserves when it comes to critique/influence… but doh, is this <critique a politician, public figure> not CANCEL culture? How about this <very crummy but TECHNICALLY legal thing> it technically is legal!!” Wow it’s too inscrutable and complicated so therefore it’s a mystery!”
The response to this is generally to adopt a stance that verbally berating, name-calling, organizing in an attempt to get someone fired, etc represents a fuller commitment to free speech than that which is demonstrated by those who declare some of these things unhealthy / suspect / out of bounds.
I agree with Freddie that free speech is not synonymous with the first amendment, and that a culture in which voicing commonly-held ideas publicly carries risks of social ostracism, job loss, blacklisting, and so forth cannot be described as a culture healthy to free speech.
I don't think I have anything add except: the weirdness of this behavior is what makes it so compelling and unnerving. We advance theories that are all a piece of the truth (projection, personal insecurity, job insecurity, coddling, post modernism, phones, identities, tribalism, conformity), and no explanation feels like a completely satisfying answer.
Stupid question: is this a shame-based vs. guilt-based vs. fear-based culture thing? At some point, young people were inculcated into a shame-based culture? And the rest of us are guilt-based, or something?
IDK, just looking for alternative explanations. Maybe these are just outdated anthropological distinctions.
I think a lot of it is fear of being out-grouped, so mostly fear. But they do it to themselves, they aren't just thinking what they think and then faking it to get the job or the grade or the client or whatever. Some people of course keep their true opinions off social media because they know the score and want to remain employed, but they're not the ones spearheading the denunciations/punishments.
Because if we don't value acceptance by the group then we are ruled by shame? OK. That's certainly the weapon they want to deploy, apart from the actual firing etc. Very often a defender will say, of a particular canceled person, that they have plenty of money or are still working, so there is nothing to complain about, and this of course ignores the whole shunning, "you're garbage/toxic/trash" aspect to it, as though it doesn't exist. That's the part they value the most -- they call it "accountability" -- but they simultaneously say the recipient isn't really suffering. It's like Rumsfeld saying stress positions and waterboarding aren't torture. Then why are you doing it?
That's really true. I originally got onto this idea because I read weird substack today that was all about letting go of shame so that we could better wrestle with ourselves when we are "called out," but the author never stopped to consider where the shame came from. And of course that answer is: the Left creates shame, and then tells you that it isn't what you are supposed to feel.
I’m ask just tired of the “So she’s pissed that she wasn’t praise??” as if someone who can bang out a reasonably good op-ed is truly operating at the brainrot superficial level (and wouldn’t already know that any hint of “wahhh” is going to work very hard against them and get them dismissed).
If she wanted attention/to throw a tantrum instead of being sincere why would she send the op-Ed to the NYT instead of of some culturally dramatic right-wing publication?!? It’s just a hot-air caricature
I think it annoys them that the right wins on “the principle of this matters” but journalists don’t care about if this hurts them, silences discussion yet they might just see that conceding “yeah this isn’t good we should do better” is ceding some ground (possibly?) as if it somehow is a “win” for the other side to admit that the right was accurately noticing/discussing this censorious mood (despite it being super obvious so it’s not some magic trick) and so instead they just “God I can’t believe this fragile horseshit!”
Journalists who work for a paywall-subscribe publication that leaves them more at the mercy of their readership also know they can’t really go WRONG with responding with “wow can you believe these awful people <that you already dislike, dear reader!>” and so there’s no professional benefit in taking the argument seriously if your readers prefer that you stir the pot and dismiss.
The incident in the article is bad, same with the one involving Charles Murray. Part of it is 'kids will be kids', part a willingness to indulge kids too much in the short term while losing sight of the big picture, imo.
My theory of the internet, though, is it works on a backlash^n model, where each wave triggers a counter-reaction, and the NYT piece over-corrected. They were insinuating there should be free speech without accountability or criticism ("without shaming ..."), and that's dumb. There's an inability there to separate the wheat from the chaff, the good-faith criticism of 'cancel culture' from the bad.
That whole 'backlash'n model' ... in the physical world, this means focused energy is being added to the waves, causing them to become larger-stronger.
This is the business model of social media, focus the eyes onto things which will excite the user, cause them some aggravation, get them incensed enough, they'll become more focused on your product. There's probably a tie-in with slot machine programming models too.
No, backlash against the 'cancel culture' itself, which expands the set of ideas and opinions that won't be 'prosecuted'. Think the recent Rogan controversy was a sea change.
"But any other type of repercussion is fascist." Again, you're dealing out absolutes. If someone is tweeting racial slurs every 3rd word, they're going to get filtered. That comes back to the company's value proposition. And markets do #darwin, too.
Nitpicking here, because I understand your point and agree. But technically, the "yelling fire..." trope is not accurate. Legal types hate it because it is not at all a real thing, it was a flimsy off-hand remark within a broader point being made within a SCOTUS opinion. And worse, the quote was used in an opinion that unanimously sided with the government to prosecute WWI anti-war protestors. Soon after the opinion was gutted, by some of the same justices, who realized they had opened the floodgates to possible 1A protection erosion.
Very interesting. By coincidence I saw a post just the other day laying out the nine or so categories of speech that are not constitutionally protected and I was wondering where the "fire" trope would fit. I will have to read that article later.
Yes. Here's my anodyne reply on Twitter to one Adam Davidson who's spent that last few days railing against that editorial: "This is not complicated. There are any number of *legitimate* policy debates—e.g. how much affirmative action, where, and for whom; or trans people in sports and prisons; or criminal justice reform—that many people are afraid to opine on in certain settings. That fear helps no one." That anyone who actually *lives* in this country could disagree with that is insane. And of course, when those who feel censored take their revenge in the privacy of the voting booth, these same people are shocked, shocked.
Electability is the last thing on their minds. The distaste at having to do retail politics, the actual work of associating w/ the impure, i.e. people who think differently. Let alone winning office and having to horse-trade, which is how laws are made. Ah, but going viral is *chef’s kiss*
Yes the Argus incident was very important. (and BLM seems to have had some integrity problems of late).
Campus papers have deteriorated nationwide. They want to be the mini-me of the NYT/Atlantic/Slate and are thus unreadable in their sure-footed following of their betters. They want the admiration of the "NPR tote bag set" (that's so funny). They want other people in media to see them as cool and smart and that other thing you said. But if I want the full monty I can read the NYT, not my campus paper.
I did a thing. I wrote abt the need for libraries to care abt the white working class in an academic journal. I wasn't attacked, I was just ignored and low metrics....which in academia is like being shunned. That's ok for me where I am. I don't care abt being cool and I was tenured long ago, ...but for a person on tenure track they need broader academe to vote them in the club. And right now that "broader academe" is not admitting those who don't fall in line. Krupskaya would be so proud. [source on Krupskaya & Soviet libraries as tools of the state meant to indoctrinate as well as educate: Richardson, John V., Jr. “The Origin of Soviet Education for Librarianship: The Role of Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, Lyubov’ Borisovna Khavkina-Hamburger, and Genrietta K. Abele-Derman.” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 41, no. 2 (2000): 106-128.}
You've touched on this many times: the lol nothing matters posture. These things do matter, for all the reasons you've outlined. It's a pathology in media culture that's worsening an already life-threatening censoriousness in broader American culture. And pretending something doesn't matter that much--whether campus climate or inflation trouble or whatever--is deeply insulting to normal people who aren't trying to Be Cool, to whom these things matter a great deal.
I think in this case the "lol nothing matters" posture is not ironic detachment, but rather it is a way to avoid confronting an argument one does not want to confront. It's a form of rationalization as to why the person doesn't need to consider the argument. They presumably do not have a direct response, so they minimize the relevance of it. It's not "lol nothing matters"; rather, it is "what YOU want to discuss doesn't matter because it's not a relevant consideration" which is not ironic distance. Rather, it is a deliberate counter-argument, and its value is predicated on if there actually *is* relevance, which Freddie has argued to establish above.
Yes, great point. That’s why it’s so insulting. The concerns of normies are stupid or of no real consequence. I’ve never felt more like a normie than since my kids started school and my main aim is to be a good parent.
Hm, I think I did a poor job wording my imagined paraphrasing of the dismissal ("what YOU want to discuss..."). I didn't mean that your ideas were dismissed because they were *yours*, but because they considered the idea itself irrelevant, irrespective of its source.
