This is precisely my point: what difference does it make if ICE or other agencies do that work? The problem is the brutality of the policies, not the brutality of the agency that enforces them.
Freddie, if I may say ... this is what pleases and informs; the variety of your subjects, the fluency of your prose, the richness of your vocabulary, the wit of your observations. I could add to this list. Political activism not so much.
Freddie, I found you through the podcast Blocked and Reported (by Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog), and man oh man your writing has done so much for my mental health.
I'm a long time left-of-center person and have no desire to ever look in the GOP's direction. But goddamn it do I hate social media-fueled woke culture and cancel culture. I hate all the mobbing and shaming. And I REALLY HATE how most arts criticism (especially movies and TV) has devolved into this fucking circus where the only point of art is to express the "correct" message and how anything else is "problematic" at best or harmful at worst.
I've been driven insane by how seemingly the only mainstream people speaking out against this crap are right wing. We badly, desperately need actual left wing people to do the same. Thank you thank you THANK YOU for doing what you do.
Re: arts criticism, my group was having a pretty good laugh at this article about how Tina Fey's new character has better feminist credentials than Liz Lemon, which was clearly written by someone who watched every season of 30 Rock without ever understanding it at all: https://slate.com/culture/2021/05/tina-fey-girls5eva-30-rock-feminism.html
I don't know about you, KW, but re: cancel culture, it's funny to me the people who deny cancel culture exists...are the ones who perpetuate it and revel in seeing people get deplatformed. In a fandom I was a part of for a while, a decent-sized blogger (and now author) was under fire because some arguably horrific things he said about trans men and women in the military. However, the people who blew this up had been holding onto it for a while and waited for his book to come out. A book that had NOTHING to do with trans men and women. Simply interviews with different people about...giant...monster movies. While I can't endorse what he said, the act of trying to deplatform him was stupid, especially since, behind the scenes, one of the people admitted to having said some incredibly racist and stupid stuff in his past, but he went back and scrubbed his profile so this would never happen to him. ***As if that makes him a better person.***
The whole thing is astronomically stupid, and yes, you're right. The fact it seems to be, largely, those on the right who speak out against it only seems to make the actual "cancel/call-out/shame culture" mentality stronger.
I'm a right-leaning independent who finds the writing superb but primarily subscribed for the cogent and original articles pertaining to race issues. I agree it's urgent that Democrats speak out against Critical Race Theory and cancel culture. And FdB, you probably already know, there's a much larger audience for your writings.
I'm not sure you were aware, and I bet many people have made similar analogies over the years, but Eric Weinstein used kayfabe similarly:
"Kayfabrication (the process of transition from reality towards Kayfabe) arises out of attempts to deliver a dependably engaging product for a mass audience while removing the unpredictable upheavals that imperil participants. As such Kayfabrication is a dependable feature of many of our most important systems which share the above two characteristics such as war, finance, love, politics and science."
Weinstein originally popularized it, and has played with the idea a lot over the years. Worth checking out, especially in light of the capital protests.
We can dismiss it as fantasy and bullshit, but need to remember that Pro wrestling has resulted in many more deaths than "real" fighting like UFC.
But Freddie’s a better writer than Eric. The concept is presented more clearly here. (Yes, I know that sounds like a kiss up. But while I appreciate the Weinstein brothers there’s something slightly off about both of them. I trust FDB more. Don’t know why. I could be wrong.)
[I'm just trying to complement what you wrote; not argue against it.]
I didn't read KC's comment as claiming differently; just commenting about the origin (or earlier popularization) of the term/idea.
But I think translation/adaptation is a fascinating and wonderful 'genre' of art/craft anyways and, often I think, the 'Ur-Example' of something [see: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UrExample] isn't always the 'Trope Maker' or 'Trope Codifier'.
And not only is it enjoyable/interesting for the audience, it's often very helpful for the writer/creator. I wish I'd known as a kid that it's an entirely acceptable and sensible to trace over some other art as part of general practice drawing/illustrating/painting! (I always thought I was 'cheating'.)
I have an easier time understanding Bret than Eric. They are both obviously smart, and Eric (possibly also Bret) grew up with learning disabilities or dyslexia, not sure, and was wrongly thought to be academically deficient. Eric's brain might work in a different way. He cooks up complex and perhaps novel ideas, but can't for the life of him convey it in concise words digestible by the lay person. His friendship with Joe Rogan is hilarious because they could not be more different in how they communicate. The Rogan interview where Eric "describes" getting iced out of Harvard is incomprehensible.
I wish it were this simple, but it isn't. One substantial group with a significant percentage not in on the kayfabe is activist youth. They aren't sufficiently disillusioned yet. Experience with many, as well as my own past, suggests it. And they bring a lot of energy to these fights. There are also those incrementalists who understand but accept that a pound of rhetoric will get you a penny of change. And some of the changes passed by local governments are penny enough to them (however well or poorly thought out). As usual, there are multiple social forces at work, which is why the kayfabe that there is can't simply be dropped by mutual agreement.
The question is whether this generation's slice of activist youth will, like so many before them, mostly go on to relatively apolitical lives as liberal Democrats who don't get that involved and worry more about soccer practice than liberation.
"The question is whether this generation's slice of activist youth will, like so many before them, mostly go on to relatively apolitical lives as liberal Democrats who don't get that involved and worry more about soccer practice than liberation."
Well, that's part of the life cycle of activism, isn't it? Surely it's just as much of a fantasy to imagine that everyone involves themselves actively in politics throughout their lives, especially when the exhausting demands of work and family come into play, and to use that as a barometer for the "seriousness" of what activists today look like. Every generation's activists has tapped on the energies (and adolescent passions, and free time) of youth activists, even if those activists eventually age out of it. There'll be more of them to come. (Reminder that David Bowie wrote "Changes," with its line that the children who try to change their world are "immune to your consultation," an entire half-century ago!)
I don't disagree, but I think people are wandering pretty far away from what I'm actually talking about here: last year, in particular, we were not talking about life cycles of activism. We were talking about a wholly unique political awakening, a cleavage point in history after which nothing would be the same. And everyone has kind of quietly walked that back, in fits and parts and not especially comprehensively, and without introspection. If we're talking about life cycles of activism, fine! But I was told over and over again a year ago that what we were facing was precisely NOT the regular life cycle of activism.
Fair point, but the height of the pandemic also unleashed the "sky is falling, everything is different now" rhetoric from everyone, since the 100-year nature of global pandemics means that no one had living memory to advise otherwise. You're right that a reasonable commentator would have said "This will pass once we get a vaccine," but then remember also the level of vaccine denial that we were facing at the time, under a president whom it wasn't clear we were going to replace. Those energies have dissipated for sure, now that Biden and vaccine distribution have dramatically reduced the volume of pandemic-induced paranoia (save for the mask-forever moralizers that you've written elsewhere about).
Which is exactly the plot to WWE. They are always building up to the biggest and most important match in history which will drastically change everything. But of course it doesn't. Nobody actually wants that because then the show ends. They want the buildup over and over.
I watch WWE, AEW, and NJPW pretty regularly. Some of what is said in this post, and in these comments, is, I think, inaccurate. Would it be persnickety of me to bring that up? Or would that be taking the kayfabe metaphor too seriously? (I've felt the same way about Taibbi's use of WWE in Hate, Inc. and Eric Weinstein's use of kayfabe in the Edge.org essay.)
It might be taking the metaphor to far, but I'd be interested.
Most of my viewing was during the PG and Reality eras when Trump was involved. I remember when the Kayfabe became so real that real life WWE stock droped because of a story-line where Trump "buys" Raw, I think. So I likely take the metaphor too far. But I am convinced that Trump is an expert at Kayfabe.
I distinctly remember loads of talk last year about a New Civil Rights Era that was going to blow the last 40-50 years of stagnation on race away. A year later, and a few statues are gone, one cop got convicted of murder, Robin DiAngelo is very rich, and the NYT writes "Black" with a capital letter. Only the ultra-online can actually name the leaders of Black Lives Matter, and their one policy proposal that a punter on the street can name is "Defund the Police," which he overwhelmingly thinks is a disturbing idea.
Maybe there's a history yet to unfold from last summer, but right now it's difficult to argue that we're on our way to anything as consequential the Civil Rights Act or Voting Rights Act. I wonder how much of this "kayfabe" is desperation and despair at another chance for real reform going sour.
Well, the George Floyd Act would be a step in the right direction (I would claim a big step). It is almost unanimously supported by Democrats and unanimously opposed by Republicans.
If only there was a way to distinguish the two major parties! Then we could strongly support the one that's gets us closer to our goals, step by step, small or big.
I'm not sure it's all kayfabe, although I imagine much of it is, especially as you creep up the power ladder. I have encountered more than a few people who appear to be "true believers". Perhaps they are just exceptional actors, but it seems more likely to me that they are simply very passionate people who lack critical thinking skills and see no dissonance between their position six months ago and their position now because they don't have the mental skills to recognize the shift. They'll say they haven't given up on Defund, they're just shifting tactics because the "optics" have changed, or what-have-you, and then spin up reasons it's all the Republicans' fault. In my experience, it's like talking to a brick wall.
