The big elephant has been hanging out in the Shoutbox. Anyway, as far as I know, there's no maybe left. He's won. As for what happens next, there's only one thing you can be sure of, he won't make America great again.
schopenhauer1November 09, 2016 at 07:06#313640 likes
The big elephant has been hanging out in the Shoutbox. Anyway, as far as I know, there's no maybe left. He's won. As for what happens next, there's only one thing you can be sure of, he won't make America great again.
I think it's the triumph of television, of appearance over reality. Can't see a single good thing coming out of this, it inverts the exaltation and joy I felt 8 years ago, when Obama was elected. Whilst Obama fell short in some respects, he has also achieved an incredible amount. If Trump fulfills anything like his true potential, we'll all be the poorer for it.
It's a complex world where people wish to believe in simple solutions. Trump gives them that and with only two parties, there are only two narratives about the state of the USA and where to go from there. Even a multiparty system leads to a hopeless simplification of complex social problems, a two-party system simply exacerbates it. This year it was worse since candidates didn't discuss policy at all. 18 months of shit shoveling and commercials. Greatest democracy on earth indeed. Ha ha.
EDIT: It's also the ridiculous smugness of the Democratic party leadership that led them to even have Clinton as the candidate. It wasn't as if it wasn't clear from the beginning that Clinton was a controversial figure for many Democrats and non-Democrats alike. In hindsight, Michelle Obama should've run for president.
I cannot believe the madman actually did it haha. What an incredible achievement! With almost the entire world against him - Clinton, the democrats, Obama, the entire mainstream media, the polling companies, most world leaders, United Nations, most celebrities, the list goes on and on - he still managed through the will of the American people a decisive victory! Incredible! The American people have spoken loud and clear! Senate! Congress! White House wooooooo it's a clean sweep!
MAGA!!! WOOOOOOO I AM ACTUALLY SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW
Haha cheer up you doomsdaying democrats above! Were you actually even *excited* for a Clinton victory? You're probably only disappointed that trump won, not that Hillary isn't Madame POTUS!
Also how ungracious was it for Hillary to not even give a concession speech?! If trump lost and did the same the entire freaking world would be outraged. She just had podesta send everyone home with a 'it's not over till it's over speech' and then right after called trump and conceded! Weak!
Donald Trumps win is a symptom of that problem, not the cause.
Maybe Trump can actually start mending the problem! A Hillary win would have just been another 4 (or God forbid, 8!) years of the same divided and polarised nation were living in right now. Literally nothing would have changed. For example, we have had a black president for 8 years and yet race relations are worse now than they were before Obama took office. Electing a more establishment (and corrupt) version of Obama wouldn't have made this any better.
You might say that things will be even worse and more divided under Trump, but we'll just have to wait and see! Trump made it this far against all odds, so what's to stop him going even further and actually making a greater country? I'm optimistic and you should be too!
Reply to Wayfarer The narrative I like better is that the masses is tired of the status quo: any change is better than no change; it's also much more exciting.
Reply to BenkeiThe House, Senate, and presidency is Republican, which means if it is polarized on some level, it's not for the moment when it comes to our government. There will be no gridlock and legislation will be passed (bye bye Obamacare and Iran deal). The Republicans also have a majority of Governors and state houses. Can someone open their eyes and just accept that the US is a very conservative country, opposed to European style social care, and stop being surprised when it doesn't do as left minded folks think it should?
For the record, I predicted this, all the way down to the Pennsylvania win (rust belt state that lost manufacturing jobs), and I won a free lunch from it.
I'd also say the media has been atrocious, acting as a PR machine for Clinton, not taking a candidate seriously, and abandoning its duty to just report the news. In truth, that rallied Trump supporters, a defiant group to begin with. The worst thing you can do is tell those folks what they have to do.
This really is a devastating blow to the Obama legacy, where his every accomplishment will be dismantled.
I wonder if the months of poll after poll after poll right up to the vote showing a comfortable democratic lead was just a function of a corrupt and biased media, or there's actually something wrong with the way in which polls are conducted in America? How could they have been so wrong?
Crazy how Trump was right all along about the poll numbers not being right and he's campaigning with a silent majority. Although I'm not sure even he really believed it!
There will be no gridlock and legislation will be passed (bye bye Obamacare and Iran deal).
From what I've read there are plenty of Republicans who disagree with Trump. The fact that he's a Republican president doesn't entail that a Republican-controlled Congress will inevitably support him (or vice versa).
The House, Senate, and presidency is Republican, which means if it is polarized on some level, it's not for the moment when it comes to our government. There will be no gridlock and legislation will be passed (bye bye Obamacare and Iran deal). The Republicans also have a majority of Governors and state houses. Can someone open their eyes and just accept that the US is a very conservative country, opposed to European style social care, and stop being surprised when it doesn't do as left minded folks think it should?
What a bullshit reply to my observation that it's sad somebody can be this happy about the schism existing in the USA. Yes, it's a winner-takes-all system and no, I'm not even surprised. We already had Bush jr. for 8 years which was a farce as well. In the meantime popular votes for both candidates are almost equal. But never mind what a lot of other people think because the Republicans won. Just because Republicans won the election doesn't make your fellow Democratic countrymen irrelevant, nor their wishes and hopes for what the US government should be.
So yeah, I'm saddened by people celebrating that they're going to destroy things a lot of other people worked hard to achieve.
From what I've read there are plenty of Republicans who disagree with Trump. The fact that he's a Republican president doesn't entail that a Republican-controlled Congress will inevitably support him.
Fat chance. Trump won, not backing the winner will be political suicide.
Perhaps I wasn't clear. Hanover claimed that Trump wouldn't be gridlocked by a Republican-controlled Congress, where Obama was. My point is that even though Trump is a Republican it doesn't then follow that the same can't happen to him.
All Presidents were the winners, but they still face opposition from the legislature.
Reply to Benkei Oh please, you're not sad that things will be destroyed that people worked hard to achieve. You're sad that achievements you agreed with are being destroyed. If the preservation of legacy is important to you, take comfort in the fact that Scalia's legacy will be preserved with a solid conservative replacement.
Can someone open their eyes and just accept that the US is a very conservative country, opposed to European style social care, and stop being surprised when it doesn't do as left minded folks think it should?
Same can be said about Iran, and yet we still criticise their decisions.
So now the Republicans control both houses, presidency, governerships, State legislatures, and Supreme Court, and the narrative was the party was in shambles. The narrators are the only thing the Republicans don't control.
Harry HinduNovember 09, 2016 at 11:44#314000 likes
I just had to come to the forums early this morning to see all the left-wingers whine.
I can't believe you're this happy when your country is basically a divided, polarized mess. :-|
The country has been a divided, polarized mess before Trump got elected. You can think Obama for that.
Americans have show that they are united against govt. corruption - the lying, the cheating, the double standard in the judicial system for elites vs. the rest of us, and the silencing of millions of voters with Clinton being handed the nomination by the elitists in the Democratic party. It's good day.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 11:45#314010 likes
Most U.S. philosophy forum members probably voted for Clinton or Jill Stein?
I voted for Trump. I actually consider myself a "socialist libertarian" at this point (in lieu of something better to call myself . . . my views are a mixture of socialism and libertarianism, but my views are also extremely idiosyncratic), but I voted for Trump partially because there was no way I wanted Hillary to win. I've never liked Hillary, I didn't like Bill when he was president, and I'd rather have someone in office who isn't a career politician.
If I had been voting for the person whose views I most agree with, I would have voted for Jill Stein--I voted for her in 2012. Not that I agree with her on everything, but she was the best choice in my opinion. Of course, we're still nowhere near any party other than Republican and Democrat being a viable option for achieving the presidency, so a vote for Jill Stein from me this time around would have simply made it easier for Hillary to win.
I used to be pretty strictly capital-L Libertarian, a la the U.S. Libertarian party, and to a point where I was involved with the Libertarian party on local and national levels at one point in the past, but I no longer agree with them on economic issues.
I see the one positive development of the Trump campaign being his ability to make the 'white working-class' a more self-conscious group than before, when they served the interests of their Republican free market fundamentalist overlords. The very notion of a working class vote, to my recollection, has not been important in US politics for a very long time. So that class awareness is a positive development IMO and will hopefully temper the latent racism within this group and lead to a more inclusive working-class coalition with other non-white citizens of this country.
I think that is entirely possible. I come from one of those working class families with many members who supported Trump, and can say with confidence that not all Trump supporters were motivated by bigotry and hate. That was a caricature disseminated by popular media, the motivation perhaps being to shame decent folk away from any association with Trump. I don't think that grotesque aspect of his candidacy was essential to all or even most of his voters. What was essential was the fact that a large segment of US citizens have been hit hard over the past 40 or so years in material and psychological terms, with loss of jobs, the breakup of families, increased drug use, the loss of status within the community and nation, etc. Those social, political and economic conditions were exploited by Trump, but not created by him. Dems bailed out on this group of what should have been their natural allies many years ago, and their cynical manipulation by the Republican establishment (based upon cultural rather than economic considerations) is now thankfully over.
I doubt Trump will truly serve the interests of this group he's made many promises to, but as mentioned they are now class conscious and anti-establishment. It's going to be a good opportunity to really battle over what it means to be an American now, as that question is far from settled. Hopefully an inclusive and forward-thinking answer to this question will be put forward, with a fixation on identity politics and other divisive things (although noble in intention) ultimately giving way to more transcendent and elevated sense of communal and environmental responsibility. This may take the next 20-30 years if not longer (again, Trump will not be able to provide the long-term answer IMO), but that corrupt status quo of unchecked capitalism with its dominance by moneyed interests is thankfully over, at least for the time being. Now the battle for the soul of America begins and us working-class stiffs will have a voice in that conversation.
Just trying to find the silver lining in this result. It requires separating Trump the fraud from the real conditions of hopelessness he tapped into and appropriated to his advantage. He's a consequence rather than cause of our predicament, and looking at it like this offers a bit of solace and hope. He's unwittingly doing a temporary service for a movement much larger and potentially greater than himself. That vague narrative is at least the illusion I'd like to maintain right now. Giving form to that amorphous group of disaffected will definitely take plenty of work, but it's a fresh start.
Oh please, you're not sad that things will be destroyed that people worked hard to achieve. You're sad that achievements you agreed with are being destroyed. If the preservation of legacy is important to you, take comfort in the fact that Scalia's legacy will be preserved with a solid conservative replacement.
Of course you know better how I feel. How stupid can your comments get? >:O
And it's not the preservation of legacy I'm concerned with but tearing down something in its entirety that a slight majority of the people seem to support (or a slight minority, depending on how the popular vote will play out). But never mind them, because they lost, right? Here's the picture though, if voters would be evenly distributed according to their statistical occurence then your left door and right door neighbours would be Democrats.
Finally, not every vote for Trump was a vote for ending Obamacare as not every vote for Clinton was a vote for continuing Obamacare. The opinions of the candidates (or party line for that matter) do not reflect the myriad of interests of citizens that exist in the US and this is why representative democracies fail and will ultimately disintegrate. The USA is a very good example of that with its latest election. I'm looking forward to another 4 years of schadenfreude.
Barry EtheridgeNovember 09, 2016 at 12:07#314100 likes
but that corrupt status quo of unchecked capitalism with its dominance by moneyed interests is thankfully over, at least for the time being
Ah yes, because Donald Trump has consistently resisted any temptation to protect his wealth by less than scrupulous means like false advertising, tax avoidance, and outsourcing and is in constant search of an ethical economic system! In no way is he going to use this Presidency to line his pockets and reward his rich friends!
Reply to Benkei And so your opinion would have been the same had Clinton won, considering the polarization would have been the same and we'd still be on the same 200+ year collision course set in motion when the Constitution set out the foolish election system it did?
There's obviously a major disconnect between his life and the group he claims to represent. No argument there, but would that be the first time that's happened in politics? Of course not. But he's awakened that monster despite the discrepancy, and will be held accountable by this group to deliver on his promises. If he doesn't - which I agree he probably wont - someone else will be there to channel the energies of these middle and lower-class folk. I'm hoping that's the case.
This may be a bad theological analogy (my understanding of these matters is minimal), but it's almost like a corrupt preacher who lives a secret life of debauchery and possibly even unbelief somehow inspiring others with the message of the gospel. His motivation may have been to get their money through tithing, or to gain power and influence within that particular community, but the end result may have also been to change lives amongst the flock and make them somehow aware of their sin in a way they may not have understood before. I see no reason why the insincerity of the one (preacher) should necessarily lead to the insincerity of the other (church members or parishioners or whatever they're called). Like I said, that may not be a great analogy but I do think it makes the point to a certain degree. Trump appealed to the working class in a cynical and manipulative fashion, I think, but that doesn't mean his message didn't resonate amongst this large bloc of voters.
And it's not the preservation of legacy I'm concerned with but tearing down something in its entirety that a slight majority of the people seem to support (or a slight minority, depending on how the popular vote will play out). But never mind them, because they lost, right?
Sounds like you're sad because you don't believe in democracy!
I doubt you'd be crying over the electoral system right now if Hillary was POTUS!
Reply to Barry Etheridge And I would also ask: do you really think Trump needs more money? Was that his sole or even primary motivation for running for president? To enrich himself and his friends? It's definitely possible. I'm not a fan at all and honestly don't know what his thought-process or driving ideas have been. I am cynical about his stated intentions, but at this point I'm willing to wait and see what he does. Enhancing his power and influence in the service of his already monstrous ego seem more likely motivating factors, but then if that's the case why not try to implement those changes you promised through your populist message and strive to be loved by the masses? I see no necessary conflict in his self-interest somehow aligning with the interests of working-class Americans. In fact at this point they seem symbiotic. If he does sell out to that very establishment he attacked, he'll be called out for it by the many media outlets who already despise him and perhaps someone like Bernie Sanders will be given an opportunity the next go around. That would be ideal, actually.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 13:00#314210 likes
think that is entirely possible. I come from one of those working class families with many members who supported Trump, and can say with confidence that not all Trump supporters were motivated by bigotry and hate. That was a caricature disseminated by popular media, the motivation perhaps being to shame decent folk away from any association with Trump. I don't think that grotesque aspect of his candidacy was essential to all or even most of his voters. What was essential was the fact that a large segment of US citizens have been hit hard over the past 40 or so years in material and psychological terms,
One of the smartest things Trump did was to focus on Americans who have lost their jobs, and subsequently their homes, etc., because of companies sourcing work out to other countries. That's a tremendous amount of people. Whether Trump can actually do something about this is another matter, but the fact that he said he wants to do something about it was important. And that's why he won states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc.--those states have been hit hard by factories etc. closing down.
Indeed. It may not be realistic to expect a return to the days when one could find a solid and stable job without an advanced degree or marketable skill, afford to buy a home at a reasonable price, raise a family on a single income with more parental involvement in the kids' lives, etc. and in doing all these things attain the very important psychological satisfaction of having a certain respectable status within the community. But the alternative of staying the neoliberal course at the expense of hardworking and law-abiding citizens was not the answer either. I'll await Trump's solutions to the myriad problems we're facing with a bit of cautious optimism. Change was obviously needed, whether it's for the better or worse remains to be seen. Couldn't get much worse for many people, at least economically, and that was the primary motivation for voting against the 'establishment' and for a man who effectively crafted a narrative in which he - an outsider relative to the main players within the system - would finally give voice to those who've been screwed over and neglected.
And so your opinion would have been the same had Clinton won, considering the polarization would have been the same and we'd still be on the same 200+ year collision course set in motion when the Constitution set out the foolish election system it did?
Yes, as I said in another thread, it doesn't matter which monkey pushes the button and when Baden was trying to call it I again I stated I don't care who'd win. Maybe if you'd have a bit more knowledge about democratic systems (historic and contemporary) you wouldn't be so hung up on the shitty system you have.
And I would also ask: do you really think Trump needs more money?
Actually yes. He wildly overspent on this campaign. He has failing businesses on his hands and he's going to want a slew of lawsuits to go away so can expect to have to dig deep to settle them on the quiet. I really can't see him wanting to come out of the Presidency as 'poor' as he'll be going into it.
But even if he didn't need it, when has that ever stopped rich men desiring to get richer? Isn't it that apparently needless and reckless adding of billions to personal fortunes that has gotten us, by which I mean pretty much the entire Western world not just USA, into this mess in the first place? I just don't see, for all the rhetoric, this leopard changing his spots.
Most U.S. philosophy forum members probably voted for Clinton or Jill Stein?
I voted for Trump. I actually consider myself a "socialist libertarian" at this point (in lieu of something better to call myself . . . my views are a mixture of socialism and libertarianism, but my views are also extremely idiosyncratic), but I voted for Trump partially because there was no way I wanted Hillary to win. I've never liked Hillary, I didn't like Bill when he was president, and I'd rather have someone in office who isn't a career politician.
If I had been voting for the person whose views I most agree with, I would have voted for Jill Stein--I voted for her in 2012. Not that I agree with her on everything, but she was the best choice in my opinion. Of course, we're still nowhere near any party other than Republican and Democrat being a viable option for achieving the presidency, so a vote for Jill Stein from me this time around would have simply made it easier for Hillary to win.
I think that that is the worst decision that someone in your circumstances - someone who has socialist views, and views with much in common with those of Jill Stein - could have made. And I think that it is nothing short of a travesty that relatively large numbers of people in similar circumstances voted that way - including, and especially, Bernie supporters.
I follow Jill Stein on Twitter, so I was aware of her focus on attacking Hillary Clinton. But, although that might have been advantageous for her and her party, I think that, outside of that context, it was a mistake once Hillary became the Democratic candidate, given that Hillary was the better, and Trump was the worse, of the only two candidates with a realistic chance of winning.
It is completely against socialist interests 1) not to have voted for Hillary Clinton, in light of her clear socialist policy proposals and priorities, such as those relating to taxation and economic inequality, which no other candidate would have had a hope in hell of enacting; and 2) to have voted for Trump, in light of his policy proposals and priorities, again, such as those relating to taxation and economic inequality, the latter of which would be exacerbated, and the former of which would be relaxed in places where it should be maintained, if not increased.
Does anyone have thoughts on what this might mean?
Its like I keep saying, in over ten years of asking if anyone knows the simple distinction between a lynch mob and democracy I have yet to hear the correct answer. You simply can't have a democracy when nobody knows the meaning of the damned word and spends all their time arguing over the definition of stupid and who is the better example. What you have instead is Mob Rule. Its empire baby, and this train ain't stopping until she derails.
The money is doing all the driving because the lights are on, but nobody is home. Ranting and raving and complaining or even rioting won't make any significant difference because nobody is listening. At best such things will only temporarily address the worst symptoms of the problem. Your constitutional rights have been suspended indefinitely and almost every police department in the country has been buying surplus military equipment, while congress has already given the military the legal right to round up citizens like cattle and made all the necessary preparations to do so.
Sooner or later people might catch on, but I'm not holding my breath. The real worry is that the US could produce the next Adolf Hitler.
...but that corrupt status quo of unchecked capitalism with its dominance by moneyed interests is thankfully over, at least for the time being.
No it ain't. Don't kid yourself.
Trump has said he will significantly cut corporation tax, and, according to analysis, his plans would mean that the top 1% of earners would see their income increase by double-digits. This is not in the interests of the working class, it is in the interests of large corporations and the fattest of fat cats.
Trump's speech was actually not too shabby. He still repeated himself a lot and asserted all these things that he'll never actually be able to do. But I was genuinely surprised that he apparently called Clinton right beforehand. For once, Trump was not a wild, raving lunatic in a suit.
Trump looked scared during his speech. Maybe he was just tired from the whole election campaign. But I suspect he also was finally understanding the gravity of the situation.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 17:54#314570 likes
given that Hillary was the better, and Trump was the worse, of the only two candidates . . . It is completely against socialist interests
As I said about my views, "in lieu of something better to call myself . . . my views are a mixture of socialism and libertarianism, but my views are also extremely idiosyncratic"
I can't stand Hillary. I didn't like Bill when he was president either. (And I didn't like Hillary when she was first lady either.) I don't dislike Trump. In fact, I like many things about him. I just do not agree with all of his views. But there is never a presidential candidate where I agree with all of their views, and I don't even usually agree with most of any candidate's views.
Also, another consideration is if something were to happen to the president. Tim Kaine comes across to me as completely sleazy/untrustworthy. I definitely do not agree with all of Mike Pence's views--he's very religious for one, but he comes across like a pleasant, even-keeled, intelligent guy who easily would have a presidential quality. There's no way in hell I'd want Kaine to be president.
As I said about my views, "in lieu of something better to call myself . . . my views are a mixture of socialism and libertarianism, but my views are also extremely idiosyncratic"
I can't stand Hillary. I didn't like Bill when he was president either. I don't dislike Trump. In fact, I like many things about him. I just do not agree with all of his views. But there is never a presidential candidate where I agree with all of their views, and I don't even usually agree with most of any candidate's views.
So, not only did you make the worst possible decision, you did so on shaky grounds. Is that supposed to be a defence?
If I can't stand waters that aren't infested with sharks, and I don't dislike sharks, but in fact like many things about them, should I go swimming in shark infested waters?
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 18:08#314670 likes
You know that "worst"/"best" etc. are subjective, right?
Ah, that old chestnut.
They are relative terms. And in this case, I'm talking about what is in the best/worst interests of you or of society, as opposed to mere preference or what you happen to like or dislike.
What does "can't stand" have to do with anything I said about Trump?
It doesn't. It has to do with what you said about Clinton. In the analogy, Clinton is the safe waters, Trump is the sharks, and voting for trump is swimming in shark infested waters.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 18:15#314720 likes
Yes, and subjective, and noncognitive. Statements containing those terms are never correct or incorrect, true or false. There is no coherent distinction to be had where those terms do not refer to preferences.
It doesn't. It has to do with what you said about Clinton. In the analogy, Clinton is the safe waters, Trump is the sharks, and voting for trump is swimming in shark infested waters.
If trump is the sharks, but I can't stand Clinton, then you'd be equivocating "sharks"
If trump is the sharks, but I can't stand Clinton, then you'd be equivocating "sharks".
What? How so?
I applied the same form of argument as you did in a different context in order to show that it's a poor basis for reaching a decision, and I think that I have succeeded in doing so. You haven't answered my question because you know that it forces you to either accept a stupid conclusion or tacitly accept that that basis for reaching a decision is poor.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 18:33#314890 likes
Ah--I misread you as saying "If I can't stand waters that ARE infested with sharks"--I didn't read it as "AREN'T" That's why it made no sense to me.
