It’s hard to write about this without sound pious, but probably the most elementary political ideal I have is that principle has to come before affiliation. Politics is about taking moral intuitions and reasoning and using them to craft an ideology from which you derive specific policy positions and arguments. In order to put those into practice you will have to form coalitions, so affiliation is important. But it’s very easy for your group identity to obliterate your principles, as the desire to belong overwhelms your organic beliefs. And I think we’re at a space, in 2022, where the default political identity is almost purely affiliatory. I understand that claiming we’re in a tribal period is not novel, but almost every day I’m reminded of how bad things have gotten.
Well, so are party platforms like those of the Greens and the Libertarian Party, which implicitly demand allegiance to various cockamamie idealistic projects and condemn those who object to any point in the platform that's drawn up on the basis of the Ideal Template.
In my opinion, one of the (many, vitally important) benefits of Ranked-Choice Voting is that if outsider parties- particularly those that have endured for a series of election cycles, like the Greens and the Libertarians- find that they've actually been allowed a path to compete with the Big Two, they might see clear to modifying some of their more extravagant proposals in the direction of emphasizing practical achievements rather than ideological posturing. Because we need alternatives very badly; this democracy is in peril of degenerating into the sort of two-party system found in the history of Colombia, as described in the book More Terrible Than Death: two major parties, each pledging nominal allegiance to a given ideological slant, relatively speaking, while in actuality being almost entirely about regional/local partisanship and party patronage. Two party politics that gets freighted with cynicism and decadence declines to the level of rote tribal loyalty and the use of political power for punitive retaliation. The goal of dialogue between constituencies or a dialectic of compromise on policy is forgotten.
In Colombia, the degeneration into hostile factions eventually led to the era of La Violencia, in the 1940s- a ten-year civil war. Sane human beings do not seek to invite a future like that for the United States. The question is whether there are enough of us to keep the lunatic fringes from bootstrapping their extremism by hogging the narrative. Because it's definitely possible for societies to get carried away. En masse.
I've been noticing troubling indications of that slide into cynicism and zero-sum politics ever since unscrupulous political advisers like Newt Gingrich and David Horowitz began demonizing the Democratic Party in the 1990s and speaking in terms of the politics of annihilating the opposition; over time, this has led to the same narrative among many Democrats. The politics of annihilating the opposition is implicit in Wokism- a movement that poses rhetorically with extravagant Left radicalism, but which ultimately boils down to a campaign of polarization to herd voters- the favored constituencies, of course- into the camp of the Democrats (Along with the most outspoken leaders making sure to get well-paid, of course.)
There are several problems with the Democratic Party embrace of zero-sum radicalism: the first is that it's a grave error to turn into your adversary like that. The other problem is that the Republicans do demagoguery better, and polarizing politics work to their advantage. The Democrats need to step away from that ledge, and get a better grasp on their verbal faculties, their rhetoric. A matter as different from success at achieving the policy goals of campaign promises as symbolism is from substance.
>In my opinion, one of the (many, vitally important) benefits of Ranked-Choice Voting is that if outsider parties- particularly those that have endured for a series of election cycles, like the Greens and the Libertarians- find that they've actually been allowed a path to compete with the Big Two, they might see clear to modifying some of their more extravagant proposals in the direction of emphasizing practical achievements rather than ideological posturing.
I've never understood why those looking to break the two-party duopoly aren't the most fanatical popularists of all.
I don’t generally think typos should be pointed out unless 1) they significantly alter the meaning or 2) they’re hilarious. I don’t really think they matter otherwise. We all make them.
(Though Freddie, if you’re ever in the market again for another copyeditor, you have my email!)
I think a good method is to have one thread for typos, where the author can delete them as he fixes them.
In practice this runs into problems, because sometimes the author is just pissed and kicks out the user, and other times people want to start grammar debates.
I suggest the idea so Freddie can try it if he wants (and I'll participate if he does) but will otherwise move on with my life.
I think they should be fixed because they FAIRLY OR NOT can make a bad impression. We may not care, because we're paying subscribers and already fans, but for the public posts in particular I would like them to look as though they were read once over before hitting "post" and less like an email, ONLY because of the fact that people are judgmental, even when they think they aren't. Respectability politics!
I disagree. First, there are actually very few typos This is a very long piece and there are maybe three obvious ones. Most unfiltered writers (not all, but most) would have more errors in an article of this length. Second, the typos contribute to the fresh, vibrant, hot-off-the-press, no-fucks-given feel of this substack. Third, this guy is unique in the quantity, quality and frequency of his posting - I wouldn't want to dull that energy.
I think it’s unfair to Cheney and Goldberg, FWIW, to lump them in with Kristol. Disagree with their principles, but they’ve clung to them and can’t help that they’ve attracted support from Resistance liberals. They’ve also suffered professionally as a result. Kristol OTOH has engaged in a full-on Resistance grift. The Bulwark is an utterly banal and useless publication, a Johnny One Note with absolutely nothing interesting to say (and literally nothing to say that doesn’t include the word “Trump” somewhere).
I thought his point was more about finding people on the other side who one can work with rather than letting a particular affiliation dictate your policies and groups with whom you'd work.
I'm not sure, but I think Freddie's referring to Goldberg's noisy defection from Fox and his taking a gig with CNN.
I don't know - maybe that had some business motives, but the identified principle (that Goldberg thought Tucker Carlson was a dangerous hack) is one that Goldberg had never been shy about.
I guess if Freddie wants to be cynical about how long Jonah stayed at Fox, I don't know enough about Jonah's motives to argue, but it seems unfair, as you say, to lump him and Cheney in with the others.
I deleted the first version of this comment because I googled and realized it contained a factual error:
If memory serves, Goldberg wasn't renewed at Fox (edit: he resigned in Nov. 2021, but only after having his appearances at Fox dramatically cut over Trump years), and then was offered a spot at CNN. Through all that, I never detected a meaningful shift in his core principles, or even really his tone (other than a twinge of understandable resentment at being non-personed by former friends who readily abandoned their once-shared principles and sold out to Trumpism). Man's gotta eat, can't blame him for taking a paying gig to keep saying the same things he's said from the beginning.
"Even if you think he’s the world’s biggest asshole, the immense roster of people on Twitter and in the media who spend their time on the anti-Greenwald beat is very strange."
I *know* he's an asshole and I still think it's utterly bizarre and counterproductive how much time people spend hating him, which only riles him up and makes him more of an asshole. I value a lot of his work, for what it's worth.
It seems thousands of people will spend 5 seconds writing "Greenwald sucks, everyone agree," which does contribute to the stupid circlejerk, but isn't inherently robbing time that could be spent critiquing better targets or better topics.