I think it's a valid argument to make, in the sense that if the original claim were truly irrelevant, it would be a valid to dismiss that claim. However, Freddie made the case in his piece that the claim *is* relevant.
Also, the relevancy angle suffers from the fact that (outside of court) it seems to be made primarily when one cannot address the substance of the original claim. Basically, in most cases, it's a weak argument and requires substantiation in the form of "even if the original claim were true, it wouldn't change anything."
Yes. The elites are simply dripping with sanctimony and condescension for anyone they consider below them or nonconforming these days. It used to be polite etiquette to hide your narcissistic thoughts and be gracious to lesser souls. Apparently, the gloves are off. They are so sure of their superiority that they don't even have to try to be a little human or grant anyone the benefit of the doubt. It reminds of nothing so much as the excesses that presaged the French Revolution.
Gotta remember that the "elites" are a very specific group defined in many ways by their own imagination than necessarily by money. "You, too, can be an elite for the bargain price of an undergraduate degree and the right attitudes and opinions!" I think that's how we get so many "new" elites whose positions seem so contemptuous toward the very people and places they just left five minutes ago.
It’s a bizarre mongrel breed where “Nothing matters ergo I’m cool” meets spittle-flecked hatred of “TERFs” (etc etc). As in the article saying if you have a TERF at your T’Giving dinner, throw the turkey at her. (I shit you not.)
And the two potentiate each other, the former lending deniability. “LOL we didn’t mean it, it was just performative.”
Almost as though social media have stripped away the repressive mechanisms making it possible for people who disagree to live together, the higher mental functions. The return of the repressed!
Thx. I found it too dispiriting to look for. Especially because those of us in the NYC area remember an incident a few decades ago where some imbeciles dropped a frozen turkey onto a woman’s windshield from an overpass, shattering most of the bones in her face. Throwing a turkey has scant comic value.
You are talking about people who don't have the mental capacity to grasp the obvious fact that just because Putin isn't a good guy, it doesn't automatically mean Zelensky is. Of course, that includes the US congress too.
I'm just cynical enough to notice that when junior staffers at the NYT wanted a senior reporter involved with the News Guild fired, the editors were glad to comply; and now that he is gone, suddenly the editorial board signals that it's no longer interested in catering to the political positions held by those junior staffers.
One of the big problems with these college brouhahas seems to be that people graduate from them with the idea that as workers, they will have some real moral authority over their workplaces. They do not realize that at college, they are customers -- and people will put up with way more from customers than they will ever put up with from employees. Activist employees who don't realize this act as useful idiots who only increase the employers' power over the workers.
Thanks again, Freddie. A DSM entry is the perfect way to describe this stuff.
I've been left-of-center my whole life. By all accounts, I should be raging against Republicans every day. But for some reason, these woke censorious Mean Girl liberals piss me off more. I mean they viscerally upset me and send me into a white hot rage. It's the haughtiness of it all I think, the attitude that says "I'm so superior that I know what's better for you than you do."
What made them like this? Was it just Trump's victory that broke their brains? Or was it the nature of online echo chambers in general (particularly Twitter)?
It has to be social media (and especially twitter). Back in the day, when someone had a controversial take there might be dueling op-eds, or letters to the editor, or more recently blogs, but there was basically always at least a day between contrasting viewpoints being shared. Now an article could be a trending topic on twitter with swarms of haters without hours. Backlash to the backlash to the backlash within 6 hours. Our minds weren't made for this shit.
I feel like we were still doing okay for a good bit after the internet existed. For my money, the catalyst is some combo of smart phones and social media. Most especially, I pin it on the way smart phones shifted us into never being truly "offline", and the way social media pointedly rewards the most shitty, shallow, and narcissistic human impulses and behaviors.
Sitting at an actual computer, using a mouse and keyboard, has a self-limiting aspect for most people that tiny pocket computers don't have. Smart phones have, in fact, a nearly opposite effect -- their constant presence and endless notifications encourage constant use.
Similarly, using a regular website or a more specialized forum, without likes and all the rest, doesn't encourage drama and self-aggrandizement nearly as efficiently or directly as social media does. By way of analogy, if the pre-existing internet (broadly speaking) had been oxy pills, smart phones + social media was fentanyl.
I disagree with the others. It wasn't the Internet. I'm 47. When I was in school, they were making the move from schools as places of education and training grounds for the real world (so socialization for dealing with a diverse world with diverse opinions and ways of being) to what they have become, places of cultivating self-esteem and a place where opinions are just as important as facts and reality. That's what I blame.
I don't know-I graduated in 2008 from a relatively prestigious school, and a very progressive one. The Internet existed but twitter didn't. I honestly don't recall feeling stifled against going against the grain at all. Neither was there a ton of emotional hand holding.
You were lucky. The iphone was only a year old back in ‘08 and our cellular grid was slow and patchy. Hard to imagine any of these echo chambers having the same distorting influence if smartphones don’t become a ubiquitous and blazing fast conduit to an infinite firehose of opinion and social feedback loops.
I'm talking about primary and secondary school, and I was an adjunct in the late 90s and early 2000s at a local state university. The students coming out of the high schools thought that it was enough to simply give an opinion. They didn't need facts to back it up. You were asking too much if you were asking for facts. Critical thinking skills were virtually nonexistent. The Internet and Twitter would have been harmless had we still taught that facts were facts, opinions were opinions, skepticism is vital (especially of yourself and "experts" and most importantly when dealing with "news" sources and politicians and narratives), and it's important to listen to others even if you vehemently disagree. The seeds of this problem were planted when the computer was still in an infancy. The computer was more like pouring water and fertilizer on a patch of noxious weeds that already existed. They just grew bigger and faster.
I don't think its specifically the internet or college. I think there is a weaponized component to the left's culture war movements that sets a ceiling to those movements as they won't win over the mainstream, and it gets all the media figures on the left to fall in line because it really only works on them. They aren't able to cancel Fox News but they can close down any left leaning publication that isn't 'woke' enough.
Same. I've never voted for a Republican in my life, and for a long time in my adult life probably would have been considered far-left. But I've crossed some sort of Rubicon where I hate Keith Olbermann with far more intensity than I can summon for Tucker Carlson.
And this reminds me of another bone that should be eminently throwable: riots are bad. I’m thinking of that guy who got fired from a think tank for linking to a paper (by an African-American!) saying Democrats do better when people associate them with peaceful assembly as opposed to riots. “There are no riots!” but, “riots are good actually.”
I think a lot of this is that we have higher expectations of those with whom we typically identify, as well as assuming that they will be willing to at least listen to us, and when they vilify us rather than listen, it's a betrayal. (I'm sure they see our questioning of the orthodoxy, making them look bad in front of the Republicans, as a betrayal as well.)
It's not either:or. I subscribe to the WUSA Capitol Riots Newsletter and a little thrill every time another Jan 6 criminal gets justice. And I can still champion free speech among my friends, even though it is increasingly unpopular.
Matt Yglesias said something yesterday about how when religion was more common, piety and orthodoxy were generally the realms of conservatives, and iconoclastic/rebel types were to the left. With the decline of religion and the rise of social justice orthodoxy, now the subversive impulse mostly comes from the right.
Social justice orthodoxy reminds me of a present day Reverend Ike in that you can get your just rewards in this life and not have to wait for the by and by.
Subversiveness does seem to swing side to side every 25 years or more. This lack of allowing for heterodoxy is what drove me away from the left in the 70's, when the Maoists took over and what had been healthy discussions became neo-religious statements of absolute good vs evil.
Key takeaway: “Indeed, a review of the legal studies literature suggests that when CRT “questions the very foundations of the liberal order,” this is no grad-school intellectual exercise, but rather a strategy for transforming our entire legal system into one that privileges group rights over individual rights. If you want to transform the foundations of American society (without using rifles), you need a theory of the law, and you need a farm system for training federal judges. (Just ask the Federalist Society.) This, in a nutshell, is why CRT emerged from legal studies.”
Imagine - training future lawyers and judges to subvert the rights of individuals in favor of group rights. What an elegant coup of our entire legal system based on individual rights. Who needs a revolution when you can sneak it in through the back doors of academic and criminal justice systems? Just incredible.