"In the long run we do have to think about more radical alternatives because there’s inherent violence in the cop-community relationship"
I know you have a million requests, but I'm curious if you'd be willing to expound upon this. I've seen a lot of people declaring we need 'radical' change in policing, yet none of them seem to know what that radical change is. I live in Minneapolis, and I've heard a lot of ballyhooing about "re-imagining what police are!", including from elected officials, and all of it is pseudo-academic feel-good nonsense without a single concrete policy proposal in sight. It seems to me a lot of people earnestly want policing to change but have no idea how to do this, and this would be fine except they're tearing down policing with nothing to replace it, and the fallout is devastating and falling almost entirely on the poorest communities.
It seems to me that violence is the point of police: modern states rely on being the sole source of legitimate force for their power, and this is true regardless of their government or economic system. If you're not willing to eventually resort to violence to enforce laws, you can't have laws. Many modern people are understandably disgusted by violence, but I don't see how violence can be wholly eliminated: for violence to be eliminated, we'd have to have a populace that is completely obedient. Looking at the history of mankind, achieving that seems like a stretch. We can do a lot with poverty alleviation, etc, but humans are and always have been emotional, violent creatures, and no social program is going to change human nature. (and that's before we get into the thorny problem of mental illness, or even of drug use. you cannot reason or bargain with people who have become wholly divorced from reality)
So I guess basically I'm wondering what's in your 'radical change' step, because what others have said boils down to "miraculously all humans become perfect model citizens and then we don't need police".
'I live in Minneapolis, and I've heard a lot of ballyhooing about "re-imagining what police are!", including from elected officials, and all of it is pseudo-academic feel-good nonsense without a single concrete policy proposal in sight"
Right and then reality intervened and dissolving the current police force turned into very modest budget cuts turned into, if I have this correct, calls for more police funding.
Yes, it's been a bit of a mess. The city council pledged to defund the police, then back-pedaled, saying they'd been strong-armed by activists into supporting defund when they didn't actually mean it. It kind of doesn't matter, though, at this point: the police force, which has struggled with staffing historically (note how many incidents in MN involve rookie or second-year officers?), had a bunch a bunch of officers resign or go on disability in the wake of the riots, bringing staffing critically low. The gun violence in some parts of the city is unreal; everyone knows someone who's been shot in those parts. We've had to "import" officers from surrounding states short-term.
Sounds like a mess. But if you want to know what real reform is don’t we have to start with drug laws & prison reform? It seems many European & Scandinavian countries are good at this. More restorative justice instead of retributive justice right?
I’m no expert but THAT stuff I’m still liberal about. While “Abolish the police” is just ducking retarded. (Apologies to retards.)
Yes, but can't we chew gum and walk at the same time? There's more than one person on the pay role to figure this shit out. We can work on drug laws & prison reform AND create reasonable changes to discourage police brutality, such as not running plates when pulling over people for forgetting to signal a lane change.
That's the reality of "defund the police" playing out. As you said, policing necessarily and by definition involves violence. What we can do, though, is redefine the parameters of what's an acceptable form of violence and under what circumstances. But that would require nuance and acceptance of unpalatable facts, like some people are violent and horrible and can't be trusted to self-regulate. Or that many if not a majority of police officers aren't mustache-twiddling power-trippers with no respect for human life. Or that there are loads of police officers who are also members of minority groups, who clearly consider policing a valid career choice.
You don't need to send a man with a gun out every time someone calls for government assistance. For instance, imagine there's a minor traffic accident. No one is injured, but everyone involved needs a report to submit to their insurance company. Why send a man with a gun out to that? Have some sort of a city traffic department that sends unarmed bureaucrats out to take the reports.
"Defund the police" does not mean "abolish the government's monopoly on violence." Of course violence can't be completely eliminated. Of course you would still send government agents with guns to calls like, say, reports of an active shooter. It's more about rethinking what kinds of requests for government assistance need lightly-trained men with guns, and what kind of calls for government assistance can be met with some other kind of government employee. The police are currently asked to do many, many things that they don't need to be doing.
But that's also the reason it was so effective. Most viral twitter hashtags work the same way. YesAllMen, etc.
If it's not controversial no one will care. But more importantly, as you point out, it results in a state of contradiction within you. You know you don't believe the literal meaning, but you use the slogan anyways because you think the cause is worth it. You know what you are saying is partly wrong but you are still saying it. This results in a much more powerful and defensive emotional response when you are challenged. It's also a stronger form of signalling. Something without contradiction like "lessPoliceViolence" doesn't have these properties.
No matter how quickly it spreads, It's not effective when 90 percent of the population, including the majority of the population it's intended to protect, find the idea horrifying.
Yes, but let's be smart about what social workers/ minor traffic incident officers can and cannot do. My low population community has lost two police officers in the past five years due to responding to, what they believed to be, minor domestic disturbances.
There are entire nations where the police don't usually carry guns. Due to our history, the US might have to do it differently, though. Some cities are experimenting with first responders that aren't police for some calls, just because things are so fraught here.
I wonder where that's going to end up. Could the same people be either "police" or "not police" depending on the job? That would be some interesting kayfabe.
With regards how "Defund the Police" might play out in concrete, more incremental policy proposals (from a Canadian/Toronto perspective):
- Reduce the scope of what is considered a crime: Decriminalize drugs and sex work, end by-laws that forbid camping overnight in public parks, disband fare enforcement officers. Don't treat groups like the Proud Boys as a "terrorism" problem.
- Invest in solutions that address some of the root causes of crime: Toronto has a whole "strategy to tackle the roots of youth violence" that it approved years ago but never fully funded. Our social housing is falling apart and has a wait list years long. Welfare rates have been frozen sine 2018. Transit prices keep going up even though service gets worse. Mental health care is completely inaccessible. Shelters are constantly full. And so on. More people are likely to do bad things if they are in a shitty situation.
- Invest in alternatives to policing: We have launched a pilot service that would send civilians to mental health calls instead of cops (as long as violence isn't threatened), much like CAHOOTS in Oregon. There's a cool model out in the Yukon where you have (unarmed) people from the community help break up fights, drive drunk teens home, intervene in domestic violence, etc -- not sure if it would scale the same way in a big city as an official group, but could have promise as a community model.
- Reduce the need for traffic cops via infrastructure: The best way to prevent collisions (and deaths/injury) is to design streets so people unconsciously drive more carefully, whether through narrowing lanes, tightening turn radii, creating protected intersections, etc. It can also include investing in transit/bike infrastructure/walkable communities (so people drive less), limiting the use of gigantic cars with trash sightlines, guard rails on trucks, etc. Toronto also put in a bunch of automated speed enforcement cameras recently, and it's more-or-less worked to change behaviour, although people keep stealing them. Fund more crossing guards!
- Stop spending money on stupid shit: I don't know why the TPS needs armoured vehicles or facial recognition or CCTV cameras!
Lots of people want more policing because the popular conception is that policing = safety, and maybe that's sometimes the case, but there's lots of ways to achieve safety than just the application of more state-sanctioned violence, especially when that violence is not the most helpful way to actually address the problem.
I totally understand the frustration that prompted you to write this, but I've gotto say a few things.
1) You underestimate the earnestness of people advocating for defunding the police and similar policies, and you're conflating enthusiasm for the idea with a belief that it's imminently going to happen. A lot of the support for these ideas is genuine, despite the enormous difficulties in implementation! I do think there is some kayfabe in the professional activist class, but don't project that onto ordinary people. This leads me to my next point...
2) I think you get a way worse dose of this stuff than most people because of your job. I can't think of a single person in my social circle who would support the professor in the video you posted. (For context - I am a 32 year old software engineer in Chicago and my friends run the gamut from long-time DSA members to Hillary Clinton Democrats.) Honestly in that particular case - have you tried just saying what you think? A lot of abstract support for these call outs collapses in the face of direct interpersonal cruelty. (Although apparently this happened during a class on public speaking and debate? I think there might be a bit more to the video than meets the eye.)
I do find the belief that reading Ibram Kendi and mandating corporate diversity training actually helps fight racism and improve the country to be pretty frustrating. When talking with my friends, I've found the thing that helps get people to admit this is to contrast these activities with concrete, material steps, for example: all the corporate diversity training in the world does less for minorities than Medicare for All would; same for a $15 minimum wage. To your point, perhaps I wouldn't say that to my head of HR. But still - I think if you can focus on what real change actually looks like, you might find that people are less invested in the superficial stuff than they appear.
I think your perspective, which I get a lot, is indicative of the "boiling frog" problem: these things have asserted themselves gradually and over time and so you don't realize how bizarre things have gotten.
I promise, for every moment in a college classroom like this one caught on camera, there are a thousand that go unnoticed. Should I ignore that reality and say "ah it's probably not a big deal"? And you may not know many people who would defend that professor, and I do; I have been in academia literally my entire life. Many, many people in that influential and important field feel exactly the same as she does, and believe that students who disagree are "doing violence" or whatever the fuck. I think you're whistling past the graveyard.
We can definitely agree that things seem way worse in academia than in other industries, and that doesn't seem like it's a good sign as today's college students will obviously be tomorrow's workforce. And it seems like the trend in academia is for the worse.