Yes, and it's especially counterproductive because he's the special kind of thin-skinned asshole who seems to gain hubris from being criticized. If everyone just shut up about him, it would take away some of his power, I suspect.
I don’t really see this happening outside of Very Online People who probably amount to 3% of the people I know. But those 3% are so into it they are certain that everyone else is spending their time deeply immersed in politics.
But educational polarization and the demise if ticket splitting are real and mass phenomena. Everyone doesn't have to be Very Online for this to happen; they just have to be a little online
Well, yes, but does the same apply outside the 3% when it comes to the weird infighting? Most Republicans I know hate Joe Biden, not Bill Kristol; most not-extremely-online Democrats are annoyed at Joe Manchin but loathe Donald Trump.
Hyperbole is the coin of the realm these days. Possibly connected to the popular acceptance of Richard Dawkins' "meme" concept, as if "memes" held some profound science-based insight with overarching power over human cognition and critical assessment of verbal language.
"Memes" are adspeak, about selling the sizzle and not the steak (to resort to an archaic but nonetheless appropriate simile.) Memes aren't an insight objectively drawn from principles of Evolutionary Biology; they're superficial linguistic features exploited by those peerless professionals of applied social psychology, the propagandists of advertising. The focus of study of Edward Bernays, Ivan Pavlov, Josef Goebbels, and the crafters of ad campaigns, not R. Dawkins and E. O. Wilson.
As such, Hyperbole is a key tool in the toolbox of language manipulators. As is offering Name-checks of Heroes and Villains, based on public familiarity with them and intended to link that familiarity for propaganda advantage. It has to be admitted that many readers don't read for content or context; they skim. Their thoughts are prompted by the emotional triggering of labels; that isn't about "the power of the meme", it's the result of eliciting a conditioned response.
It's a good idea for anyone in the business of political "messaging" to understand the principles of advertising to aid their appeal to their audience- especially in democracies, which implicitly rely on persuasion rather than badgering or coercion in order to draw allegiance from their voters. But without ethics or concern for integrity in the message content, shit has a way of getting dumb fast. Especially when one side is adept at slick demagoguery, and the other is inept at the keeping the common touch. Or, worse, if both positions in a given issue debate resort to unethical means. When both sides jettison their ethics, that most often indicates that the value of the respective positions of both sides is exhausted, either because they've been asking the wrong questions for too long or seeking private ends at the expense of productive results for the common good. The sort of cynicism that one hears expressed as "fighting fire with fire", etc.
I agree. I see cars sometimes with Fuck Joe Biden stickers (not "Let's Go Brandon" childish nonsense, but actual FJB), and I think two things: 1) How tacky. No matter how much I hate W or Trump, I would never put something like that on my car; and 2) What do you hate him so much for? What has he done that is SO antithetical to your belief system? I'm sure not a single one of them could tell me anything coherent beyond they think he stole the election or whatever.
Today things are discussed online, and the only people who want to be mods are the Very Online. And it's much easier to kick out a person who disagrees than engage them.
Unless we descend back to blogs and newsletters -- which I guess we are.
Mirabile dictu, my favorite current political writer is a contrarian Marxist. Although, as a Massachusetts boy, I am compelled to observe that Red Sox vs. Yankees is the ULTIMATE matter of principle!
The very thing I pointed out is the problem with politics being a religion. Politics should not be about faith. You can't debate faith. You can't make faith compromise. That's a very dangerous position to take with politics. The other side becomes infidels and those who leave the fold become heretics. Do you really want to live in a system like that?
I love it when people see the religious nature of modern politics. Of course, religious zealotry is much harder to deal with than one's generic political disagreements.
I agree with basically the entirety of this article but I think Michael Tracey has clearly gone off the deep end in recent weeks. He's basically turned into James Lindsey but instead of CRT his great enemy is support for Ukraine. It's bizarre and honestly kinda captivating.
He did the same thing when Trump blew up Soleimani. Lost a lot of his followers, with no remorse. Whenever any big world conflict like this happens his main goal seems to be doing whatever he can to help avert escalation. It bothered me a bit, but that’s because I’m unfortunately more tribal than him. He’s probably in that sense one of the most principled journalists I have recently observed.
yes, and fairly thrilling. Didn't seem to result in a large counterattack either. Nevertheless, one would prefer something like that were approved by congress first, secretly I guess, if only to slow the ongoing surrender of power from legislative to executive branch.
Well, his main thing right now is arguing with people on Twitter who ARE IN FAVOR OF NUCLEAR WAR which makes them about the dumbest human beings on Earth. So I'll stick up for a guy who's smart enough not to be a hawk.
How many people do these intense internecine battles really affect? My theory is that their importance is overstated, because they largely affect the small number of combatants who happen to have the profession of battling through words.
Freddie, I do not consider you a "political orphan" in the sense that you have a large audience who values what you write. You can stay above the fray. Or, more vividly, you can let the dogs bark, but still move the caravan along.
To repeat myself, educational polarization and the demise of ticket splitting are national phenomena that are determining the outcomes of our federal elections. They can't be dismissed as a meaningless online thing
I agree about the polarization, but I think there are many factors at play, with online ranting about who's out and who's in as one factor, and, I believe secondary to Cable TV and gerrymandering as causes.
The impact of cable TV would be impressive considering how tiny of a fraction of the electorate watches it (presuming you mean the news channels and not, like, ESPN). The popularity of Fox News and MSNBC is massively overstated online.
I follow state politics and the poor little Gerrymander only comes out every decade. He is hated in Illinois by Republicans. He is hated in Florida by Democrats. He doesn't live in Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, or Wyoming.
How do you reconcile that with ticket splitting beginning its decline in the 90s? Surely we’re not blaming this on Usenet. It seems unlikely these phenomenon are causally related.
I think this is much closer to the truth than "the internet did it," although even this underrates the general weirdness that we live in a country where Blacks voted for Abraham Lincoln and white Southerners voted against Abraham Lincoln for 100-130 years after his death. A look at any graph or voting trends really drives home that up until the 90s most of them were driven by Lincoln and FDR.
I thought this was insightful but I didn't realize it. I've always split tickets since I voted in Chicago and the precinct captain yelled at you if you were in the booth too long--like he could DO anything to me since I wasn't a city worker.