So yeah, if you like sharks, you can't stand waters that don't have them (which isn't what I said, but okay, we can go with that) and you want to go swimming with them, then sure, you should.
So yeah, if you like sharks, you can't stand waters that don't have them (which isn't what I said, but okay, we can go with that) and you want to go swimming with them, then sure, you should.
>:O
So you bit the bullet and went with the stupid conclusion. At least you're consistent.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 18:36#314910 likes
You believe that some people shouldn't do things they like in that vein, because someone else feels differently about it? They should do what the other people like instead?
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 18:40#314930 likes
(I actually know/have known people who have swam with sharks, by the way, including Ron and Valerie Taylor . . .)
You believe that some people shouldn't do things they like in that vein, because someone else feels differently about it?
I believe that there are some pretty clearcut cases where prioritising preference over what's in one's best interests is more likely to lead to worse outcomes, and that worse outcomes should usually be avoided.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 18:41#314960 likes
A demagogue /?d?m????/ (from Greek ?????????, a popular leader, a leader of a mob, from ?????, people, populace, the commons + ?????? leading, leader)[1] or rabble-rouser is a leader in a democracy who gains popularity by exploiting prejudice and ignorance among the common people, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation.[1][2][3][4] Demagogues have usually advocated immediate, violent action to address a national crisis while accusing moderate and thoughtful opponents of weakness or disloyalty. Demagogues violate established rules of political conduct; most who were elected to high office changed their democracy into some form of dictatorship.
Demagogues have appeared in democracies since ancient Athens. They exploit a fundamental weakness in democracy: because ultimate power is held by the people, nothing stops the people from giving that power to someone who appeals to the lowest common denominator of a large segment of the population.
Right on the mark. Note the observation about 'changing democracy into dictatorship'.
Sure, so how are you attempting to separate preferences and best interests, outcome assessments, etc.? What's the distinction you attempt?
Well, for starters, they each have distinct and inequivalent meanings.
Moreover, if it is possible for one's best interests to not always correspond to one's preferences, then they are separate. And if that specific knowledge can be obtained, then it can be used to differentiate between the one and the other.
The finer details aren't as important, since pointing to cases like the one in my analogy is sufficient to show that making decisions based on preference with disregard to what is in one's best interest can lead to detrimental consequences. The only way out of that one is to bite a bullet that most people wouldn't bite for good reason.
The question of what is in one's best interests, and the question of what is the best or worse outcome, are secondary questions, and open to debate. There is strong intuitive appeal in some cases, but perhaps the strongest arguments are based on using the person's own account of what is in their interests, and then comparing that with a decision which is counterproductive to those interests, as can be done in your case of voting for Trump.
The Great WhateverNovember 09, 2016 at 19:17#315200 likes
I am not enthusiastic about a Trump win but I don't see it as a sign of the apocalypse. I hope that above all else, every pollster, media station, and complacent liberal who is 'surprised' right now takes a long hard look at themselves, and realizes 'I am completely out of touch with reality, with my country, and the desires of the people, and have little conception of the way that people think or what they value.'
That's the lesson to be learned from this. There are a lot of people who need to let sink in just how wrong they were. The media stations are all reporting that nobody saw it coming.' Yes, they did. You didn't see it coming. Because you are deeply, deeply deluded and incompetent.
The Great WhateverNovember 09, 2016 at 19:19#315220 likes
Reply to Wayfarer I see it the opposite. The television told us all one thing, and reality smashed it.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 19:21#315240 likes
Can you support how that would be possible? That would be a step in suggesting a coherent distinction.
I can raise a [i]reductio ad absurdum[/I] against the alternative. If it isn't, then examples like the one that I provided wouldn't make any sense. But they clearly do. There are numerous and clearcut cases of this. You yourself have no doubt found this out the hard way through experience, just like the rest of us - although I wouldn't be surprised if you deny this, like in our previous discussion, where you seemed to prioritise consistency at the expense of plausibility.
Right on the mark. Note the observation about 'changing democracy into dictatorship'.
That's the polite way of saying we've merely traded one mob rule with more of a pretense of democracy for one that has fewer illusions. Its a rude awakening for many of the democrats and republicans alike, but at least its more honest. It is what the I-Ching describes as a possible "turning point". Hitler's Nazi Germany had its ugly side, but that is precisely what the German people needed to come to the realization of after the war, that they could not continue on with business as usual constantly going to war with their neighbors and supporting their traditional extreme authoritarian culture and bigotry.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 19:33#315360 likes
It doesn't make any sense that something being "in the best interest" of someone isn't (a) a subjective judgment of an individual, and (b) about their preferences.
I'm challening you to make sense of it not being (a) or (b).
Saying "it clearly makes sense" isn't any sort of philosophical support.
Barry EtheridgeNovember 09, 2016 at 19:34#315380 likes
So the real question now is do we call it Califexit or Exitornia, apparently!
Reply to The Great Whatever I see Trump as 'the triumph of television'. People can't differentiate reality and TV; when Trump waves his arms and says he's going to make America great, they don't ask how are you going to do that? They just cheer and wave.
He's a demagogue, pure and simple.
The Great WhateverNovember 09, 2016 at 19:43#315470 likes
Reply to Wayfarer Yet what they saw on TV was literally just him talking. And then they went to his rallies and saw him in person.
The people who can't distinguish between media and reality are those who took anything CNN, Fox, or MSNBC said seriously for a second.
I am not enthusiastic about a Trump win but I don't see it as a sign of the apocalypse. I hope that above all else, every pollster, media station, and complacent liberal who is 'surprised' right now takes a long hard look at themselves, and realizes 'I am completely out of touch with reality, with my country, and the desires of the people, and have little conception of the way that people think or what they value.'
Well, given that Clinton seems to have won the popular vote I don't think it right to say that they're completely out of touch. They just underestimated Trump's support (or at least its geography).
But, you know, with only a 55.6% turn out, it's even more questionable.
The Great WhateverNovember 09, 2016 at 19:49#315510 likes
Reply to Michael They weren't predicting the popular vote. They were predicting the election.
DeleteduserrcNovember 09, 2016 at 19:49#315520 likes
I am not enthusiastic about a Trump win but I don't see it as a sign of the apocalypse. I hope that above all else, every pollster, media station, and complacent liberal who is 'surprised' right now takes a long hard look at themselves, and realizes 'I am completely out of touch with reality, with my country, and the desires of the people, and have little conception of the way that people think or what they value.'
That's the lesson to be learned from this. There are a lot of people who need to let sink in just how wrong they were. The media stations are all reporting that nobody saw it coming.' Yes, they did. You didn't see it coming. Because you are deeply, deeply deluded and incompetent.
Yeah, I'm pretty upset with the results, but I agree with this 100% (There were a few prescient voices among liberals, but they were drowned out by the consensus of their peers)
It doesn't make any sense that something being "in the best interest" of someone isn't (a) a subjective judgment of an individual, and (b) about their preferences.
I'm challening you to make sense of it not being (a) or (b).
My original point was that swimming with sharks, as opposed to not swimming with sharks, for example, might not be in one's best interests. And that, if it isn't, then swimming with sharks would be a worse outcome than not swimming with sharks. And that swimming with sharks because one likes sharks wouldn't change that. And that swimming with sharks for that reason would therefore be a poor reason for deciding to swim with sharks.
Whether or not [i]not[/I] swimming with sharks being in one's best interests is (a) a subjective judgment of an individual, and (b) about their preferences, is irrelevant to my original point, and seems to have been a red herring from the start. What's your point? What if it is?
Saying "it clearly makes sense" isn't any sort of philosophical support.
That it wouldn't make sense is a consequence of your position, which, when the evidence suggests otherwise, can indeed be used as part of an argument against your position.
Would you like me to elaborate on why it wouldn't make sense?
DeleteduserrcNovember 09, 2016 at 19:55#315560 likes
The people shocked at Trump's Latino support really don't get it either. Have they talked to latinos? Beyond asking them stock questions for 15 minutes at a time before retreating to the suburbs? I spent the summer of 2015 in D.C., with nothing to do, wandering around (I took two months from work for personal reasons) and ended up speaking to whole lot of immigrants. Most identify as hard-working, enterprising individuals who, like anyone who is part of a large, diverse population harbor resentments toward many within that population, those they see as giving the whole group a bad name. So though I don't like the rhetoric myself, all that xenophobic stuff about keeping 'the bad ones out' can actually easily resonate with an immigrant population. "the bad ones" are always someone other than myself, the ones making it harder for me to be successful and respected.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 20:02#315580 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever I was referring to your claim about them being "out of touch with the desires of the people, and hav[ing] little conception of the way that people think or what they value".
The Great WhateverNovember 09, 2016 at 20:04#315610 likes
Another thing that bothers me is that my social circle (what little there is) is mostly academics, and academics have a smokescreen in front of them because they are largely cosmopolitan and rootless, having few ties to the country and/or state in which they work, either because they are originally foreigners, and almost always were at least born somewhere else entirely in the country, and even if they did grow up in the area know in the back of their minds that their work can and will taken them anywhere in the western world. Most people do not live like this. They do not go to conferences in Barcelona. They do not work in a discipline that is spread across several prestigious institutions none of which are in driving distance of each other. Their fortunes rise and fall with the land they live in, and they are tied to that land in a way academics are not. They do not have the luxury of making every election about hypersensitive, hysterical moralizing and tertiary social issues largely orthogonal to the presidency. Most people care about where they live more than academics do. The American heartland will never share academia's values, and that does not make them 'stupid' (code for 'poor').
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 20:04#315620 likes
Most identify as hard-working, enterprising individuals who, like any large, diverse population harbor resentments toward many within that population, those they see as giving the whole groups a bad name.
Yeah, particularly people who came to the country legally and who worked hard to change their status to permanent resident and then citizen, who worked hard above the table to make money to pay for the things they own, etc., tend to resent immigrants whom they see as being given a free pass--having their status changed just because they snuck into the country, went into the underground economy, maybe received other government assistance, etc.
it is in the interests of large corporations and the fattest of fat cats
This isn't entirely true. Corporations don't like him. They didn't give much to his campaign (whereas loads of them donated to Hillary) and they hate his trade protectionism. Look at the markets today, too. They will rebound, but there was real uncertainty about his presidency coming into the day.
The Great WhateverNovember 09, 2016 at 20:05#315640 likes
Reply to Michael By and large, the delusion does run that deep. Liberals have a serious problem with conceiving of minorities as people with opinions. And I say this because as of now liberalism is still a fundamentally white worldview with deep historical ties to racial guilt and messiah complexes.
DeleteduserrcNovember 09, 2016 at 20:06#315660 likes
One last thing re: liberals polling and interviewing minorities (or poor whites.) There's often a slightly bullying aspect to it. The undertone is you do realize how bad this person is for you (you whom I'm addressing as basically just a faceless representative of a demographic). X said Y - can you believe that? - as someone who should be offended by that, are you offended by that?
People are more likely to tell you what you want to hear if they think you're publically pressuring them, just to make you happy and go away.
Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty liberal myself, but it's hard not to see this dynamic at play.
The Great WhateverNovember 09, 2016 at 20:08#315670 likes
Reply to csalisbury It's the same with 'working white class people voting against their own interests.' As soon as the tides turn, it's always 'I can't believe these rednecks' [totally not a racial slur btw] have votes that count as much as mine.' And don't even get me started on Uncle Tomming.
Say goodbye to climate change action, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the bans on drilling and mining in sensitive wildlife areas. Trump is firmly in bed with Big Oil, it's back to the future as far as they're concerned.
Reply to The Great Whatever Just look at the smug condescension of those Berkeley hipsters, haha. I encounter that soft bigotry of low expectations in academia too.
What I'd like is for you to give the specific characterization of the two terms that makes a distinction between them coherent.
What is in a person's best interests need not be what that person likes or prefers. Hence, I can like sharks, and I might prefer swimming with sharks to watching them from afar, but, on the other hand, it might not be in my best interests to swim with sharks - for a number of possible reasons, and which may be related to other preferences, likes, or dislikes. But I don't see why that last part is presumably relevant, so what I'd like is for you explain that. [i]Quid pro quo[/I].
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 20:17#315730 likes
might not be in my best interests to swim with sharks - for a number of possible reasons, and which may be related to other preferences, likes, or dislikes. But I don't see why that last part is presumably relevant,
Well, it's relevant because that's all that I'm arguing and that you're supposedly arguing against--that "best interests" is a matter of preferences.
The Great WhateverNovember 09, 2016 at 20:18#315750 likes
To emphasize the point about being out of touch with reality, the reactions to the people who were watching the election and not pleased with the results around me was not, 'oh no, this is happening,' but 'I can't believe this is happening' or 'How is this happening' or 'Please tell me this isn't happening.'
There is an important difference between these reactions.
This isn't entirely true. Corporations don't like him. They didn't give much to his campaign (whereas loads of them donated to Hillary) and they hate his trade protectionism. Look at the markets today, too. They will rebound, but there was real uncertainty about his presidency coming into the day.
Yes, good point. There's probably a reason for that. But I doubt they'll be complaining about the cuts to corporation tax.
Cast your mind back to 2000 when Bush beat Gore by 300 votes. I will always believe, had Gore won, the world would have been better off, not that we'll ever know. But I think the consequence of Trump will be economic and environmental decline, higher unemployment, and an increase in international conflict. He promised the impossible, and has no clue about how to actually work with the possible.
Well, it's relevant because that's all that I'm arguing and that you're supposedly arguing against--that "best interests" is a matter of preferences.
No it isn't. Whether or not it's in a child's best interest to eat chocolate and drink sugary drinks every day is not simply a matter of the child's preferences. It's in their best interests that they don't, even if the child would prefer otherwise. The same with swimming in shark-infested waters. You might want to, but you shouldn't.
Well, it's relevant because that's all that I'm arguing and that you're supposedly arguing against--that "best interests" is a matter of preferences.
No, that doesn't argue against my original point, which I reiterated not long ago. So, why did you change the subject?
Best interests can be related to, or dependent on, preference. They can relate and overlap in some cases. But it certainly doesn't follow that they are one and the same, nor that basing a decision on preference rather than what is in one's best interests can't be a poor basis for reaching a decision.
Reply to Wayfarer Think what you like, but wait for the facts to come out regarding those things before you start gluing your tin foil hat firmly on your head.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 20:38#315830 likes
"I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I gave it to you straight last summer when I told you that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president. And now I have even more awful, depressing news for you: Donald J. Trump is going to win in November."
"This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump. Go ahead and say the words, 'cause you'll be saying them for the next four years: 'PRESIDENT TRUMP.'"
Reply to Wayfarer On the evening of Obama's election my partner and I walked around the neighborhood a bit; we talked to a few people who, like us, were elated. Obama's election had solid significance. So does Trump's election, but I wasn't having the same fuzzy warm vibrations.
Now that it's happened, I hope all the dire predictions are wrong, that Trump turns out OK. But honestly, apart from hand waving and talk about 'harnessing anger', what evidence is there that Trump will be a successful economic and foreign policy manager?
Many of his stump speeches were improvised rants on whatever ideas were in his twitter feed. A very large percentage of his commentary was in exchanging insults and denigrating his opponents. So there's just nothing to show that he will now be able to turn around and act like a professional instead of a demagogue that manipulates public opinion.
(But the trouble with arguments like that is, they have big words, like 'manipulate' and 'demagogue'. 'Lock her up' is a much easier concept to understand.)
It wasn't changing the subject from my perspective. It was always what I was talking about.
It wasn't changing the subject from your perspective, therefore it wasn't changing the subject? If that is what you are suggesting, that is a [I]non sequitur[/I].
Looking back, I see that you [i]did[/I] address [i]part[/I] of my comment when you responded with that question bringing up subjectivity, but you did not address the main point, which was that it is a poor basis for reaching that decision. And it's a poor basis for reaching that decision because, based on your own interests in the case of you voting for Trump, or based on my own interests if I am the person in the shark example, it will likely lead to consequences counterproductive to those interests.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 21:04#315950 likes
Unhappy people need to look at the means by which the Republican party engineered its victory. It wasn't just a bunch of whackos voting for Trump.
4 or 5 congressional cycles ago the Republican Party began a major effort to corral reasonably affluent (upper working class through upper class), suburban, more or less white voters and win control of state legislatures. This turned out to be very prudent. They were prepared in 2010 to control reapportionment based on the 2010 census (a process generally under the supervision of legislatures). In succeeding elections they had more friendly districts and were able to more efficiently elect Republicans to governorships, the senate, and house -- in state and federal elections.
Liberals, Democrats, etc. are going to have to work on this project too. They are also going to have to take more strenuous positions in the interests of the white working class, millennials--white or colored--African Americans, Latin Americans, et al. This isn't easy to do, because those interests are often at odds with the industrialist and ruling class interests. But Bernie Sanders showed that there is a large block ready to go that route.
Liberals and Democrats, etc. are, in a word, going to have to get "smarter" about winning. Running Hillary Clinton, who had a large following of people who already hated her at the beginning of her campaign--even if running a woman as candidate for president was a bold step--was not a good idea.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 21:17#315980 likes
The thought, judgement, belief, etc., is. But that isn't as significant as you might think.
I'm not saying anything about significance quantification. It's just that whether something is still the same subject or not is always a matter of individual interpretation.
Climate change is another one that might be applicable
Upon what are you basing what's in my interests re climate change and climate change policy? Or are you just assuming that I'd have a particular view on that because I voted for Jill Stein and you're assuming I'd agree with her on that issue? Again, my views have just in much in common with Libertarianism, although my views aren't the same as either any other socialists, any other libertarians, or any other Green party members, etc. I've never met anyone else who has the same political views as I do, or in fact, anyone who feels that my political views are a good idea once I explain them in more detail, haha. That's why I call myself a "socialist libertarian" only in lieu of something better to call myself. No matter what I call myself, I'd have to just explain what my views are in detail.
This may take the next 20-30 years if not longer (again, Trump will not be able to provide the long-term answer IMO), but that corrupt status quo of unchecked capitalism with its dominance by moneyed interests is thankfully over, at least for the time being.
This is so untrue on so many levels. I'm surprisd you would think that a Republican sweep would solve it if not exacerbate it.
I hope that above all else, every pollster, media station, and complacent liberal who is 'surprised' right now takes a long hard look at themselves, and realizes 'I am completely out of touch with reality, with my country, and the desires of the people, and have little conception of the way that people think or what they value.'
Yes.
And people reading the polls (like me) need to be more careful. For instance, many of the polls I read have a "margin of error" of say, 3%. That means that there is a 6% range that can not be known. If the poll says Clinton is 3% ahead of Trump, it may be that they are actually tied. In a 3% MOE poll, a 2% lead may mean that the Clinton is actually behind Trump.
Early on, the distance between the candidates was very large and the MOE didn't matter very much. But as they came closer and closer, MOE mattered more and more.
The other thing people (like me) need to remember is that A POLL RESULT IS NOT A FACT. It may be that 2000 of 3000 people polled said they preferred Clinton. That doesn't mean they are definitely going to vote for Clinton, especially when the election is weeks or months off. It doesn't mean they are going to vote at all.
Reply to Wayfarer quoted Michael Moore saying last summer that "Donald Trump is going to win." Moore isn't the Oracle at Eleusis, but one does have to use "gut response" in prognostication. And one needs to watch out for crowd bias. Everyone I hang around with liked Clinton. If I suspected that somebody liked Trump I shied away from them. My siblings live in the small town America that grooved on Donald's affronts to good taste. We avoided the topic.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 21:35#316030 likes
But that's irrelevant. The point is that when we say that such-and-such is in someone's best interests we're saying that such-and-such is going to help someone achieve good health (for example). Whether or not such-and-such is going to help someone achieve good health isn't simply a matter of preference.
You can't avoid getting fat from eating chocolate and drinking sugary drinks simply because you'd prefer not to.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 21:39#316050 likes
I'm going to address what we type sentence by sentence. If that's not addressing "the actual relevant point" in your view, then I suppose so. Addressing stuff sentence-by-sentence is how I do discussions like this (where there's a disputational tenor to the proceedings with a host of core disagreements).
BitterCrank:Liberals and Democrats, etc. are, in a word, going to have to get "smarter" about winning.
Au contraire, BC, I think they've tried 'smart' and it hasn't worked. Trump won by trying 'dumb' - slogans, fear, hatred, 'the other', anger, doubt, and appeals to greed ('Look how rich I am'). So 'smart' is what has failed. Dumb is the new smart.
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 21:49#316100 likes
The Great WhateverNovember 09, 2016 at 22:00#316120 likes
Reply to Wayfarer In what sense was Trump's campaign more fueled by fear, hatred, 'the other,' anger, and doubt than Clinton's? This is what I mean about being delusional. You simply can't afford it anymore. Look at what actually happened, not what you wished would have happened because it comforts your world-view.
TheGreatWhatever:In what sense was Trump's campaign more fueled by fear, hatred, 'the other,' anger, and doubt than Clinton's? This is what I mean about being delusional. You simply can't afford it anymore.
I think it is objectively the case. You recall the long period when Sanders was refusing to concede, and there were a series of debates between he and Clinton. They were about policy - you know, 'policy' - how funds should be dispersed for healthcare, public education, tax rates, and so on. They went for hours, over periods of months.
Meanwhile, what was Trump talking about? He was stirring up headlines by making statements that most politicians wouldn't - Mexicans being thieves, Muslims being terrorists, women being suitable targets for horny celebrities who can grope them with impunity because they're famous.
You think there's no difference between hate speech and policy debate? Is that distinction beyond your powers of discrimination?
Metaphysician UndercoverNovember 09, 2016 at 22:21#316150 likes
It's all a good example of why Plato said democracy is a bad form of government.
Reply to Metaphysician Undercover You can't use this (or Brexit) to "prove" that democracy is a bad form of government. You need to compare it to other forms of government. Do non-democratic countries tend to be better?
This is so untrue on so many levels. I'm surprisd you would think that a Republican sweep would solve it if not exacerbate it. Reply to Question
You may be right, but I think Thorongil did a good job of pointing out that many within the Republican establishment - those primarily concerned with protecting large corporate interests - have been extremely hostile to Trump. If he's a typical Republican, why the discomfort? Not sure what this development portends, but it does seem to buttress Trump's self-portrayal as the anti-establishment candidate (along with Bernie Sanders) who will represent the neglected interests of working class Americans.