Couple that with the soon-to-be-upon-us social credit system and surveillance state/tech industry alliance, and even Beria, Mao, Che or Muller would be envious. They'll already have the man, it'll be easy to find the crime.
Allowing this to happen is just one more F'd up legacy we boomers leave behind.
BTW, serendipitously, just one day after I posted this, this topic showed up on the Bari Weiss substack: https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-takeover-of-americas-legal-system?s=r Out of everything that is going on, I believe that this is the most serious. It has the potential to crush everything. If our system of laws no longer works to protect the individual, who are we?
IMHO that's retarded because I could still do plenty of irreverent stuff "from the Left". I just wouldn't get an audience for it. Nowadays if you wanna do "irreverent" or "non-SJW" left-flavored stuff, you have to be doing it very seriously, bring receipts for everything, and still be prepared to take some flame.
>A DSM entry is the perfect way to describe this stuff.
I disagreed with that throwaway line and its thrust, and not just because I think it's lazy and crass to use the specter of mental illness as an insult. It's a misapprehension of the problem. I'm just using this remark as a launching point here, so sorry to ignore the rest of your remarks, KW.
"You have to understand this to understand our media class: the number one priority in their entire lives, above and beyond literally any other, is to earn insider status with other people in media. That’s it. That is their lodestar, their true north. They want other people in media to see them as cool and smart and fuckable, and most of all they want to have the right opinions, the opinions that the group doesn’t laugh at."
What is being described here is your typical status-obsessed human being, in one particular milieu. You can find similar complaints in others: Academics don't care about truth, they care about prestige and publishing. Politicians don't care about people, they care about re-election and career advancement. Do some people care more about status than others? Of course. Do media people as a group care more about status as a group than maybe homemakers? I'd buy it. But nothing is going on in the mind of a journalist vis a vis gaining status that isn't going on in everyone else's. Everyone, all the time, wants intensely to be viewed in high esteem and to gain rather than lose social standing and resources. They aren't running some special malign software, this is just human stuff, albeit the kind we like to shield from our own awareness. People whose ethical convictions truly outstrip this basic self-preservation behavior are the actual outliers.
But if today's media types are out on the far end of the distribution here, then surely the structures and incentives of the industry acting on these universal tendencies in human psychology make them so, rather than their individual pathologies. And since journalists typically do not have mental illnesses whose treatment would engender more prosocial behavior, and since status-obsession isn't something it's reasonable to try to remedy in the human race as a whole, we have to turn to those structures and incentives for remedies.
And since it's clearly not the case that "the absolute madness this anodyne NYT op-ed provoked among the NPR tote bag set should be listed in the DSM," the line reduces to "they're crazy like an actual crazy person," which is sad but not surprising coming from another, actual crazy person.
I was with you until the end. I have bipolar illness and I don’t think it interferes with my ability to think and reason, at least when I am not manic. It takes lot of careful thinking not to project. It’s another part of the human condition, along with ambition.
I also have BP1, and when I referred to both myself (which is why I wrote "coming from another") and Freddie as "crazy people" in the closing remark I didn't mean to be disparaging in the least. I realize most people don't adopt that vernacular in a neutral or even affectionate way as I do and I could have been more careful about being misread there, especially since I was drawing attention to the disparaging use in the first place.
*Edit: And looking back over that closing line again, I want to clarify that the reason it isn't surprising to hear it from "another crazy person" is because so many people with mental illness struggle with self-loathing and think they deserve the poor treatment they have received, and not because of irrationality or any other character flaw of the mentally ill.
I could try but I'd be speculating more than reporting; I'm not nearly as familiar with the industry as others are, and in fact Freddie has detailed a lot of it in his work. I'm making a "If you're looking for rare earth metals, dig a mine instead of building a hot air balloon," level-of-analysis kind of argument, which I think is useful advice even if I don't know where best to start the digging on a particular continent.
But what do structures and incentives look like in general? What people are rewarded and punished for, professionally and socially. What kinds of traits and behaviors lead to success or failure within a given institution. If dunking on randos on twitter does offer more professional clout than double-checking your sources, then you'll see more dunking on randos on twitter over time and less source-checking, because of the natural human tendency to care more about attaining professional clout than about abstracted ideals like integrity. In repairing these structures you want people's best and worst tendencies to align behaviorally, so that chasing professional clout and acting with principle don't come into a conflict that principles cannot win.
Have you ever read Roe v. Wade? I did in law school and was blown away. The ruling relied on such a tenuous connection to the Constitution that as a pro-choice law student, I was deeply troubled by the ruling and thus began my conversion to the stance that Roe was wrongly decided and should have been left to the states. I encourage you to read the entire Roe v. Wade ruling (and Griswold), not just rely on articles that are filled with partisan outrage. You may very well come to the same conclusion you do now, but grappling with the convoluted rationale of the right to contraception and ultimately abortion as a federal constitutional right. Saying the public supports a particular view is not the same thing as such view being a federal constitutional right.
It's one where the Democrats are already seeing massive electoral losses precisely because of their attachments to woke ideology. Historically the last time this happened a center left champion, Bill Clinton, emerged to slay the PC dragon by metaphorically killing Sista Souljah and literally killing Ricky Ray Rector, banishing the beast back to the ghetto of college campuses for thirty years or so. I imagine the crackup this time will be equally catastrophic.
I maintain this is the real element the internet plays in this. It creates a sense that these people's outlooks are far more prevalent than they actually are. They're not faced with how unpopular this way of acting is and they keep upping the ante.
As you note, the reaction will likely be ugly. Reactions rarely come in a measured form.
Will it actually be ugly? I mean, riots are always possible, I suppose, but the New Left is so amazingly weak that I don't think they'll actually do much of anything except continue to complain on Twitter. And cops are always available to stop riots.
I find this take literally unbelievable from an adult who's lived through the past five years. Leaving aside whether or not they physically can - and in large parts of the country there is massive doubt about this - whether or not they're deployed to do so is a political concern, not a physical one. Regime-sanctioned riots took place all over the Midwest and Pacific North-West for months.
If it's politically convenient they'll happen again. Bear in mind the Rittenhouse shooting - who was out that night, what were they doing and why, and how did Rittenhouse end up on his back firing upward, and from whom did he run after he did so?
Riots might be bottom-up but the precipitants and the permission is absolutely top-down, and people had better get used to that fact with a quickness because any 'reaction' isn't going to take place without a far more potent backlash from the organized Left.
This was a very interesting tidbit. That said, I'm always cautious about reading too much into the opinions of young people because as us non-young people know, they frequently change as we age.
If I had to bet, I'd assume the near future will be more-PC than it was in 00s but less PC than the Twitterati would like.
I actually think this is pretty common. If we're being honest, we definitely say less casually racist things than our grandparents. And if we're being really honest, most of us use far less homophobic and ableist language now than we did in our youth (yes, I know, no one here EVER used the R word or called things they didn't like "gay," we were all perfect angels and that wasn't consideres broadly acceptable in 2005). Which frankly I think is good and helps build a more inclusive society! But this still feels like a bubble waiting to pop.
But the electoral losses are real. All that's required in my view for history to repeat itself is for woke politics to become so toxic that the D's suffer significant electoral losses. The complicating factor is the 2024 presidential race: If Trump is elected in that will be the stake in the heart but the Democrats will (probably?) have the advantage of incumbency.
The pessimist in me says that they'll simply use that as just one more reason why the Republicans -- and everyone who didn't vote for them -- is racist and bad, simply reconfirming their own moral rectitude and reinforcing that they should *not* listen to disagreements.
But maybe the desire to get elected would win out. The fact that I'm not really sure disturbs me: would they rather be defiantly moral or change the world for the better?
See, I have a slightly different take on it. Inside the party there is a segment of true believers and there is a separate segment of political operators. When the losses get too bad the centrists will win out and they will purge the opposition--the cadres of young wokeists that David Shor likes to talk about.
By then it will be too late: the right has learned all about illiberal power-preservation techniques like gerrymandering, district-variable voting opportunities, etc etc etc.
That stuff is a never ending arms race that is just as toxic and dangerous as the military competition between great powers like the US and China, or Russia.
The Republican slur is that if you vote for Democrats, the woke people will be running the government. The party has a lot of centrist voters, but the political operators, especially the up and coming ones, are themselves true believers, and they have been very busy in this administration.