"But surely Yglesias shares far more politically with his many leftist detractors than with, say, the Breitbart crowd. I can understand thinking that time is better spent critiquing those who are more subject to the influence of your side, and obviously, it would be profoundly hypocritical for me to act as though it’s not legitimate to criticize 'your side'."
this is the issue, though, with the way a lot of (other) culture war writers work through this question. everyone has their own stock responses to the question, "Why do you spend your time criticizing this left/right/woke/anti-woke person instead of that right/left/anti-woke/woke person." it's often got a lot to do w affinities -- "i'm keeping my own house in order," "i'm more influential here than there," "i hold my own side to a higher standard" -- but then the same writers also reserve the right to dismiss every one else's stock responses in the same spirit to same question, if they're coming from a different subfaction, as braindead tribalism. when really the difference just hinges on one person thinking in-group criticism is more valuable and another person thinking out-group criticism is more valuable; it's a manner of tribalism either way and not, as you note, primarily driven by the content of ideas.
you know this, i'm not disagreeing w the post, i'm just emphasizing the "everyone" in "everyone absolutely insane." we each in ourselves contain the answer to this never-ending scooby-doo mystery.
The core problem there is that criticism based solely on taking offense over someone else's choice of topics and "targets" is inane. It's valid to disagree with the content of what's being said, if one can provide reasons for why it's unwarranted or unfair. But lodging an objection simply on the basis of topic choice is superfluous, and it most often reads to me like pique. Pique is not legitimate criticism, because it's unresponsive, and obvious to boot- of course the writer could have chosen a different topic! I don't care about anyone's pique, whether the remarks inspired by it are directed at my writing or someone else's writing. Since when do readers have a legitimate prerogative to pressure writers to delimit the topic choices of the stories they write? I've most often noticed these objections leveled without specific reference to content found within the story itself- which implies that upon failing to refute or gainsay any of the claims made by the writer, the reader posting the criticism is left only to express their wish that the story hadn't been written at all.
I agree, never knew they were viewed as on the right. It feels more Libertarian to me than anything else, but in quite a moderate way on the political spectrum.
I think any place which allows dissenters from the publishing industry's current position will become a haven for authors looking for a 'neutral' platform. As they colonize it, it will become just another ideologically defined platform. The more so, because a role as refuge for people with heterodox opinions is hard to combine with rigorous fact-editing.
Quillete is "of the right" because the left has moved thousands of miles to the left. Now anyone to the right of the left most person is the right, alt-right, far right, ultra right, etc. Colin Wright's tweet lays it out best.
A fine chart. Although I wish there was a way to capture the fact that the left has not gotten more liberal, they've repudiated liberalism in favor of illiberal wokery.
I agree. I refuse to say they're "more left" than I am just because their views are extreme. They're elitist and obsessed with language and symbolism. Disdainful of the working class and opposed to class-based organizing. That's not "being a leftist."
Maybe it's the definition of the left has changed. I see more leftist politics in those labeled right. I think many on the left are clinging to a party/label that has fundamentally changed and no longer represents their views but they cannot countenance calling themselves a conservative or Republican.
A big part of that is that the republican party, no matter what it uses to drum up interest from its base, can only be counted on to lower taxes for the rich. There is just no place for people who are socially moderate and economically socialist in the current political spectrum.
There was a woman in the class that I just took who consistently talked about how the professor “hated her“ and couldn’t stand her existence. This guy was a literal Eagle Scout and he seemed so nice to me. Not to me as in me specifically but generally I perceived him as really nice. But every time she spoke to him or asked a question she was sarcastic or rude.
Example: she asked a question that didn’t really make much sense and he was genuinely trying to figure out what her question was. I didn’t even understand what she was trying to ask. (She was asking which of the “two names” of an organ he was intending for us to give on a test; that organ only has one name. And he said very generously “hmm I’m thinking about it to see if I can figure out what this other name could be.” And she said “oh yeah I can see your thinking real hard. You’re doing good.”
That’s how I feel about these extremists. They act defensive and defiant and offensive depending on whatever *your* posture is, and then say “see? You don’t want to learn, you don’t want to listen” etc. etc.
God, I cannot wait for the day when that level of rudeness won't be tolerated. Like, no, Paxtynne, you're not "woke" or "progressive", you're just a shitty person and nobody likes you.
Funny thing: I don’t think I’d call her woke. She has a Margaritaville tire cover on the back of her jeep and the day we didn’t have to wear masks in class anymore she said my body my choice.
See? Being an asshole knows no political boundaries.
'And she said “oh yeah I can see your thinking real hard. You’re doing good.”'
She actually said that to the teacher? What the actual fuck, that is so rude. I think she's just being an asshole like you said. Don't need no political affiliation for that moniker, it transcends all. :]
That's a good chart to illustrate his point, but it would be more accurate if he stayed to the left of center instead of moving right. The center shouldn't move at all, despite how far things go to either side.
To be fair, the right had been moving farther right for many years before this. Maybe the left just wanted to not be outdone? :]
The center/right/left will always be in flux. Things change, circumstances changes, people change. That being said, I still believe core foundational principles, morality and good values are timeless but how these play out in real life depend on so many factors.
It does when it comes to god and country. They both have their righteous zealotry, they just worship different idols. To me, the only practical difference between the far right and far left is that the former is old and the latter is new.
The center is completely relative, as being between the right and left, roughly equidistant, so if the right keeps moving right faster than the left moves left, the center is going to move right as well, yes?
Hmm, that's a good point. For instance, gay marriage was probably a very extreme Left position to take not 3 decades ago. And freedom of speech, once firmly a liberal stance, has now pretty much crossed the center line.
But there are also a lot of things that haven't moved for like a hundred years either, like limited government and free-markets in the case of conservatives. I feels like to me that some things are fluid and others aren't. And that maybe it's the non-fluid aspects of political ideology that people point to when this subject comes up.
There are completely different definitions for these things depending on whether you count those who mutually self-identify as right-wing or just enemies of someone who identifies themselves as left-wing.
I agree, but I do think there are exceptions. For instance, I no longer identify as "left-wing" or "Leftist", even though pretty much all my policy positions would "cluster left" and centrist normies think I'm a loony commie. Nonetheless, the actual social milieu that mutually self-identify as Leftist don't want me and I don't want them, for both personal and political reasons, so I'm not a Leftist.
Same. My point was more that I would never countenance being labeled "right" and I'd advise the same to anyone who does not actually consider themselves as such.
I try not to countenance being labeled "right-wing", but leftoids pretty much insist I'm far-right (sometimes they insist it's free-market type, sometimes fascistic type). Actual centrist Democrats I meet IRL continue to consider me a flaming commie.
Which is to say, I can only shrug my shoulders at what are simply different usages of "left" or "right", different origin points in the coordinate space. Sure, if your origin point is the Grauniad or the New York Times editorial page, you'll think I'm a right-wing contrarian. If your origin point is the dominant faction of the Democratic Party, you'll roll your eyes at my academic Marxism. If your origin point is the Republican Party, you'll accuse me of being a communist infiltrator.