But sure, his vague mentions of preferred economic policy did not sound very populist to me, especially his plan to lower taxes on the wealthy even further, ostensibly as a means of getting them to set up shop and do business in the US once again. My main point was that IF he doesn't follow through with his promises to represent the economic interests of average people, then someone else will be there to rally this group that he (and Bernie) energized. If nothing else, I do see that wedge he's driven between normal people and the economic elites whom they used to support, and uncritically at that, to be a positive development. And while isolationism may not be a realistic possibility in this day and age, if it leads to less meddling in the internal affairs of foreign countries to protect American or MNC business interests, that could be a good thing as well.
I'll keep abreast of the latest developments and information as it arises and reassess my views accordingly. That's the good thing about not being an ideologue or party hack who interprets facts to fit an agenda and only sees what they want to see. I'll try my best to avoid the blatant hypocrisy I've seen from both sides and search instead for the truth, which is clearly not what motivates political partisans.
Metaphysician UndercoverNovember 09, 2016 at 22:39#316220 likes
You can't use this (or Brexit) to "prove" that democracy is a bad form of government. You need to compare it to other forms of government. Do non-democratic countries tend to be better?
I don't believe that's true. You do not need to show that something is worse than something else, to prove that it is bad. You just need to describe the thing, and explain why the described thing is bad. That there may be other things which are worse, is not relevant.
Au contraire, BC, I think they've tried 'smart' and it hasn't worked. Trump won by trying 'dumb' - slogans, fear, hatred, 'the other', anger, doubt, and appeals to greed ('Look how rich I am'). So 'smart' is what has failed. Dumb is the new smart.
Dumb may be the new smart but I'll stand by what I said. Redistricting is a critical process, because it enables the party in power to tailor districts to suit. This might not affect the vote on a Trump or a Clinton, but it makes a lot of difference for who will occupy the US Congress and the state houses. Trump would be less of threat IF the Senate was controlled by Democrats.
Reply to Metaphysician Undercover Depends on the context. Sometimes the only measure of goodness and badness is a comparison with the alternatives. Muskets were good weapons at the time, but aren't nowadays.
The thing is that we have hard data to look at and see the result of having Republican leadership at the helm and economic progress of the middle class. The data seems point out that the interests of the middle class are not aligned with the interest of special interest groups that practically dictate national economic policy.
It's all a good example of why Plato said democracy is a bad form of government.
Poorly functioning systems of government are all bad.
An efficiently run and relatively humane dictatorship beats a scatter-brained and cruel dictatorship. A failed democracy would not be better than a failed dictatorship.
Democracy in the US or UK is not failed. It is hobbled, at least in the US, by several factors: the way politics are financed, the way primaries are tallied (winner take all), the way the electoral college works, and so forth. Having money fed into the campaigns by a high pressure hose doesn't help either. All of these, and other factors, could and should be reformed.
Reply to Question Yeah that standard Republican economic agenda has been to push for unregulated global free markets, the continued dismantling of labor unions, the elimination of social services which provide a bit of a safety net for struggling citizens, and other such things. These have created the very conditions of anger and resentment amongst the populace which contributed to Trump's popularity and rise to power. I don't see how he can just maintain that business as usual approach after all he's talked about and promised. One thing is however certain: if anyone can be that blatantly dishonest and backstabbing, it would be Trump.
I'm not saying anything about significance quantification. It's just that whether something is still the same subject or not is always a matter of individual interpretation.
Even if so, importantly, it's not [I]just[/I] about that. It's also about correctness. It's not 'anything goes'. Some interpretations are more correct than others.
Or are you just assuming that I'd have a particular view on that because I voted for Jill Stein and you're assuming I'd agree with her on that issue?
I made no such assumption. I qualified with "might". But it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that you would likewise approve of policies which treat climate change as a priority, rather than seek to undermine it. And Trump, in stark contrast to Stein, has a poor track record in that regard.
Again, my views have just in much in common with Libertarianism, although my views aren't the same as either any other socialists, any other libertarians, or any other Green party members, etc. I've never met anyone else who has the same political views as I do, or in fact, anyone who feels that my political views are a good idea once I explain them in more detail, haha. That's why I call myself a "socialist libertarian" only in lieu of something better to call myself. No matter what I call myself, I'd have to just explain what my views are in detail.
Riiight. So, what does socialism mean to you? How do you justify using that term to form part of the position you identify with? Or is it just a hollow word for you? Little more than a label you kind of like the sound of?
Terrapin StationNovember 09, 2016 at 23:28#316350 likes
I have done so. More than once. Here, for example.
No, that's claiming that there is a distinction. It's not specifying what the distinction is supposed to be--that is, what the specific properties of each are supposed to be that make the distinction.
I think a big mistake the Clinton campaign made was to campaign as if voting democrat was the *morally correct* thing to do. People really don't like being told by someone that it's morally wrong to not do what they want. If someone feels they're being called a racist, sexist, deplorable, by someone, they're not likely to then vote for that person. A big part of why trump won is he tapped into the needs of a voting bloc that hadn't felt it's interests had been represented and advocated for in a long time - working class white people. I think a lot of people felt like holy shit someone is finally representing MY interests! Trumps not perfect, but you can afford to make a lot of mistakes when the alternative to voting for someone who appears to be advocating for you, is to be called a racist uneducated redneck for even considering voting in your own interest. It was a big mistake and alienated a lot of people.
It was as if the Clinton campaign had a horrible smugness to it - a lot of people voting democrat seemed CONVINCED of the moral righteousness of their choice. "Only a bigot would vote for Trump". It was crazy seeing not just how disappointed but utterly SHOCKED people were by the result. I mean the result was a little surprising given the polls showed a marginal Democratic lead right up until the vote, but it was as if people hadn't even thought it was possible Hillary might NOT become POTUS. I CANT EVEN HOW COULD THIS BE?!
You must be so completely out of touch with the desires of the ordinary American. It's as if people occupy this liberal bubble and can't even grasp there's a world beyond it!
It's not specifying what the distinction is supposed to be--that is, what the specific properties of each are supposed to be that make the distinction.
So now you want me to talk about properties? No. Not if that entails more than what I've already provided. That'd be moving the goal posts. I have explained why they're not equivalent, and have illustrated that with an example.
But here, I'll throw in another distinction for free, because I'm generous. Although it's really just another way of putting what I've already said:
What is in one's interests is what is beneficial to those interests, whereas what one likes is just what one likes, and need not be beneficial to those interests. [U]The former is necessarily, by definition, beneficial to those interests, whereas the latter is not.[/u]
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 00:08#316430 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever We're very much in agreement, I think, but I still don't like that Horowitz video, for the same reason I don't like daily show vids about dumb trump supporters. There're so many dumb people (code, here, for liberal academics) that anyone can make a worst-of vid for any group. I agree with your criticisms of academia, but the vid immediately made me think of the daily show and smooth editors.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 00:27#316450 likes
Reply to Wayfarer What I am telling you is that if you believe the picture of what happened that you just outlined, you are delusional. It may be due to insularity of news source, I don't know. But to say that Clinton's criticisms of Trump were policy-oriented is totally insane. Clinton's campaign thrived on a number of fears and divisive rhetoric, including purposefully calling on and inflaming bad race relations (with the not-so-subtle implication that a huge number of Americans were crypto-white-supremacists), and abusing insults like 'misogynistic' so badly that it's a wonder if they will have any meaning over the next few years. It also relied on a massive amount of really bizarre neo-Cold War rhetoric and fantasies about Russia, with a disturbing pro-war message beneath it. What can a person call all of this, if not fear and hate?
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 00:31#316460 likes
Reply to csalisbury I would be happy never to have to hear an undergraduate open their mouth again, to be honest -- what's in that video is not, from my experience, in any way atypical. And I just can't stand when someone uses a word you can tell isn't part of their native vocabulary like that, and signals 'someone told me to use this word in this situation.'
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 00:40#316490 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever I agree - even look at OWS. I'd love to never hear a confused reference to Hardt&Negri again. But satisfaction at being smarter - or more aware - than others is the same whether we fight against 'rednecks' or sophmores with a trustfund - thats about our own merits, not about changing shit.
one could easily cobble together a vid of alt-righters being dumb for example
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 01:06#316570 likes
Reply to csalisbury You could, but I have some sympathy for the alt-rghters because they have a quality that others don't -- they're funny. There's something about what's funny that can't ever fail. The people who are wrong are always unfunny. I think part of it ultimately is that those who are in power can't be funny, because anything disruptive by definition hurts them. Witness the all-embracing attempt to define what satire is and isn't, and delineate when it 'punches up' versus 'punching down.' Only a profoundly unfunny person thinks of humor in this way.
So I don't think the criticism has to be on their terms, as saying 'no, I'm actually smarter than you.' The point is to take it away from a battle of intelligence, which is really not about intelligence anyway, but a surrogate for class, and ultimately to deny the premises on which they predicate their worldview, as a product that you're not interested in buying.
Yeah that standard Republican economic agenda has been to push for unregulated global free markets, the continued dismantling of labor unions, the elimination of social services which provide a bit of a safety net for struggling citizens, and other such things. These have created the very conditions of anger and resentment amongst the populace which contributed to Trump's popularity and rise to power. I don't see how he can just maintain that business as usual approach after all he's talked about and promised. One thing is however certain: if anyone can be that blatantly dishonest and backstabbing, it would be Trump.
So, what are you suggesting? That the American public that elected him and with it the majority that the Republican party has in the House and Senate... are uneducated and misinformed?
That sadly seems to be my conclusion on the matter.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 02:57#316630 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever I agree with you - funny for me trumps all. But I think clickhole is funnier than most 4chan stuff. The alt-right memes quickly become as predictable as any mainstream whatever. But they do have great hair! Nice sweep, Milo!
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 03:03#316640 likes
Reply to csalisbury I don't think Milo is alt-right. He's co-opted the label and tried to make it seem like a classical liberal thing, but the core seems to be white nationalist. It's not a realistic political ideology, nor one given my race I can participate in. But, like with the radfems, they're funny – that's a fact. Real humor comes from dark places, not from high places. Complacent people cannot be funny, which is why moderate liberal comedians who were in support of the Clinton campaign (Louis CK, Patton Oswalt, Amy Schumer, etc.) are profoundly unfunny when doing so.
Is clickhole like The Onion? I was raised in a center-left household where that sort of humor (Onion, Funny Times, Daily Show) was what we grew up on, and while I think it has its place, there's a sense in which it can't be truly, gut-bustingly funny.
Here is a dose of the respect Clinton supporters have for women.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 03:13#316660 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever no, clickhole is funnier than all that, tho I do agree with you re: Louis CK, Amy Schumer et al. Not all that funny.
(I'll be honest, I didn't watch that vid because I can't stand the young turks and I don't need to watch it to know I won't like it.)
But the alt-right shitlord troll-memes aren't really that funny. They're 'edgy.' Who cares? They have shock value, and shock value is good, even necessary, to progress through your teenage years.You have to embrace it before you can authentically move beyond it. But if you still find shock-value shit deeply funny at 27 (my age) then something went horribly wrong. Yes, whoa, you're very edgy, mannn, wow, you make jokes about 9/11?? and Muslims?? & Jews too!!!
jeez, no one can hold you back!
whoa wait, feminists and SJWs too?
dammmn.
No, stoppp, you wouldn't dare, about blacks too? About MLK? mann soo good! no fucks given, lol, amirite?
Terrapin StationNovember 10, 2016 at 03:19#316670 likes
What is in one's interests is what is beneficial to those interests,
How is "beneficial to interests" different from meeting one's preferences with respect to interests?
(And how are one's interests not just preferences?)
Also, aren't you conflating "best for one's interests" and "best interests"? And then within that, you're pretending that a preference for meeting interests isn't a preference.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 03:20#316680 likes
Reply to csalisbury I'll give you an example of something I found utterly hilarious. It's hard to explain out of context, and wasn't even connected to the alt-right directly, but to a sister board on 4chan, r9k, which is infamous for being a meeting place for losers (although I don't know if it still is). There was a time when people started posting fake advertisements on the board for fast food restaurants, extolling their virtues and including prices of meals and saying which were their favorites. But they were written in a way that made them sound eerily casual and conversational, but still with the hallmarks of an obvious advertisement. It was just so fucking funny, the self-deprecating undertones of understanding why a self-understanding 'loser' would be a fast food connoisseur and at the same time an unwitting advertising pawn for them, it was just perfect. And not only that, they weren't repeated, but each time it happened they were freshly rewritten. It's hard to explain exactly why it was so funny because the number of subtle factors were too high. But it was in a way also a very dark sort of humor. It's that sort of thing that I think if you aren't in pain in some way, you simply cannot produce. And people who are in power, who are complacent, are not in pain in that way. The alt-right is a wing of that style of humor, and sometimes taps into it.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 03:24#316690 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever I respect that type of humor and deeply sympathize with it. It makes me real nostalgic for High School. That's my shit! Those are my ppl!
& I also understand that the alt-right has grown out of that kind of IDGAF messageboard ethos.
But the ethos & sense of humor I could empathize with gets lost when ppl go hard-alt-right.
Because it gets less funny!
I believe that plenty of legitimately funny 4channers went hard-right. But I think they probably got less funny as a result of that in the same way other funny ppl got less funny when they started pulling hard for HRC
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 03:28#316700 likes
Reply to csalisbury I used to think that the humor was an endless spiral, and that maybe there was a sort of ethical duty to remain committed to it, which precluded ever adopting a 'serious' ideology. The people who stick too hard to the alt-right have found their serious ideology, and so it can make the humor fade, because they won't suffer a joke to the thing that they now take seriously. I don't know if I feel that way anymore, and I think I would adopt an ideology if it was something worthwhile, even at the risk of not seeing the funny as clearly anymore.
Also, once something becomes mainstream, the population becomes composed of people who don't have the years of subtle in-group training baked into their experience. So when you see a 14 year old Canadian girl or whatever talk about how she's 'red pilled' and wants immigrants to leave it's not really anything but sad.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 03:34#316710 likes
I used to think that the humor was an endless spiral, and that maybe there was a sort of ethical duty to remain committed to it, which precluded ever adopting a 'serious' ideology. The people who stick too hard to the alt-right have found their serious ideology, and so it can make the humor fade, because they won't suffer a joke to the thing that they now take seriously. I don't know if I feel that way anymore, and I think I would adopt an ideology if it was something worthwhile, even at the risk of not seeing the funny as clearly anymore.
Yeah, this is where I'm at. I love the anarchic comedic spirit (I've mentioned him before but Donald Barthelme is my saint here and is far funnier (and more morally and politically serious) than any alt-righter who thinks he can transcend any category through sheer outrage (Nigger! Normie! blahhh)
(and, sure, saying 'anarchic comedic spirit' is already to lose it, but w/e)
At a certain point, you have to ask: Is a slightly more sophisticated version of a COD player calling everyone else a fag really where I want to stake my claim?
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 03:38#316730 likes
At a certain point, you have to ask: Is a slightly more sophisticated version of a COD player calling everyone else a fag really where I want to stake my claim?
It might be. Some insults are clever because they cut so deep, toward subconscious inadequacies people have. There is no limit to how mad you can potentially make a complacent person.
With respect to Trump, here is the gist as I see it. There are roughly two sorts of people, who have different reactions to the following video:
One sort will becomes more sympathetic to Trump after seeing it, the other sort will be horrified. This was intended as a video critical of Trump – but it just doesn't work. Trump is funnier than the creator, and arranging why he is funny in artful sequence only emphasizes that.
You have to have some sense of humor to see Trump as worth a vote. People will respond and say that when it comes to their safety, etc. they can't afford to find things funny, because their lives are at risk. But then, I think this is grandstanding and crocodile tears. Because again, when complacent you lack a sense of humor.
Lol, you know that all of the Trump criticism did make me like him more, and want to be on his side more. That's just how I am, I like to side with the underdog, as it were. I never really heard anything about Hilary, anything funny quotable, or silly that she had to say or did. It was just that mirror practiced smile, and nothing really memorable.
I considered earlier today, that maybe all of the free publicity through criticism of Obama had a lot to do with his winning so well, and in this case may have had a lot to do with his winning.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 03:45#316750 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever I've always thought Trump was funny, and not just in a funny-for-me-as-a-smart-ironic-liberal guy way. But yeah, no crocodile tears, I think you have to differentiate between who's funny and who's a good candidate.
And I agree with you, complacency kills a sense of humor. But not-being-complacent is necessary, not sufficient. You can be a radical or outside the mainstream and still be super fucking boring.
I'm very arrogant about my sense of humor. As arrogant as Trump is about other things, maybe. And the alt-right isn't all that funny. They're a little funny on a first pass. But they have one or two jokes and they beat them to death and then get serious about their real concerns.
Everyone knows a meme dies after a few cycles. But the alt-right will keep posting pepe the same way normies keep posting gene wilder looking smug or picard being bewildered.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 03:50#316760 likes
I feel that this is an example of something on the verge of being too serious. But it's far more inventive than Pepe – although, to be fair, there was some amazingly creative Pepe stuff, especially around the time that Kek was first getting popular, and earlier in the poo-poo pee-pee and good boy points eras (look that stuff up if you want examples of the 'good' Pepe stuff).
I very rarely seriously consider, nor am effected negatively by race issues. I'm super white. I don't really even get that? Is that like, saying that movies like that support racial purity, and segregation because they're never bi-racial couples? If so, then I really never considered that. I'm always worried about how there aren't enough trannies, and dykes, and fags.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 04:08#316810 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever It's not bad at all. But it gets infinitely less funny if you view it as a serious attack on PC speech-policing (since it then turns into a sincere love song between two alt-righters - and would then be as unfunny as liberals rewriting the lyrics so they're celebrating the success of obamacare or multicultural tolerance)
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 04:09#316820 likes
And, as you've already said, alt-righters are all too eager to get serious and sacrifice the humor.
That video is hilarious... but not because of Trump's politics or policy. It's funny because being right doesn't matter. He contradicts himself, speaks nonsense and doesn't say the right thing, but all of that has no bearing on anything. On he goes, no matter how ridiculous or outrageous. Nothing is held back to save face or follow somebody's rules. Comedy isn't made on politics, but, in a certain sense, an expression of power of being who you are.
I think you feel sympathy for the alt right (at least more than others) because they are the underdog, more so than because they're particularly funny in comparison to anyone else.
According to the Guardian, "Neither she nor her campaign seemed to foresee that American voters would resoundingly reject a plea to hold on to unity in favour of division, and choose fear over hope."
American Voters didn't do anything "resounding'. Clinton (seems to have) won the popular vote, and though she lost the Electoral College race, it was by 50 votes, not 200. She won a good share of what was needed, but close doesn't count, of course.
American voters were split down the middle. Trump didn't earn the mandate of a landslide and Clinton wasn't cast aside by a landslide.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 10, 2016 at 04:44#316870 likes
Watching it, I thought it could work either as a sincere expression of white supremacy or a satire criticising it, which is probably a good sign. I think it's funny either way.
As a sincere love song between alt-righters, I think it works much better than you give it credit for. There's a level of disruption, between family, identity, culture and relationship to politics, which makes it much funnier and substantial than just re-purposing popular media. I think there is disruptive a story-- I was actually thinking "How nice for them. Their fascist white supremacy will be so beautiful" watching it.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 04:48#316890 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness
I think it works as best as neither criticism nor sincere expression, but as just a kind of strange crossing of two realms that would never otherwise meet - disney, with all that carries, and alt right. (tho even to spell it out like that kinda ruins it) Maybe that's what you mean by a level of disruption.
"I was actually thinking "How nice for them. Their fascist white supremacy will be so beautiful" watching it."
Ha, yeah, I think that's why it works.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 04:49#316900 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness What this response ignores in my opinion is that being funny and being the underdog are deeply, deeply linked.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 04:53#316910 likes
What this response ignores in my opinion is that being funny and being the underdog are deeply, deeply linked.
I disagree with this reading.
It's funny because it expresses the unspoken and unspeakable emotional undercurrents two powerful white ppl (say a news anchor(ess) and idk a senator) might feel, but would irl chalk up to something very different (just like a movie! a perfect romance! like a french novel!). lt's not funny bc it's about underdogs - it's because it presents that which is usually unspeakable due to repression and good manners , as spoken in naive, shame-free open disney-level musicals.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 04:56#316920 likes
Reply to csalisbury If you are not the underdog, there is nothing unspeakable for you. Your thoughts go out of the radio, into your ears, and out your mouth again.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 04:58#316930 likes
I'm not up with all of the latest buzzwords, so I didn't know what "alt-right" was until the explosion of use I'm seeing for the first time... so had to looks it up.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 04:59#316950 likes
Like I said, the video is funny bc white ppl already do this exact same thing but code it (like a movie! like a french novel! like jane austen!) but this clip just makes it explicit.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:00#316960 likes
Reply to csalisbury I think you are naive to suggest that white people are the ones in power, at least in the US. Yes there are correlations, but it's far more complicated than that, and they have certain things unique to being white that make them unable to say a vast host of things.
Wealth I can agree on. Wealth works anywhere. But if you're really rich, there is a sense in which you can say whatever you want.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 05:03#316970 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever
I'm not sure what you mean. I think by and large white people are in power, yeah, but there are important social/class things that come into play and make it impossible to talk it about it strictly as white/non-white thing.
What's the non-naive understanding of white people and power?
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:03#316980 likes
If you like, csal, you are the underdog if you discover anything unspeakable, because if you weren't, your opinion would determine, implicitly or explicitly, what is unspeakable and what is not.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:06#316990 likes
What's the non-naive understanding of white people and power?
I think a non-naive understanding would be that white people have a unique relation with racial guilt and masochism that makes them self-hating and resentful of the idea of working toward their own interests, and that there are a host of words and ideologies that can be employed against them at any time not only by other white people but anyone non-white to enforce this. This is something that non-white people of any stripe simply do not have to deal with.
On the world stage, things get even more complicated -- white people there have a unique status, implicitly or explicitly, that they are the only large ethnic group not entitled to a homeland, IMO. This is one of the talking points of the alt-right, and I don't think it's crazy, I think it's quite plain. It's another fact what one is to make of it.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 10, 2016 at 05:07#317000 likes
I know, but I think that's wrong. The significance is disruption, not in being the (political) underdog. (Political) underdogs make rote and unfunny statements all the time, no matter how shocking the might be to the elite or powerful. Simply offending and hurting the elite or powerful (or frequently, less powerful, since something like protection form hate speech is distinct from an individual power) is not enough to make something funny. Indeed, sometimes it is just a vile expression of power.