It's not a slur, it's a fact (and I say that as a 66-yr-old lifelong Democrat). Every Democrat is in favor of the Equality Act that privileges individually self-determined, infinitely changeable "gender identity" over biological sex. Democrats are also all-in with Kendian neo-racism (eg Biden choosing a SCOTUS nominee only of a particular race). As a classical liberal philosophically, I'm appalled.
Of course they would rather be defiantly moral. We already saw this in 2016, when the left largely stayed on the sidelines in the POTUS election, because HRC was too corporate/centrist/whatever. And yet: abortion rights were very clearly on the line. Very few on the left cared enough to hold their noses and work to get her elected.
This dynamic faded enough in 2020 to get Biden elected, but after that, we see the "progressive" left declaring all sorts of good things not good enough for them, and so nothing gets done. Meanwhile Democrats continue to push divisive stuff like the Equality Act, that would privilege self-determined "gender identity" over biological sex, and make it illegal to bar any man who claims (in that momemt) to be a woman from any womens space (locker room, prison, domestic violence shelter) or competition (professional tennis match with prize money). I think any Republican who wants to run on pointing this out repeatedly would win in any but the deepest blue districts.
I would argue that Covid defeated Trump, not turnout or political platforms. And I think it's critical to understand that because it was very real and very significant ramifications for 2024.
I certainly agree that the covid situation was one of the things that contributed to Trump's defeat. ("Things are bad, so change is good.") Ruy Teixeira https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com argues pretty persuasively that the Democrats are just bleeding support everywhere, due both economic issues ("Things are not getting better, so change is good.") and cultural issues. Alas, I see the Democrats doubling down rather than changing course, at least through their crushing defeats in 2022 and 2024.
Sometimes I find culture war conversations tiresome, but at the same time I simply find free speech to be an incredibly important issue. It honestly kills me how many seemingly smart people tut tut at any acknowledgment that conversation and journalism are incredibly stifled right now. I saw takes (from people I know IRL, not just randos on twitter) about how basically, as long as you're a good person, you have nothing to worry about. It reminds me of the (mostly) conservative response to the Patriot Act-sure we've lost rights, but we're on the good side, it won't affect us. And the yawn in response to Snowden's surveillance expose--we're all tracked anyway, but they'll never come for us. I could go on, but I'm genuinely perplexed how easily people have rolled over for all this.
I blame "the customer is always right" mindset we in American hold more important then any constitutional right.
In my youth I worked for a insufferable German, in his restaurant making said food.
The thing I loved about him was if customers were being rude or beyond stupid, he'd tell em off. 'The sauerbraten is sour?' "Can't you read?"
In a world of Yelp and Google reviews that sadly isn't possible anymore.
These kids aren't students, they are customers and they are always right. For the price they are paying I don't blame em, but this all will get worst unless the core issue isn't challenged.
I think there's definitely a problem with universities pivoting to a "selling degrees" model, at least based on conversations with friends who are professors (and not unbiased).
But I strongly agree that anyone who willingly buys German food deserves to be mocked and ridiculed.
Maybe we should reframe university as the cross fit gym of the mind. People seem far more amenable to paying for that kind of rigor than pure intellectual rigor.
It's not "just college." Many of the places we're seeing this craziness are the places that educate that cliched "future leader." It's a very dangerous situation to allow these students to throw tantrums like toddlers and get their way, which is what it strikes me they are doing. It does not bode well for letting them be in charge of the nation one day, especially given the outsized role this country plays in the world. If we were a tiny country with no influence, this ridiculousness would be one thing, but given what we are, for the worse, it is completely unacceptable.
Imprisoning black men at a high rate hasn’t solved the problem though. And incarceration and the destruction of families and communities that results has almost certainly made the problem worse. That isn’t to say that murderers should hit be incarcerated. But I don’t think it will solve the crime problem, and the imprisonment of non violent offenders certainly won’t.
Why is the only way to resolve this problem to imprison more people? Sounds like a lack of imagination and compassion to me.
Misguided militancy does seem increasingly common on campus. Very tenacious fuckers who view compromise as losing, in my experience. Not leftists, not liberal in the classic sense, more just a culture of the disappointed middle class that doesn't know how to use its anger productively, and weaponizes whatever trends and language they can to get their way.
However, there's lots of good stuff going on at the same time :) . It's easy to forget that, since the bad tends to hit Twitter and the Times.
I wonder if these idiotic controversies lead to a defunding of universities
Edited.
The school paper was in a paper box outside my building daily, then it went to 3x a week, then weekly, now just online. Hardly know it exists.
Dang. My college generally had four print papers at any one time -- the flagship, a right-wing rag, a left-wing rag, and always some new upstart. That, it seems to me, is the healthier way to go. Mad about things? Start a paper!
it was once, now they tweet
I'm scared to go look and see what the media environment is at my old school.
It seems like the problem is specifically elite universities. You don't see a lot of these controveries coming out of Chico Community College or Appalachian State. Let's just make university endowments taxable.
I went to an Eastern Western State A&M University type of college, and I've definitely seen the woke/PC stuff ramp up in the past few years. It was basically non-existent when I started in 2013* , where the only woke people were the Scientologists.
*edited the year.
Hahahahahahaha. I used to work in development. And while we’re at it let’s make church revenue over a certain amount taxable too
App State what what!!! Represent! I can also attest to same at Forsyth Tech Community College.
There's literally no chance that out of 8 million possibilities I randomly guessed your alma mater. That's impressive if true.
Not mine, but my brother in law’s. So close!
It has spread well beyond the elite schools. Read Rod Dreher on what's happening at Louisiana colleges.
It's highly likely you and Klaus are correct and I'm oversimplifying. In my limited experience dealing with my non-elite alma maters, I see more of this than I do in the real world but far less than I see online. So perhaps it's happening but not to such a degree?
That said, a friend told me about an absolutely bonkers cancellation story of one of his fellow professors at the non-elite Jesuit school he works at. I saw no coverage of it in the media, so this is perhaps availability bias on my part. The people who produce the media I consume are less likely to cover this because they don't consider these real schools.
Probably has to do with the relative power of the various departments and the ideologies thereof. At my Central Southern Northern State University, the biggest department (by enrollment) was management for a specified industry. We also have growing engineering and medical schools in an effort to diversify the economy (as in, diversity of industries). There's simply a limit in how woke you can get when the pedagogy has a direct application. If you try decolonize your circuit board, it won't work.
As such, I think the woke are winning battles more easily at Oberlin, but they are still fighting the front lines in others.
"Decolonize your circuit board" deserved a far, far greater response than merely mashing the like button.
I've been reading Cynical Theories, and it shows that kind of stuff really exists.
Btw, yes, that author is a nutcase but he seems pretty reasonable in this book.
Central Southern Northern State -- woohoo! Gooooooo Wafflers!
non-elite Jesuit school? don't ever tell anyone who teaches at one you characterized them like this.
You might also be seeing a difference based on the fact that most "elite" schools are private, and many less elite schools are government-sponsored. State schools are far more limited in how much they can restrict speech, because any formal restriction on speech by a state school is a restriction by the government, so they can get hit with First Amendment claims. There are certainly some state schools that try to get around this as much as they can (looking at you, Berkeley/UCLA), but generally speaking their lawyers will rein them in after a certain point.
One can hope.
As I watched the conniption fits unfold last week, I couldn't find it in me to get worked up about it anymore. Behavior like that is beneath contempt. My experience suggests more and more people are noticing
There's some variant of 'crying wolf' going on.
I don't know anything about the Wesleyan controversy, but the reaction to the NYT op-ed seems to prove the point. If there were no threat to open discourse in our culture, nobody would care about that op-ed at all. Most of us would not even know it was written. Why are journalists *so threatened* by this idea? Why is there so much vitriol? Do these people really not see the contradiction, or is there just so much pressure to say the right thing publicly they won't let themselves consider what's staring them in the face?
"cancel culture isn't real and anyone who thinks otherwise should be immediately fired from their jobs"
That man is quite possibly my most hated pundit out there. He's just the worst. How he ever caught on as a "debunker" is beyond me.
I couldn't stomach the smugness either, even when I agreed with them. I stopped listening after a half dozen episodes.