I only have friends among my own IRL communities and "fellow contrarians/heterodox ex-leftists" anymore, so I don't bother with a label.
It's only a matter of time until there are so many outcasts expelled by various forms of lockstep ideological policing that we become the new majority.
By any reasonable measure that happened long ago, but "we" don't have any mediating institutions designed to translate "our" shared baseline of views, or even tolerance for heterodoxy, into a power base within liberal or left-wing civil society.
I'd say their editorial bias is generally both right wing and liberal. Equating conservative and liberal with right and left is a weird anglophone-specific thing.
Another thoughtful and interesting essay FdB (this from one of those mouth breathing conservative a-holes). But I think the gist of the problem on both sides of the political fence lies in your statement "To be clear, I have absolutely no attachment to civility or even-handedness or respectful exchange for their own sake. My problem is that politics without principle is nothing, literally Yooks and Zooks. " It really is possible to have respectful disagreement with those individuals on the other side politically - in fact it is essential if this American experiment is to continue. John Adams said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Mildly center-left-ish asshole chiming in. I always thought the point was to argue as much as possible, then have an election and chill the fuck out for 2/4/however-many years. I thought the point of elections was to elect the best candidate and the one a majority (or at least a plurality) of the voters wanted. Then, you have the consent of the governed, and presumably the losers are secure in the knowledge that they get to try again in a few years. This keeps everyone from just straight up killing each other or having a king or a revolution every few years or something ridiculous like that.
As Freddie (and others) have written, though, everyone who even mildly disagrees with you now is political enemy number one, but that's because nobody is talking to anyone outside of their bubble. I learned recently that a coworker of mine voted from Trump the first time, because he was frustrated with the state of politics. Not like some sort of accelerationist, but someone with genuine political frustration willing to try something radically different. He believes he made the wrong choice, but even so, I don't blame him, and I'm not upset with him. We mostly don't discuss politics at work, but I know this guy is really smart and thoughtful, which helps erode the kind of thinking that would otherwise make all Trump voters political enemies. I think we need more of that. I hate the phrase "reaching across the aisle", but I think it really does help to talk to people who are different, because you end up realizing that you might actually have a lot in common, and the two-party system makes binaries inevitable.
Your point about the two party system is dead on. I have a deep belief that the US’s two-party system is fundamentally bad, not simply because it limits voter choice, but also because I think it plays into partisanship much too easily. People see the Democrats as the only viable left wing party, the Republicans as the only viable right wing party, and there’s no clear alternative for anyone who doesn’t like either group. It’s a literal us vs them scenario.
What’s particularly bad about the American party system, though, is how damnably centralized it is. The UK is also a two-party system, but unlike the States they have 3rd parties that consistently and reliably win at least a few seats in Parliament, if not more. (The UK actually has a sustained history of coalition governments, unlike the US). That helps to provide an at least somewhat viable alternative, and helps avoid the illusion that Party A and the ideology they represent are one and the same, which in turn helps hold off groupthink. The US doesn’t have that, which I think aggravates tribalism.
Main issue is that the centralized two-party system we have here is at least somewhat linked to the Constitution itself, which is hard to change. If it weren’t for the downright shitty political environment in this country, I’d want a “Second Constitutional Convention” of sorts to remake how this country’s democracy works, but sadly I think partisan squabbles and bad faith negotiation would sink such a thing, so who knows if that will ever happen. But a man can dream.
Till then, just a waiting game to see if/when people will actually start “reaching across the aisle” to calm things down.
Now do Elon Musk. How did the person most responsible for the first mass-adopted electric car become the ultimate bogeyman of left-wing nightmares? Because he might let Trump have his Twitter account back?
I'd say that unions and working conditions are more important than transitioning to electric cars. I think the importance of electric cars is exaggerated, since they're still cars. I'd much rather have trains and cities planned for biking or walking. After all, moving 1000s of lbs of metal around to get to work isn't going to be efficient no matter what energy source you use.
(besides, he may not have transitioned millions of people to electric cars. There's about 2 million Teslas sold, and some were probably to repeat customers.)
Absolutely and it shouldn't even be a question. Solar cars still play into a car-centric infrastructure and Elon's imagined future of private tunnels for Tesla drivers and such is as much (maybe more?) of an environmental nightmare as anything being floated around by the motor industry. Liberal environmentalism and green capitalism are way more nefarious than they're given credit for. People repeat outdated ideas about nuclear energy, place the blame directly on fossil fuels themselves to distract from the industry that controls them, accept personal consumption habits as a permanent and sustainable solution, adopt kneejerk anti-growth and anti-urbanist politics, stage protest that block people from public transit so on and so forth, none of which is really helping. It's madness. I would rather just live and work somewhere where I never have to drive, but given the choice between a gas-powered car made by union workers or a more environmentally friendly car by someone like Musk, I just might choose the former. Mostly, though, I just hate driving.
My impression was that it was Musk's decidedly non-progressive ideas and abrasive personality that got him in the deepest trouble. I think if he hadn't had union issues in his factories, he'd still be a progressive target because he won't mouth the platitudes.
People who excoriate Musk have not paid attention to his larger projects. Those I know --who are all for support of climate change legislation--still don't like him. This, more than anything shows me how shallow are their perceptions. Musk on Rogan 3 years ago will give a lot of insight. (still free on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycPr5-27vSI )
Well, so are party platforms like those of the Greens and the Libertarian Party, which implicitly demand allegiance to various cockamamie idealistic projects and condemn those who object to any point in the platform that's drawn up on the basis of the Ideal Template.
In my opinion, one of the (many, vitally important) benefits of Ranked-Choice Voting is that if outsider parties- particularly those that have endured for a series of election cycles, like the Greens and the Libertarians- find that they've actually been allowed a path to compete with the Big Two, they might see clear to modifying some of their more extravagant proposals in the direction of emphasizing practical achievements rather than ideological posturing. Because we need alternatives very badly; this democracy is in peril of degenerating into the sort of two-party system found in the history of Colombia, as described in the book More Terrible Than Death: two major parties, each pledging nominal allegiance to a given ideological slant, relatively speaking, while in actuality being almost entirely about regional/local partisanship and party patronage. Two party politics that gets freighted with cynicism and decadence declines to the level of rote tribal loyalty and the use of political power for punitive retaliation. The goal of dialogue between constituencies or a dialectic of compromise on policy is forgotten.
In Colombia, the degeneration into hostile factions eventually led to the era of La Violencia, in the 1940s- a ten-year civil war. Sane human beings do not seek to invite a future like that for the United States. The question is whether there are enough of us to keep the lunatic fringes from bootstrapping their extremism by hogging the narrative. Because it's definitely possible for societies to get carried away. En masse.