This is exactly it. It's not "confined" to academia, because not only the workforce element you mentioned but now, "academics" are on Twitter, spreading their ideas, and their followers are letting anything and everything wash over them with little to no critical thinking. When you have woke professors who are treated and revered like rockstars... Woof.
That's so funny. I got a Computer Science degree in 1987 and was amazed even back then at the bullshit that went on over on the soft-science/non-science side of campus. We didn't have time for their whiny crap.
I am always a bit puzzled by the claim that the police were invented to catch runaway slaves in America because there are of course countries other than America that also have police but never runaway slaves.
As a Philadelphian, I find it darkly amusing when this point comes up from friends and associates. Slavery was phased out in Pennsylvania in 1780. The PPD in its current form dates to the 1850s. The PPD already has a long and well-documented history of racist violence. There is NO need to also make them slave catchers in a time when the city had thousands of free, middle-class African Americans. This meme history is overwriting real history in weird, sad ways.
I also hear the "this came from slavery" explanation bandied about in regard to anti-fatness, and I don't quite get it. The thinking is, thinness was equated with goodness, and fatness was equated with Blackness, from the time of slavery. ...Were there loads of fat enslaved people I'm not aware of? I'm seriously asking.
Certainly, anti-fatness and anti-Blackness can be related, especially in contemporary society, but I'm not sure the lineage to slavery is that direct, nor the causation so singular. And speaking as though the correlation is an indisputable fact does a disservice to the cause of people working against anti-Blackness and anti-fatness.
l’m glad to see I’m in good company on, when first hearing this claim, immediately thought “But there’s police in other countries.” It seems that many of the more unusual claims asserted as facts that come out of the same milieu seem to involve not just suspect knowledge of history but almost complete ignorance that there are other countries in the world.
Unlike the good respectable people of the Daily Wire (linked in the twitter thread Freddie linked) who are just doing honest journalism and not targeting any particular demographic by talking about this story :/
Oh I actually went back to check and the person who wrote the tweet also wrote the article and she explicitly identifies as conservative. But nope, nothing to see here. I'm the biased one here, clearly.
2. Showing the entirely irrelevant image of that student as a Trump supporter flashing a "white power symbol" (lol) gives the game away - he wasn't oppressed, but by the way, he actually is bad and deserves it! Try harder.
1. Why not? It seems pretty clear cut: they're having a debate in a classroom setting and he was given ample time to speak beforehand, but when it came time to the actual debate part, he got salty at being contradicted.
2. I think the white power symbol thing is stupid too but is that really justification enough to ignore every other aspect to what I linked?
Nope, I'm hoping to move as many lefties as possible off of counterproductive slogans like "defund the police" and "cops aren't heroes". It's a sisyphean task for sure.
I would say that there's a pretty compelling case that students have a greater right to be insufferably wrong than professors. They're supposed to be teaching them not entering into high school status competitions!
I keep a toolbox of such videos and links to re-post thousands of times each year all over forums and social media to remind high school-aged students and their parents of what their $50,000 in student loan debt is being wasted on. This is a drop in the bucket, like trying to shovel the sand back into the ocean.
The folks in my social and professional circles are completely caught up in this, with varying degrees of sincerity (from what I can tell).
I struggle because while "defund the police" doesn't accomplish anything, it has become a symbol of supporting people with marginalized identities. If BLM is saying "defund the police," arguing feels like saying to black people, "I'm not on your side. I don't support you." Especially because people are so quick to claim that disagreement = harm.
I feel the same way about some of the extreme demands and talking points in the queer community (which I am part of). Someone says "I'm not sure that's reasonable to demand," and people will just start crying because they hear "I hate you."
In politics, strategy should be more important than emotion. But a lot of this plays out in social groups among people who don't have any power or influence. When I stay quiet, I'm not trying to hold on to my New York magazine column -- I just don't want my friends to think I'm an asshole.
" If BLM is saying "defund the police," arguing feels like saying to black people, "I'm not on your side. I don't support you.""
According to polling, well under 1/3 of black people support "defund the police". Which makes the activist position ridiculous (in addition to being ineffective and counterproductive).
Good point. I should have said it feels that way in educated, lefty social circles where people of all races feel compelled to support these positions.
> If BLM is saying "defund the police," arguing feels like saying to black people, "I'm not on your side. I don't support you."
This – the conflation of BLM with black people – seems like a real tragedy to me.
I've long thought that a LOT – maybe _almost_ all – of people really do have a kind of default 'associational magic' kind of thinking with respect to words. It's pretty mystifying, and frustrating, that 'I don't agree with BLM' is mostly and automatically translated to 'I hate black people'.
Nice piece Freddie, thank you. nicely parsed and well stated. The main difference i see between the activism of the 60s (i.e., late 50s, 60s, early 70s) and now, which you captured very well, is that then there were clear goals: stop the war, stop Jim Crow, break segregation, enfranchise voters. Attaining each of those goals could be measured, progress toward them measured. I have been troubled by the unclarity of most of the stated goals of the current activism. Black Lives Matter has a good ring to it but I thought from the beginning if they had said Black Lives Matter, Too, it would have short circuited counter arguments (ALL lives matter, for instance, or Blue lives matter). Many people have said the "too" was obviously implied but the opponents' responses indicate otherwise. Defund the Police, as you clearly point out, was intellectually vapid from the beginning despite it having a nice ring to it as a slogan. Since Reagan, and more so since 9/11, policing has become more violent as well as applied to many situations where it does not belong (mental health responses, for instance). Despite the long slog, I believe that the only proper response to the sophomoric and simplistic sloganeering (and intellectual poverty) of my liberal tribe is to continually create a coherent response which unmasks their lack of clothing while developing an strong intellectual foundation to that response. Something that you and a number of others are doing. (thank you) What you are discussing here necessitates a continual and forceful response in order to set limits on what is happening. As someone whose books are being burned these days (I have said improper things out loud) I can see all too clearly where all this is going if we do not oppose it strongly and relentlessly. The sad thing is that far too many people (many that I once respected) are unwilling to take a stand.
The first part of this is so critically important it should be mandatory reading. I am not sure of Freddie’s specific brand of Marxism, but in mine I was taught the importance of a program. Peace, bread, and land is a program and one that - as much as some people may detest the Bolsheviks - was perhaps the most effective one ever deployed.
All political activism REQUIRES a clear goal. Part of why this contradiction Freddie discusses (being told there’s a huge awakening but no actual results) exists is because there was no program behind it. The only time it got close was Defund, but, see above for why that failed. The perfect example of this was the hilarious NBA “strike” after the Jacob Blake shooting. You’re not going to play until, what, racism ends? That’s never happening. It’s the new version of the War on Terror. It’s a temper tantrum. It’s public masturbation.
Incidentally, the big “win” from that was owns opening up arenas for voting (for Joe Biden). Which is, as I suspect, what the unstated clear goal of the big upheavals was last year: electing Joe Biden.
There is something to be said for advocating for policies that have no realistic chance of becoming real in our lifetimes. When you have one side advocating ridiculous policies like cutting corporate taxes, starting wars, cutting worker protections, etc. then trying to cooperate with them and only focusing on what's practically possible only leads to policies that hurt people - like Joe Biden's crime bill.
But if rather than trying to cooperate with Republicans, we instead insist on our ideal world, even if most of it has no practical chance of becoming law, then it leads to better outcomes overall. Don't let Republicans set the agenda and then we're forced to cooperate with them. We'll state our ideal world and Republican have to deal with that.
I 100% agree with your first sentence, but I also think that this was just a very strange context we've had for the past year or so, and people were not thinking rationally about expressing utopian solutions but instead trying to bully people into advocating a policy that I don't think anyone thought was actually going to pass.
It's Wednesday, so today we get the Freddie who believes that political actions should be effective, and who rightly laments the staggering ineffectiveness of the left to get anything meaningful done.
But tomorrow we are just as likely to get the Freddie who wants to throw AOC under the bus for being insufficiently rigorous on Palestine, and who loudly declares that Hilary Clinton is "garbage" (which he did in 2016, when it mattered).
Freddie: you rightly lament the fact that the George Floyd Act is unlikely to pass the Senate, but did you happen to notice the vote in the House? Democrats: 217 for, 2 against. Republicans: 0 for, 211 against. (One Republican accidentally voted yes, but has now corrected the record.) Gee, how can we possibly tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans???
Yes, tomorrow we will get the Freddie who thinks there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, no reason to try to get Democrats elected (especially to high office like Senator and President) and to work with them.
That's Freddie's kayfabe, one that he keeps quite rigorously.
I don't see how his positions in the first half are contradicted by those in the second. He simply doesn't believe that Democrats are effective, or even left wing. What he'd like is effective political action against Israel, or for racial justice. But consider that a watered down bill is all that Democrats could vote for, and that Biden continues to show unwillingness to condemn the actions of the IDF, let alone take serious action to prevent similar tragedies from occurring. The truth of the matter is that there is good beyond the lesser evil.
> I don't see how his positions in the first half are contradicted by those in the second.
That's not what I said. Today's essay is coherent, but it doesn't cohere with other day's essays.
> He simply doesn't believe that Democrats are effective
This is manifestly false.
> or even left wing.