You are, I think, more interested in annoying, hurting or seeing proponents of doxa get a comeuppance than in what's funny.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 05:07#317010 likes
If you like, csal, you are the underdog if you discover anything unspeakable, because if you weren't, your opinion would determine, implicitly or explicitly, what is unspeakable and what is not.
I guess I don't see that as an underdog/overdog thing. It's an ethos thing. And a public/private thing. There are certain taboos in any culture. Both wealthy people and poor people, with our ethos, suffer repercussions if they say racist things in public, so they generally don't (Even Donald trump wouldn't say nigger right? & Mel Gibson did his time etc. etc.)
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:09#317020 likes
Reply to csalisbury This is not true: non-white people are allowed to say racist things in public. If you believe racism against whites isn't possible (note the racially charged ideology required to think this -- very deep), then it still holds for minorities saying racist things toward each other. The ban on racism applies only to white people. This is what I mean when I say your position is naive.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:10#317030 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness I'm going to suggest that the reason you don't find it funny is that you are the overdog and hence feel threatened by it. *shrug*
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 05:10#317040 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever Oh ok, yes, I agree minorities are allowed to attack white people in ways white people aren't allowed to attack minorities.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:11#317050 likes
Reply to csalisbury Is not being allowed to attack someone symptomatic of being in a position of power over them?
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 05:11#317060 likes
I still don't think that makes the white people the underdog, tho, certainly not enough to explain the humor of the vid.
Reply to The Great Whatever Some argue that the notion of whiteness is itself racist and privileged, and that the solution to racism (at least in the West), is to abolish "whiteness" (blackness is tied to the definition of whiteness).
This doesn't mean that the people we currently identify as "white" don't get to participate in their unique ethnicity, unlike everyone else. It just means that we stop treating people descended from a continent as belonging to one race, be it white, black or otherwise.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:14#317080 likes
Reply to csalisbury You can be an underdog in certain respects and not in others. The inability to understand this, except in terms of intersection of multiple demographics, is characteristic of modern social criticism. Anyway, the point was just that you said the video was funny because of its being flippant and cute with something unspeakable, but the unspeakability is what is important here.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:15#317090 likes
Reply to Marchesk To think that there is only one unique race (white people) whose racial identity is defined entirely negatively in terms of oppression, requires a deep racialist ideology.
Reply to The Great Whatever But the idea of being white was invented to justify colonialism and slavery. Before that, people were French, German, English, Polish, etc.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 05:16#317110 likes
Is not being allowed to attack someone symptomatic of being in a position of power over them?
I think that's actually a super complicated question. Couldn't you flip this and say the taboo on racial slurs is an expression of white racial security? Don't need to put someone in their place, who knows their place, kinda thing. Imagine a subtly abusive husband who fucks with his wife in subtle ways but acts calm and in control while she launches insult after insult, and remains respectful especially when he's talking about her in public
I don't think it's as simple as the image, but it's also not as simple as whites under the heavy thumb of pc speech-policing.
DeleteduserrcNovember 10, 2016 at 05:21#317120 likes
Anyway, the point was just that you said the video was funny because of its being flippant and cute with something unspeakable, but the unspeakability is what is important here.
Oh, I definitely agree, but I think we differ on why the unspeakable stuff in it is funny.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 10, 2016 at 05:21#317130 likes
See... that's political, not comedy. Supposedly, there is this grave double standard in how racism is treated. How unjust you cry. What could be funnier than seeing those people ignorant of racism against white people ground into the dust?
The Great Whatever:I'm going to suggest that the reason you don't find it funny is that you are the overdog and hence feel threatened by it. *shrug*
No doubt, but that's to be expected here. "Comedy" is heavily tied into expressing political power. One laughs at the failure, stupidity, pain or inferiority of their opponents as rhetoric. You are (sometimes) laughing not because what you've seen is really funny, but because it hurts those who you disagree with. What could be better than taking down those ignorant students of Western hegemony?
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:21#317140 likes
Reply to Marchesk This doesn't make much sense, considering white people were always white, and even now people are still German, Polish, etc. I mean, Europeans are an ethnic population. There's some serious metaphysical juju going on in trying to transmogrify your very genes into pure evil. But that seems to be the gist.
Couldn't you flip this and say the taboo on racial slurs is an expression of white racial security?
Yes, and I would agree with that. I think that white people exert a feeling of superiority in thinking that they have transcended culture and have a duty to bring the other mud people, still tied down to base tribalist sentiment, to their level. Hence the self-deprecating white insistence that they 'have no culture,' which simultaneously harms and exalts white people, hence why they make a sport out of how much they hate other white people, etc.
Imagine a subtly abusive husband who fucks with his wife in subtle ways but acts calm and in control while she launches insult after insult, and he remains respectful (especially when he's talking about her in public)
Agreed. There is a tendency for white people, mostly liberal white people, to treat minorities as animals and pets of various sorts, and to show 'solidarity' with them in condescending ways, by showing how they can take an insult like an adult while a minority can't and must be protected (and 'can't help but violently protest' and so on). This is all common knowledge.
I don't think it's as simple as the image, but it's also not as simple as whites under the heavy thumb of pc speech-policing.
It isn't – but poor white people, for example, are actually under the thumb in significant ways, whereas wealthy and educated white people use the thumb to throw poorer white people under the bus for various ingratiation strategies. Yes, it's all very complicated.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:23#317150 likes
See... that's political, not comedy. Supposedly, there is this grave double standard in how racism is treated. How unjust you cry. What could be funnier than seeing those people ignorant of racism against white people ground into the dust?
It's not unjust. It's reality, and I'm commenting on it.
No doubt, but that's to be expected here. "Comedy" is heavily tied into expressing political power. One laughs at the failure, stupidity, pain or inferiority of their opponents as rhetoric. You are (sometimes) laughing not because what you've seen is really funny, but because it hurts those who you disagree with. What could be better than taking down those ignorant students of Western hegemony?
I think that comedy is deeper than that, but okay.
Everyone knows that that's all pretend though, right? I mean, I could say racist stuff all day and none of my family or friends or anyone that knew me would care. It's just that we think all of the strangers we're trying to impress would care...
Reply to The Great Whatever Europeans are made up of many ethnic groups, just as Africans are. The idea of a single white race to which various ethnic groups may or may not be included in is based on a history of thinking there were superior and inferior groups of humanity based on some racial characteristics, with skin color being predominant.
So do we consider Persians to be white? They're not European, but they don't identify as Arabs. What about Aborigines? Are they black? South Asians with very dark skin, what are they?
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:29#317180 likes
Reply to Marchesk It's a continuum obviously, but to deny the existence of groups because a continuum between them exists is the fallacy of Loki's Wager. Yes Europeans are made up of many ethnic groups, but each of these are more closely related than sub-Saharan African ethnic subgroups, and so on. There is obviously a large ethnic group of human beings with a certain skin tone living on a certain continent, not by coincidence.
Your arguments seemed to suggest that people are mistaken for arguing racism only applies to white people. You have sympathy for the alt-right because, on some level, you think they are unjustly treated. Supposedly, we don't let them claim their homeland like any other ethnic group.
[quote=The Great Whatever]I think that comedy is deeper than that, but okay.[/quote]
A lot of the time (hopefully), it is. My point is that it's quite sometimes not. People laugh to assert hierarchy, to bask in a victory over an opponent. I'm saying that you seem to fall into this a lot-- where comedy is reduced to nothing more than upsetting the powerful.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:33#317220 likes
Reply to Marchesk But it's obviously not a social construction. I mean, you understand that people who originate from different parts of the world look different, right? Do you really think that the fact Africans are darker than East Asians is socially constructed? I guess your eyeballs must be too?
Yes Europeans are made up of many ethnic groups, but each of these are more closely related than sub-Saharan African ethnic subgroups, and so on
Yes, but why lump them into one category called "white", "black" or "red"? The reason this happend is because of racism during the colonial era to justify the economics of slavery, and driving natives off their land.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:35#317240 likes
Your arguments seemed to suggest that people are mistaken for arguing racism only applies to white people. You have sympathy for the alt-right because, on some level, you think they are unjustly treated. Supposedly, we don't let them claim their homeland like any other ethnic group.
I don't think it's just or unjust. Again, I think it's reality.
A lot of the time (hopefully), it is. My point is that it's quite sometimes not. People laugh to assert hierarchy, to bask in a victory over an opponent. I'm saying that you seem to fall into this a lot-- where comedy is reduced to nothing more than upsetting the powerful.
Ultimately I think that comedy is not for upsetting the powerful because it gives the powerful too much center – the humor is for the one laughing as much as the object of laughter. If that object is 'the powerful,' then the powerful are the powers that be in a deeper cosmic sense, the archons or metaphorical rulers of the universe, given that humor is fundamentally disruptive of rule. But this disruption is far deeper than politics.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:35#317250 likes
Reply to Marchesk Because there are obvious differences, the most obvious of which is a clear difference in skin color? Isn't this a stupid question?
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 10, 2016 at 05:39#317260 likes
Yes... if we are talking in terms of understanding and categorisation. That we put people of a certain body in a particular category is always our discourse. It's constructed in how we understand people. The presence of a body doesn't put anyone within a category.
I mean, you understand that people who originate from different parts of the world look different, right?
You mean like how Northern Europeans look different than Southern Europeans? What about red head, freckled Irish people with their light skin? Are they more white than someone from Romania?
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:40#317290 likes
You mean like how Northern Europeans look different than Southern Europeans? What about red head, freckled Irish people with their light skin? Are they more white than someone from Romania?
Yes, Europeans are different from each other, but they are more different from Africans.
This is seriously not hard to understand.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:41#317300 likes
Yes, Europeans are different from each other, but they are more different from Africans.
Particularly with the Neanderthal genes, but at any rate, the history of being in the white or black race is one of slavery and then deep discrimination, so it's something a bit more than just noticing that people descendended from different geographic locations tending to look different. Also, it includes a history of which Europeans groups got to be considered white, and which weren't, depending on the time period.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 05:43#317320 likes
Reply to Marchesk Slavery is a part of the history of black and white people. This does not mean that being white in itself was created as a result of, or is inherently tied to, that slavery. People were white before and after slavery, and being white isn't defined in terms of being evil.
Alright, I don't know why the topic went this direction, but I have to go to bed. Night.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 10, 2016 at 05:45#317340 likes
What we wouldn't have, if we didn't talk, think or understand it, is the ethnic category. If everyone looked at a white person and saw someone belonging to the category of "black person," there would be no white ethnic group identity in our culture. There would be black bodies and white bodies, yes, but no-one would be thought of as having an ethnic identity of "white person."
People were white before and after slavery, and being white isn't defined in terms of being evil.
There was no such thing as being "white" or being "black" before a certain time. There were various ethnic groups competing and sometimes allying with one another. They didn't consider themselves to be all one race.
And anyway, unless you are an albino, nobody actually has white skin. So it's a false categorization to begin with.
Really, when you think about it, white is full spectrum... it includes all of the colours of the rainbow brozillas -- and white, being the category itself, transcends all of the colours within it.
Well, some things are "socially constructed". Maybe there is a better way of saying it. How about, people have considered themselves and others to belong to varying groups over time, and being white is no exception to this. In the European past, it could have been Roman, or Spartan, or Scottish, or Jewish (which isn't always accepted as white).
So Romans considered various non-Roman groups to be barbarians. Jews called the non-Jewish Gentile. Various Germanic tribes would have had their own naming for the other. The point is that all of this made up by culture. Who is part of a group and who is an outsider, and how you think about that outsider, whether they are to be feared or conquered, or treated as savages.
Also, what meaning is given to calling someone "Asian". It's a vast continent. What does a Mongolian have in common with a Pakistani, besides being human? Europe is just smaller, and it doesn't have a major desert separating populations like Africa does. But it's notable to consider how the British Isles have had their own ethnic struggles amongst the English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish, just in that little small area. There was certainly a time when they didn't all consider themselves to belong to the same race.
Who has some specific references for when the categories of 'white', 'black', 'yellow', and 'red' were constructed and became common? Also, when were the Irish not considered 'white' and by whom? When were the French or Greeks or Jews (like, Russian Jews) not considered 'white' and by whom?
the English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish, just in that little small area.
Or consider the long history of ethnic conflicts in Palestine which is even smaller and littler. Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, Samaritans, Judeans, Israelites, etc. Twelve tribes of tiny Israel?
How about, people have considered themselves and others to belong to varying groups over time
Here we see the motte and bailey technique of the postmodernist on display. Make provocative claims when skirmishing at first, such as "being white is a social construction," and when challenged, retreat back into safety by making an utterly banal and unchallengeable point. People have considered themselves and others to belong to varying groups over time? Gee whiz, you don't say! Next you'll be telling me that people have dressed differently over time! But see, that wouldn't prove that cotton, silk, or wool are "social constructions."
You can't get away with making a prima facie absurd claim like "being white is socially constructed" as if it were self-evident. The "better way of saying it," as you put it, is in fact not a way of saying it at all. It's to say something completely different. So pick one and stick to it.
You can't get away with making a prima facie absurd claim like "being white is socially constructed" as if it were self-evident. The "better way of saying it," as you put it, is in fact not a way of saying it at all. It's to say something completely different. So pick one and stick to it.
The point is that people in Europe didn't consider themselves to be white before a certain point. They considered themselves to be in other categories, usually associated with their homeland, culture, language and religion.
What is the counter argument to this obvious observation? That Europeans were white before they considered themselves to be white? Based on what? Their lighter skin color compared to certain populations in other parts of the world?
Let's ask a different question. What is the usefulness in calling an entire continent of people "white" or "black" or whatever? What role does it serve?
The point is that people in Europe didn't consider themselves to be white before a certain point.
Nonsense. Are you honestly going to tell me that ancient Europeans failed to notice their own skin tone? If not, then by "white" you mean something other than "white," in which case you ought to use different vocabulary so as to avoid equivocating.
Nonsense. Are you honestly going to tell me that ancient Europeans failed to notice the similarity in their skin tones? If not, then by "white" you mean something other than "white," in which case you ought to use different vocabulary so as to avoid equivocating.
You mean like "pink" or "tan" or even light brown? I'm sure people have always noticed differences. A red headed, freckled person who burns easily in the sun can look significantly different from someone else of the same ethnicity. So can a tall skinny person compared to someone stocky. So how do we go about grouping regarding difference? Do you think the Vikings considered themselves kin with Italians?
You're assuming that all Europeans would have agreed that they belong in some common group based on relatively lighter skin color than people from different geographic locations, despite all the regional differences amongst various European groups throughout history.
What would make a Spaniard or Italian more white than an Arab to a Northern or Eastern European? Is it because the Arabs have to cross a sea?
Do you think the Vikings considered themselves kin with Italians?
No, but they would have noticed that the Italians had a similar complexion to themselves, one noticeably lighter than their Moorish friends, for example.
However, later classicists have responded that Snowden's work unnecessarily reduced all forms of racism to its peculiarly American version based on skin color and others markers of non-white identity. Thus, Benjamin Isaac (2004) and Denise McCoskey (2012) contend that the ancient Greeks and Romans did hold proto-racist views that applied to other groups which today might be considered white. Isaac persuasively argues that these views must be considered proto-racist: although they were formed without the aid of a modern race concept grounded in ideas of deterministic biology (2004, 5), they nevertheless resembled modern racism by attributing “to groups of people common characteristics considered to be unalterable because they are determined by external factors or heredity” (2004, 38).
Reply to Marchesk Thanks, it's seems it was adopted by early Americans(U.S. citizens(God this is a minefied)). I always thought it was a Yorkshire dialect word, because my gran used it a lot, and she barely travelled outside the county of Yorkshire, well except when she went to Bognor Regis.
Maybe, the word travelled back over the pond, because folk over here thought it was one of their words.
How is "beneficial to interests" different from meeting one's preferences with respect to interests?
I have explained this multiple times now. I don't know why it isn't getting through to you. Let's be honest, you already know the difference, and behind all of this posturing, you know that I'm right.
For the last time, one's preferences obviously don't have to be beneficial to one's interests.
Now, stop this, because it is beginning to look like trolling.
(And how are one's interests not just preferences?)
You must enjoy me repeating myself. Because they're different. Those words mean different things, and they can, and do in fact, refer to different things in some cases, which aren't difficult to discover, and which you yourself can discover from thinking about your own experience. If you tell me that you've never experienced anything you like which wasn't in your best interests, then frankly you are full of crap.
Also, aren't you conflating "best for one's interests" and "best interests"? And then within that, you're pretending that a preference for meeting interests isn't a preference.
No.
Terrapin StationNovember 10, 2016 at 13:02#317910 likes
So I'm just being dishonest to aggravate you or something in your view?
I suspect you of willful ignorance. You are clinging to your position, even if it means accepting falsehoods, which, perhaps deep down, you know to be falsehoods.
Terrapin StationNovember 10, 2016 at 13:16#317960 likes
ArguingWAristotleTiffNovember 10, 2016 at 15:40#318470 likes
I will just quietly say: I'm so excited! And I think I like it! I'm about to lose control and I think I like it! Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
okay, I am likely done
for today
maybe
(Y)
ArguingWAristotleTiffNovember 10, 2016 at 15:47#318510 likes
Btw: Positive Unintended Consequences of Trump being elected
Sales of Rosary Prayer Beads and Mala Prayer beads are flying off the shelf! I may not have a free moment away from my jewelry bench for the next four years!
On election night, I lost my entire family. My fiance, who I've been working for 7 years to clear the way to finally get married is now probably barred from entering the US. Most of my family are Trump supporters, so they essentially pushed for me to be shipped off to a concentration camp, so I won't be seeing them for Thanksgiving or Christmas, obviously. Only my daughters are not Trump supporters, but they are mixed-race, so life is going to get really bad for them.
And the backtracking begins. I guess that quote of Trump saying he'd lie his way into the White House was accurate.
So much for Crooked Clinton. It's Dishonest Donald.
Note: criticising the lying, not the reversal.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 17:05#318620 likes
Reply to Marchesk This is just wrong. People were aware of ethnic differences since there have been ethnic differences, and had labels for them. Ancient literature mentions them in some detail. And they were aware that there were wider ethnic conglomerates that were more similar to each other than other ethnic conglomerates (and so in the Bible you have Samaritans versus Judeans, which are juxtaposed against the far more distant Kushites).
As for the 'no one is really white' thing, give me a break, that has to be disingenuous.
Good questions. Wiki claims it was late 17th century for the term modern use of white, but I suppose you would want a more substantial source.
I've been reading that "white" as a racial term has a short history for a couple of decades now, and hadn't checked any references.
I did a quick (separate) search of "white" and "racial" in the OED (on-line) and found that "white" as we apply it to race does indeed have a relatively short history. ("White" describing a color of course goes back to Old English and further.) "Racial" has a shorter history.
Google Ngram charts words by the frequency of their appearance in texts which are part of their corpus of printed books (it's big). Here is a result.
Note that in 1800, the incidence of the two terms (black race and white race) was extremely low. The term "black race" was used for 200 years at about the same, fairly low rate, while the term "white race" was much higher and fluctuating.
Of course, just because Chaucer, Spencer, or Shakespeare didn't describe any characters as "white" doesn't mean there wasn't an appreciation of differences that we would call "racial" prior to the 19th century. In the eponymous play, Othello (1604) is described as “the Moor” (I.i.57), “the thick-lips” (I.i.66), “an old black ram” (I.i.88), and “a Barbary horse” (I.i.113)."
Making racial distinctions doesn't make sense where there is little regular inter-racial contact. Americans are predictably indifferent to the ethnic (dis)similarities of central African or Siberian peoples, because we have no regular contact with peoples from these areas bearing differences. In reverse, the residents of Central Africa or Siberia would likely have little awareness of differences between the Ojibwa and Navaho Indian peoples, or Incas and Aztecs.
Scientific classification probably had a role in highlighting racial differences and similarities.
This is just wrong. People were aware of ethnic differences since there have been ethnic differences, and had labels for them.
I never said people weren't aware of ethnic differences. I said people considered themselves and others to belong to different groups over time, depending on the criteria. And being white is relatively recent. It's origin is the justification of colonialism and slavery. The idea of being white is the idea that you're skin color determines your status in society, and if your skin color is dark enough, you deserve to be a slave, or have less rights.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 18:35#318790 likes
Reply to Marchesk Nah. The idea of being white is the idea of roughly being from Europe ancestrally. It's true that that ancestry has been used to justify slavery and colonialism. But it makes no sense to conflate ethnic origins with an evil moral position. It's not that it's morally wrong to do so, it's just a category error.
The idea of being white is the idea that you're skin color determines your status in society
This is true, but I would add especially in the context of radical change. The radical change in Anglo-American culture was the rise of abolition, the end of the slave trade, and the events preceding (and following) the American Civil War.
The English ended their participation in slave trading in 1807. They didn't do this because it was unprofitable. The Anglo-American Abolition Movements began within the Quaker and Evangelical Christian groups on the grounds that slavery was un-Christian. A concern for civil and human equality followed later - quite a bit later.
"Whiteness" and "Blackness" wouldn't be so intense a concern in a settled, enforced system of slavery. Racial difference would become a hot issue once the settled enforced system of slavery was blown open and former slaves suddenly were presented as equals. Racial distinctions would now be critical in establishing a new social order.
I would guess that many Europeans--who hadn't previously thought a lot about racial and ethnic differences--suddenly became sensitive to these differences with the sudden arrival of waves of refugees. People having difficulty making accommodating too much too fast change aren't necessarily racists.
?Marchesk Nah. The idea of being white is the idea of roughly being from Europe ancestrally.
There was an interesting lecture from the BBC Reith Lectures series on the radio -- something like 3:00 in the morning in the US. Don't remember who was speaking, but he was pointing out how "white people" pride themselves on having "European heritage" and being inheritors of "Western Civilization", while actually knowing almost nothing about it.
Reply to The Great Whatever It's not the idea of ethnic origins, of which there are many in Europe, it's the idea of race that is the issue. The idea of being white, brown, black, red, or yellow stem from a belief of racial superiority and inferiority, which has been used to justify various political and economic policies over time which were discriminatory. This played out all over the Americas. Being white means you get to be in the higher social class. It's true that wealth matters as well, but it's been pointed out that being poor and black (or native) is always considered worse than being poor and white.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 10, 2016 at 20:40#318950 likes
If my suspicion of what you mean is correct (upper-class narcissists), no. Otherwise, I'm not really familiar with its history or cultural usage.