I've been noticing troubling indications of that slide into cynicism and zero-sum politics ever since unscrupulous political advisers like Newt Gingrich and David Horowitz began demonizing the Democratic Party in the 1990s and speaking in terms of the politics of annihilating the opposition; over time, this has led to the same narrative among many Democrats. The politics of annihilating the opposition is implicit in Wokism- a movement that poses rhetorically with extravagant Left radicalism, but which ultimately boils down to a campaign of polarization to herd voters- the favored constituencies, of course- into the camp of the Democrats (Along with the most outspoken leaders making sure to get well-paid, of course.)
There are several problems with the Democratic Party embrace of zero-sum radicalism: the first is that it's a grave error to turn into your adversary like that. The other problem is that the Republicans do demagoguery better, and polarizing politics work to their advantage. The Democrats need to step away from that ledge, and get a better grasp on their verbal faculties, their rhetoric. A matter as different from success at achieving the policy goals of campaign promises as symbolism is from substance.
>In my opinion, one of the (many, vitally important) benefits of Ranked-Choice Voting is that if outsider parties- particularly those that have endured for a series of election cycles, like the Greens and the Libertarians- find that they've actually been allowed a path to compete with the Big Two, they might see clear to modifying some of their more extravagant proposals in the direction of emphasizing practical achievements rather than ideological posturing.
I've never understood why those looking to break the two-party duopoly aren't the most fanatical popularists of all.
"Politics has" is correct so please don't notify me about the supposed typo, thanks!
However, I still think you meant "wring" instead of "ring" ...
If you don't mind my playing the part of grammar Nazi ... we wring money out of people, ibviously.
Should we inform you about all the other typos?
There were so many that I lost track, but I'd happily add to a list if I have any that others missed. Or whatever.
I don’t generally think typos should be pointed out unless 1) they significantly alter the meaning or 2) they’re hilarious. I don’t really think they matter otherwise. We all make them.
(Though Freddie, if you’re ever in the market again for another copyeditor, you have my email!)
I think people are pointing them out in a friendly spirit. As you say, we ALL make them.
I think a good method is to have one thread for typos, where the author can delete them as he fixes them.
In practice this runs into problems, because sometimes the author is just pissed and kicks out the user, and other times people want to start grammar debates.
I suggest the idea so Freddie can try it if he wants (and I'll participate if he does) but will otherwise move on with my life.
I think they should be fixed because they FAIRLY OR NOT can make a bad impression. We may not care, because we're paying subscribers and already fans, but for the public posts in particular I would like them to look as though they were read once over before hitting "post" and less like an email, ONLY because of the fact that people are judgmental, even when they think they aren't. Respectability politics!
I disagree. First, there are actually very few typos This is a very long piece and there are maybe three obvious ones. Most unfiltered writers (not all, but most) would have more errors in an article of this length. Second, the typos contribute to the fresh, vibrant, hot-off-the-press, no-fucks-given feel of this substack. Third, this guy is unique in the quantity, quality and frequency of his posting - I wouldn't want to dull that energy.
I think it’s unfair to Cheney and Goldberg, FWIW, to lump them in with Kristol. Disagree with their principles, but they’ve clung to them and can’t help that they’ve attracted support from Resistance liberals. They’ve also suffered professionally as a result. Kristol OTOH has engaged in a full-on Resistance grift. The Bulwark is an utterly banal and useless publication, a Johnny One Note with absolutely nothing interesting to say (and literally nothing to say that doesn’t include the word “Trump” somewhere).
This response feels a little like the affiliation politics Freddie wrote about.
I thought his point was more about finding people on the other side who one can work with rather than letting a particular affiliation dictate your policies and groups with whom you'd work.
No, they don't really have principles. They finally got their just due like a lot of ConInc grifters and are just trying to extend their grift.
I'm not sure, but I think Freddie's referring to Goldberg's noisy defection from Fox and his taking a gig with CNN.
I don't know - maybe that had some business motives, but the identified principle (that Goldberg thought Tucker Carlson was a dangerous hack) is one that Goldberg had never been shy about.
I guess if Freddie wants to be cynical about how long Jonah stayed at Fox, I don't know enough about Jonah's motives to argue, but it seems unfair, as you say, to lump him and Cheney in with the others.
I deleted the first version of this comment because I googled and realized it contained a factual error:
If memory serves, Goldberg wasn't renewed at Fox (edit: he resigned in Nov. 2021, but only after having his appearances at Fox dramatically cut over Trump years), and then was offered a spot at CNN. Through all that, I never detected a meaningful shift in his core principles, or even really his tone (other than a twinge of understandable resentment at being non-personed by former friends who readily abandoned their once-shared principles and sold out to Trumpism). Man's gotta eat, can't blame him for taking a paying gig to keep saying the same things he's said from the beginning.
Good piece. For elaboration on the issue of big conflict over smallish matters, see Freud: "the narcissism of minor differences."
"Even if you think he’s the world’s biggest asshole, the immense roster of people on Twitter and in the media who spend their time on the anti-Greenwald beat is very strange."
I *know* he's an asshole and I still think it's utterly bizarre and counterproductive how much time people spend hating him, which only riles him up and makes him more of an asshole. I value a lot of his work, for what it's worth.
It seems thousands of people will spend 5 seconds writing "Greenwald sucks, everyone agree," which does contribute to the stupid circlejerk, but isn't inherently robbing time that could be spent critiquing better targets or better topics.
Yes, and it's especially counterproductive because he's the special kind of thin-skinned asshole who seems to gain hubris from being criticized. If everyone just shut up about him, it would take away some of his power, I suspect.
I don’t really see this happening outside of Very Online People who probably amount to 3% of the people I know. But those 3% are so into it they are certain that everyone else is spending their time deeply immersed in politics.
But educational polarization and the demise if ticket splitting are real and mass phenomena. Everyone doesn't have to be Very Online for this to happen; they just have to be a little online
Well, yes, but does the same apply outside the 3% when it comes to the weird infighting? Most Republicans I know hate Joe Biden, not Bill Kristol; most not-extremely-online Democrats are annoyed at Joe Manchin but loathe Donald Trump.
Hate Joe Biden? They certainly don’t hate him like they hated Hillary.
No one has ever hated anyone the way the GOP hated Hillary Clinton. Clinton was sui generis. We will never see her like again.
But the hatred for Biden is awesomely disproportionate to anything that he has been actually able to accomplish.
Hyperbole is the coin of the realm these days. Possibly connected to the popular acceptance of Richard Dawkins' "meme" concept, as if "memes" held some profound science-based insight with overarching power over human cognition and critical assessment of verbal language.