I really wish progressives would have the self-awareness to realize how they sound to conservatives when they communicate in this way, presuming their goal is actually to change conservative minds (and not just farm likes from people who already agree with them). I've seen so many videos about policy issues where I agree 100% with the policy proposals but cringe at the seemingly-obligatory "omg Americans are so stupid, Europeans have been doing things the right way forever, why can't we get our shit together, you're so dumb for wanting to keep things the way you're comfortable with" delivery style (example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcqah8U_uKA)
Dear god, that video. I made it about 10 seconds.
We have like 250,000 guys like that in Brooklyn. Free-range. Unfortunately there are laws against shooting them. It would be a mercy killing tbh.
I tried listening to his new podcast, Maintenance Phase. Couldn't make it 5 minutes before bowing out.
Maybe he’s nasty, brutish, and short.
I've heard this referred to as "The Law of Merited Impossibility": https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-law-of-merited-impossibility/
Exactly
"cancellations will continue until morale improves"
Those are 1 & 2. 3 is, “cancel culture is good, AKSHULLY”
I didn't know how actually when used that way was spelled. Thanks.
We live to serve.
Don’t forget “While we all intuitively grasp the power dynamic where Walmart suing a small business is TECHNICALLy legal its terrible because of the the uneven reserves when it comes to critique/influence… but doh, is this <critique a politician, public figure> not CANCEL culture? How about this <very crummy but TECHNICALLY legal thing> it technically is legal!!” Wow it’s too inscrutable and complicated so therefore it’s a mystery!”
The response to this is generally to adopt a stance that verbally berating, name-calling, organizing in an attempt to get someone fired, etc represents a fuller commitment to free speech than that which is demonstrated by those who declare some of these things unhealthy / suspect / out of bounds.
I agree with Freddie that free speech is not synonymous with the first amendment, and that a culture in which voicing commonly-held ideas publicly carries risks of social ostracism, job loss, blacklisting, and so forth cannot be described as a culture healthy to free speech.
I don't think I have anything add except: the weirdness of this behavior is what makes it so compelling and unnerving. We advance theories that are all a piece of the truth (projection, personal insecurity, job insecurity, coddling, post modernism, phones, identities, tribalism, conformity), and no explanation feels like a completely satisfying answer.
Stupid question: is this a shame-based vs. guilt-based vs. fear-based culture thing? At some point, young people were inculcated into a shame-based culture? And the rest of us are guilt-based, or something?
IDK, just looking for alternative explanations. Maybe these are just outdated anthropological distinctions.
I think a lot of it is fear of being out-grouped, so mostly fear. But they do it to themselves, they aren't just thinking what they think and then faking it to get the job or the grade or the client or whatever. Some people of course keep their true opinions off social media because they know the score and want to remain employed, but they're not the ones spearheading the denunciations/punishments.
if you are afraid of the group, I think that's a shame based culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt%E2%80%93shame%E2%80%93fear_spectrum_of_cultures
Because if we don't value acceptance by the group then we are ruled by shame? OK. That's certainly the weapon they want to deploy, apart from the actual firing etc. Very often a defender will say, of a particular canceled person, that they have plenty of money or are still working, so there is nothing to complain about, and this of course ignores the whole shunning, "you're garbage/toxic/trash" aspect to it, as though it doesn't exist. That's the part they value the most -- they call it "accountability" -- but they simultaneously say the recipient isn't really suffering. It's like Rumsfeld saying stress positions and waterboarding aren't torture. Then why are you doing it?
That's really true. I originally got onto this idea because I read weird substack today that was all about letting go of shame so that we could better wrestle with ourselves when we are "called out," but the author never stopped to consider where the shame came from. And of course that answer is: the Left creates shame, and then tells you that it isn't what you are supposed to feel.
Makes no sense.
I’m ask just tired of the “So she’s pissed that she wasn’t praise??” as if someone who can bang out a reasonably good op-ed is truly operating at the brainrot superficial level (and wouldn’t already know that any hint of “wahhh” is going to work very hard against them and get them dismissed).
If she wanted attention/to throw a tantrum instead of being sincere why would she send the op-Ed to the NYT instead of of some culturally dramatic right-wing publication?!? It’s just a hot-air caricature
I think it annoys them that the right wins on “the principle of this matters” but journalists don’t care about if this hurts them, silences discussion yet they might just see that conceding “yeah this isn’t good we should do better” is ceding some ground (possibly?) as if it somehow is a “win” for the other side to admit that the right was accurately noticing/discussing this censorious mood (despite it being super obvious so it’s not some magic trick) and so instead they just “God I can’t believe this fragile horseshit!”
Journalists who work for a paywall-subscribe publication that leaves them more at the mercy of their readership also know they can’t really go WRONG with responding with “wow can you believe these awful people <that you already dislike, dear reader!>” and so there’s no professional benefit in taking the argument seriously if your readers prefer that you stir the pot and dismiss.
The incident in the article is bad, same with the one involving Charles Murray. Part of it is 'kids will be kids', part a willingness to indulge kids too much in the short term while losing sight of the big picture, imo.
My theory of the internet, though, is it works on a backlash^n model, where each wave triggers a counter-reaction, and the NYT piece over-corrected. They were insinuating there should be free speech without accountability or criticism ("without shaming ..."), and that's dumb. There's an inability there to separate the wheat from the chaff, the good-faith criticism of 'cancel culture' from the bad.
That whole 'backlash'n model' ... in the physical world, this means focused energy is being added to the waves, causing them to become larger-stronger.
This is the business model of social media, focus the eyes onto things which will excite the user, cause them some aggravation, get them incensed enough, they'll become more focused on your product. There's probably a tie-in with slot machine programming models too.
"is that us?"
Criticism: yes. Accountability: no.
You're in favor of people yelling 'fire' in crowded theaters?
Accountability is what makes it work. Cuts down on trolling and s***-posting, too.
Trolling and shit posting are constitutionally protected. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is not.
The problem with accountability is who gets to decide who will be held accountable?
"The problem with accountability is who gets to decide who will be held accountable?"
Ideally, the marketplace of ideas and opinions. I agree there's gatekeeping in that direction, but backlash ...
Backlash in the sense of somebody else disagreeing with you? Fine. But any other type of repercussion is fascist.
No, backlash against the 'cancel culture' itself, which expands the set of ideas and opinions that won't be 'prosecuted'. Think the recent Rogan controversy was a sea change.
"But any other type of repercussion is fascist." Again, you're dealing out absolutes. If someone is tweeting racial slurs every 3rd word, they're going to get filtered. That comes back to the company's value proposition. And markets do #darwin, too.
Nitpicking here, because I understand your point and agree. But technically, the "yelling fire..." trope is not accurate. Legal types hate it because it is not at all a real thing, it was a flimsy off-hand remark within a broader point being made within a SCOTUS opinion. And worse, the quote was used in an opinion that unanimously sided with the government to prosecute WWI anti-war protestors. Soon after the opinion was gutted, by some of the same justices, who realized they had opened the floodgates to possible 1A protection erosion.
https://abovethelaw.com/2021/10/why-falsely-claiming-its-illegal-to-shout-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-distorts-any-conversation-about-online-speech/
Very interesting. By coincidence I saw a post just the other day laying out the nine or so categories of speech that are not constitutionally protected and I was wondering where the "fire" trope would fit. I will have to read that article later.
Yes. Here's my anodyne reply on Twitter to one Adam Davidson who's spent that last few days railing against that editorial: "This is not complicated. There are any number of *legitimate* policy debates—e.g. how much affirmative action, where, and for whom; or trans people in sports and prisons; or criminal justice reform—that many people are afraid to opine on in certain settings. That fear helps no one." That anyone who actually *lives* in this country could disagree with that is insane. And of course, when those who feel censored take their revenge in the privacy of the voting booth, these same people are shocked, shocked.
Electability is the last thing on their minds. The distaste at having to do retail politics, the actual work of associating w/ the impure, i.e. people who think differently. Let alone winning office and having to horse-trade, which is how laws are made. Ah, but going viral is *chef’s kiss*
Yes the Argus incident was very important. (and BLM seems to have had some integrity problems of late).
Campus papers have deteriorated nationwide. They want to be the mini-me of the NYT/Atlantic/Slate and are thus unreadable in their sure-footed following of their betters. They want the admiration of the "NPR tote bag set" (that's so funny). They want other people in media to see them as cool and smart and that other thing you said. But if I want the full monty I can read the NYT, not my campus paper.