My usage was deliberate though. I thought its self-important, sneering glee at the pain and suffering of others was a fitting description of thinking shallow annoyance or offence of an opponent was hilarious.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 10, 2016 at 21:25#318990 likes
We aren't doing that. The "evilness" of white people is a description of how social relations have been expressed in our societies more or less since colonialismand after. It's not white skin that's a problem. Nor is it white enthic identity. The issue is a social advantage white people have had for a period of time, a description of a social power and dominance the white enthic group has had over others.
This is why some people say "white people can't be subject to racism" in the West. Not because people of the white ethnic group cannot be discriminated against, but because the don't live is a society which defines their ethnic identity as a second class citizen.
People who say white people can't suffer racism are (rightly) concerned that suggestioning otherwise will lead to an equivocation of the treatment of white people with those of other ethnic groups, leading to an invisibility to the latter.
We actually saw this in your post earlier. You treated racism as if it was merely a question of being unable to take pride in one's identity, as if not being able to say: "White people are the greatest people" belonged in the same catergoy as the dispossession, slavery and social inequality that constitutes our society for many people if other enthic groups.
You are right that (white)Western liberal culture views people without identity. The "free" everyman who's distinctions don't matter is the defining idea of the classical liberalism our culture has grown out of.
Part of the post-modern critique is this is a myth. Since people have their own identity, distinctions matter. In terms of our understanding and categories, the might only be a social construction, but that doesn't mean they are not real.
Earlier you pointed out that racial distinction is of great importance to the post-modern critic. This is absolutely true. They know that just saying the distinction doesn't matter does not reflect how people are treated.
Contrary to the classical liberal narrative, the post-modernist is saying that distinctions always matter, for each individual is distinct. If someone is living is a society, they need a place as a distinct person. Just saying the are "free" isn't enough. Distinction matters and we have to be careful of how our understanding of it impacts on people-- thus, the dominate group doesn't get go around proclaiming itself as the greatest, for it implies the exclusion of others from value.
It's not the idea of ethnic origins, of which there are many in Europe, it's the idea of race that is the issue.
It seems to me (provincial that I am) that actual races do exist side by side with race-used-as-a-vehicle-to-suppress-those-groups-and-elevate-these-groups. Blacks, after all, are black because of their recent place (last 25k years) of origin, and whites are white for the same reason. Aboriginals have been separated from other groups long enough to take on some unique characteristics. NONE of the characteristics that different groups feature are bad. The features are just different. NONE of the groups are superior in significant ways. Each group has some metabolic features (on the level of detail more than anything else) that are unique to that group -- just as males and females have metabolic differences.
Personally, I like the existence of people who look consistently different, who have characteristic skin tones, differences in hair, and so on. I think we are more interesting as different than if we were all coffee-with-cream colored with tightly curled hair.
One of the confusions that occur that make race much more problematic than it would otherwise be is that people link particular cultures to race. Black/violent; white/smart; blacks easy going; whites uptight; asians/smart; Indians/drunk, and so on. Of course these cultural stereotypes are harmful, because most blacks aren't violent. Blacks, whites, asians, and indians are all represented similarly on a distribution of basic intelligence and a long list of other variables.
It IS the case that many blacks in America do poorly in academics, from the get-go. We have good reason to think this has nothing to do with basic intelligence and everything to do with more cultural factors like the impoverished language culture of poor people (in this case, blacks). Poor people living in a culture of impoverishment do not express themselves the same way that better off people living in
a cultures of sufficiency or advantage. Poor American Black children arrive in kindergarten having heard perhaps 20-30 million fewer words spoken by parents or caregivers, and have heard far more negative and command language than children from cultures of sufficiency or advantage. These deficits appear to be lifelong -- not readily remediated after the age of 7 or 8.
Because language is formed early and is difficult to change, some people have assumed that differences in school performance was genetic. It isn't, of course. It's cultural.
This is why some people say "white people can't be subject to racism" in the West. Not because people of the white ethnic group cannot be discriminated against, but because the don't live is a society which defines their ethnic identity as a second class citizen.
Various European groups did not colonize other peoples to prove that they were better than colored people. They colonized other people because it was economically, militarily, and politically advantageous to subjugate other peoples and extract their wealth from them.
Many of the elites that profited from a lot of the colonialism that occurred are still in place, still benefitting from their acts of exploitation, still exploiting fresh people. It is entirely possible for the rich, white, elite to discriminate against poor, white, people -- and to do so just as viciously as they would exploit colonialised brown people.
Exploitation, colonialism, subjugation, and so forth is primarily an economic process -- not a racist, sexist, white-run social operation.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 21:55#319050 likes
The idea of being white, brown, black, red, or yellow stem from a belief of racial superiority and inferiority,
No, it stems from the fact that people come from different places and look different ways based on where they come from. There would still be white, black, etc. people whether or not this were used to attribute superiority or inferiority.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 21:58#319060 likes
You are right that (white)Western liberal culture views people without identity. The "free" everyman who's distinctions don't matter is the defining idea of the classical liberalism our culture has grown out of.
Not quite. It views white people as without identity. Although the moderate right does evoke the 'colorblind' position.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 10, 2016 at 22:25#319090 likes
It views everyone without identity. Everyone is invisible, which is how the myth functions. It doesn't matter if you are black, white, rich, poor, gay, straight, trans, etc., etc., any person is thought to be a free individual who can do anything. It is the "colourblind (and everything else too)" position. The are no issues or problems because everyone is considered a priori equal and the same to everyone else. An imagined freedom and equality, rather than a lived one.
No doubt this is not what people think in practice. They think about identity the time, including white identity ("European heritage" ), but it's not what registers in understanding of society.
The Great WhateverNovember 10, 2016 at 22:41#319120 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness Not at all. Identity politics is a driving force in modern Western politics, and is being exported to the rest of the world.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 10, 2016 at 22:42#319130 likes
For sure. Do you think that makes it any better? Are native americans meant to take solace that they were disposed of their lands, had their cultures destroyed and a genocide committed against because the powerful white Americans just want to get richer, rather than prove the superiority of the white race( though that happened too, as an excuse to exploit other ethnicities for resources)?
Let me put in terms you might understand. What do you think has a greater "racist" impact? A cabal sitting around talking about how they will "prove" white people are superior and plotting instances of deliberate hate crime to rally people to their cause? Or an economic vision of manifest destiny which sees entire cultures and its people wiped out? How can you say that the deliberate killing of someone for their ethnicity is "racist," but then turn around and say that the dispossession and genocide of entire ethnic groups is not "racist" just because it was done to make someone richer? I mean the latter is the former multiplied by the thousand if not million.
No, it stems from the fact that people come from different places and look different ways based on where they come from. There would still be white, black, etc. people whether or not this were used to attribute superiority or inferiority.
But there wouldn't be white, black , etc racial categories. Those were invented during the colonial era. There is no scientific evidence for a "white" race, anymore than there is for a "red" or "yellow" one. In fact, it's absurd on the face of it.
Consider, who belongs to the "brown" race? Mexicans, Arabs, Indians? That's three very distinct groups from different geographical locations. Who all is "black"? Do you count Aborigenes? What color are Polynesians? Are Eskimos "redskins"? Are Siberians or Hindus "yellow"?
There are no such races. It's a complete myth.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 01:38#319380 likes
But there wouldn't be white, black , etc racial categories. Those were invented during the colonial era. There is no scientific evidence for a "white" race, anymore than there is for a "red" or "yellow" one. In fact, it's absurd on the face of it. Were Eskimos, Cherokee and tribes from the Amazon all part of one "redskin" race? Are Hindus "yellow"? Are Native Siberians?
What exactly do you think is absurd? That there are ethnic groups? I seriously don't know what you're trying to say here, nor how protesting that classifications of things can be made along different lines changes anything.
Anyway, science has disavowed the notion of race. There is one species of homo sapien consisting of many ethnic groups, none of which are white, black or brown, or any other color, although the amount of skin pigmentation, eye color, kinds of hair follicles, nose size, average height, etc all vary amongst them.
What are you even saying here? There is one race, but they vary along a ton of physical dimensions that has to do with where they come from. Okay, so how is that different from race? If you don't want to use the word 'race' for political reasons, whatever. But you're being incoherent right now. Would it make you feel more comfortable to say there are different ethnic groups? And that these vary in greater or lesser details roughly in correlation to their native homelands? But if you agree with that (and you would have to be delusional on an unbelievable scale not to), what exactly are you even arguing about?
A mystery regarding white people: if there's no such thing as them, how do they keep causing all the world's problems? How can everything be the fault of people who don't exist?
And now there is a republican majority in the house and senate.
The one thing that will probably happen is they will do both supply side and Keynesian economics at the same time.
They will cut taxes and increase government spending, Trump is already talking about infrastructure stimulus.
I wish republicans understood that doing both stimulus and tax cuts is what, in reality, bloats deficits.
You would think this should be obvious and of some concern to them considering how much they complain when democrats fail to fix their mistakes quickly enough.
Pick one or the other, but tax cuts and stimulus is wrong economics.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 01:42#319400 likes
Marchesk, please tell me where you begin to disagree:
1) There are different groups of people who originated in different parts of the world.
2) These groups of people, due to breeding with those close to them, have differing physical features that are easily recognizable.
3) These groups are all different from each other, but they are more different from those who originated yet farther away from them.
4) One's belonging to one of these groups has serious implications for the sort of identity politics one can engage in, in the Western World.
Okay, so how is that different from race? If you don't want to use the word 'race' for political reasons, whatever.
I've never denied ethnicity. I've denied the concept of race based on skin color. The idea that an entire continent of people could be considered belonging to the same racial group, or that it's even meaningful to say that there are such racial groups, because their skin color is similar.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 01:43#319420 likes
Reply to Marchesk So you're denying that people who descended from European ancestors are part of a group? What do you mean by 'racial group,' and how does that differ from 'ethnic group?'
So you're denying that people who descended from European ancestors are part of a group? What do you mean by 'racial group,' and how does that differ from 'ethnic group?'
There part of many different groups, migrating in and out, fighting and conquering one another across an entire continent over thousands of years. You wouldn't claim that all Asians or Africans belong to a single racial group, would you?
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 01:52#319440 likes
Reply to Marchesk Yes, there were many groups, which were more closely related to their neighbors than those farther away. This correlates with physical traits, the most obvious of which is skin tone.
If Europeans don't form a genetic group, how is it possible that genetic testing can trace your ancestry to its place of origin, including Europe?
Are you denying that people who originated from places closer on the globe have a greater genetic similarity to each other? If so, that's clearly absurd; but if not, I don't understand what you take yourself to be denying in distinguishing 'race' from 'ethnicity.'
Yes, by and large, European people have a common genetic ancestry in virtue of originating from the same continent. This does not mean that they are all the same, or that all Africans are the same, or anything like that.
1) There are different groups of people who originated in different parts of the world.
2) These groups of people, due to breeding with those close to them, have differing physical features that are easily recognizable.
3) These groups are all different form each other, but they are more different from those who originated yet farther away from them.
4) One's belonging to one of these groups has serious implications for the sort of identity politics one can engage in, in the Western World.
1). They didn't originate there, unless it's sub-Saharan Africa, but okay, their ancestors lived there long enough to adapt.
2). To the extent it's passing genes on and not a common adaptation across multiple groups, sure. That said, do you believe that the entire continent interbred?
3). Does the science back this up? Are you sure that any given Scandinavia is more similar genetically to any Frenchman than a Korean?
4) The reason for identity politics is a reaction to the result of racial categorizations during Colonialism.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 01:55#319460 likes
Yes, by and large, European people have a common genetic ancestry in virtue of originating from the same continent. This does not mean that they are all the same, or that all Africans are the same, or anything like that.
But you wouldn't say the same about Asia, right, considering that Hindus, Chinese, Siberians and natives of Paupa Guinea vary considerably? Just as you don't think of Arabs when mentioning blacks. So what makes Europe different? That it's too small to have large enough differences? That they're all closely enough related such that they can be lumped into one racial category? Because Portuguese and Ukrainians are so much alike?
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:01#319480 likes
Reply to Marchesk ...Yes, the Portguguese and Ukranians are genetically related, not as closely as the Spanish and Portuguese, and more closely to each other than the Portuguese and Zulu. I don't get what is so hard about this.
And no I wouldn't say that about all Asians, because I never said there was a 'one ethnic group' or 'one race' per continent rule. It just so happens that a certain group of people were by and large established on a certain continent. That you would think that because there are other continents (the definition of 'continent' being arbitrary anyway) that have a larger ethnic diversity in them, whether because of size or whatever, this is somehow negated, this baffles me.
Reply to The Great Whatever Regardless of whether we can meaningfully categorize a large geographical population into one super ethnic group, that doesn't change the origin of doing so based on skin color, whose goal was to justify a social order where ethnic groups considered to be white had the power in society. That's the role of whiteness in Western civilization, and it hasn't gone away just because we've become more sensitive about treating people equally.
Also, it doesn't change the historical fact that Europeans didn't consider themselves belonging to a continent spanning racial category called white until rather recently (and there's always been a dispute over which ethnicities from Europe get to be called white).
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 11, 2016 at 02:06#319510 likes
I suspect not, at least in the sense you're thinking.
In terms of identity though, yes. Race and ethnicity are both categories or discourse, as opposed to the presence of either a cultural practice or a particular genome. We may say that, for example, that someone of Korean descent living in France has no less belonging to the category of Frenchman than either a Scandinavian or a Frenchman of European descent.
Genetics do not constitute our understanding of someone beginning to a particular category. It's just, to borrow from similar analysis on sex and gender, the body. The identity categories we use, they are our understanding, our sorting of people within our conceptual frameworks, no matter how many "factual" markers (e.g. skin color, genetics, genitals, chromosomes, etc.,etc.) we happen to use.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:10#319520 likes
Reply to Marchesk OK, but 'white' means roughly 'of European descent.' To be of European descent is not a social construct, nor is it somehow equivalent to evil ethical positions. To suggest that until a couple hundred years ago people were unaware of the fact that people from Europe were more closely related to each other than those on other continents (or that Scandinavians might be more closely related to Koreans than the French...?) is obviously crazy, as is the suggestion that skin color didn't form part of that understanding. FFS, the Edomites were singled out for their 'red' skin explicitly, and they were next door neighbors to the Judeans.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:12#319540 likes
Race and ethnicity are both categories or discourse
What does this even mean? Does it mean that we talk about them? Okay, yes we do. But that is a weird way of saying that.
Does it mean that ethnicity is literally somehow made out of words or constituted by discourse? Okay, it's obviously not. So why would you say it?
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 11, 2016 at 02:20#319580 likes
The Great Whatever:Does it mean that ethnicity is literally somehow made out of words or constituted by discourse?
Yes, it does. Particular experiences, to be entirely accurate. Ethnic identity is only our thoughts and words. If people, for example, thought of black people as white people, then within our categories they would be "white."
Bodies remain what they are (e.g. white skin and black skin) obviously, but that runs on a different axis. It's a descriptive discourse of someone's bodily trait, which doesn't carry with it belonging to a particular discourse of identity. To say someone belongs within a category because of their skin (e.g. a white person has the identity of "white" and a black person has the identity of "black") is entirely a social construction, our moulding of the meaning of an individual within our community that is parasitic on states we have observed (and many then falsely proclaims that identity is defined by the existence of those bodily states).
OK, but 'white' means roughly 'of European descent.'
It correlated with being of European descent, particularly from countries like England, Spain, France, Germany, etc. But what being white meant was being the group in power who gets to dominate the inferior people from other areas of the world.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:23#319600 likes
Yes, it does. Ethnic identity is only our thoughts and words. If people, for example, thought of black people as white people, then within our categories they would be "white."
They would be "white?" Well, they would be black ex hypothesi, as you just said. We could use the word "white" to mean what we now mean by "black," sure. But that wouldn't make black people white. This is a use-mention confusion.
To say someone belongs within a category because of their skin (e.g. a white person has the identity of "white" and a black person has the identity of "black") is entirely a social construction
Not at all – there are different groups of people, and one of the outward signs of this is a different superficial experience, e.g. in skin tone.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:24#319610 likes
Reply to Marchesk No, it meant being European. Being European meant you got to dominate, yes. But you're committing a fallacy. Notice that no one not from Europe becomes white in virtue of being a colonizer – and there have even been many colonizers over the years that were not white, if you can believe it.
They would be "white?" Well, they would be black ex hypothesi, as you just said. We could use the word "white" to mean what we now mean by "black," sure. But that wouldn't make black people white. This is a use-mention confusion.
White people aren't white, and black people aren't black, if you want to get technical about it. So obviously we can use colors to denote something other than the actual skin pigment.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:27#319640 likes
Reply to Marchesk Except I wasn't talking about colors, obviously, but categories of people metonymically named on the basis of those colors, so this is irrelevant.
Reply to The Great Whatever I understand that there have been many non-European colonizers. What I'm saying is that whiteness as invented to justify domination of non-European groups. It's okay to own slaves because being black means being inferior and in need of a master. It was the dark skinned African's place in the world to serve the white man. That sort of thing. It didn't start out that way, but it turned into that. Problem is that it stayed on after slavery was ended, and was used as a justification for discriminating against blacks and other minorities. To pretend that whiteness, blackness, etc is separate from all that is to ignore history.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 11, 2016 at 02:32#319660 likes
Missing the point. I didn't say to would make black people white (i.e. change the colour of their skin). Nor did I say that "white" meant "black." I mean, literally, that black people might be considered part of the same identity category as white people, a category of "white."-- an instance where skin colour doesn't matter to belonging to the category of "white" or where it is thought someone of black skin ought to belong to the same category as someone of "white skin."
[quote=The Great Whatever;]Not at all – there are different groups of people, and one of the outward signs of this is a different superficial experience, e.g. in skin tone.[/quote]
Not in terms of our understanding of others. Who belongs to a group depends on whether we categorise them as a part of it. We all have different bodies, yes, but that's not enough to define belonging to a different social identity. Differences might, for example, not be thought about by us, so we just think of everyone as "human" (as opposed to "male" or "female" or "black" or "white"). We need to group people before they register in this sense. It's our action, not a pre-existing fact defined by the differences between us.
I would add further, that if it weren't for the slave trade, there wouldn't be black people, there would be Africans of different groups. And there wouldn't be white people, there would be people of various European descent.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:35#319690 likes
Reply to Marchesk So being white is being of European descent. But being white was invented to justify colonization and slavery. It therefore follows that being of European descent was invented to justify colonization and slavery.
Granted this seems to be what some people actually believe – but I'm just pointing out it's incoherent.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:36#319700 likes
Not in terms of our understanding of others. Who belongs to a group depends on whether we categorise them as a part of it.
Not at all. Who belongs to a group depends on the qualities of the person and the qualities composing the group. We can change labels for groups, and categorize more or less broadly, and change which words we use to refer to which groups, or decide to focus on some groups to the exclusion of others as more salient or important for categorization, but that affects nothing about whether someone belongs to a particular group or not.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:37#319710 likes
Reply to Marchesk If it weren't for the slave trade, there would still be black people, obviously. Why would you say something so clearly false?
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 11, 2016 at 02:39#319720 likes
If it weren't for the slave trade, there would still be black people, obviously. Why would you say something so clearly false?
There would be related groups of people from sub-Sarahan Africa, southern Asia, and Australia who had darker skin than everyone else. But they wouldn't be considered "black" in the sense of belonging to a racial category that is somehow inferior to groups of related lighter skinned people descended from elsewhere on the planet, particularly in Europe.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:40#319740 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness OK, but having European heritage is just having ancestors that lived in Europe. So what you're saying makes no sense.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:41#319750 likes
Reply to Marchesk OK, but people from sub-saharan Africa are black. So what you say makes no sense. They wouldn't be considered inferior or enslaved, but that wouldn't make them not black, which is absurd. White people didn't invent black people by enslaving them, as your position seems to suggest.
Reply to Bitter Crank Just people who wrote about when 'black', 'yellow', etc. were created. Now that Trump has won on poor whites who have been neglected for decades, but also marginalized through the 'PC' culture, it might be worth going back to when and why PC culture actually originated and perhaps reconsider whether this was all justified.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 11, 2016 at 02:45#319780 likes
Yeah... that's the falsehood we are trying to get past here. Identity is not a constraint (e.g. tick these boxes and you count as X) but an expression (e.g. you are X if you express X). Who belongs to a group can change, it may expand or reduce, depending on who is understood to have that identity. All it takes is the right expression.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:48#319790 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness In the case of ethnic identity? Clearly not. No amount of expression will make it so that your ancestors originated from somewhere other than from where they actually did.
So by that you mean they are more closely related to one another and have darker skin? Do you think we would recognize an all-encompassing category based on skin pigment?
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:49#319820 likes
Reply to Marchesk I mean that "black" and "of sub-Saharan African descent" are roughly synonymous, at least as I understand the words in my idiolect.
No amount of expression will make it so that your ancestors originated from somewhere other than from where they actually did.
So in our accurate description of ethnic groups, do we consider Eskimos to be yellow or red?
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:51#319840 likes
Reply to Marchesk It doesn't matter. Maybe neither. Using the vagueness of categories or exceptions of categories is not grounds for the dismissal of a category – again this is a fallacy. If the vague terms don't work, you can track their ethnic origin as precisely as the data will allow.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 11, 2016 at 02:55#319850 likes
But the point here is it doesn't. In the situation I was pointing out, "European heritage" or "white" is a social identity category. The one of the various European societies who came to dominate the globe in the last few centuries. It doesn't mean "my ancestors were European." It means: "I am of the ethic group which colonised the world between the 16th and 21st century."
[quote="The Great Whatever" ]In the case of ethnic identity? Clearly not. No amount of expression will make it so that your ancestors originated from somewhere other than from where they actually did.[/quote]
That's not ethic identity. It a description of where your ancestors lived. It's not subject to any sort of doubt here. The point is not that expression makes your ancestors come from somewhere else, it is that it defines how people are understood to belong, the social groups of a particular time and how they relate to others.