This is manifestly true.
> What he'd like is effective political action against Israel, or for racial justice.
Sure, me too. But how are we going to get it?
> But consider that a watered down bill is all that Democrats could vote for
I claim that watered down is much better than nothing. This is my whole point.
> and that Biden continues to show unwillingness to condemn the actions of the IDF, let alone take serious action to prevent similar tragedies from occurring.
Sure. Would Trump have been better? Because ONLY Biden or Trump ever had a measurable chance of being POTUS in 2021. Pick one. In this world, on this branch of the universal wave function, those were your only choices.
> The truth of the matter is that there is good beyond the lesser evil.
Of course. But my claim is that the path to that good proceeds ALWAYS AND ONLY through lesser evil. This is the great truth that so few on the left can manage to see.
to clarify, in that case, I refer to present day Democrats (post Reagan). I don't agree with your claim that good emerges from the lesser evil. What we got out of Obama was a choice between Hillary and Trump, neither of which was good in absolute or relative terms (compared with Obama).
Trump gave lifetime appointments to literally hundreds of right-wing federal judges and three Supreme Court Justices, who will be dispensing anti-progressive rulings for decades to come. I find it hard to forgive those who could not get off their high horses long enough to vote for (and indeed work hard to elect) HRC in 2016. That utter failure by the left will now haunt us all, and most especially people of color and poor people generally. Nice work, lefties!
Congressional votes are often (usually?) kayfabe. Back in the Obama administration, the Republican House voted to abolish Obamacare 60-odd times, because they knew it wouldn't happen. Then Trump got into power and there was nothing stopping them from doing it for real, but it didn't happen.
The same thing happens today with the Democrats in the House. When the Senate vote is the bottleneck, House actions are mostly symbolic.
Even for votes that matter, the vote count might be kayfabe. For a bill that the Democrats want to pass, conservative Democrats could vote against it with everyone's blessing because their vote isn't needed and it will play well in their district.
The result is that you can't just cite the congressional voting records as if they showed what members really think; you need to put them into context of what the politics were at the time, and that's subject to interpretation.
This might be an astute criticism. It has also occurred to me that Freddie might be exercising the sort of double standard you mention, but I haven't found an indisputable minimal working example...I probably haven't tried hard enough because I'm partial to Freddie. Where has he said there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats?
OK, "no difference" is an exaggeration, but I clearly remember that you did not support or vote for Hilary in 2016 in the general, and that you wrote that she was "garbage". So if you see a difference, I can't discern what effect it has on what you regard as effective political action.
The first two things aren't mutually exclusive, though. AOC gets criticized from the left because people accuse her of not using her power effectively. And likewise, Hillary is criticized from the left not because of her effectiveness or lack thereof but because of the positions she takes.
You seem to have taken a strange position where you're taking Freddie's complaints about lack of effectiveness in isolation, divorced from the political positions we should be effective in achieving.
Re AOC: please tell me how she could use her power more effectively. She gets one vote in the House. Amping up the rhetoric would accomplish what, exactly? She also has to worry about drawing a centrist primary challenger in 2022, 2024, 2026, ...
Re HRC: you can criticize her positions, but she got 55% of the primary votes in 2016 to Bernie's 43%, 3.7 million more votes than Bernie. And it was AFTER she had won the primary that the left refused to back her. And so now we have literally hundreds of Trump-appointed right-wing judges who will be ruling our lives for decades to come.
That was the argument behind the force the vote initiative; that AOC should use the congress leadership vote to push for concessions. It's what more centrist dems did, and they got appointments to committees. I think there's an argument that even as a performance the M4A vote would fail, but AOC didn't even use the vote to get the appointments she wanted for herself.
Why are you bringing up primary numbers? If you don't identify as a democrat all that means is you ended up with two right-wing candidates that you don't support.
Again, "being effective" at passing policy you don't really support isn't "being effective" at all.
IMO, the force-the-vote initiative had zero chance of succeeding, which AOC was smart enough to understand.
I brought up primary numbers because you criticized HRC for her positions. If you didn't like her positions, you needed someone else to win the primary. The primary numbers show how very far the left was from getting Bernie the nomination. (Now you'll blame the DNC, as if anything the DNC could say or do would swing 2 million votes.)
AOC was smart enough to understand, but not smart enough to guarantee herself a seat on the Energy and Commerce committee, which she wanted. Again, AOC hasn't shown herself to be effective even at getting power for herself, much less enacting progressive policy.
And you're missing the point: if I don't like Hillary's policies I don't have to vote for her, full stop. If her policies are antithetical to mine (which for foreign policy they very much are) I won't vote for her. Voting for her would mean voting against *my* interests. That's not effective either.
Earnest belief in one's own moral superiority, derived by unwavering support for a specific political party, is probably more dangerous than adhering to socially acceptable delusions as described in this article. But yes, do tell us more about how the heroic Democrats would usher in criminal justice reform utopia if only the evil Republicans weren't holding them back. We'll just have to ignore the spiking rates of violent crime and murder currently playing out in cities run by progressive Democrats with a penchant for reformation and defunding of law enforcement.
I found myself agreeing with vast majority of what's written here. And it seems equally applicable to all of the loudest parts of the progressive policy agenda right now (HR1, "what you hate voting?" PRO Act, "what you hate workers?") Still, after sitting with it for a bit, it strikes that the right is dealing with the same sickness, if perhaps a more insidious variant. On the left, you have to pretend bad policy is good policy, hide your discomfort with identity politics, and pretend patently obvious simplistic views are self-evident truths. But there's implicit room to wiggle because of course leftists agree the world is complicated. If pushed, the professor would say "of course I literally don't believe all of policing was born out of the slaveholding south." On the right, thought, you literally have to pretend deniable facts are other than as they are. The left will watch the video of the debate kid in the classroom and say, "this isn't indicative of a larger problem," (when it obviously is). The right will watch its version of the video and have to say say, "that didn't happen; the video was forged, fake, staged, etc." There's no room for backtrack or nuance, or else you get Liz Cheney'd.
I see this as a subtle but important distinction. But maybe not, maybe it's the exact same problem. Either way, I don't know that articles like this that talk to one half of the problem move the needle. I'm not sure I see a way out of a national death spiral unless we can find a broad-based way to inoculate the population as a whole.
If pushed, the professor would say "of course I literally don't believe all of policing was born out of the slaveholding south."
Well I'd like to see that on video. I think you what you would get instead is ever more convoluted and bizarre justification coupled with personal attacks on you for pushing.
Republican kayfabe: "The election was stolen"; "It was just a friendly crowd on 1/6"; "I am deeply concerned about voter fraud and the deficit". Most Republicans say these things because they know the party line.
I think there's some amount of this that has been true for politicians of every stripe in every era. I think the what's happening now is different, and is technology-driven in a way that hasn't been true before. That is: no matter how asinine your beliefs, you can now find a whole community online of other asinine people who agree with you (before you used to just be the office/neighborhood nutso). Social media gives these pockets a megaphone and drowns out middling views (nonsense is driven to the top since people are more likely to click and engage on outrageous content, consuming ad content along the way). As these voices get amplified, they attract people who fail to realize that these views are not actually mainstream at all. This is happening now on left and right in a way that just hasn't been true before. As a population, we actually need a way to amplify moderate/moderating voices. I don't see how you overcome kayfabe otherwise.
I don't know if you want to hear this, Freddie, since you say you support trans rights, but "trans women are women" is the ultimate, perfect example of Kayfabe. Everyone who says it knows what a woman is. Obviously! But they're devoted to the sense of sacred commitment, to maintaining the consensual fantasy as you put it.
This is precisely my point: what difference does it make if ICE or other agencies do that work? The problem is the brutality of the policies, not the brutality of the agency that enforces them.
Freddie, if I may say ... this is what pleases and informs; the variety of your subjects, the fluency of your prose, the richness of your vocabulary, the wit of your observations. I could add to this list. Political activism not so much.
Agreed about his writing. It’s good. But do you disagree with his positions? He seems to want real change instead of hashtag bullshit. Don’t you?
No. I don't disagree with his positions, but they are just one set among many sets endlessly proposed, and no set is perfect.
Freddie, I found you through the podcast Blocked and Reported (by Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog), and man oh man your writing has done so much for my mental health.
I'm a long time left-of-center person and have no desire to ever look in the GOP's direction. But goddamn it do I hate social media-fueled woke culture and cancel culture. I hate all the mobbing and shaming. And I REALLY HATE how most arts criticism (especially movies and TV) has devolved into this fucking circus where the only point of art is to express the "correct" message and how anything else is "problematic" at best or harmful at worst.
I've been driven insane by how seemingly the only mainstream people speaking out against this crap are right wing. We badly, desperately need actual left wing people to do the same. Thank you thank you THANK YOU for doing what you do.
Re: arts criticism, my group was having a pretty good laugh at this article about how Tina Fey's new character has better feminist credentials than Liz Lemon, which was clearly written by someone who watched every season of 30 Rock without ever understanding it at all: https://slate.com/culture/2021/05/tina-fey-girls5eva-30-rock-feminism.html
There are many of us. Same boat. Welcome.