I did a thing. I wrote abt the need for libraries to care abt the white working class in an academic journal. I wasn't attacked, I was just ignored and low metrics....which in academia is like being shunned. That's ok for me where I am. I don't care abt being cool and I was tenured long ago, ...but for a person on tenure track they need broader academe to vote them in the club. And right now that "broader academe" is not admitting those who don't fall in line. Krupskaya would be so proud. [source on Krupskaya & Soviet libraries as tools of the state meant to indoctrinate as well as educate: Richardson, John V., Jr. “The Origin of Soviet Education for Librarianship: The Role of Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, Lyubov’ Borisovna Khavkina-Hamburger, and Genrietta K. Abele-Derman.” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 41, no. 2 (2000): 106-128.}
Yeah, I'm so glad I'm in my 60s now...
I was saddened when I read this: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/12/30/berkeley-rubric/
I think it might be positive if someone was involved, but not required. People have different areas of commitment. That is extreme.
You've touched on this many times: the lol nothing matters posture. These things do matter, for all the reasons you've outlined. It's a pathology in media culture that's worsening an already life-threatening censoriousness in broader American culture. And pretending something doesn't matter that much--whether campus climate or inflation trouble or whatever--is deeply insulting to normal people who aren't trying to Be Cool, to whom these things matter a great deal.
I think in this case the "lol nothing matters" posture is not ironic detachment, but rather it is a way to avoid confronting an argument one does not want to confront. It's a form of rationalization as to why the person doesn't need to consider the argument. They presumably do not have a direct response, so they minimize the relevance of it. It's not "lol nothing matters"; rather, it is "what YOU want to discuss doesn't matter because it's not a relevant consideration" which is not ironic distance. Rather, it is a deliberate counter-argument, and its value is predicated on if there actually *is* relevance, which Freddie has argued to establish above.
Yes, great point. That’s why it’s so insulting. The concerns of normies are stupid or of no real consequence. I’ve never felt more like a normie than since my kids started school and my main aim is to be a good parent.
Hm, I think I did a poor job wording my imagined paraphrasing of the dismissal ("what YOU want to discuss..."). I didn't mean that your ideas were dismissed because they were *yours*, but because they considered the idea itself irrelevant, irrespective of its source.
I think it's a valid argument to make, in the sense that if the original claim were truly irrelevant, it would be a valid to dismiss that claim. However, Freddie made the case in his piece that the claim *is* relevant.
Also, the relevancy angle suffers from the fact that (outside of court) it seems to be made primarily when one cannot address the substance of the original claim. Basically, in most cases, it's a weak argument and requires substantiation in the form of "even if the original claim were true, it wouldn't change anything."
Yes. The elites are simply dripping with sanctimony and condescension for anyone they consider below them or nonconforming these days. It used to be polite etiquette to hide your narcissistic thoughts and be gracious to lesser souls. Apparently, the gloves are off. They are so sure of their superiority that they don't even have to try to be a little human or grant anyone the benefit of the doubt. It reminds of nothing so much as the excesses that presaged the French Revolution.
Gotta remember that the "elites" are a very specific group defined in many ways by their own imagination than necessarily by money. "You, too, can be an elite for the bargain price of an undergraduate degree and the right attitudes and opinions!" I think that's how we get so many "new" elites whose positions seem so contemptuous toward the very people and places they just left five minutes ago.
It’s a bizarre mongrel breed where “Nothing matters ergo I’m cool” meets spittle-flecked hatred of “TERFs” (etc etc). As in the article saying if you have a TERF at your T’Giving dinner, throw the turkey at her. (I shit you not.)
And the two potentiate each other, the former lending deniability. “LOL we didn’t mean it, it was just performative.”
Almost as though social media have stripped away the repressive mechanisms making it possible for people who disagree to live together, the higher mental functions. The return of the repressed!
Link for those interested: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2020/11/23/is-there-a-terf-at-your-thanksgiving-gathering/
Thx. I found it too dispiriting to look for. Especially because those of us in the NYC area remember an incident a few decades ago where some imbeciles dropped a frozen turkey onto a woman’s windshield from an overpass, shattering most of the bones in her face. Throwing a turkey has scant comic value.
You are talking about people who don't have the mental capacity to grasp the obvious fact that just because Putin isn't a good guy, it doesn't automatically mean Zelensky is. Of course, that includes the US congress too.
It's amazing how many issues you can clear up when you realize that sometimes both sides are pretty bad.
Clear up in your mind, but in reality a hopeless muddle
I'm just cynical enough to notice that when junior staffers at the NYT wanted a senior reporter involved with the News Guild fired, the editors were glad to comply; and now that he is gone, suddenly the editorial board signals that it's no longer interested in catering to the political positions held by those junior staffers.
One of the big problems with these college brouhahas seems to be that people graduate from them with the idea that as workers, they will have some real moral authority over their workplaces. They do not realize that at college, they are customers -- and people will put up with way more from customers than they will ever put up with from employees. Activist employees who don't realize this act as useful idiots who only increase the employers' power over the workers.
Thanks again, Freddie. A DSM entry is the perfect way to describe this stuff.
I've been left-of-center my whole life. By all accounts, I should be raging against Republicans every day. But for some reason, these woke censorious Mean Girl liberals piss me off more. I mean they viscerally upset me and send me into a white hot rage. It's the haughtiness of it all I think, the attitude that says "I'm so superior that I know what's better for you than you do."
What made them like this? Was it just Trump's victory that broke their brains? Or was it the nature of online echo chambers in general (particularly Twitter)?
It has to be social media (and especially twitter). Back in the day, when someone had a controversial take there might be dueling op-eds, or letters to the editor, or more recently blogs, but there was basically always at least a day between contrasting viewpoints being shared. Now an article could be a trending topic on twitter with swarms of haters without hours. Backlash to the backlash to the backlash within 6 hours. Our minds weren't made for this shit.
Our minds love gossip and status-setting more than anything else.
Actual recorded anthropology data.
Too bad.
The internet did it. It has made aggrieved brittle narcissists of us all.
I feel like we were still doing okay for a good bit after the internet existed. For my money, the catalyst is some combo of smart phones and social media. Most especially, I pin it on the way smart phones shifted us into never being truly "offline", and the way social media pointedly rewards the most shitty, shallow, and narcissistic human impulses and behaviors.
Sitting at an actual computer, using a mouse and keyboard, has a self-limiting aspect for most people that tiny pocket computers don't have. Smart phones have, in fact, a nearly opposite effect -- their constant presence and endless notifications encourage constant use.
Similarly, using a regular website or a more specialized forum, without likes and all the rest, doesn't encourage drama and self-aggrandizement nearly as efficiently or directly as social media does. By way of analogy, if the pre-existing internet (broadly speaking) had been oxy pills, smart phones + social media was fentanyl.
I disagree with the others. It wasn't the Internet. I'm 47. When I was in school, they were making the move from schools as places of education and training grounds for the real world (so socialization for dealing with a diverse world with diverse opinions and ways of being) to what they have become, places of cultivating self-esteem and a place where opinions are just as important as facts and reality. That's what I blame.
I don't know-I graduated in 2008 from a relatively prestigious school, and a very progressive one. The Internet existed but twitter didn't. I honestly don't recall feeling stifled against going against the grain at all. Neither was there a ton of emotional hand holding.
You were lucky. The iphone was only a year old back in ‘08 and our cellular grid was slow and patchy. Hard to imagine any of these echo chambers having the same distorting influence if smartphones don’t become a ubiquitous and blazing fast conduit to an infinite firehose of opinion and social feedback loops.
The iphone does seem to have been the precipitating event for lots of bad stuff (eg depression among teens)
I'm talking about primary and secondary school, and I was an adjunct in the late 90s and early 2000s at a local state university. The students coming out of the high schools thought that it was enough to simply give an opinion. They didn't need facts to back it up. You were asking too much if you were asking for facts. Critical thinking skills were virtually nonexistent. The Internet and Twitter would have been harmless had we still taught that facts were facts, opinions were opinions, skepticism is vital (especially of yourself and "experts" and most importantly when dealing with "news" sources and politicians and narratives), and it's important to listen to others even if you vehemently disagree. The seeds of this problem were planted when the computer was still in an infancy. The computer was more like pouring water and fertilizer on a patch of noxious weeds that already existed. They just grew bigger and faster.