"Memes" are adspeak, about selling the sizzle and not the steak (to resort to an archaic but nonetheless appropriate simile.) Memes aren't an insight objectively drawn from principles of Evolutionary Biology; they're superficial linguistic features exploited by those peerless professionals of applied social psychology, the propagandists of advertising. The focus of study of Edward Bernays, Ivan Pavlov, Josef Goebbels, and the crafters of ad campaigns, not R. Dawkins and E. O. Wilson.
As such, Hyperbole is a key tool in the toolbox of language manipulators. As is offering Name-checks of Heroes and Villains, based on public familiarity with them and intended to link that familiarity for propaganda advantage. It has to be admitted that many readers don't read for content or context; they skim. Their thoughts are prompted by the emotional triggering of labels; that isn't about "the power of the meme", it's the result of eliciting a conditioned response.
It's a good idea for anyone in the business of political "messaging" to understand the principles of advertising to aid their appeal to their audience- especially in democracies, which implicitly rely on persuasion rather than badgering or coercion in order to draw allegiance from their voters. But without ethics or concern for integrity in the message content, shit has a way of getting dumb fast. Especially when one side is adept at slick demagoguery, and the other is inept at the keeping the common touch. Or, worse, if both positions in a given issue debate resort to unethical means. When both sides jettison their ethics, that most often indicates that the value of the respective positions of both sides is exhausted, either because they've been asking the wrong questions for too long or seeking private ends at the expense of productive results for the common good. The sort of cynicism that one hears expressed as "fighting fire with fire", etc.
I agree. I see cars sometimes with Fuck Joe Biden stickers (not "Let's Go Brandon" childish nonsense, but actual FJB), and I think two things: 1) How tacky. No matter how much I hate W or Trump, I would never put something like that on my car; and 2) What do you hate him so much for? What has he done that is SO antithetical to your belief system? I'm sure not a single one of them could tell me anything coherent beyond they think he stole the election or whatever.
I'm not sure those bumper stickers are an expression of personal antipathy to Biden so much as a declaration of animus towards the other party.
How is educational polarization different than any of the earlier class and race based polarizations?
It doesn't reflect people's material interests. Lumpen-PMCs working at Starbucks need a union, not a war in Ukraine.
Today things are discussed online, and the only people who want to be mods are the Very Online. And it's much easier to kick out a person who disagrees than engage them.
Unless we descend back to blogs and newsletters -- which I guess we are.
Mirabile dictu, my favorite current political writer is a contrarian Marxist. Although, as a Massachusetts boy, I am compelled to observe that Red Sox vs. Yankees is the ULTIMATE matter of principle!
Tampa Bay Rays fan here finds them both have no principles.
Fuck you both -- Mets
Idk why but this reminded me of Paul Graham's "Two Kinds of Moderates": http://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
"...the level of personal antipathy towards dissidents now is far greater than towards those all the way in the other camp..."
Exactly. That's why this shit is religion, not politics. In a religion, heretics are much more hated than the other tribe.
The very thing I pointed out is the problem with politics being a religion. Politics should not be about faith. You can't debate faith. You can't make faith compromise. That's a very dangerous position to take with politics. The other side becomes infidels and those who leave the fold become heretics. Do you really want to live in a system like that?
You may well get your wish.
While I agree that there's not much chance of stopping it, it would seem any chance we have is in recognition and trying to counteract the trend.
I love it when people see the religious nature of modern politics. Of course, religious zealotry is much harder to deal with than one's generic political disagreements.
https://theupheaval.substack.com/
I agree with basically the entirety of this article but I think Michael Tracey has clearly gone off the deep end in recent weeks. He's basically turned into James Lindsey but instead of CRT his great enemy is support for Ukraine. It's bizarre and honestly kinda captivating.
He did the same thing when Trump blew up Soleimani. Lost a lot of his followers, with no remorse. Whenever any big world conflict like this happens his main goal seems to be doing whatever he can to help avert escalation. It bothered me a bit, but that’s because I’m unfortunately more tribal than him. He’s probably in that sense one of the most principled journalists I have recently observed.
Fair point! Though we can all agree now that killing Soleimani was good though, right?
yes, and fairly thrilling. Didn't seem to result in a large counterattack either. Nevertheless, one would prefer something like that were approved by congress first, secretly I guess, if only to slow the ongoing surrender of power from legislative to executive branch.
I think the thing nobody wants to admit is that when it comes down to it, Tracey is about as bright as a puppy.
Well, his main thing right now is arguing with people on Twitter who ARE IN FAVOR OF NUCLEAR WAR which makes them about the dumbest human beings on Earth. So I'll stick up for a guy who's smart enough not to be a hawk.
How many people do these intense internecine battles really affect? My theory is that their importance is overstated, because they largely affect the small number of combatants who happen to have the profession of battling through words.
Freddie, I do not consider you a "political orphan" in the sense that you have a large audience who values what you write. You can stay above the fray. Or, more vividly, you can let the dogs bark, but still move the caravan along.
To repeat myself, educational polarization and the demise of ticket splitting are national phenomena that are determining the outcomes of our federal elections. They can't be dismissed as a meaningless online thing
I agree about the polarization, but I think there are many factors at play, with online ranting about who's out and who's in as one factor, and, I believe secondary to Cable TV and gerrymandering as causes.
The impact of cable TV would be impressive considering how tiny of a fraction of the electorate watches it (presuming you mean the news channels and not, like, ESPN). The popularity of Fox News and MSNBC is massively overstated online.
I follow state politics and the poor little Gerrymander only comes out every decade. He is hated in Illinois by Republicans. He is hated in Florida by Democrats. He doesn't live in Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, or Wyoming.
How do you reconcile that with ticket splitting beginning its decline in the 90s? Surely we’re not blaming this on Usenet. It seems unlikely these phenomenon are causally related.
Someone has been reading their Ezra Klein... or should be. :)
I think this is much closer to the truth than "the internet did it," although even this underrates the general weirdness that we live in a country where Blacks voted for Abraham Lincoln and white Southerners voted against Abraham Lincoln for 100-130 years after his death. A look at any graph or voting trends really drives home that up until the 90s most of them were driven by Lincoln and FDR.
The techno-populist dynamic of politics under neoliberalism was A Thing during the '90s.
I thought this was insightful but I didn't realize it. I've always split tickets since I voted in Chicago and the precinct captain yelled at you if you were in the booth too long--like he could DO anything to me since I wasn't a city worker.