I don't know about you, KW, but re: cancel culture, it's funny to me the people who deny cancel culture exists...are the ones who perpetuate it and revel in seeing people get deplatformed. In a fandom I was a part of for a while, a decent-sized blogger (and now author) was under fire because some arguably horrific things he said about trans men and women in the military. However, the people who blew this up had been holding onto it for a while and waited for his book to come out. A book that had NOTHING to do with trans men and women. Simply interviews with different people about...giant...monster movies. While I can't endorse what he said, the act of trying to deplatform him was stupid, especially since, behind the scenes, one of the people admitted to having said some incredibly racist and stupid stuff in his past, but he went back and scrubbed his profile so this would never happen to him. ***As if that makes him a better person.***
The whole thing is astronomically stupid, and yes, you're right. The fact it seems to be, largely, those on the right who speak out against it only seems to make the actual "cancel/call-out/shame culture" mentality stronger.
I'm a right-leaning independent who finds the writing superb but primarily subscribed for the cogent and original articles pertaining to race issues. I agree it's urgent that Democrats speak out against Critical Race Theory and cancel culture. And FdB, you probably already know, there's a much larger audience for your writings.
I'm not sure you were aware, and I bet many people have made similar analogies over the years, but Eric Weinstein used kayfabe similarly:
"Kayfabrication (the process of transition from reality towards Kayfabe) arises out of attempts to deliver a dependably engaging product for a mass audience while removing the unpredictable upheavals that imperil participants. As such Kayfabrication is a dependable feature of many of our most important systems which share the above two characteristics such as war, finance, love, politics and science."
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11783
I was not aware of that specifically although I certainly knew as I wrote this that speaking of kayfabe, in a political sense, is not novel.
Weinstein originally popularized it, and has played with the idea a lot over the years. Worth checking out, especially in light of the capital protests.
We can dismiss it as fantasy and bullshit, but need to remember that Pro wrestling has resulted in many more deaths than "real" fighting like UFC.
But Freddie’s a better writer than Eric. The concept is presented more clearly here. (Yes, I know that sounds like a kiss up. But while I appreciate the Weinstein brothers there’s something slightly off about both of them. I trust FDB more. Don’t know why. I could be wrong.)
Oh yeah! Bret is kind of an anti-vaxxer. That’s it.
[I'm just trying to complement what you wrote; not argue against it.]
I didn't read KC's comment as claiming differently; just commenting about the origin (or earlier popularization) of the term/idea.
But I think translation/adaptation is a fascinating and wonderful 'genre' of art/craft anyways and, often I think, the 'Ur-Example' of something [see: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UrExample] isn't always the 'Trope Maker' or 'Trope Codifier'.
And not only is it enjoyable/interesting for the audience, it's often very helpful for the writer/creator. I wish I'd known as a kid that it's an entirely acceptable and sensible to trace over some other art as part of general practice drawing/illustrating/painting! (I always thought I was 'cheating'.)
I have an easier time understanding Bret than Eric. They are both obviously smart, and Eric (possibly also Bret) grew up with learning disabilities or dyslexia, not sure, and was wrongly thought to be academically deficient. Eric's brain might work in a different way. He cooks up complex and perhaps novel ideas, but can't for the life of him convey it in concise words digestible by the lay person. His friendship with Joe Rogan is hilarious because they could not be more different in how they communicate. The Rogan interview where Eric "describes" getting iced out of Harvard is incomprehensible.
The thing this post reminded me of most was Adam Curtis' documentary Hypernormalisation
I wish it were this simple, but it isn't. One substantial group with a significant percentage not in on the kayfabe is activist youth. They aren't sufficiently disillusioned yet. Experience with many, as well as my own past, suggests it. And they bring a lot of energy to these fights. There are also those incrementalists who understand but accept that a pound of rhetoric will get you a penny of change. And some of the changes passed by local governments are penny enough to them (however well or poorly thought out). As usual, there are multiple social forces at work, which is why the kayfabe that there is can't simply be dropped by mutual agreement.
The question is whether this generation's slice of activist youth will, like so many before them, mostly go on to relatively apolitical lives as liberal Democrats who don't get that involved and worry more about soccer practice than liberation.
"The question is whether this generation's slice of activist youth will, like so many before them, mostly go on to relatively apolitical lives as liberal Democrats who don't get that involved and worry more about soccer practice than liberation."
Well, that's part of the life cycle of activism, isn't it? Surely it's just as much of a fantasy to imagine that everyone involves themselves actively in politics throughout their lives, especially when the exhausting demands of work and family come into play, and to use that as a barometer for the "seriousness" of what activists today look like. Every generation's activists has tapped on the energies (and adolescent passions, and free time) of youth activists, even if those activists eventually age out of it. There'll be more of them to come. (Reminder that David Bowie wrote "Changes," with its line that the children who try to change their world are "immune to your consultation," an entire half-century ago!)
I don't disagree, but I think people are wandering pretty far away from what I'm actually talking about here: last year, in particular, we were not talking about life cycles of activism. We were talking about a wholly unique political awakening, a cleavage point in history after which nothing would be the same. And everyone has kind of quietly walked that back, in fits and parts and not especially comprehensively, and without introspection. If we're talking about life cycles of activism, fine! But I was told over and over again a year ago that what we were facing was precisely NOT the regular life cycle of activism.
Fair point, but the height of the pandemic also unleashed the "sky is falling, everything is different now" rhetoric from everyone, since the 100-year nature of global pandemics means that no one had living memory to advise otherwise. You're right that a reasonable commentator would have said "This will pass once we get a vaccine," but then remember also the level of vaccine denial that we were facing at the time, under a president whom it wasn't clear we were going to replace. Those energies have dissipated for sure, now that Biden and vaccine distribution have dramatically reduced the volume of pandemic-induced paranoia (save for the mask-forever moralizers that you've written elsewhere about).
Which is exactly the plot to WWE. They are always building up to the biggest and most important match in history which will drastically change everything. But of course it doesn't. Nobody actually wants that because then the show ends. They want the buildup over and over.
I watch WWE, AEW, and NJPW pretty regularly. Some of what is said in this post, and in these comments, is, I think, inaccurate. Would it be persnickety of me to bring that up? Or would that be taking the kayfabe metaphor too seriously? (I've felt the same way about Taibbi's use of WWE in Hate, Inc. and Eric Weinstein's use of kayfabe in the Edge.org essay.)
It might be taking the metaphor to far, but I'd be interested.
Most of my viewing was during the PG and Reality eras when Trump was involved. I remember when the Kayfabe became so real that real life WWE stock droped because of a story-line where Trump "buys" Raw, I think. So I likely take the metaphor too far. But I am convinced that Trump is an expert at Kayfabe.
I distinctly remember loads of talk last year about a New Civil Rights Era that was going to blow the last 40-50 years of stagnation on race away. A year later, and a few statues are gone, one cop got convicted of murder, Robin DiAngelo is very rich, and the NYT writes "Black" with a capital letter. Only the ultra-online can actually name the leaders of Black Lives Matter, and their one policy proposal that a punter on the street can name is "Defund the Police," which he overwhelmingly thinks is a disturbing idea.
Maybe there's a history yet to unfold from last summer, but right now it's difficult to argue that we're on our way to anything as consequential the Civil Rights Act or Voting Rights Act. I wonder how much of this "kayfabe" is desperation and despair at another chance for real reform going sour.
Well, the George Floyd Act would be a step in the right direction (I would claim a big step). It is almost unanimously supported by Democrats and unanimously opposed by Republicans.
If only there was a way to distinguish the two major parties! Then we could strongly support the one that's gets us closer to our goals, step by step, small or big.
I'm not sure it's all kayfabe, although I imagine much of it is, especially as you creep up the power ladder. I have encountered more than a few people who appear to be "true believers". Perhaps they are just exceptional actors, but it seems more likely to me that they are simply very passionate people who lack critical thinking skills and see no dissonance between their position six months ago and their position now because they don't have the mental skills to recognize the shift. They'll say they haven't given up on Defund, they're just shifting tactics because the "optics" have changed, or what-have-you, and then spin up reasons it's all the Republicans' fault. In my experience, it's like talking to a brick wall.
"In the long run we do have to think about more radical alternatives because there’s inherent violence in the cop-community relationship"
I know you have a million requests, but I'm curious if you'd be willing to expound upon this. I've seen a lot of people declaring we need 'radical' change in policing, yet none of them seem to know what that radical change is. I live in Minneapolis, and I've heard a lot of ballyhooing about "re-imagining what police are!", including from elected officials, and all of it is pseudo-academic feel-good nonsense without a single concrete policy proposal in sight. It seems to me a lot of people earnestly want policing to change but have no idea how to do this, and this would be fine except they're tearing down policing with nothing to replace it, and the fallout is devastating and falling almost entirely on the poorest communities.
It seems to me that violence is the point of police: modern states rely on being the sole source of legitimate force for their power, and this is true regardless of their government or economic system. If you're not willing to eventually resort to violence to enforce laws, you can't have laws. Many modern people are understandably disgusted by violence, but I don't see how violence can be wholly eliminated: for violence to be eliminated, we'd have to have a populace that is completely obedient. Looking at the history of mankind, achieving that seems like a stretch. We can do a lot with poverty alleviation, etc, but humans are and always have been emotional, violent creatures, and no social program is going to change human nature. (and that's before we get into the thorny problem of mental illness, or even of drug use. you cannot reason or bargain with people who have become wholly divorced from reality)
So I guess basically I'm wondering what's in your 'radical change' step, because what others have said boils down to "miraculously all humans become perfect model citizens and then we don't need police".