I witnessed the mobbing and shouting down of conservative speakers when I was in college, in 1980.
I don't think its specifically the internet or college. I think there is a weaponized component to the left's culture war movements that sets a ceiling to those movements as they won't win over the mainstream, and it gets all the media figures on the left to fall in line because it really only works on them. They aren't able to cancel Fox News but they can close down any left leaning publication that isn't 'woke' enough.
Same. I've never voted for a Republican in my life, and for a long time in my adult life probably would have been considered far-left. But I've crossed some sort of Rubicon where I hate Keith Olbermann with far more intensity than I can summon for Tucker Carlson.
I think that progressive excesses are probably the best thing the RNC has going for it...
When Bree Newsome said it was normal for teenagers to have knife fights, I thought, she has to be on the GOP payroll.
And this reminds me of another bone that should be eminently throwable: riots are bad. I’m thinking of that guy who got fired from a think tank for linking to a paper (by an African-American!) saying Democrats do better when people associate them with peaceful assembly as opposed to riots. “There are no riots!” but, “riots are good actually.”
David Shor, I believe.
Yes, thx.
I think a lot of this is that we have higher expectations of those with whom we typically identify, as well as assuming that they will be willing to at least listen to us, and when they vilify us rather than listen, it's a betrayal. (I'm sure they see our questioning of the orthodoxy, making them look bad in front of the Republicans, as a betrayal as well.)
It's not either:or. I subscribe to the WUSA Capitol Riots Newsletter and a little thrill every time another Jan 6 criminal gets justice. And I can still champion free speech among my friends, even though it is increasingly unpopular.
https://www.wusa9.com/riots
I am old enough to remember when the shoe was definitely on the other foot. I guess you "stick it to the Man" until you are the Man.
Matt Yglesias said something yesterday about how when religion was more common, piety and orthodoxy were generally the realms of conservatives, and iconoclastic/rebel types were to the left. With the decline of religion and the rise of social justice orthodoxy, now the subversive impulse mostly comes from the right.
Social justice orthodoxy reminds me of a present day Reverend Ike in that you can get your just rewards in this life and not have to wait for the by and by.
Subversiveness does seem to swing side to side every 25 years or more. This lack of allowing for heterodoxy is what drove me away from the left in the 70's, when the Maoists took over and what had been healthy discussions became neo-religious statements of absolute good vs evil.
Yes. The social justice movement that we know now began burgeoning in the 70s. Post-modernism planted the seeds but they took root in the 70s. https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/why-did-critical-race-theory-emerge?s=r
Key takeaway: “Indeed, a review of the legal studies literature suggests that when CRT “questions the very foundations of the liberal order,” this is no grad-school intellectual exercise, but rather a strategy for transforming our entire legal system into one that privileges group rights over individual rights. If you want to transform the foundations of American society (without using rifles), you need a theory of the law, and you need a farm system for training federal judges. (Just ask the Federalist Society.) This, in a nutshell, is why CRT emerged from legal studies.”
Imagine - training future lawyers and judges to subvert the rights of individuals in favor of group rights. What an elegant coup of our entire legal system based on individual rights. Who needs a revolution when you can sneak it in through the back doors of academic and criminal justice systems? Just incredible.
Couple that with the soon-to-be-upon-us social credit system and surveillance state/tech industry alliance, and even Beria, Mao, Che or Muller would be envious. They'll already have the man, it'll be easy to find the crime.
Allowing this to happen is just one more F'd up legacy we boomers leave behind.
BTW, serendipitously, just one day after I posted this, this topic showed up on the Bari Weiss substack: https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-takeover-of-americas-legal-system?s=r Out of everything that is going on, I believe that this is the most serious. It has the potential to crush everything. If our system of laws no longer works to protect the individual, who are we?
And soon the circle will be complete.
IMHO that's retarded because I could still do plenty of irreverent stuff "from the Left". I just wouldn't get an audience for it. Nowadays if you wanna do "irreverent" or "non-SJW" left-flavored stuff, you have to be doing it very seriously, bring receipts for everything, and still be prepared to take some flame.
>A DSM entry is the perfect way to describe this stuff.
I disagreed with that throwaway line and its thrust, and not just because I think it's lazy and crass to use the specter of mental illness as an insult. It's a misapprehension of the problem. I'm just using this remark as a launching point here, so sorry to ignore the rest of your remarks, KW.
"You have to understand this to understand our media class: the number one priority in their entire lives, above and beyond literally any other, is to earn insider status with other people in media. That’s it. That is their lodestar, their true north. They want other people in media to see them as cool and smart and fuckable, and most of all they want to have the right opinions, the opinions that the group doesn’t laugh at."
What is being described here is your typical status-obsessed human being, in one particular milieu. You can find similar complaints in others: Academics don't care about truth, they care about prestige and publishing. Politicians don't care about people, they care about re-election and career advancement. Do some people care more about status than others? Of course. Do media people as a group care more about status as a group than maybe homemakers? I'd buy it. But nothing is going on in the mind of a journalist vis a vis gaining status that isn't going on in everyone else's. Everyone, all the time, wants intensely to be viewed in high esteem and to gain rather than lose social standing and resources. They aren't running some special malign software, this is just human stuff, albeit the kind we like to shield from our own awareness. People whose ethical convictions truly outstrip this basic self-preservation behavior are the actual outliers.
But if today's media types are out on the far end of the distribution here, then surely the structures and incentives of the industry acting on these universal tendencies in human psychology make them so, rather than their individual pathologies. And since journalists typically do not have mental illnesses whose treatment would engender more prosocial behavior, and since status-obsession isn't something it's reasonable to try to remedy in the human race as a whole, we have to turn to those structures and incentives for remedies.
And since it's clearly not the case that "the absolute madness this anodyne NYT op-ed provoked among the NPR tote bag set should be listed in the DSM," the line reduces to "they're crazy like an actual crazy person," which is sad but not surprising coming from another, actual crazy person.
I was with you until the end. I have bipolar illness and I don’t think it interferes with my ability to think and reason, at least when I am not manic. It takes lot of careful thinking not to project. It’s another part of the human condition, along with ambition.
I also have BP1, and when I referred to both myself (which is why I wrote "coming from another") and Freddie as "crazy people" in the closing remark I didn't mean to be disparaging in the least. I realize most people don't adopt that vernacular in a neutral or even affectionate way as I do and I could have been more careful about being misread there, especially since I was drawing attention to the disparaging use in the first place.
*Edit: And looking back over that closing line again, I want to clarify that the reason it isn't surprising to hear it from "another crazy person" is because so many people with mental illness struggle with self-loathing and think they deserve the poor treatment they have received, and not because of irrationality or any other character flaw of the mentally ill.
Curiosity question: Can you explicate the "structures and incentives" in media that you are referencing? What does this look like?
I could try but I'd be speculating more than reporting; I'm not nearly as familiar with the industry as others are, and in fact Freddie has detailed a lot of it in his work. I'm making a "If you're looking for rare earth metals, dig a mine instead of building a hot air balloon," level-of-analysis kind of argument, which I think is useful advice even if I don't know where best to start the digging on a particular continent.
But what do structures and incentives look like in general? What people are rewarded and punished for, professionally and socially. What kinds of traits and behaviors lead to success or failure within a given institution. If dunking on randos on twitter does offer more professional clout than double-checking your sources, then you'll see more dunking on randos on twitter over time and less source-checking, because of the natural human tendency to care more about attaining professional clout than about abstracted ideals like integrity. In repairing these structures you want people's best and worst tendencies to align behaviorally, so that chasing professional clout and acting with principle don't come into a conflict that principles cannot win.
Thanks. I did an end-run around this issue by owning my own biz for the past 20+ years and I was just curious. I'll do some research on it.
Personally I still hate Republicans. Cuz sure, let's repeal the ruling codifying a right to privacy and for married hetero couples to use contraception. Cool cool cool. https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/blackburn-denounces-supreme-court-contraception-ruling-1965-rcna20862
Fucking Bushiviks.
Have you ever read Roe v. Wade? I did in law school and was blown away. The ruling relied on such a tenuous connection to the Constitution that as a pro-choice law student, I was deeply troubled by the ruling and thus began my conversion to the stance that Roe was wrongly decided and should have been left to the states. I encourage you to read the entire Roe v. Wade ruling (and Griswold), not just rely on articles that are filled with partisan outrage. You may very well come to the same conclusion you do now, but grappling with the convoluted rationale of the right to contraception and ultimately abortion as a federal constitutional right. Saying the public supports a particular view is not the same thing as such view being a federal constitutional right.