"But surely Yglesias shares far more politically with his many leftist detractors than with, say, the Breitbart crowd. I can understand thinking that time is better spent critiquing those who are more subject to the influence of your side, and obviously, it would be profoundly hypocritical for me to act as though it’s not legitimate to criticize 'your side'."
this is the issue, though, with the way a lot of (other) culture war writers work through this question. everyone has their own stock responses to the question, "Why do you spend your time criticizing this left/right/woke/anti-woke person instead of that right/left/anti-woke/woke person." it's often got a lot to do w affinities -- "i'm keeping my own house in order," "i'm more influential here than there," "i hold my own side to a higher standard" -- but then the same writers also reserve the right to dismiss every one else's stock responses in the same spirit to same question, if they're coming from a different subfaction, as braindead tribalism. when really the difference just hinges on one person thinking in-group criticism is more valuable and another person thinking out-group criticism is more valuable; it's a manner of tribalism either way and not, as you note, primarily driven by the content of ideas.
you know this, i'm not disagreeing w the post, i'm just emphasizing the "everyone" in "everyone absolutely insane." we each in ourselves contain the answer to this never-ending scooby-doo mystery.
The core problem there is that criticism based solely on taking offense over someone else's choice of topics and "targets" is inane. It's valid to disagree with the content of what's being said, if one can provide reasons for why it's unwarranted or unfair. But lodging an objection simply on the basis of topic choice is superfluous, and it most often reads to me like pique. Pique is not legitimate criticism, because it's unresponsive, and obvious to boot- of course the writer could have chosen a different topic! I don't care about anyone's pique, whether the remarks inspired by it are directed at my writing or someone else's writing. Since when do readers have a legitimate prerogative to pressure writers to delimit the topic choices of the stories they write? I've most often noticed these objections leveled without specific reference to content found within the story itself- which implies that upon failing to refute or gainsay any of the claims made by the writer, the reader posting the criticism is left only to express their wish that the story hadn't been written at all.
I've never thought of Quillette as being "of the right." They are more centrist-heterodox liberal, in the vein of aughts-era Slate.
That's appropriate, given that it's how the hosts of Quillette define themselves and articulate the basis for their positions.
I agree, never knew they were viewed as on the right. It feels more Libertarian to me than anything else, but in quite a moderate way on the political spectrum.
I think any place which allows dissenters from the publishing industry's current position will become a haven for authors looking for a 'neutral' platform. As they colonize it, it will become just another ideologically defined platform. The more so, because a role as refuge for people with heterodox opinions is hard to combine with rigorous fact-editing.
Quillete is "of the right" because the left has moved thousands of miles to the left. Now anyone to the right of the left most person is the right, alt-right, far right, ultra right, etc. Colin Wright's tweet lays it out best.
https://www.trendsmap.com/twitter/tweet/1463636464210640896
A fine chart. Although I wish there was a way to capture the fact that the left has not gotten more liberal, they've repudiated liberalism in favor of illiberal wokery.
I agree. I refuse to say they're "more left" than I am just because their views are extreme. They're elitist and obsessed with language and symbolism. Disdainful of the working class and opposed to class-based organizing. That's not "being a leftist."
Maybe it's the definition of the left has changed. I see more leftist politics in those labeled right. I think many on the left are clinging to a party/label that has fundamentally changed and no longer represents their views but they cannot countenance calling themselves a conservative or Republican.
A big part of that is that the republican party, no matter what it uses to drum up interest from its base, can only be counted on to lower taxes for the rich. There is just no place for people who are socially moderate and economically socialist in the current political spectrum.
There was a woman in the class that I just took who consistently talked about how the professor “hated her“ and couldn’t stand her existence. This guy was a literal Eagle Scout and he seemed so nice to me. Not to me as in me specifically but generally I perceived him as really nice. But every time she spoke to him or asked a question she was sarcastic or rude.
Example: she asked a question that didn’t really make much sense and he was genuinely trying to figure out what her question was. I didn’t even understand what she was trying to ask. (She was asking which of the “two names” of an organ he was intending for us to give on a test; that organ only has one name. And he said very generously “hmm I’m thinking about it to see if I can figure out what this other name could be.” And she said “oh yeah I can see your thinking real hard. You’re doing good.”
That’s how I feel about these extremists. They act defensive and defiant and offensive depending on whatever *your* posture is, and then say “see? You don’t want to learn, you don’t want to listen” etc. etc.
God, I cannot wait for the day when that level of rudeness won't be tolerated. Like, no, Paxtynne, you're not "woke" or "progressive", you're just a shitty person and nobody likes you.
That’s core wokeness: if you disagree with me, you can’t simply be wrong, you must be evil.
Funny thing: I don’t think I’d call her woke. She has a Margaritaville tire cover on the back of her jeep and the day we didn’t have to wear masks in class anymore she said my body my choice.
See? Being an asshole knows no political boundaries.
'And she said “oh yeah I can see your thinking real hard. You’re doing good.”'
She actually said that to the teacher? What the actual fuck, that is so rude. I think she's just being an asshole like you said. Don't need no political affiliation for that moniker, it transcends all. :]
She literally said that. Two days ago.
That's a good chart to illustrate his point, but it would be more accurate if he stayed to the left of center instead of moving right. The center shouldn't move at all, despite how far things go to either side.
To be fair, the right had been moving farther right for many years before this. Maybe the left just wanted to not be outdone? :]
The center/right/left will always be in flux. Things change, circumstances changes, people change. That being said, I still believe core foundational principles, morality and good values are timeless but how these play out in real life depend on so many factors.
Nah. The left engages in body-snatchers-screaming visceral hatred. The right doesn’t know the meaning of “visceral.”
It does when it comes to god and country. They both have their righteous zealotry, they just worship different idols. To me, the only practical difference between the far right and far left is that the former is old and the latter is new.
The center is completely relative, as being between the right and left, roughly equidistant, so if the right keeps moving right faster than the left moves left, the center is going to move right as well, yes?
Hmm, that's a good point. For instance, gay marriage was probably a very extreme Left position to take not 3 decades ago. And freedom of speech, once firmly a liberal stance, has now pretty much crossed the center line.
But there are also a lot of things that haven't moved for like a hundred years either, like limited government and free-markets in the case of conservatives. I feels like to me that some things are fluid and others aren't. And that maybe it's the non-fluid aspects of political ideology that people point to when this subject comes up.
Twitter is not the American political spectrum. Twitter is the kiddie pool.
I love that, and it is painfully true to what I've gone through (I don't think I'm alone, obviously). Thank you for posting the link.
There are completely different definitions for these things depending on whether you count those who mutually self-identify as right-wing or just enemies of someone who identifies themselves as left-wing.
True, and I think it is important not to concede that ground.