'I live in Minneapolis, and I've heard a lot of ballyhooing about "re-imagining what police are!", including from elected officials, and all of it is pseudo-academic feel-good nonsense without a single concrete policy proposal in sight"
Right and then reality intervened and dissolving the current police force turned into very modest budget cuts turned into, if I have this correct, calls for more police funding.
Yes, it's been a bit of a mess. The city council pledged to defund the police, then back-pedaled, saying they'd been strong-armed by activists into supporting defund when they didn't actually mean it. It kind of doesn't matter, though, at this point: the police force, which has struggled with staffing historically (note how many incidents in MN involve rookie or second-year officers?), had a bunch a bunch of officers resign or go on disability in the wake of the riots, bringing staffing critically low. The gun violence in some parts of the city is unreal; everyone knows someone who's been shot in those parts. We've had to "import" officers from surrounding states short-term.
Sounds like a mess. But if you want to know what real reform is don’t we have to start with drug laws & prison reform? It seems many European & Scandinavian countries are good at this. More restorative justice instead of retributive justice right?
I’m no expert but THAT stuff I’m still liberal about. While “Abolish the police” is just ducking retarded. (Apologies to retards.)
Yes, but can't we chew gum and walk at the same time? There's more than one person on the pay role to figure this shit out. We can work on drug laws & prison reform AND create reasonable changes to discourage police brutality, such as not running plates when pulling over people for forgetting to signal a lane change.
That's the reality of "defund the police" playing out. As you said, policing necessarily and by definition involves violence. What we can do, though, is redefine the parameters of what's an acceptable form of violence and under what circumstances. But that would require nuance and acceptance of unpalatable facts, like some people are violent and horrible and can't be trusted to self-regulate. Or that many if not a majority of police officers aren't mustache-twiddling power-trippers with no respect for human life. Or that there are loads of police officers who are also members of minority groups, who clearly consider policing a valid career choice.
You don't need to send a man with a gun out every time someone calls for government assistance. For instance, imagine there's a minor traffic accident. No one is injured, but everyone involved needs a report to submit to their insurance company. Why send a man with a gun out to that? Have some sort of a city traffic department that sends unarmed bureaucrats out to take the reports.
"Defund the police" does not mean "abolish the government's monopoly on violence." Of course violence can't be completely eliminated. Of course you would still send government agents with guns to calls like, say, reports of an active shooter. It's more about rethinking what kinds of requests for government assistance need lightly-trained men with guns, and what kind of calls for government assistance can be met with some other kind of government employee. The police are currently asked to do many, many things that they don't need to be doing.
"Defund the police" does not mean "abolish the government's monopoly on violence."
Of course it does. "Defund" has a plain meaning. So does "police".
There really isn't much to parse in "defund the police".
Which is exactly why it was a terrible horrible no good very bad slogan.
But that's also the reason it was so effective. Most viral twitter hashtags work the same way. YesAllMen, etc.
If it's not controversial no one will care. But more importantly, as you point out, it results in a state of contradiction within you. You know you don't believe the literal meaning, but you use the slogan anyways because you think the cause is worth it. You know what you are saying is partly wrong but you are still saying it. This results in a much more powerful and defensive emotional response when you are challenged. It's also a stronger form of signalling. Something without contradiction like "lessPoliceViolence" doesn't have these properties.
You have a very strange notion of what it means to be "effective".
An effective slogan spreads quickly and widely. This is not a strange notion. What happens after is a result of much more than the slogan.
No matter how quickly it spreads, It's not effective when 90 percent of the population, including the majority of the population it's intended to protect, find the idea horrifying.
Yes, but let's be smart about what social workers/ minor traffic incident officers can and cannot do. My low population community has lost two police officers in the past five years due to responding to, what they believed to be, minor domestic disturbances.
There are entire nations where the police don't usually carry guns. Due to our history, the US might have to do it differently, though. Some cities are experimenting with first responders that aren't police for some calls, just because things are so fraught here.
I wonder where that's going to end up. Could the same people be either "police" or "not police" depending on the job? That would be some interesting kayfabe.
Literally last week's news: https://www.sfweekly.com/news/breed-announces-additional-police-alternatives/
With regards how "Defund the Police" might play out in concrete, more incremental policy proposals (from a Canadian/Toronto perspective):
- Reduce the scope of what is considered a crime: Decriminalize drugs and sex work, end by-laws that forbid camping overnight in public parks, disband fare enforcement officers. Don't treat groups like the Proud Boys as a "terrorism" problem.
- Invest in solutions that address some of the root causes of crime: Toronto has a whole "strategy to tackle the roots of youth violence" that it approved years ago but never fully funded. Our social housing is falling apart and has a wait list years long. Welfare rates have been frozen sine 2018. Transit prices keep going up even though service gets worse. Mental health care is completely inaccessible. Shelters are constantly full. And so on. More people are likely to do bad things if they are in a shitty situation.
- Invest in alternatives to policing: We have launched a pilot service that would send civilians to mental health calls instead of cops (as long as violence isn't threatened), much like CAHOOTS in Oregon. There's a cool model out in the Yukon where you have (unarmed) people from the community help break up fights, drive drunk teens home, intervene in domestic violence, etc -- not sure if it would scale the same way in a big city as an official group, but could have promise as a community model.
- Reduce the need for traffic cops via infrastructure: The best way to prevent collisions (and deaths/injury) is to design streets so people unconsciously drive more carefully, whether through narrowing lanes, tightening turn radii, creating protected intersections, etc. It can also include investing in transit/bike infrastructure/walkable communities (so people drive less), limiting the use of gigantic cars with trash sightlines, guard rails on trucks, etc. Toronto also put in a bunch of automated speed enforcement cameras recently, and it's more-or-less worked to change behaviour, although people keep stealing them. Fund more crossing guards!
- Stop spending money on stupid shit: I don't know why the TPS needs armoured vehicles or facial recognition or CCTV cameras!
Lots of people want more policing because the popular conception is that policing = safety, and maybe that's sometimes the case, but there's lots of ways to achieve safety than just the application of more state-sanctioned violence, especially when that violence is not the most helpful way to actually address the problem.
Freddie,
I totally understand the frustration that prompted you to write this, but I've gotto say a few things.
1) You underestimate the earnestness of people advocating for defunding the police and similar policies, and you're conflating enthusiasm for the idea with a belief that it's imminently going to happen. A lot of the support for these ideas is genuine, despite the enormous difficulties in implementation! I do think there is some kayfabe in the professional activist class, but don't project that onto ordinary people. This leads me to my next point...
2) I think you get a way worse dose of this stuff than most people because of your job. I can't think of a single person in my social circle who would support the professor in the video you posted. (For context - I am a 32 year old software engineer in Chicago and my friends run the gamut from long-time DSA members to Hillary Clinton Democrats.) Honestly in that particular case - have you tried just saying what you think? A lot of abstract support for these call outs collapses in the face of direct interpersonal cruelty. (Although apparently this happened during a class on public speaking and debate? I think there might be a bit more to the video than meets the eye.)
I do find the belief that reading Ibram Kendi and mandating corporate diversity training actually helps fight racism and improve the country to be pretty frustrating. When talking with my friends, I've found the thing that helps get people to admit this is to contrast these activities with concrete, material steps, for example: all the corporate diversity training in the world does less for minorities than Medicare for All would; same for a $15 minimum wage. To your point, perhaps I wouldn't say that to my head of HR. But still - I think if you can focus on what real change actually looks like, you might find that people are less invested in the superficial stuff than they appear.
Keep your head up man.
I think your perspective, which I get a lot, is indicative of the "boiling frog" problem: these things have asserted themselves gradually and over time and so you don't realize how bizarre things have gotten.
I promise, for every moment in a college classroom like this one caught on camera, there are a thousand that go unnoticed. Should I ignore that reality and say "ah it's probably not a big deal"? And you may not know many people who would defend that professor, and I do; I have been in academia literally my entire life. Many, many people in that influential and important field feel exactly the same as she does, and believe that students who disagree are "doing violence" or whatever the fuck. I think you're whistling past the graveyard.
We can definitely agree that things seem way worse in academia than in other industries, and that doesn't seem like it's a good sign as today's college students will obviously be tomorrow's workforce. And it seems like the trend in academia is for the worse.
This is exactly it. It's not "confined" to academia, because not only the workforce element you mentioned but now, "academics" are on Twitter, spreading their ideas, and their followers are letting anything and everything wash over them with little to no critical thinking. When you have woke professors who are treated and revered like rockstars... Woof.
Well fuck. That's depressing. Academia sounds like a shithole. I'm glad I work a fairly normal job and don't have to touch that shit.
Only the non-STEM side. STEM academia is fine.
That's so funny. I got a Computer Science degree in 1987 and was amazed even back then at the bullshit that went on over on the soft-science/non-science side of campus. We didn't have time for their whiny crap.