It existed before Trump, so it wasn't Trump, he was just grist for their mill.
The "real world" that these students are going to enter is one where political correctness is overwhelmingly unpopular.
https://hiddentribes.us/
It's one where the Democrats are already seeing massive electoral losses precisely because of their attachments to woke ideology. Historically the last time this happened a center left champion, Bill Clinton, emerged to slay the PC dragon by metaphorically killing Sista Souljah and literally killing Ricky Ray Rector, banishing the beast back to the ghetto of college campuses for thirty years or so. I imagine the crackup this time will be equally catastrophic.
I maintain this is the real element the internet plays in this. It creates a sense that these people's outlooks are far more prevalent than they actually are. They're not faced with how unpopular this way of acting is and they keep upping the ante.
As you note, the reaction will likely be ugly. Reactions rarely come in a measured form.
One might go so far as to call it a backlash!
Will it actually be ugly? I mean, riots are always possible, I suppose, but the New Left is so amazingly weak that I don't think they'll actually do much of anything except continue to complain on Twitter. And cops are always available to stop riots.
I mean that what happened to Ricky Ray Rector was ugly. And shameful. And inhumane.
"And cops are always available to stop riots."
I find this take literally unbelievable from an adult who's lived through the past five years. Leaving aside whether or not they physically can - and in large parts of the country there is massive doubt about this - whether or not they're deployed to do so is a political concern, not a physical one. Regime-sanctioned riots took place all over the Midwest and Pacific North-West for months.
If it's politically convenient they'll happen again. Bear in mind the Rittenhouse shooting - who was out that night, what were they doing and why, and how did Rittenhouse end up on his back firing upward, and from whom did he run after he did so?
Riots might be bottom-up but the precipitants and the permission is absolutely top-down, and people had better get used to that fact with a quickness because any 'reaction' isn't going to take place without a far more potent backlash from the organized Left.
For a contrary take (claiming that wokeness is winning among those under 30), see
https://www.city-journal.org/cancel-culture-generational-divide
This was a very interesting tidbit. That said, I'm always cautious about reading too much into the opinions of young people because as us non-young people know, they frequently change as we age.
If I had to bet, I'd assume the near future will be more-PC than it was in 00s but less PC than the Twitterati would like.
I actually think this is pretty common. If we're being honest, we definitely say less casually racist things than our grandparents. And if we're being really honest, most of us use far less homophobic and ableist language now than we did in our youth (yes, I know, no one here EVER used the R word or called things they didn't like "gay," we were all perfect angels and that wasn't consideres broadly acceptable in 2005). Which frankly I think is good and helps build a more inclusive society! But this still feels like a bubble waiting to pop.
But the electoral losses are real. All that's required in my view for history to repeat itself is for woke politics to become so toxic that the D's suffer significant electoral losses. The complicating factor is the 2024 presidential race: If Trump is elected in that will be the stake in the heart but the Democrats will (probably?) have the advantage of incumbency.
The pessimist in me says that they'll simply use that as just one more reason why the Republicans -- and everyone who didn't vote for them -- is racist and bad, simply reconfirming their own moral rectitude and reinforcing that they should *not* listen to disagreements.
But maybe the desire to get elected would win out. The fact that I'm not really sure disturbs me: would they rather be defiantly moral or change the world for the better?
See, I have a slightly different take on it. Inside the party there is a segment of true believers and there is a separate segment of political operators. When the losses get too bad the centrists will win out and they will purge the opposition--the cadres of young wokeists that David Shor likes to talk about.
By then it will be too late: the right has learned all about illiberal power-preservation techniques like gerrymandering, district-variable voting opportunities, etc etc etc.
That stuff is a never ending arms race that is just as toxic and dangerous as the military competition between great powers like the US and China, or Russia.
And they will conflate wokeness with the left/Berniebros, same as they used it as a weapon against him when they thought that would help.
The Republican slur is that if you vote for Democrats, the woke people will be running the government. The party has a lot of centrist voters, but the political operators, especially the up and coming ones, are themselves true believers, and they have been very busy in this administration.
It's not a slur, it's a fact (and I say that as a 66-yr-old lifelong Democrat). Every Democrat is in favor of the Equality Act that privileges individually self-determined, infinitely changeable "gender identity" over biological sex. Democrats are also all-in with Kendian neo-racism (eg Biden choosing a SCOTUS nominee only of a particular race). As a classical liberal philosophically, I'm appalled.
Of course they would rather be defiantly moral. We already saw this in 2016, when the left largely stayed on the sidelines in the POTUS election, because HRC was too corporate/centrist/whatever. And yet: abortion rights were very clearly on the line. Very few on the left cared enough to hold their noses and work to get her elected.
This dynamic faded enough in 2020 to get Biden elected, but after that, we see the "progressive" left declaring all sorts of good things not good enough for them, and so nothing gets done. Meanwhile Democrats continue to push divisive stuff like the Equality Act, that would privilege self-determined "gender identity" over biological sex, and make it illegal to bar any man who claims (in that momemt) to be a woman from any womens space (locker room, prison, domestic violence shelter) or competition (professional tennis match with prize money). I think any Republican who wants to run on pointing this out repeatedly would win in any but the deepest blue districts.
I would argue that Covid defeated Trump, not turnout or political platforms. And I think it's critical to understand that because it was very real and very significant ramifications for 2024.
I certainly agree that the covid situation was one of the things that contributed to Trump's defeat. ("Things are bad, so change is good.") Ruy Teixeira https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com argues pretty persuasively that the Democrats are just bleeding support everywhere, due both economic issues ("Things are not getting better, so change is good.") and cultural issues. Alas, I see the Democrats doubling down rather than changing course, at least through their crushing defeats in 2022 and 2024.
Sometimes I find culture war conversations tiresome, but at the same time I simply find free speech to be an incredibly important issue. It honestly kills me how many seemingly smart people tut tut at any acknowledgment that conversation and journalism are incredibly stifled right now. I saw takes (from people I know IRL, not just randos on twitter) about how basically, as long as you're a good person, you have nothing to worry about. It reminds me of the (mostly) conservative response to the Patriot Act-sure we've lost rights, but we're on the good side, it won't affect us. And the yawn in response to Snowden's surveillance expose--we're all tracked anyway, but they'll never come for us. I could go on, but I'm genuinely perplexed how easily people have rolled over for all this.
I blame "the customer is always right" mindset we in American hold more important then any constitutional right.
In my youth I worked for a insufferable German, in his restaurant making said food.
The thing I loved about him was if customers were being rude or beyond stupid, he'd tell em off. 'The sauerbraten is sour?' "Can't you read?"
In a world of Yelp and Google reviews that sadly isn't possible anymore.
These kids aren't students, they are customers and they are always right. For the price they are paying I don't blame em, but this all will get worst unless the core issue isn't challenged.
I think there's definitely a problem with universities pivoting to a "selling degrees" model, at least based on conversations with friends who are professors (and not unbiased).
But I strongly agree that anyone who willingly buys German food deserves to be mocked and ridiculed.
No to pickled herring? For shaaaaame!
With tuition rates at $50,000 plus for these “spaniversities,” how can they not adopt a selling model?
Of course you feel that way: you haven’t had my Oma’s sauerbraten.
Apparently you've never had: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/55224/kaese-spaetzle/ or https://ilovegermanfood.com/recipes/rahmschnitzel/
Maybe we should reframe university as the cross fit gym of the mind. People seem far more amenable to paying for that kind of rigor than pure intellectual rigor.
So you go for a couple weeks and then never again? Sounds good to me
😂
It's not "just college." Many of the places we're seeing this craziness are the places that educate that cliched "future leader." It's a very dangerous situation to allow these students to throw tantrums like toddlers and get their way, which is what it strikes me they are doing. It does not bode well for letting them be in charge of the nation one day, especially given the outsized role this country plays in the world. If we were a tiny country with no influence, this ridiculousness would be one thing, but given what we are, for the worse, it is completely unacceptable.
Can you imagine one of these kids - later in life in an important role - on the phone with someone like Putin?
That's what nightmares are made of.