Reply to The Great Whatever The question is what the motivation is for lumping such large populations into a groups based on skin color. I've noticed that people of European descent can vary quite a bit in their skin pigment, and even look quite dark with enough sun, just as African descendants can be quite light.
If all we cared about was noting that people descend from certain geographic locations, why not just use European, African, Indian, North American, etc?
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 02:58#319890 likes
Yes it does. It may also be that being of European descent puts you in a historically privileged class. That does not mean that this is the meaning of the word, or that white people were 'invented' in the last several hundred years.
For instance, if you say someone in America is white, you mean they're of European descent. You may connote that they are racist or horrible slavers or whatever, but that's not what the word means, and it can be used connotation-neutrally as well.
You're both right. The distinct features of white Europeans and black Africans have been recognized for millennia. The changing fortunes of Europeans over that time period rules out the possibility that the distinction only serves to identify European superiority.
The definitions of "white" and "black" Marchesk is using appear to be specifically related to New World slavery or S. African apartheid. And yea.. All sorts of dark skinned people would qualify as black. S. Africans identified the Chinese as black and the Japanese as white. Go figure.
On the other hand, as we climb into the 21st Century and note that the Ottoman Empire favored European slaves, we may say: "Those slaves were white". Anyone who has difficulty understanding what that means has a rigid outlook which probably causes perpetual confusion.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 03:09#319960 likes
Reply to Marchesk How could it have been a social construct? If there was nothing to latch onto, it wouldn't have worked, because you literally wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between white and black people, after these things were supposedly 'invented.'
Of course the reason this is so stupid is that you could tell the difference, because well...
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 03:10#319970 likes
Reply to Mongrel I understand Marchesk's position but am being deliberately obtuse because sometimes that's what it takes to show that a position's dumb. I mean, I went to university, I understand that this is what people are told.
How could it have been a social construct? If there was nothing to latch onto, it wouldn't have worked, because you literally wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between white and black people, after these things were supposedly 'invented.'
It was a social construct that having light skin meant one was from a superior racial category that rightfully gets to dominate as a result. Or are you just going to overlook that part of history?
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 03:15#320000 likes
Reply to Marchesk So people thought that those of European ancestry were superior to those who weren't. OK, how does that mean that being of European ancestry was invented several hundred years ago? Obviously, it wasn't; something already existing was taken as a signifier of a certain status. Notice the difference and the incoherence of the competing claim.
mean, I went to university, I understand that this is what people are told.
You don't have to go to university to understand that racism, even if it's the subtle kind, is still an issue. But don't believe me, go ask any American minority what it means to be a minority compared to being white.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 03:17#320020 likes
Reply to Marchesk Well, considering I am an American minority...maybe I should ask myself?
Which is not the same thing as saying that whiteness is a social construct or was invented to justify colonialism and slavery.
The idea of whiteness is, not the pinkish skin pigment, or relative relatedness on the European continent.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 03:23#320070 likes
Reply to Marchesk White people are utterly delusional about race, and all minorities know this and exploit them for it, so their opinions don't matter on the subject. As for other minorities, I can't speak for them, but having listened to them all my life I think they're delusional too.
White people are utterly delusional about race, and all minorities know this and exploit them for it, so their opinions don't matter on the subject. As for other minorities, I can't speak for them, but having listened to them all my life I think they're delusional too.
I'd be interested to know what you think isn't delusional, since it seems you think everyone is delusional about the issue.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 03:28#320090 likes
Reply to Marchesk I think ethnicities exist, and are traceable to where your ancestors came from. I think they're not a social construction, that white people are an ethnic group, and that no ethnicity, white or otherwise, is definable in terms of moral reprehensibility. I think that race issues are mostly a pot of incoherent moral hysteria that have nothing to do with the issues people actually face and serve as a crutch to place a comic book ethical facade over daily life because the real world is too difficult to handle.
Reply to The Great Whatever Let's try a thought experiment. Say history went different, and an Ethiopian empire dominated Europe and much of the globe for several centuries. It imposed it's own class structure based on how dark your skin was. The pale people, what we call white in our world, occupied the lowest rung because lacking in melanin, and being a conquered and enslaved people, they clearly were inferior mentally, morally and deserved their social status.
In such a world, how would we view dark and light skin?
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 03:30#320110 likes
Reply to Marchesk In such a world, there would be light and dark skin, and black and white people, as much as there are in this world.
Reply to The Great Whatever But the idea of being dark would be the reverse of what black has been considered for the past several centuries in the west. That's the point I'm making. That's what's socially constructed, not the actual skin color or where one's ancestors came from.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 03:32#320130 likes
Reply to Marchesk No, it wouldn't be. The idea of being dark would be the same. People would just think different things about dark people.
I think that race issues are mostly a pot of incoherent moral hysteria that have nothing to do with the issues people actually face and serve as a crutch to place a comic book ethical facade over daily life because the real world is too difficult to handle.
So you then the racial issues around slavery and Jim Crow laws in the past ceased being a problem shortly after the Civil Rights movement, or perhaps a decade ago or something?
People would just think different things about dark people.
It's the different things people would think about dark people that is the entire issue of racism.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 03:34#320160 likes
Reply to Marchesk I think they never began or ended. It's because of vanity that white people focus on their own exploits -- being the best at being evil gives them some sort of weird masochistic hard-on, I swear.
I think they never began or ended. It's because of vanity that white people focus on their own exploits -- being the best at being evil gives them some sort of weird masochistic hard-on, I swear.
That doesn't change the fact that black people were considered property, then were denied various rights and targeted by hate groups for a long time.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 03:37#320190 likes
Reply to Marchesk So were white people. Or did you not know that or something?
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 11, 2016 at 03:37#320200 likes
People would, as you say think differently about dark people. They would not have the ethnic identity of "black" they do now. A different set of social relations and would apply to them. You've literally pointed out that the idea of being "dark" (i.e. the social significance of a dark person to society and other people)would-be different.
Absolutely. It's tied up in our culture and desire for superiority. The principles of knowledge, technology and domination which drove the Enlightenment and colonisation, in a sense, drive our concern for identity politics. We will be the ones who overcome, through our "civilised" culture and society, to make people's lives better. It's, in a sense, a desire of empire building.
I mean it is a bit of an accident of being the world power, in that it they who are usually concerned with the maintenance and development of power in society, but it's still the same sort of focus on building a nation greater than any other. We aren't, you know, content to sit back and live out century old traditions. The world is ours to know and improve (or so we think).
Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize that was all that counted.
It's irrelevant to this particular discussion on whether "whiteness" is a relatively recent invention.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 03:51#320250 likes
Reply to Marchesk I thought I already showed you why that was nonsense? Or where was the train of thought?
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness I agree except I think that we are in a post-enlightenment epistemology, since a true enlightenment spirit emphasizes the common intellectual faculty of all people, whereas this has given way to identity-based intellectual faculties split across race, gender, etc., without a common sphere of reason (or rather, reason as a universal notion is seen as 'too white' and 'too male').
It's really not a pretty world, in any sense. We can only hope for something new soon, where no one is ashamed of who they are and everyone is strong and spiritually productive and wonderful.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 11, 2016 at 04:16#320260 likes
We are "post-enlightment" in the sense we worked out the Enlightenment was telling us a great big lie with regards to "common intellectual faculty"; it effectively meant "rich white male." A spirit blind to how power is express on and by individuals ("colourblindness," the free everyman of classical liberalism), where there is only the stagnate facts of the world to investigate (e.g. someone has white ancestors), rather than a conflux of interacting people who each define the lives of the other (e.g. a white identity which defines how a person belongs to a social context.
In the last two or so centuries, the enlightenment spirit ate itself. Reason and concern for knowledge turned to describing out society power relationships, where upon we found the "common sphere of reason" was not common at all-- the poor are missing (Marxism), people of other ethnic identities are missing (Racism), women are missing (sexism), queer people were missing (LGBTIQA+ discrimination), etc., etc.
In a sense it is not a pretty world, no longer is there the illusion of common freedom, but then when there was, the ugliness was just hidden.
I have to say, I think it is this illusion you covet. The "post-enlightment" doesn't demand anyone be ashamed who who they are per se, at least not unless they are doing something wrong (which is, you know, par for ethics). It demands we be honest about the impact of our actions on other people or how, that we recognise when we have destroyed others or taking away their power, rather than passing it off as "nature" or just giving savages what the deserve. I think it's this conflict, the awareness of ugliness and/or wrong done, which irks you. You'd rather just hide it away so people could get on with their lives rather than spending their days worrying about power relationships.
It's irrelevant to this particular discussion on whether "whiteness" is a relatively recent invention.
Once again, the lack of melanin in the skin of Europeans was a fact about them before there was a society to allegedly construct it. There's nothing to discuss here. TGW has so thoroughly interred your stupid claim into the ground that you now appear a sucker for punishment.
Once again, the lack of melanin in the skin of Europeans was a fact about them before there was a society to allegedly construct it. There's nothing to discuss here. TGW has so thoroughly interred your stupid claim into the ground that you now appear a sucker for punishment.
My argument was never about the range of melanin in Europeans (notice how Northern Europeans tend to have less than Southern). TGW decided to make it about that. Anyway, history says different about the racial categories of white and black.
The "post-enlightment" doesn't demand anyone be ashamed who who they are per se, at least not unless they are doing something wrong
But then postmodernists conveniently claim that simply being white is to be in the wrong, the very point of dispute here. This is have one's cake and eat it too, so don't talk about the Enlightenment eating itself. It doesn't propose any such monstrous relativism.
Reply to Thorongil Equivocating about what? I noted that Europeans have considered themselves to belong to different groups over time. You said that didn't have anything to do with race being a social construction. It appears you and TGW think that the entire European continent belongs to an objectively real racial category, one discoverable by science.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 04:30#320330 likes
Reply to Marchesk Yes, the European continent is objectively real. Hahahahaah
Reply to The Great Whatever Sure, I amended my wording. Although, you admitted continents were somewhat arbitrary divisions, but they can be admitted into science nevertheless.
I have to wonder though, considering your past posting history on metaphysics. Do you believe anything is objectively real?
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 04:40#320400 likes
Reply to Marchesk Which chunk of land you consider a continent is arbitrary. But the continents themselves are obviously not. You could have considered Europe three continents, or half of one, if you wanted – but Europe would have been there all the same.
I haven't really given hard thought to metaphysics in a while. I have Gnostic sympathies.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 11, 2016 at 04:41#320410 likes
No, they don't. They describe horrors and wrongs which "white (the ethnic identity of the last few hundred years, as opposed to someone skin color)" people have enacted upon the world. To simply be "white" isn't to do anything wrong. Sure, it means to have racial advantage in the West, but that's not any sort of (un)ethical act a person performs.
I talk about the Enlightenment eating itself becasue post-modernism isn't really "relativistic." Rather it is concerned with the objectivity of our relationships as subjects. The same concerns: knowledge, reason, social improvement, individual freedom, which drove the Enlightenment also drive post-modernism-- it was born in realising the narrative of the liberal enlightenment (the free everyman individual) was not happening for many people.
If we are to value reasons and knowledge above all else, the Enlightenment was always going to dissolve into post-modernism because the universal is an inadequate description. People are always distinct. The "Enlightenment spirit," the universal story, cannot be maintained unless we abandon knowledge and reason when it comes to describing the individual. Without this ignorance of distinction, the world dissolves into an array of objective subjectivities.
hich chunk of land you consider a continent is arbitrary. But the continents themselves are obviously not. You could have considered Europe three continents, or half of one, if you wanted – but Europe would have been there all the same.
So would have Eurasia, which relates to the point of arbitrary categorizations, although I think land masses are a bit less arbitrary than super ethnic groups.
Now I'm curious if all ethnic groups of European descent are actually more closely related than obviously different ones in Asia (to one another).
Good. I have no further issue with you on this point.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 04:44#320450 likes
Reply to Marchesk Seems the same to me. The use-mention distinction is a first test of decent philosophy, IMO, and failure to grasp it is the start of a lot of bad thinking. That you can call things "X" instead of "Y" doesn't mean that they just as easily could have been non-X's if you had done so. That's not how it works.
Good. I have no further issue with you on this point.
It's not about being of European descent or a light skin pigment. It's about the concepts of whiteness, blackness, yellowness, etc that we inherited from a very discriminatory period of time.
Reply to The Great Whatever It depends on what we are talking about. The idea of being white is a fuzzy notion that can be extended or retracted to included various groups and even individuals. Notice how people can be accused of acting white or black, or being uncle toms or whiggers. That's not about European or African descent. The Irish and Italians weren't originally considered white. Neither were Eastern Europeans. Jews have often been left off. I wouldn't be surprised if the English or Northern Europeans didn't start out thinking only they were truly white.
Reply to Thorongil What is the cause? Convert me back to proper belief in the reality of whiteness?
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 05:03#320520 likes
Reply to Marchesk Again, this doesn't strike me as interesting. The confusion of what words are used for what things, and what those things are, is a pedestrian one.
Since I apparently love equivocating so, let's say this white racial category had played out between the Northern and Southern Europeans. Would we still say that it's objectively true that Northern Europeans are white, and Southern Europeans are black? Or would we understand that "white" and "black" are just social constructs?
Again, this doesn't strike me as interesting. The confusion of what words are used for what words are used for what things, and what those things are, is a pedestrian one.
Sure if it's just a word game and has no social implications, like who gets favored treatment in a society, and who gets looked down on, based on skin color.
Or let's say, aliens show up, and they've taken human form to make colonization easier on us, but they don't have any pigment in their skin, because maybe they prefer really cold climates, or they don't like going outdoors.
Will we still consider Europeans to be white? What if the aliens want to call themselves white, and insist that Europeans are really pinkish? Furthermore, since the true white aliens are technologically superior, and get to lord it over us, all sorts of notions are attached to being truly white, as opposed to less nice notions of being pinkish.
Is that not a social construction by the aliens, forced on us?
But the point here is it doesn't. In the situation I was pointing out, "European heritage" or "white" is a social identity category. The one of the various European societies who came to dominate the globe in the last few centuries. It doesn't mean "my ancestors were European." It means: "I am of the ethic group which colonised the world between the 16th and 21st century."
This is an extremely tendentious usage. One has to go out of one's way to think that more than a handful of your friends use "white" in that way.
When I say "I am white" I definitely do not denote the meaning ""I am of the ethic group which colonised the world between the 16th and 21st century."" I mean that my ancestors came from Britain. The ruling class of Britain colonized the world, not the peasants of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, or England, for Christ's sake. My ancestors were not ruling class, either -- not in Britain and not in the US.
It is true that some non-ruling class subjects of the various colonizing crowns of Europe served in their majesties' armed forces (willingly or not) and were sent hither and thither to back up the colonial forces. Most of them didn't have much choice in that service. For the most part, the shat upon in Britain were not a lot better off than the shat upon in Nigeria or India.
Your usage of the word white (and the meaning you load into it) is as lazy and stereotypical as you think racist language is.
I remember a class discussion back in college involving Edward Said's Orientalism that I found interesting. Predictably, it pertained to Western colonialism and oppression - specifically in the Middle East in this case - being prepared by historians, novelists and other intellectuals who served as some sort of vanguard for the later military, political, social and economic domination of the region. The inhabitants of the area were depicted as lazy, sensual, undisciplined etc. and juxtaposed to the rational, orderly and elevated French and English who would eventually serve as their overlords. It was this intellectual 'essentializing' of the 'other' which paved the way for the actual physical subjection which occurred later.
After weeks of learning that this essentializing was not based upon the 'objective' search for truth (there is no such thing) but was instead entirely in the service of power, I told the teacher that it seemed like Mr. Said was doing precisely what he accused others of doing: essentializing Europeans as greedy, self-serving, deceitful and just plain evil.
His response to my naïve comment/inquiry, after months of telling us how identities were not grounded in reality but were 100% social constructs: 'Well, aren't they?'
I wasn't satisfied with his response but didn't press further on whether he felt identities were drawn from actual facts (or at least interpretations of facts) or were complete fictions guided by nothing more than power interests. Seemed like he wanted it both ways for some reason; complaining incessantly about the injustice of European hierarchies and domination while simultaneously perpetuating his own sort of inverted hierarchy with its own type of essentializing. Reminds me of Nietzsche's take on the successful Christian inversion of Greco-Roman values in the world of antiquity.
Anyhow apologies for that irrelevancy. I'm finding this discussion very interesting too and don't have a settled opinion on the matter.
When People say:
I am Han Chinese
I am North African
I am Native American
I am European
I am South American
I am Arabian
I am Russian
I am Norwegian
I am East African
I am yellow, black, white, red, brown, beige...
I am -- any number of geographically located adjectives -- they generally are identifying as something that is good in their experience.
We derive our meaning as persons from many layers of experience, including religion, language, race, ethnicity, diet, altitude (sea side to alpine), landscape, education, music, and a few dozen other factors. If people want to claim that one of their layers is race, I think they are entitled to that, and they are entitled to think positively about it.
I would not appreciate you, WOD, or anybody else telling me that my religion, diet, clothing (or lack thereof), sports, or anything else -- including race and ethnicity -- were actually negative factors that I should apologize for or remain silent about. I would be inclined to invite you to go fuck yourself in some politically incorrect way.
Some people say "I am Black and Proud" because they are or wish to be. Their ancestors may have been a slave, they may be the progeny of a white slave owner somewhere along the line. They may have been a poor sharecropper; they may have been in jail; they may have been screwed by every guy in the cell block; they may be illiterate; but they now claim Proud Black Man because that is how they think of themselves, and perhaps that pride came at a high price. Who are you to say "Well, that's not what black means!"
Reply to Marchesk If the OED and Google Ngram are at all accurate, then nobody though of themselves as "white" until January 1, 1800. They thought they were Swedish, Welsh, Sicilian, Greek, if that.
Reply to Bitter Crank And to be clear, thinking of oneself as white in that you have light skin, and your ancestors are European, and you may even celebrate eating French cuisine - that's all perfectly normal and good. It's all the other stuff that got attached to being white or black or whatever to justify slavery or white man's burden or what have you.
Now if people want to make the case that all those negative connotations around race disappeared in the recent past, so that being white or black or red is no longer an issue, then go for it. And here I mean on a societal level, not whether a given individual is racist, or delusional about race.
So in that context, it is the idea of being white, black, etc. at a societal level, stemming from several centuries ago, that is being challenged as a negative social construct.
Reply to dukkha Yeah I would second that if it involves the belief that there's some positive advantage that one gets by virtue of being 'white'. Sure, I can acknowledge that I may not get stopped by police because of my skin color, or may not receive bad service at a restaurant due to stereotypes, or any number of other things that black people are in general much more likely to be subjected to and which are demeaning. But what actual benefit do most average working-class white folk receive? None that I can tell. But I'll entertain ideas that run contrary to this if anyone can convince me otherwise.
I tend to view things more in terms of class and culture, and the many assumptions that are made regarding these things. Perhaps that's just my 'white privilege' speaking, and I'm not being facetious in suggesting that possibility.
Sure, I can acknowledge that I may not get stopped by police, or receive bad service at a restaurant, or any number of other things that black people are in general much more likely to be subjected to.
Black people get stopped by police more often because they (on average) commit far more crime than other races. They don't get stopped because there's some racial conspiracy involving black hating cops inconveniencing people with needless traffic stops.
"Black people are more likely to receive bad service at a restaurant than other races because they are black"
Even if it were true that black people are more likely to receive bad service, it's probably for a different reason than waiters not liking black people due to their race and 'punishing' them with bad service. Blacks are notorious among waiters for being bad tippers, for example.
I really don't buy this ''white privilege systemic racism microagression invisible toolkit'' bullshit. Universities are cancer.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 11, 2016 at 07:12#320720 likes
It's just a different usage than a lot of people would use when referring to themselves of describing the skin colour of their ancestors. I'm not talking about that specific usage of "white."
You might use that just as a description of your skin colour rather than attempting to claim a history and superiority of the "white" identity, but that doesn't make any difference to my argument.
I'm talking about the expression of "white" identity as a dominating culture of the few hundred years, a culture we are a part of regardless of how we might otherwise use "white" as a description of our ancestors skin colour. It's neither lazy nor stereotypical. Just a description of a identity category expressed within our society and the West in the (relatively) recent history.
Bitter Crank:We derive our meaning as persons from many layers of experience, including religion, language, race, ethnicity, diet, altitude (sea side to alpine), landscape, education, music, and a few dozen other factors. If people want to claim that one of their layers is race, I think they are entitled to that, and they are entitled to think positively about it.
I would not appreciate you, WOD, or anybody else telling me that my religion, diet, clothing (or lack thereof), sports, or anything else -- including race and ethnicity -- were actually negative factors that I should apologize for or remain silent about. I would be inclined to invite you to go fuck yourself in some politically incorrect way.
This is where the usage of "white" that I'm talking about frequently becomes muddled with the description of ancestors. Various aspects of religion, language, race, ethnicity, diet, altitude (sea side to alpine), landscape, education, music and the dozens of other factors become bound up with thinking about our ancestors. People don't just think of them being fine for their skin colour, but that all their ideas, actions, etc., etc. were fantastic. They refuse to admit their ancestors did harm to some people.
Since people treat identity "essentially," they can't make the distinction between having skin colour and worth of action, idea or tradition. You won't, for example, admit the economically driven manifest density of the American colonisation particularly racist and unethical action because you think it reflects badly on you. It as if, by having white skin, you were the one who committed the genocide and are in the wrong.
Do I need to point how nonsensical that line of thought is? Your identity is not your ancestors. Even if they belong to the same "ethnic group (whether spoken by you or someone else)," you are not the one who committed the acts in question. Your identity as someone who has white skin not theirs. To point out their failings, including those involving "white identity," is not to say that you fail in the same way.
No doubt you might to appreciate people talking about horrible things ancestors have done and their relationship to the culture you are connected to, but that is sort of beside the point. We don't sit back and let the rich heir say that his society's tradition of Capitalism never harmed anyone, just so they can think their ancestors have a "perfection" which they inherent. It's no different for any other issue (e.g. racism, sexism, gay rights, trans rights, etc.,etc.). We don't get to ignore the harm which has been caused to people becasue we don't like to look at it.
Bitter Crank:Who are you to say "Well, that's not what black means!"