I agree, but I do think there are exceptions. For instance, I no longer identify as "left-wing" or "Leftist", even though pretty much all my policy positions would "cluster left" and centrist normies think I'm a loony commie. Nonetheless, the actual social milieu that mutually self-identify as Leftist don't want me and I don't want them, for both personal and political reasons, so I'm not a Leftist.
Same. My point was more that I would never countenance being labeled "right" and I'd advise the same to anyone who does not actually consider themselves as such.
I try not to countenance being labeled "right-wing", but leftoids pretty much insist I'm far-right (sometimes they insist it's free-market type, sometimes fascistic type). Actual centrist Democrats I meet IRL continue to consider me a flaming commie.
Which is to say, I can only shrug my shoulders at what are simply different usages of "left" or "right", different origin points in the coordinate space. Sure, if your origin point is the Grauniad or the New York Times editorial page, you'll think I'm a right-wing contrarian. If your origin point is the dominant faction of the Democratic Party, you'll roll your eyes at my academic Marxism. If your origin point is the Republican Party, you'll accuse me of being a communist infiltrator.
I only have friends among my own IRL communities and "fellow contrarians/heterodox ex-leftists" anymore, so I don't bother with a label.
It's only a matter of time until there are so many outcasts expelled by various forms of lockstep ideological policing that we become the new majority.
By any reasonable measure that happened long ago, but "we" don't have any mediating institutions designed to translate "our" shared baseline of views, or even tolerance for heterodoxy, into a power base within liberal or left-wing civil society.
I'd say their editorial bias is generally both right wing and liberal. Equating conservative and liberal with right and left is a weird anglophone-specific thing.
Another thoughtful and interesting essay FdB (this from one of those mouth breathing conservative a-holes). But I think the gist of the problem on both sides of the political fence lies in your statement "To be clear, I have absolutely no attachment to civility or even-handedness or respectful exchange for their own sake. My problem is that politics without principle is nothing, literally Yooks and Zooks. " It really is possible to have respectful disagreement with those individuals on the other side politically - in fact it is essential if this American experiment is to continue. John Adams said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Mildly center-left-ish asshole chiming in. I always thought the point was to argue as much as possible, then have an election and chill the fuck out for 2/4/however-many years. I thought the point of elections was to elect the best candidate and the one a majority (or at least a plurality) of the voters wanted. Then, you have the consent of the governed, and presumably the losers are secure in the knowledge that they get to try again in a few years. This keeps everyone from just straight up killing each other or having a king or a revolution every few years or something ridiculous like that.
As Freddie (and others) have written, though, everyone who even mildly disagrees with you now is political enemy number one, but that's because nobody is talking to anyone outside of their bubble. I learned recently that a coworker of mine voted from Trump the first time, because he was frustrated with the state of politics. Not like some sort of accelerationist, but someone with genuine political frustration willing to try something radically different. He believes he made the wrong choice, but even so, I don't blame him, and I'm not upset with him. We mostly don't discuss politics at work, but I know this guy is really smart and thoughtful, which helps erode the kind of thinking that would otherwise make all Trump voters political enemies. I think we need more of that. I hate the phrase "reaching across the aisle", but I think it really does help to talk to people who are different, because you end up realizing that you might actually have a lot in common, and the two-party system makes binaries inevitable.
It's easy to lose when you've already been defeated, I suppose. I don't know how to help.
Your point about the two party system is dead on. I have a deep belief that the US’s two-party system is fundamentally bad, not simply because it limits voter choice, but also because I think it plays into partisanship much too easily. People see the Democrats as the only viable left wing party, the Republicans as the only viable right wing party, and there’s no clear alternative for anyone who doesn’t like either group. It’s a literal us vs them scenario.
What’s particularly bad about the American party system, though, is how damnably centralized it is. The UK is also a two-party system, but unlike the States they have 3rd parties that consistently and reliably win at least a few seats in Parliament, if not more. (The UK actually has a sustained history of coalition governments, unlike the US). That helps to provide an at least somewhat viable alternative, and helps avoid the illusion that Party A and the ideology they represent are one and the same, which in turn helps hold off groupthink. The US doesn’t have that, which I think aggravates tribalism.
Main issue is that the centralized two-party system we have here is at least somewhat linked to the Constitution itself, which is hard to change. If it weren’t for the downright shitty political environment in this country, I’d want a “Second Constitutional Convention” of sorts to remake how this country’s democracy works, but sadly I think partisan squabbles and bad faith negotiation would sink such a thing, so who knows if that will ever happen. But a man can dream.
Till then, just a waiting game to see if/when people will actually start “reaching across the aisle” to calm things down.
" attempting to ring every last dime" should be "attempts to wring"
Now do Elon Musk. How did the person most responsible for the first mass-adopted electric car become the ultimate bogeyman of left-wing nightmares? Because he might let Trump have his Twitter account back?
More important than transitioning millions of people from gas-burning cars to electric cars?
?
Just totally unresponsive
I'd say that unions and working conditions are more important than transitioning to electric cars. I think the importance of electric cars is exaggerated, since they're still cars. I'd much rather have trains and cities planned for biking or walking. After all, moving 1000s of lbs of metal around to get to work isn't going to be efficient no matter what energy source you use.
(besides, he may not have transitioned millions of people to electric cars. There's about 2 million Teslas sold, and some were probably to repeat customers.)
Absolutely and it shouldn't even be a question. Solar cars still play into a car-centric infrastructure and Elon's imagined future of private tunnels for Tesla drivers and such is as much (maybe more?) of an environmental nightmare as anything being floated around by the motor industry. Liberal environmentalism and green capitalism are way more nefarious than they're given credit for. People repeat outdated ideas about nuclear energy, place the blame directly on fossil fuels themselves to distract from the industry that controls them, accept personal consumption habits as a permanent and sustainable solution, adopt kneejerk anti-growth and anti-urbanist politics, stage protest that block people from public transit so on and so forth, none of which is really helping. It's madness. I would rather just live and work somewhere where I never have to drive, but given the choice between a gas-powered car made by union workers or a more environmentally friendly car by someone like Musk, I just might choose the former. Mostly, though, I just hate driving.
My impression was that it was Musk's decidedly non-progressive ideas and abrasive personality that got him in the deepest trouble. I think if he hadn't had union issues in his factories, he'd still be a progressive target because he won't mouth the platitudes.
People who excoriate Musk have not paid attention to his larger projects. Those I know --who are all for support of climate change legislation--still don't like him. This, more than anything shows me how shallow are their perceptions. Musk on Rogan 3 years ago will give a lot of insight. (still free on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycPr5-27vSI )
I do think Musk is a visionary, but he has a history of labor abuses, is anti-union.
That's because he runs a business
Deep beans.
He's an anti-union edgelord with bad ideas about public transportation.