Not 100% fine.See my talk here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHEvLUxTWGsAjNjR3epRiQw
"my friends run the gamut from long-time DSA members to Hillary Clinton Democrats".
Wow, all the way from A to B.
I am always a bit puzzled by the claim that the police were invented to catch runaway slaves in America because there are of course countries other than America that also have police but never runaway slaves.
This!
As a Philadelphian, I find it darkly amusing when this point comes up from friends and associates. Slavery was phased out in Pennsylvania in 1780. The PPD in its current form dates to the 1850s. The PPD already has a long and well-documented history of racist violence. There is NO need to also make them slave catchers in a time when the city had thousands of free, middle-class African Americans. This meme history is overwriting real history in weird, sad ways.
I also hear the "this came from slavery" explanation bandied about in regard to anti-fatness, and I don't quite get it. The thinking is, thinness was equated with goodness, and fatness was equated with Blackness, from the time of slavery. ...Were there loads of fat enslaved people I'm not aware of? I'm seriously asking.
Certainly, anti-fatness and anti-Blackness can be related, especially in contemporary society, but I'm not sure the lineage to slavery is that direct, nor the causation so singular. And speaking as though the correlation is an indisputable fact does a disservice to the cause of people working against anti-Blackness and anti-fatness.
l’m glad to see I’m in good company on, when first hearing this claim, immediately thought “But there’s police in other countries.” It seems that many of the more unusual claims asserted as facts that come out of the same milieu seem to involve not just suspect knowledge of history but almost complete ignorance that there are other countries in the world.
Thanks for writing this. Your writing makes me feel a bit less insane and a bit more optimistic about reality becoming reality again.
Hey, are you aware that video you cited of the teacher "berating" a student was taken out of context and was part of an exercise where the whole point was to have a debate like this? https://hornet.fullcoll.edu/viral-video-of-cypress-college-instructor-and-student-was-actually-part-of-the-assignment/
Unlike the good respectable people of the Daily Wire (linked in the twitter thread Freddie linked) who are just doing honest journalism and not targeting any particular demographic by talking about this story :/
Oh I actually went back to check and the person who wrote the tweet also wrote the article and she explicitly identifies as conservative. But nope, nothing to see here. I'm the biased one here, clearly.
1. That is not remotely compelling.
2. Showing the entirely irrelevant image of that student as a Trump supporter flashing a "white power symbol" (lol) gives the game away - he wasn't oppressed, but by the way, he actually is bad and deserves it! Try harder.
1. Why not? It seems pretty clear cut: they're having a debate in a classroom setting and he was given ample time to speak beforehand, but when it came time to the actual debate part, he got salty at being contradicted.
2. I think the white power symbol thing is stupid too but is that really justification enough to ignore every other aspect to what I linked?
Am I the only one who finds both people in that video, student & professor, ignorant & insufferably wrong.
-Cops are not “heroes”.
-No were cops “created” just for slave owners.
Silly debate. Real or not. No matter what context you add.
No, cops are never heroes. What an absurd idea. [Sarcasm alert]
From 5 hours ago, from a google search for "hero cop":
"Video captures hero cop single-handedly lift overturned car off woman to save her life"
https://abcnews.go.com/US/video-shows-hero-cop-single-handedly-lift-overturned/story?id=77775969
I hope you never have to call the police.
Trying to bait someone into a binary argument? The fish ain't bittin'.
Nope, I'm hoping to move as many lefties as possible off of counterproductive slogans like "defund the police" and "cops aren't heroes". It's a sisyphean task for sure.
I would say that there's a pretty compelling case that students have a greater right to be insufferably wrong than professors. They're supposed to be teaching them not entering into high school status competitions!
I keep a toolbox of such videos and links to re-post thousands of times each year all over forums and social media to remind high school-aged students and their parents of what their $50,000 in student loan debt is being wasted on. This is a drop in the bucket, like trying to shovel the sand back into the ocean.
The folks in my social and professional circles are completely caught up in this, with varying degrees of sincerity (from what I can tell).
I struggle because while "defund the police" doesn't accomplish anything, it has become a symbol of supporting people with marginalized identities. If BLM is saying "defund the police," arguing feels like saying to black people, "I'm not on your side. I don't support you." Especially because people are so quick to claim that disagreement = harm.
I feel the same way about some of the extreme demands and talking points in the queer community (which I am part of). Someone says "I'm not sure that's reasonable to demand," and people will just start crying because they hear "I hate you."
In politics, strategy should be more important than emotion. But a lot of this plays out in social groups among people who don't have any power or influence. When I stay quiet, I'm not trying to hold on to my New York magazine column -- I just don't want my friends to think I'm an asshole.
" If BLM is saying "defund the police," arguing feels like saying to black people, "I'm not on your side. I don't support you.""
According to polling, well under 1/3 of black people support "defund the police". Which makes the activist position ridiculous (in addition to being ineffective and counterproductive).
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/07/usa-today-ipsos-poll-just-18-support-defund-police-movement/4599232001/
Good point. I should have said it feels that way in educated, lefty social circles where people of all races feel compelled to support these positions.
> If BLM is saying "defund the police," arguing feels like saying to black people, "I'm not on your side. I don't support you."
This – the conflation of BLM with black people – seems like a real tragedy to me.
I've long thought that a LOT – maybe _almost_ all – of people really do have a kind of default 'associational magic' kind of thinking with respect to words. It's pretty mystifying, and frustrating, that 'I don't agree with BLM' is mostly and automatically translated to 'I hate black people'.
Nice piece Freddie, thank you. nicely parsed and well stated. The main difference i see between the activism of the 60s (i.e., late 50s, 60s, early 70s) and now, which you captured very well, is that then there were clear goals: stop the war, stop Jim Crow, break segregation, enfranchise voters. Attaining each of those goals could be measured, progress toward them measured. I have been troubled by the unclarity of most of the stated goals of the current activism. Black Lives Matter has a good ring to it but I thought from the beginning if they had said Black Lives Matter, Too, it would have short circuited counter arguments (ALL lives matter, for instance, or Blue lives matter). Many people have said the "too" was obviously implied but the opponents' responses indicate otherwise. Defund the Police, as you clearly point out, was intellectually vapid from the beginning despite it having a nice ring to it as a slogan. Since Reagan, and more so since 9/11, policing has become more violent as well as applied to many situations where it does not belong (mental health responses, for instance). Despite the long slog, I believe that the only proper response to the sophomoric and simplistic sloganeering (and intellectual poverty) of my liberal tribe is to continually create a coherent response which unmasks their lack of clothing while developing an strong intellectual foundation to that response. Something that you and a number of others are doing. (thank you) What you are discussing here necessitates a continual and forceful response in order to set limits on what is happening. As someone whose books are being burned these days (I have said improper things out loud) I can see all too clearly where all this is going if we do not oppose it strongly and relentlessly. The sad thing is that far too many people (many that I once respected) are unwilling to take a stand.
The first part of this is so critically important it should be mandatory reading. I am not sure of Freddie’s specific brand of Marxism, but in mine I was taught the importance of a program. Peace, bread, and land is a program and one that - as much as some people may detest the Bolsheviks - was perhaps the most effective one ever deployed.
All political activism REQUIRES a clear goal. Part of why this contradiction Freddie discusses (being told there’s a huge awakening but no actual results) exists is because there was no program behind it. The only time it got close was Defund, but, see above for why that failed. The perfect example of this was the hilarious NBA “strike” after the Jacob Blake shooting. You’re not going to play until, what, racism ends? That’s never happening. It’s the new version of the War on Terror. It’s a temper tantrum. It’s public masturbation.
Incidentally, the big “win” from that was owns opening up arenas for voting (for Joe Biden). Which is, as I suspect, what the unstated clear goal of the big upheavals was last year: electing Joe Biden.
There is something to be said for advocating for policies that have no realistic chance of becoming real in our lifetimes. When you have one side advocating ridiculous policies like cutting corporate taxes, starting wars, cutting worker protections, etc. then trying to cooperate with them and only focusing on what's practically possible only leads to policies that hurt people - like Joe Biden's crime bill.
But if rather than trying to cooperate with Republicans, we instead insist on our ideal world, even if most of it has no practical chance of becoming law, then it leads to better outcomes overall. Don't let Republicans set the agenda and then we're forced to cooperate with them. We'll state our ideal world and Republican have to deal with that.
I 100% agree with your first sentence, but I also think that this was just a very strange context we've had for the past year or so, and people were not thinking rationally about expressing utopian solutions but instead trying to bully people into advocating a policy that I don't think anyone thought was actually going to pass.
Rather than trying to cooperate with Republicans, how about we replace them with Democrats?
It's Wednesday, so today we get the Freddie who believes that political actions should be effective, and who rightly laments the staggering ineffectiveness of the left to get anything meaningful done.
But tomorrow we are just as likely to get the Freddie who wants to throw AOC under the bus for being insufficiently rigorous on Palestine, and who loudly declares that Hilary Clinton is "garbage" (which he did in 2016, when it mattered).