I don't. If I was using "black" to refer to the identity which was socially oppressed, it would be a different usage. One that was describing a social relationship, rather than an individual's expression of worth. Their usage of "black" means what it does just fine.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 11, 2016 at 07:33#320750 likes
Well, he's sort of right to say that. The point of these social analysis is they are descriptive of a social relations between people. Does the West greedily exploit other countries? Absolutely, sometimes more, sometimes less (and perhaps sometimes they managed to avoid it). In this respect, they are, in a sense "evil" and self-serving. It's a descriptive fact of behaviour. Did the West treat other cultures equal, give a fair price in trade, respect the rights of individuals in other cultures? Not in the many situations we are talking about. One cannot accurately describe what has happened without mentioning this exploitation-- it's in a sense "essential," the logical expression of the part of the world we are talking about.
It's not essential to any identity though. Europeans aren't destined to always exploit. To have a European identity doesn't somehow mean your destiny is to exploit someone else. The exploitation identified is only the acts of some Europeans-- their behaviour towards other people and their understanding of themselves in relation to others. The only Europeans who "must be" "self-serving and evil" are those who have acted that way.
Identities are both. They are all socially constructed (a discourse we use), but they are also facts (a way people are understood and how this relates to others and the world around them).
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness I'll grant all that you wrote, but would then counter the implicit assumption that other, non-Western peoples don't engage in the same sort of aggressibe behavior, just not as effectively over the past few hundred years due to a number of factors, including the West's relative technological superiority:
The Aztecs conquered surrounding tribes before the Spaniards set foot in the New World. Ditto for the Incas. The Iroquois fought the Huron. The Lakota fought the Comanche. The Arabs conquered many lands and peoples during the rapid spread of Islam - including some in Europe - and before that fought amongst themselves until one group became dominant. The Ottomans did the same at a later stage, also spreading into Europe and subjecting the population to their interests. The Chinese fought amongst themselves until finally being consolidated by the strongest contending power, and then were conquered by the Mongols and later by the Manchus. The Japanese sought to expand into China and other parts of southeast Asia. The Persians attempted to subject the Greeks (amongst others). I'm not too familiar with sub-Saharan African history, but in modern times we've seen a large amount of intertribal warfare. The list goes on and on.
So it would be something like Nietzsche's understanding that what is being attributed strictly to Europeans may be an essential fact of life more generally - life as 'essentially' appropriation, exploitation, excretion, aggression, etc. - rather than a particular feature of any one region or race or ethnicity. I would stop short of his view, as I understand it, that IF this behavior is congruent with life as honestly assessed (instead of the way we'd like it to be), then it should be seen as 'good', or, at the very least, 'beyond good and evil'. I have my reasons for disagreeing with his tacit metaphysics and perspective, but that may be a topic better handled at another time.
I am, however, very much open to the idea that there's something peculiar about the modern European drive to dominate and oppress. It's a topic that intrigues me a great deal in fact and I'm curious to hear your opinion on the matter.
VagabondSpectreNovember 11, 2016 at 09:12#320870 likes
As far as I understand it, the actual electoral college votes around December 13th or something. The popular vote of Nov 8th determines electoral college votes based on the assumption that the electors will carry out the will of their state based on only a pledge.
The vote is anonymous for at least some states, and while some states have laws designed to circumvent the possibility of a faithless elector, this can in fact happen and in theory could change the results of an election...
So I'm wondering... What are the chances of the "protesting" that is going on right now challenging the faith of enough electors? Wouldn't that beat all?
So I'm wondering... What are the chances of the "protesting" that is going on right now challenging the faith of enough electors? Wouldn't that beat all?
It would have to be a hell of a lot more protest for this to have any chance. But let's say the electors could be motivated to vote Hillary in instead. How do you suppose the Trump supports would respond to that? What would the Republican Party do? What of all the red states? How would their governments respond?
Their would no longer be any smooth transition of power, of that I can guarantee you. There's a reason why the losing party is gracious in defeat and talks of working together, even if that doesn't actually happen. There's a reason why none of the Democratic leaders are joining in the protests, or encouraging them, or asking the electors to vote other than who their state chose.
So let's say the electoral college does this, and the country doesn't go down in flames. What happens the next presidential election? Now a precedent has been set. The electors can defy the states and vote in someone else. How will people feel about voting then?
VagabondSpectreNovember 11, 2016 at 10:04#320900 likes
It would have to be a hell of a lot more protest for this to have any chance. But let's say the electors could be motivated to vote Hillary in instead. How do you suppose the Trump supports would respond to that? What would the Republican Party do? What of all the red states? How would their governments respond?
I don't know. I would probably feel angry personally if I was American, as if hoodwinked, but some people would be happy surely. It could lead to some crazy shit, for better or for worse.
Their would no longer be any smooth transition of power, of that I can guarantee you. There's a reason why the losing party is gracious in defeat and talks of working together, even if that doesn't actually happen. There's a reason why none of the Democratic leaders are joining in the protests, or encouraging them, or asking the electors to vote other than who their state chose.
Yea I do get that, but I would not put it beyond either party to try and make a move if enough unrest was there to help it fly.
So let's say the electoral college does this, and the country doesn't go down in flames. What happens the next presidential election? Now a precedent has been set. The electors can defy the states and vote in someone else. How will people feel about voting then?
Well the electors would be committing party suicide I reckon. I'm not exactly sure where they all come from but I do know that they are in part chosen for their loyalty and reliability in voting for who they're told to vote for; their career as an elector would be over for certain being replaced by new electors. A new degree of precedent would be there for sure, but to be honest it could also lead to some serious reform down the road (the electoral college is certainly a peculiar beast to say the least).
Since the fall of Sanders I've been morbidly hoping for Trump to win as a kind of last ditch way of throwing a spanner into works of the current political establishment in hopes of somehow enabling electoral and other forms of political reform. Now that he's elected I find myself speculating about how such reform could come about.
One way would be for Trump to get impeached in a year or two. The willingness might be there by then, and conceivably congress could try to take action against any executive orders contravening or obfuscating their role in the political process. If pence then takes over he would pretty much be in janitor mode (congress having flexed it's arm) and the following election would be approached with such apprehension and resentment that serious reform or even independent reform candidates would have more of a shot than ever before. If Trump were to be usurped via faithless electors though, admittedly I could not even guess at what the short or long term ramifications might be. I know I would have even less faith in the system that I do now... I still like to wonder what else could be changed as a result...
If Trump were to be usurped via faithless electors though, admittedly I could not even guess at what the short or long term ramifications might be.
A constitutional change to the election process. The President is elected by popular vote. Then one needn't worry about faithless electors as there won't be an electoral college.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 14:16#321350 likes
Marchesk, again, you're confusing the application of words as social construct with that they denote as social construct, which is a use-mention error.
The Great WhateverNovember 11, 2016 at 14:20#321360 likes
Reply to ????????????? The problem is, the only way to make the conversation interesting is to equivocate: if you emphasize that it's a social identity, then you can't actually say anything interesting about white people, since as the word is actually used it means people of European descent. On the other hand, if you talk about the word as actually used, none of your social construcitonist claims are going to follow.
Notice that he did not frame the debate in terms of how white people have historically been seen, or something like that. That would have made what he said true rather than false, but it would have been totally uninteresting from the perspective of what he was trying to claim, which was that being white was itself a social construct, and this is why he didn't say it.
Reply to Erik Interesting anecdote, Erik. I made a similar point in one of my classes this semester during the week we covered postmodernism. It seemed to me that postmodernists were "essentializing" the Enlightenment, science, Western civilization, and so on just as much as their perceived opponents were allegedly doing so to other things. Two semesters ago, I had a professor who literally admitted that he would prefer to live in a medieval Islamic theocracy than modern America. I had to ask him if he was being serious, and he said he was.
I think the alt-right is another example of how the relativism of their worldview comes back around to bite them in the ass. You can't enthrone victimhood and identity politics and not expect white men to start playing the game at some point. And because of the postmodernist's commitment to cultural, moral, and epistemological relativism, there's not a damn thing they can do about it; except, of course, to contradict themselves by making the essentializing claim that white men can't be victims, which they often do. Rational consistency does not matter to these people.
He's still Senator and has two years left. He's 75; he might be willing to run again as Senator -- I don't think 79 year olds make good presidents because the job is so demanding. The Senate is important but it's demands are much less grueling for it's members.
My guess is that he will not run for President again.
Another "Bernie Sanders" is probably not on the assembly line. His history isn't solitary and unique, but there are a limited number of people who would be like him. That said, he wasn't the last energetic, clear-headed progressive in the country. There are probably a couple of hundred idealistic clear-headed ambitious very progressive people who could run for President on the Democratic ticket. (No, I do not have a list.) A few of them might have a chance to win.
The problem is keeping out the ambitious, energetic, opportunistic pragmatists who would, if elected, deliver more of the same. The two Parties are always prepared to deliver more of the same. Democrats and Republicans institutionally embody "more of the same".
The kind of sweeping political changes that could call forth high-quality leftist-progressive politicians might be constructed in the next 4 years. It depends on how intense the reaction to Trump is, and how soon it jells into an effective movement. Demonstrations of the sort we have had for the last 2 or 3 days are a good start, but that would have to turn into an mass organized campaign within a few months if it were to have a political chance in the next biannual and quadrennial election. If it's BS as usual for the next three years, and then somebody pops out of the woodwork in 2020 to run on a reform platform, nothing much will change.
Another "Bernie Sanders" is probably not on the assembly line.
:(
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 11, 2016 at 21:42#321940 likes
Reply to Thorongil Not at all, for the alt right only expesses the very values of oppression and ideology that feminism took out (and is taking out). The post-modernist aren't relativists. Feminism is, for example, a project of objective ethics-- the feminists treatment of women is ethical, the alt right's is not.
What we have is not a relativism biting anyone in the arse, but an ideology reacting in an attempt to avoid it's subjugation and destruction. The alt right wants to oppress women in ways the feminists rightly argue are objectivity immoral.
Men have always played the game, proclaimed and thought themselves superior. The alt right rhetoric about women can be found all over commentary about women's nature and place prior to the rise of feminism. It's not new.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 03:12#322420 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever Doesn't the 'one-drop rule' speak to a more complicated, quasi-metaphysical understanding of whiteness? (Note: I'm definitely not saying that the idea of racial or bloodline purity begins and ends with europeans - just that the whole idea of purity/impurity, here, as elsewhere, is central.)
Calling someone black who's 95% european and 5% african - this goes way beyond simple description doesn't it?
So when you say "[white] as is actually used it means people of European descent," this certainly hasn't been exactly true in the past (and really still isn't, the one-drop thing still operates on a subconscious level and you can see it everywhere) ). People primarily of european descent were/are often still considered black first.
Again, this isn't necessarily an arcane or archaic understanding of whiteness - just look at how people agree on the race of celebrities of mixed descent. If there's any ambiguity, people tend to err on the side of black (or 'foreign' or something.)
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 03:28#322450 likes
Reply to csalisbury One, I think it's just counterfactual that anyone abides by a 95-5 rule.
Two, I agree that there's a notion of white as the absence of ethnicity rather than an ethnicity, which plays into a host of complicated mythologies surrounding white exceptionalism on both sides – that you can't be racist against whites, that there is a such thing as 'people of color' (white not being a color, but the absence of color, in this mythology), that white people have 'no culture,' that to be white is to be a colonizer, that cultural appropriation can only flow from whites to other people, that white people are the only ones with no right to a homeland, that there are no 'indigenous' white people anywhere in the world, that Nat Geo feels that showing white breasts is for some reason less okay than showing non-white breasts (white people having transcended animality or physicality that comes with gross ethnic ties), that white people are not 'allowed' to get angry or identitarian in quite the same way as non-white people, because they are expected to be adult and above that, white virtue including self-abasement and lack of in-group loyalty, and whiteness as a moral/spiritual/social and not physical category, primarily focused on evil in a narrative of crime and redemption.
All of this is out there, and all of it is nonsense, but I think it's mostly liberals that play this sort of stuff up, and it comes out of academia, not the way people organically think. Liberalism is not the way people naturally think, and requires politically-charged educational institutions to keep it in place. On the conservative side, the notion that being mixed spoils your blood, this is just obviously not a notion particular to being white. Obama was half white, and for political reasons that had to be suppressed in the popular imagination. But in the hood, well, you tell me how black he could have stayed.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 03:46#322470 likes
All of this is out there, and all of it is nonsense, but I think it's mostly liberals that play this sort of stuff up, and it comes out of academia, not the way people organically think.
Well, it's certainly liberals who elaborate whiteness in the ways you point out. But I think that same academic bubble you decry may, despite your best intents, may be operative in how you're approaching and thinking about this. None of this stuff is born in academia, it's just a foreseeable articulation of something already brewing from beneath.
Like, I have academic interests and skew liberal, but that's not the world I live in. I spend half of my work hours talking to tow truck drivers. People do organically think this way. That's what I was getting at with the none-too-academic past-time of deciding the ethnicity of a celebrity. It's a good litmus test for the way people spontaneously understand race. Maybe it's not 95-5, but you can bet 66-33 will score 'black' for white people watching tv. And, I think, many black people as well.
Obama was half white, and for political reasons that had to be suppressed in the popular imagination. But in the hood, well, you tell me how black he could have stayed.
Yes, but that's the point. If Obama is black as America's president, yet white as just another guy in the hood, then things are very complicated here - it's not as simple as european vs african descent (though obviously it's tightly woven with real genotypic & phenotypic differences.)
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 03:55#322490 likes
Or put another way: the nat-geo thing about which breasts are showable, and which celebrity is what race - these are pervasive and organic. All the self-reproach basically builds on this with a dialectical twist.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 03:57#322500 likes
Yes, but that's the point. If Obama is black as America's president, yet white as just another guy in the hood, then things are very complicated here - it's not as simply as european vs african descent (though obviously it's tightly woven with real genotypic & phenotypic differences.)
Obama as a black president is a media creation, and I'm skeptical about that as a litmus test because the media can claim whatever it wants with virtually no basis in fact – they could have called him Asian on grounds he was from Hawaii, if that was what the narrative needed. So that doesn't speak to me about racial attitudes so much as media virtual reality.
My point was just that, the pop view of ethnicity sees mixed people as, well, mixed. And it's a universal tendency among people to favor their ethnic in-group and to dislike mixing with others. If it were true that whiteness had a special role here, then it would make no sense for half white-black and half asian-white kids to feel an identity crisis on either side, which they often do. They can feel between worlds, not firmly of the non-white one.
It's a good litmus test for the way people spontaneously understand race. Maybe it's not 95-5, but you can bet 66-33 will score 'black' for white people watching tv. And, I think, many black people as well.
Do you think that black people disavow mixed white-black children as non-black?
All the self-reproach basically builds on this with a dialectical twist.
I think the self-reproach is caluclated and manufactured in academic institutions. Not to say academic institutions aren't themselves real, but they like the media exist in a kind of hyper- or virtual reality, and you have to specifically indoctrinate young white people to be self-effacing, which is what such institutions do. In other words, it's a real phenomenon, and organic in the sense that all real things are organic, but it has no natural inertia behind it. If you destroyed the institutions, you would destroy the sentiment, whereas destroying the more grounded ethnic sentiments I've alluded to would require destroying far deeper (maybe even biological) institutions. Which, to be fair, seems to be part of what constitutes leftism as an ideology independent of any particular political position: the upheaval of older, more grounded institutions by newer, less grounded ones in order to impose a priori reorderings of the universe according to rationalistically determined lines of the way things ought to be.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 04:17#322530 likes
they could have called him Asian on grounds he was from Hawaii, if that was what the narrative needed
First, the idea that racial attitudes can be neatly separated from media virtual reality doesn't make sense to me. Second, I was introduced to Obama by a political nerd long before his campaign and I immediately saw his picture and thought of him as black. Maybe I'm not representative. Maybe other white people would have seen him as asian. But I doubt it. What are your intuitions here?
My point was just that, the pop view of ethnicity sees mixed people as, well, mixed. And it's a universal tendency among people to favor their ethnic in-group and to dislike mixing with others. If it were true that whiteness had a special role here, then it would make no sense for half white-black and half asian-white kids to feel an identity crisis on either side, which they often do.
I agree, and admitted as much in my first post on the 'one-drop' thing. That's why those in power tend to install their own ethnicity as an absolute and create a 'one-drop' rule. This is the social-construct piece. It takes a an actual irl set of physical characteristics and makes of them this metaphysical and pure center, any deviation from which immediately casts you outside the center. I don't think this is a uniquely european thing. But in America History, white people have tended to have the power.
Do you think that black people disavow mixed white-black children as non-black?
I honestly don't know. I live in Maine and don't have much irl experience with this. My 'many black people as well' comment is based entirely on things I've read (You'll love this - one main source is Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye). And I may be entirely wrong.
Certainly white people spontaneously, reflexively view mixed white-black children as black.
I'm assuming, based on your comment about Obama in the hood that you think it cuts both ways?
I think the self-reproach is calculated and manufactured in academic institutions.
Yes, and no? It's certainly manufactured there, but no one coldly, rationally built the blueprint. I think it's probably more an emergent phenomenon. It comes from somewhere.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 04:26#322540 likes
Maybe I'm not representative. Maybe other white people would have seen him as asian. But I doubt it. What are your intuitions here?
He looks both white and black to me. It shows in his accent and mannerisms as well. He can affect both white and black English, and he affects either depending on the audience he's talking to, very naturally, suggesting native competence with both dialects. He can never go into full AAVE because that's just not allowed, but he does slip in some 'ain't nobody's' when talking to a majority black audience, and drawls his vowels appropriately.
OK, then we're in agreement. Desire for racial purity and mythology situating one's own ethnic group at the metaphysical center of everything are way older than history, history is a wee baby by comparison.
I honestly don't know. I live in Maine and don't have much irl experience with this. My 'many black people as well' comment is based entirely on things I've read. And I may be entirely wrong.
I don't really either, because I think southern California where I grew up is desensitized to certain kinds of ethnic admixture, especially white-Mexican. So all I can go off of is what people say online, and I've seen some Eurasian and white-black people report these sorts of things, and I have no reason to disbelieve them.
More recently I've lived for a couple years in a black neighborhood and then a Hispanic one in Chicago, and people generally seem to be more racist and aware of racial divides, though I'm not sure how it affects mixed people.
Yes, and no? It's certainly manufactured there, but no one coldly, rationally built the blueprint. I think it's probably more an emergent phenomenon. It comes from somewhere.
I disagree that it's not done rationally. Maybe not coldly, because I think emotions – even hysteria – are mixed in. But curricula are not quite the same as spontaneous cultural lore. And part of keeping it in place is actively suppressing people's natural repulsed reaction to it.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 04:49#322610 likes
You should also pay attention to when people use the word 'folks' as opposed to 'people,' if 'folks' is not part of their native dialect. 'Folks' are not quite the same thing as 'people.' And it's no accident that black people are usually the 'folks.'
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 04:50#322620 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever Ok, I think we're mostly on the same page. I guess all I'm saying I'm sympathetic to the idea that there's a large social (religious/ethical/mythological) aspect to race and that I think it has to do with ideas of purity/impurity.
My wake-up moment with the whole classic self-flagellating white guilt thing was William T Vollman's Argall. It's the Pocahontas story told by an author who has no clear sympathies and seems to have read every source there is to read (it's a novel, but the book is littered with quotes from all sorts of contemporary texts, and the authorial voice is constantly changing.)
In it, both sides are violent and self-serving and dazed by their own myths, sometimes ( tho rarely ) noble, and both are consumed by in-fighting, often using the interracial conflict as leverage for their own intramural grabs for power.
To Vollman, the actions of the Europeans were neither noble nor deeply evil (well, there is a bit of cosmic pessimism to the book, but that's a broader evil.) They just had better technology, is all.
But the thing is the book just seemed super fucking respectful. To both sides. Like felt respectful. You can usually feel the bullshit, but I got none of that.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 05:06#322690 likes
Reply to csalisbury That sounds cool. I agree that respect comes from avoiding hagiographic lies about hero and victim races – the comparisons that have been cropping up lately that compare political figures to comic book villains is worrying. Studying a historical event deeply I think can put one in a state of appreciation for it that transcends moralizing and cheerleading. To the people who see all history and all prospects for social action as a battleground of such cheerleading, and who see sobriety as fighting for the oppressor and implicitly approving of genocide, that mindset is dangerous. But I think in the end, lies just can't help you, only the truth can, so even if the lies feel morally good, you have to face the fact that they aren't helping anyone. I think a lot of people are scared that if they don't pick a side in the virtual reality as the events are ongoing, they're bad. And it narrows their field of vision to see the only way of respecting other people as adopting the blue side of that virtual reality. I have no sympathies with liberalism whatsoever, and so I may differ with you there. But I think the important thing to emphasize is how being realistic about what actually happens in the world is a powerful way of respecting people, by showing them that you see them as adults, and not comic book characters. I don't think that's possible in any sort of liberal or leftist way of thinking, and so it has to be abandoned altogether. Liberalism and adulthood aren't compatible, so liberalism and respect aren't compatible.
Could you briefly explain what you mean by "liberalism"? I'm putting you on the spot, but not uncharitably. You said "adulthood" and "liberalism" aren't compatible. How so? Why?
(A lot of people dislike liberals: radical leftists, conservatives, people who don't know what else to accuse somebody of being, and so on.
Reply to Bitter Crank I disagree. I've seen a lot of 'Bernie Sanders' in my generation -- for better or worse. They won't out Bernie Sanders Bernie Sanders because now we've seen the show, but they might even exceed him if the right doesn't do too much damage in the next few years.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 05:37#322760 likes
Reply to Bitter Crank OK, I will try to be clearer. 'Liberalism' is maybe not the best term, since it connotes a priority of personal liberties, perhaps to the exclusion of centralized power. What I really meant was something more like 'leftism,' and even leftists who 'hate liberals' or whatever would fall under the umbrella.
I see the basic impetus behind leftism roughly as a kind of hyper-rationalism. The leftist has an a priori idea of how the world ought to be, and is outraged that it is not that way. The leftist proposes that the world ought to be changed to be that way, preferably as swiftly and with as little compromise as possible. So leftism is a radicalism in that, insofar as the world is imperfect, it seeks to perfect it, and since it cannot be perfected, it will perpetually be calling for immediate radical change and the dismantling of deep institutions, in favor of new institutions with no historical roots that better match reality as it ought to be.