Freddie: you rightly lament the fact that the George Floyd Act is unlikely to pass the Senate, but did you happen to notice the vote in the House? Democrats: 217 for, 2 against. Republicans: 0 for, 211 against. (One Republican accidentally voted yes, but has now corrected the record.) Gee, how can we possibly tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans???
Yes, tomorrow we will get the Freddie who thinks there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, no reason to try to get Democrats elected (especially to high office like Senator and President) and to work with them.
That's Freddie's kayfabe, one that he keeps quite rigorously.
I don't see how his positions in the first half are contradicted by those in the second. He simply doesn't believe that Democrats are effective, or even left wing. What he'd like is effective political action against Israel, or for racial justice. But consider that a watered down bill is all that Democrats could vote for, and that Biden continues to show unwillingness to condemn the actions of the IDF, let alone take serious action to prevent similar tragedies from occurring. The truth of the matter is that there is good beyond the lesser evil.
> I don't see how his positions in the first half are contradicted by those in the second.
That's not what I said. Today's essay is coherent, but it doesn't cohere with other day's essays.
> He simply doesn't believe that Democrats are effective
This is manifestly false.
> or even left wing.
This is manifestly true.
> What he'd like is effective political action against Israel, or for racial justice.
Sure, me too. But how are we going to get it?
> But consider that a watered down bill is all that Democrats could vote for
I claim that watered down is much better than nothing. This is my whole point.
> and that Biden continues to show unwillingness to condemn the actions of the IDF, let alone take serious action to prevent similar tragedies from occurring.
Sure. Would Trump have been better? Because ONLY Biden or Trump ever had a measurable chance of being POTUS in 2021. Pick one. In this world, on this branch of the universal wave function, those were your only choices.
> The truth of the matter is that there is good beyond the lesser evil.
Of course. But my claim is that the path to that good proceeds ALWAYS AND ONLY through lesser evil. This is the great truth that so few on the left can manage to see.
And to clarify my "Democrats are effective" comment, we can start with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and keep going from there.
to clarify, in that case, I refer to present day Democrats (post Reagan). I don't agree with your claim that good emerges from the lesser evil. What we got out of Obama was a choice between Hillary and Trump, neither of which was good in absolute or relative terms (compared with Obama).
Trump gave lifetime appointments to literally hundreds of right-wing federal judges and three Supreme Court Justices, who will be dispensing anti-progressive rulings for decades to come. I find it hard to forgive those who could not get off their high horses long enough to vote for (and indeed work hard to elect) HRC in 2016. That utter failure by the left will now haunt us all, and most especially people of color and poor people generally. Nice work, lefties!
What does this have to do with my points?
Congressional votes are often (usually?) kayfabe. Back in the Obama administration, the Republican House voted to abolish Obamacare 60-odd times, because they knew it wouldn't happen. Then Trump got into power and there was nothing stopping them from doing it for real, but it didn't happen.
The same thing happens today with the Democrats in the House. When the Senate vote is the bottleneck, House actions are mostly symbolic.
Even for votes that matter, the vote count might be kayfabe. For a bill that the Democrats want to pass, conservative Democrats could vote against it with everyone's blessing because their vote isn't needed and it will play well in their district.
The result is that you can't just cite the congressional voting records as if they showed what members really think; you need to put them into context of what the politics were at the time, and that's subject to interpretation.
Great point.
Keeping to the metaphor, senators like Manchin are heels. The audience sneers and boos at him, the faces get furious at him but it's all a work.
This might be an astute criticism. It has also occurred to me that Freddie might be exercising the sort of double standard you mention, but I haven't found an indisputable minimal working example...I probably haven't tried hard enough because I'm partial to Freddie. Where has he said there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats?
Not only have I never said that in my life, I've explicitly denied it many times
Fair enough, sounded unlikely.
OK, "no difference" is an exaggeration, but I clearly remember that you did not support or vote for Hilary in 2016 in the general, and that you wrote that she was "garbage". So if you see a difference, I can't discern what effect it has on what you regard as effective political action.
The first two things aren't mutually exclusive, though. AOC gets criticized from the left because people accuse her of not using her power effectively. And likewise, Hillary is criticized from the left not because of her effectiveness or lack thereof but because of the positions she takes.
You seem to have taken a strange position where you're taking Freddie's complaints about lack of effectiveness in isolation, divorced from the political positions we should be effective in achieving.
Re AOC: please tell me how she could use her power more effectively. She gets one vote in the House. Amping up the rhetoric would accomplish what, exactly? She also has to worry about drawing a centrist primary challenger in 2022, 2024, 2026, ...
Re HRC: you can criticize her positions, but she got 55% of the primary votes in 2016 to Bernie's 43%, 3.7 million more votes than Bernie. And it was AFTER she had won the primary that the left refused to back her. And so now we have literally hundreds of Trump-appointed right-wing judges who will be ruling our lives for decades to come.
That was the argument behind the force the vote initiative; that AOC should use the congress leadership vote to push for concessions. It's what more centrist dems did, and they got appointments to committees. I think there's an argument that even as a performance the M4A vote would fail, but AOC didn't even use the vote to get the appointments she wanted for herself.
Why are you bringing up primary numbers? If you don't identify as a democrat all that means is you ended up with two right-wing candidates that you don't support.
Again, "being effective" at passing policy you don't really support isn't "being effective" at all.
IMO, the force-the-vote initiative had zero chance of succeeding, which AOC was smart enough to understand.
I brought up primary numbers because you criticized HRC for her positions. If you didn't like her positions, you needed someone else to win the primary. The primary numbers show how very far the left was from getting Bernie the nomination. (Now you'll blame the DNC, as if anything the DNC could say or do would swing 2 million votes.)
AOC was smart enough to understand, but not smart enough to guarantee herself a seat on the Energy and Commerce committee, which she wanted. Again, AOC hasn't shown herself to be effective even at getting power for herself, much less enacting progressive policy.
And you're missing the point: if I don't like Hillary's policies I don't have to vote for her, full stop. If her policies are antithetical to mine (which for foreign policy they very much are) I won't vote for her. Voting for her would mean voting against *my* interests. That's not effective either.
Do you think it served your interests for Trump to appoint hundreds of right-wing judges with lifetime power?
Earnest belief in one's own moral superiority, derived by unwavering support for a specific political party, is probably more dangerous than adhering to socially acceptable delusions as described in this article. But yes, do tell us more about how the heroic Democrats would usher in criminal justice reform utopia if only the evil Republicans weren't holding them back. We'll just have to ignore the spiking rates of violent crime and murder currently playing out in cities run by progressive Democrats with a penchant for reformation and defunding of law enforcement.
I found myself agreeing with vast majority of what's written here. And it seems equally applicable to all of the loudest parts of the progressive policy agenda right now (HR1, "what you hate voting?" PRO Act, "what you hate workers?") Still, after sitting with it for a bit, it strikes that the right is dealing with the same sickness, if perhaps a more insidious variant. On the left, you have to pretend bad policy is good policy, hide your discomfort with identity politics, and pretend patently obvious simplistic views are self-evident truths. But there's implicit room to wiggle because of course leftists agree the world is complicated. If pushed, the professor would say "of course I literally don't believe all of policing was born out of the slaveholding south." On the right, thought, you literally have to pretend deniable facts are other than as they are. The left will watch the video of the debate kid in the classroom and say, "this isn't indicative of a larger problem," (when it obviously is). The right will watch its version of the video and have to say say, "that didn't happen; the video was forged, fake, staged, etc." There's no room for backtrack or nuance, or else you get Liz Cheney'd.
I see this as a subtle but important distinction. But maybe not, maybe it's the exact same problem. Either way, I don't know that articles like this that talk to one half of the problem move the needle. I'm not sure I see a way out of a national death spiral unless we can find a broad-based way to inoculate the population as a whole.
If pushed, the professor would say "of course I literally don't believe all of policing was born out of the slaveholding south."
Well I'd like to see that on video. I think you what you would get instead is ever more convoluted and bizarre justification coupled with personal attacks on you for pushing.
Republican kayfabe: "The election was stolen"; "It was just a friendly crowd on 1/6"; "I am deeply concerned about voter fraud and the deficit". Most Republicans say these things because they know the party line.
I think there's some amount of this that has been true for politicians of every stripe in every era. I think the what's happening now is different, and is technology-driven in a way that hasn't been true before. That is: no matter how asinine your beliefs, you can now find a whole community online of other asinine people who agree with you (before you used to just be the office/neighborhood nutso). Social media gives these pockets a megaphone and drowns out middling views (nonsense is driven to the top since people are more likely to click and engage on outrageous content, consuming ad content along the way). As these voices get amplified, they attract people who fail to realize that these views are not actually mainstream at all. This is happening now on left and right in a way that just hasn't been true before. As a population, we actually need a way to amplify moderate/moderating voices. I don't see how you overcome kayfabe otherwise.
and my apologies to R. Scott Bakker, who I realize now I'm ripping off: https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2016/07/18/the-death-of-wilson-how-the-academic-left-created-donald-trump/
I don't know if you want to hear this, Freddie, since you say you support trans rights, but "trans women are women" is the ultimate, perfect example of Kayfabe. Everyone who says it knows what a woman is. Obviously! But they're devoted to the sense of sacred commitment, to maintaining the consensual fantasy as you put it.