This means that leftism fundamentally privileges representation over reality in a certain systematic way. I read this cheesy fantasy story that had a great line, where the keeper of the observatory told a visitor that the model of the universe was not perfectly representative of the universe, and when the guest asked, 'so it is imperfect?' the observatory keeper responded 'the universe is imperfect. One day it will be remedied, to fit the observatory.' This is essentially what I see as the guiding impetus of leftism. It is representations that determine reality rather than vice-versa. In this it is fundamentally rationalist in the sense that it believes humanity imposes itself on the world, rather than the world imposing itself on humanity, which is the empiricist bent. The world is as people make it to be, and conforms, and will conform, to the categories constructed for it and placed upon it. This is of course the deep metaphysical source of social constructionism in its various forms, and of the perpetual leftist call to radical political action and revision.
Wherever the leftist sees something that isn't perfect, where the empiricst of conservative impulse is to change oneself to match the world, the leftist impulse is to change the world to match oneself. Rather than meeting a pre-existent standard, like the conservative, the leftist protests that the standard is wrong, and ought to be place elsewhere. Hence the leftist generally does not seek to be beautiful, but to redefine the ugly as beautiful (and even to problematize and hate beauty if it proves too recalcitrant), because he believes, at bottom, that there is no substance to the world other than what he places on it (notice that nihilism of some sort is considered self-apparent to many leftists, or more softly the belief that 'the world has the meaning you give to it'), and so there is a kind of delusion or fantasy of power and control, reflected in the desire for central planning in government and statism generally. This further leads to a conflation between intentions and ends: the leftist thinks that because all reality is malleable to representations, what one needs to do in order to achieve some effect is simply to intend to change the world in a certain way and marshal enough money or power to do so. Hence why the leftist believes that if something is bad, the best thing to do is illegalize it, and so on. There is a kind of naive believe that intentions generate realities. This, in my opinion, is why leftism is grounded on a deep denial of reality, not just as an after-effect (all of us deny unpleasant truths), but as a matter of principle. There is a sense in which the leftist believes that he ultimately cannot be wrong, and where the world bumps against him, the world must move. It also may in turn mean that there are certain things that, while true, cannot or should not be believed, because that would cause one to represent reality in an evil way, making one evil, and so unpleasant truths have systematic reasons to be denied or at least suspended in various forms of doublethink.
This is the reason that the leftist critiques tertiary social phenomena in the media, because they think the media has the power to control thought and behavior rather than vice-versa, and why they put so much emphasis on 'representation' in media and how the media can be used as a tool to change the way people think. This is also why it is utterly obsessed with policing language – it thinks, in a way, you can speak truths into being. Leftism is a top-down ideology, while empiricism and conservatism are, if you like, bottom-up in believing that there are organic features of reality that naturally arise and that one has to accept and conform to if one wants to live. The leftist is in deep denial about the way representations interact with the world, and holds out a secret hope that he can control these representations, and so control all of reality. But this will never work, and so the moral hysteria surrounding trying to perpetually doctor these representations is ongoing and perpetually radical / destructive. Leftism in a way saps adulthood, which is why it makes sense for a university to provide Play-Doh to upset leftist students to calm them after a troubling experience, while doing such a thing is confusing or absurd for conservative students.
All of these, I believe, are features of childhood. The confusion of representation and reality (lack of object permanence), the belief in the malleability of the world to one's desires, the refusal to face unpleasant truths, the insistence that everything ultimately be molded to one's wishes. This creates a desire for childlike narratives and a liking for comic books, superheroes, and so on, along with simplistic moral axes of oppressor-oppressed that create a sort of identity-based template for knowing who is in the wrong when, to emphatically and uncompromisingly support the side that is being hurt by the ones in the wrong. This in turn leads to the basic oppressor/oppressed distinction, which has no fundamental way of being questioned, but only multiplied and complicated by infinitely expanding axes of oppression based on increasingly minutely defined representational categories. And the desire to use this distinction for political gain in enforcing the privilege of one's own representation (and hence reality, since representations determine reality) leads to a weaponization of the notion of oppression, and the glorification of victimhood, weakness, emotional instability, infantilization, and so on. It also leads to the co-opting of natural human emotions, such as grief and anger, into deliberately evoked stratagems employed for specific political reforms. All of this is an endless, destructive spiral that can never be satisfied (since reality will always defeat the representations, while the leftist insists on the opposite), and makes everyone miserable insofar as nothing works insofar as it systematically denies reality.
But this is the behavior of a child – the first thing a child learns to do with its emotions is to artificially invoke them for instant gain, to make its desires a reality. Along with resentment and strategies for revenge against reality when one's desires aren't fulfilled.
––––
OK, scattershot, but that about covers it.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 05:41#322770 likes
Studying a historical event deeply I think can put one in a state of appreciation for it that transcends moralizing and cheerleading. To the people who see all history and all prospects for social action as a battleground of such cheerleading, and who see sobriety as fighting for the oppressor and implicitly approving of genocide, that mindset is dangerous. But I think in the end, lies just can't help you, only the truth can, so even if the lies feel morally good, you have to face the fact that they aren't helping anyone. I think a lot of people are scared that if they don't pick a side in the virtual reality as the events are ongoing, they're bad. And it narrows their field of vision to see the only way of respecting other people as adopting the blue side of that virtual reality.
This I agree with entirely, buut....
I don't think that's possible in any sort of liberal or leftist way of thinking, and so it has to be abandoned altogether. Liberalism and adulthood aren't compatible, so liberalism and respect aren't compatible.
I don't agree with this. I think both conservatives and liberals can take up the comic-book vision, and I think both conservatives and liberals can rise above it. This actually seems self-apparent to me, and I'd question how seriously you think that manichean good v evil narratives are more characteristic of liberal thought.
And then the resigned wisdom of the realistic, pessimistic conservative can very easily become the twisted humanism of the plantation owner who wishes the world wasn't structured like this, but that's how it is, and always has been, and there have always been slaves and always will be, so the best one can do is make slavery as humane as possible. A kind of Ecclesiastes argument.
Edit: posted this as you were posting your response to BC which may or may not have rendered this post moot. Reading it now.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 05:45#322790 likes
Reply to csalisbury I don't disagree that conservatism doesn't lack for comic books. I do think that leftism is unable to get out of comic books as a matter of principle, in a way not quite true of conservatism, or if you like, a more neutral 'non-leftism.' Leftism is in principle committed to deep reality denial, in my view, and generally demoralizes people by telling them to revel in being weak, ugly, victimized, self-abasing, and trapped in victimhood. It's a philosophy of resentment and isn't compatible with self-respect or maturity.
My wake-up moment with the whole classic self-flagellating white guilt thing was William T Vollman's Argall.
Haven't read the book so I can neither praise nor criticize it. But perhaps your source of knowledge about self-flagellating white guilt should come from experience and first hand observation rather than from Vollman's (or anybody else's) book.
In your life experiences, do you find white people who flagellate themselves about their white guilt? Have you witnessed ordinary white people engaging in behavior toward blacks, asians -- whoever -- that would merit self-flagellation?
Certainly white people spontaneously, reflexively view mixed white-black children as black.
Maine you say. I grew up in a rural 99.9% white county in Minnesota. I knew 1 black person by the time I graduated from high school, and he was from Uganda (exchange student). There weren't many blacks at the state college I graduated from, either. In 1968-69 I spent two years living and working in the black community of Boston. Shock immersion moving from Winona, MN to Roxbury, MA. I found that the black people I lived and worked among were not different than the white people I had grown up with. Oh sure, different food, different accent. Perhaps I was too stupid and naive to notice actual differences, but over the 40 years since then as I have worked with other black people, had black and white lovers, and so on, I haven't found significant cultural differences related to race.
Biased? Sure: my bias is that people are pretty much all alike. (in a 99.9% NW European descendent rural community, they would be.) Yes, trivial differences, especially comparing one individual to another. In the mass, no. The same things make people tick. Love, sex, desires, wishes, fears, the importance of their parents, and so on. People all seem nourished by the same thing: good work, enough income, decent environment, social connections, rich cultural life, all that. And people are starved by the same thing: bad jobs, poverty, crappy surroundings, isolation, impoverished cultural life, and so on.
The older I get, the more suspicious I am of other people's writings, whether it's books, NYT columnists, New Yorker authors, leftish magazine writers, etc. It isn't that I'm getting anti-intellectual in my old age, it's just that so many writers seem wrapped up in a package of such very narrow and specific ideas. They are tendentious, pretentious, etc.
I find that books published quite a few years ago (like 40 or more) have better balance and reflect a clearer understanding. It isn't that people thought better 40 years ago; it's just that if the book survived, it was probably pretty good to start with. Though a current book that I think is quite good is Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States (it's a good review for a lot of history that I have forgotten if I ever knew). White Trash: The 400 year Untold History of Class in America is good too.
Reply to The Great Whatever How do your academic colleagues respond to your conservative deconstruction of liberalism?
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 06:07#322850 likes
Reply to Marchesk I don't talk about it, because that would be an unwise career move. It's implicitly understood in academia that you get with the program.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 06:13#322870 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever Great post. Sincerely, though. I disagree with much of it, but you've argued your case persuasively. I kinda feel bad fisking it.
Wherever the leftist sees something that isn't perfect, where the empiricst of conservative impulse is to change oneself to match the world, the leftist impulse is to change the world to match oneself
Isn't this almost tautologically false? The conservative, by definition, does not change. After all, the world doesn't change - the sun rises and the sun sets. But while he doesn't believe anything essential changes, he does concede that the world is in flux. So he reacts, meeting this or that irruption with force, in order to restore things to the way they were. He may not try to change the world to serve the observatory, but he's endlessly vigilant against the weeds that threaten his well-manicured garden. The conservative changes, a bit, but he changes to stay the same.
Hence why the leftist believes that if something is bad, the best thing to do is illegalize it, and so on.
But what does the conservative do about stuff he believes is bad? He defends the laws already in place. Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. A resigned, even ironic, acceptance. But still acceptance.
It also may in turn mean that there are certain things that, while true, cannot or should not be believed, because that would cause one to represent reality in an evil way, making one evil, and so unpleasant truths have systematic reasons to be denied or at least suspended in various forms of doublethink.
Do you consider strict guidelines about how one may or may not depict God leftist by virtue of their focus on representation?
it will perpetually be calling for immediate radical change and the dismantling of deep institutions, in favor of new institutions with no historical roots that better match reality as it ought to be.
You said a lot of interesting things, some of which I would agree with or ring more or less true, but this part is troubling. Institutions do change over time, and the results on society can be large. If one were to take your critique of liberalism fully, then the various movements for equal rights in the US and elsewhere would be seen as a waste of time. But the result of those movements was more rights granted to those lacking and changes to various institutions, sooner or later.
A criticism of conservative views toward deep institutions is that it does not admit to progress. It doesn't allow for the possibility that old institutions can be flawed in ways that could be amended. It doesn't allow for the possibility that things may have been different prior to the setting up of such institutions, and they can be different after.
As if deep institutions reflect a kind of permanent social structure which can only be made worse by trying to change it. I don't think humans are like that. Human organizations vary a lot over time and place. Humans are adaptable, and our values vary. So things can be changed. Things have changed. Massively.
Compare the modern world in Europe today to what it was 500 years ago. It's night and day different.
I don't talk about it, because that would be an unwise career move. It's implicitly understood in academia that you get with the program.
That's most unfortunate. Different views need to be heard, especially ones challenging the official doctrine. That's what academia should be about. Or am I preferencing representation (my ideal academia) over how humans actually behave in academia?
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 06:17#322900 likes
Reply to Marchesk I think the answer is to have a deeply rooted tradition of principled change. There is a country in this world (not saying it is the only one) that has done an incredible amount toward developing such institutions (Common Law), and its name is England, for which all of us, especially as Americans, should be eternally grateful.
Also, I'm skeptical generally of the notion of progress. I agree some situations are better than others, and you should try to better yourself. But 'progress' is politicized.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 06:19#322910 likes
Reply to Marchesk I don't see my view as different. I see it as an articulation of what most people believe, and that academia has to systematically beat out of people.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 06:22#322920 likes
Haven't read the book so I can neither praise nor criticize it. But perhaps your source of knowledge about self-flagellating white guilt should come from experience and first hand observation rather than from Vollman's (or anybody else's) book.
In your life experiences, do you find white people who flagellate themselves about their white guilt? Have you witnessed ordinary white people engaging in behavior toward blacks, asians -- whoever -- that would merit self-flagellation?
What I mean was that it was a wake-up-call about how narcissistic and useless white self-flagellation is for understanding and interacting with non-white people. I more or less agree with TGW that this kind of self-flagellation is the default in middle class, liberal circles. Flagellation is a way of keeping the focus on oneself, often at the expense of reducing other people to mere occasions for one's pious penitence.
But yes, in my experience I do find white people flagellating themselves. And I have certainly witnessed atrocious behaviors by whites toward non-whites. We're mostly white, up here, but there are quite a few Somalian refugees in Portland.
Regarding the rest of what you've written, I agree that people are mostly the same. But I don't think that means they're mostly good.
What I meant was simply that white people literally see a half-white half-black person as black. That's the reflexive reaction. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that they don't see them as devoid of desires and fears.
The conservative would have a much more persuasive case to be made in ancient China, or Egypt, or the Roman Empire, during the periods of stability. But in the modern world, with the amount of ongoing change that we experience, it's harder to see how the conservative is right. Compare the Americas in the 1700s to now. It's a very different continent. Most people alive today would probably expect the world to be a very different place in a 100 years than it is today. Many of the institutions that exist now won't exist or well undergo big changes over the next century. This need have nothing to do with liberalism. Technology and the problems we will be facing almost assure that. So do the changing demographics, and the rapid spread of ideas and trade thanks to globalism, which can't be reversed short of modern civilization collapsing.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 06:23#322940 likes
Do you consider strict guidelines about how one may or may not depict God leftist by virtue of their focus on representation?
I see the hatred of representation of the divine to be an affirmation that reality is above representation, God being held to be reality par excellence. A distrust of idolatry is a call to never mistake the image for the real thing, or love it more. A leftist dismantles the possibility of idolatry in a principled way by disavowing that there are any realities.
The conservative, by definition, does not change. After all, the world doesn't change - the sun rises and the sun sets. But while he doesn't believe anything essential changes, he does concede that the world is in flux. So he reacts, meeting this or that irruption with force, in order to restore things to the way they were. He may not try to change the world to serve the observatory, but he's endlessly vigilant against the weeds that threaten his well-manicured garden. The conservative changes, a bit, but he changes to stay the same.
Maybe so, but reactive law is incredible. Again, it's what built England. You wait for a problem to arise, then judge when you have to on what ought to be done. Over the years an intricate, deeply woven house of natural institutions is built. The leftist by contrast is Cartesian, and demands (notice, the leftist always demands) that an entire constitution be written up from scratch, on the spot, and immediately enshrined, not in response to the organic problems the world rises and solving them, but from an a priori conception of the way the world ought to be.
There's a difference between ethnicity and race. An ethnicity can contain multiple races. And a race can contain multiple ethnicities.
For the former: Hispanic is an ethnicity. It includes people who are brown, black, mestizo.
For the latter: White is a race. It includes people of Jewish, Scottish, and Scandinavian ethnicities.
Ethnicities have to do with culture, heritage, country, origins. Race is a mark which designates certain character traits which then assign you a relative position within a social group.
Obviously both of these definitions aren't accepted by everyone, and I wouldn't even say they are the best on offer. But there's certainly a difference between the two.
Ok, you have a liberal/leftist picnic basket full of sour tomatoes, bitter melon, rancid olives, spoiled meat, and other delicacies. Some of it I recognize, some of it is a bit too chewed up to identify with.
I won't, but my liberal/leftist picnic basket would have some unappetizing items in it too.
The leftism I was first exposed to was, merciful god, old-fashioned. It focused on Marx and some early 19th/20th century American socialists like DeLeon. It was not flavored by the University marxism of the 1980s-present which frankly doesn't smell at all like the Marxism I like.
The leftist has an a priori idea of how the world ought to be, and is outraged that it is not that way. The leftist proposes that the world ought to be changed to be that way, preferably as swiftly and with as little compromise as possible.
It seems to me that Marx (who I use as the anchor of "leftist") was pretty well historically informed and viewed history as a process involving contending forces and interests. Yes, in the end he saw a world in which Man came into his own, no longer a wage slave, no longer a master, but in a classless society (a nice big thick hunk of shining glittering idealism for you). My belief is that Marx and Engels can not be the source of quick-perfection schemes. Historical processes take their time, and their time is not our time. Sure, I'd like to see a socialist approach to health care, to full employment, to basic income, to the diet farm for the 1%, and so on, but being in a hurry is a recipe for leftist despair.
Wherever the leftist sees something that isn't perfect, where the empiricst of conservative impulse is to change oneself to match the world, the leftist impulse is to change the world to match oneself. Rather than meeting a pre-existent standard, like the conservative, the leftist protests that the standard is wrong, and ought to be place elsewhere. Hence the leftist generally does not seek to be beautiful, but to redefine the ugly as beautiful, because he believes, at bottom, that there is no substance to the world other than what he places on it, and so there is a kind of delusion or fantasy of power and control, reflected in the desire for central planning in government and statism generally.
Don't get carried away here; it's not good for your blood pressure.
The currently victorious conservatives are finding plenty that isn't "perfect" and do not seem poised to fit into the world they see. Rather, they seem poised to do some major league changing.
there is no substance to the world other than what he places on it Right. Well people who think there is no substance other than what they place on it, whatever their political views, are chock full of shit. If they are leftists, then they need to be taken away and drummed out of the leftist movement.
All of these, I believe, are features of childhood. The confusion of representation and reality (lack of object permanence), the belief in the malleability of the world to one's desires, the refusal to face unpleasant truths, the insistence that everything ultimately be molded to one's wishes. This creates a desire for childlike narratives and a liking for comic books, superheroes, and so on, along with simplistic moral axes of oppressor-oppressed that create a sort of identity-based template for knowing who is in the wrong when, to emphatically and uncompromisingly support the side that is being hurt by the ones in the wrong. This in turn leads to the basic oppressor/oppressed distinction, which has no fundamental way of being questioned, but only multiplied and complicated by infinitely expanding axes of oppression based on increasingly minutely defined representational categories...
I agree that these are characteristics of childhood persisting into adulthood (sometimes into senescence, even). I don't think this has anything to do with left-center-conservative politics; it has to do with delayed personal intellectual and social maturation. You know, a lot of the stuff you are talking about is spouted by college students. If neuroscience is correct, and the brain isn't fully developed until around 25, that means even graduate students are still spouting immature texts. In the case of severe developmental delays one may find some tenured professors babbling this way. (In fact, one does.)
I get where you are coming from. Thank you for the thorough response. I appreciate it. Reading is hard work, and I don't want to tire anyone's brains out too much here, so... that's that.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 06:43#323000 likes
Reply to Bitter Crank I think this is totally fair, and I haven't even read Marx and am not that familiar with dialectical materialism, which may have a more 'bottom up' impetus than I characterized here. I'm only going off of my personal experience, what I've seen and heard from self-identified leftists in my lifetime, and whatever trends I've seen that relate to this spanning the writers from way back when. Although my impression from hearing Marxists speak generally is that they're very much in favor of 'get-perfetion-quick' schemes, as you put it (a radical communist group has been marching around town lately over here, demanding the immediate disbanding of the American government), and insofar as Marx prophesied anything like the rising of a classless society within a couple centuries at most, he would be too – history is long, very long, and a pendulum sweep into an imagined perfection very much counts as such a scheme by my lights.
What I meant was simply that white people literally see a half-white half-black person as black. That's the reflexive reaction. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that they don't see them as devoid of desires and fears.
If one faces a forced choice, then I suppose--yes, a half & half black-white person would be sorted into the black group. But people are not always in forced choice situations. The people that I grew up among were concerned about a lot less than 50% black, even though there weren't any actual blacks around for them to worry about -- mostly just television screens.
But the times are changing. White working class and middle class people (whatever the terms mean) are becoming much more accepting of mixed-race couples and mixed-race children, right here in 83% white Minnesota, even. "More accepting" isn't color blind, of course, nor (IMHO) should people be color blind. That's a kind of erasure of one of one's and others' real characteristics.
The times are changing, but progress isn't as swift, sure, and final as we would like. Patience, patience. We'll get there.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 06:49#323020 likes
Maybe so, but reactive law is incredible. Again, it's what built England. You wait for a problem to arise, then judge when you have to on what ought to be done. Over the years an intricate, deeply woven house of natural institutions is built. The leftist by contrast is Cartesian, and demands that an entire constitution be written up from scratch, on the spot, and immediately enshrined, not in response to the organic problems the world rises and solving them, but from an a priori conception of the way the world ought to be.
But there's one really big problem with this view. The conservative is wise enough to confront the problems that arise as they are and then determine what ought to be done. The leftist on the other hand demands that things be built from scratch based on ideals. But so how does one confront the leftist? Because one problem that arises, among many, is a bunch of people demanding that things be built from scratch and based on ideals ( this is not new, or particularly cartesian - it goes back to the prophets, and further)
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 06:51#323030 likes
By which I mean: it's utopian to dream of a world without utopian thinkers. Dreaming is baked into being, for better or for worse.
he conservative is wise enough to confront the problems that arise as they are and then determine what ought to be done. The leftist on the other hand demands that things be built from scratch based on ideals.
And which one would consider abolishing slavery? Would that occur to the conservative? Or would the conservative just argue that is the way God intended institutions to be set up? What problem would the conservative confront to convince them to abolish slavery?
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 06:56#323050 likes
Reply to csalisbury I'm not sure. I think that leftism isn't sustainable and collapses societies, often with a high toll in human suffering. So you have good reason to want to stop it – but it's been wildly successful and sowing misery across the world and shows no signs of stopping.
As I've said, I think it can't survive without academia, and there's a sense in which academia is a sick place, that often harbors people whose ideas in society at large would be otherwise unrespectable, and leftism and apologia for totalitarianism of various sorts often go hand in hand. Cf. Thorongil's comments on the professor who would prefer Islamic theocracy to living in America: I take it he's telling the truth about that, anyway!
But how do you stop academia from breeding this sort of stuff? I don't know. Academia is in a sense inherently divorced from reality, and so there are no real checks on it from developing fantasies.
I can't consistently advocate for sweeping changes that eliminate the rise of leftism as a possibility, nor would I want to. The most you can do is take responsibility for yourself – to be tired of what leftism offers you as a person, and to be frank with other people about this, and not to let them feel ashamed for disagreeing with obviously false things.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 06:56#323060 likes
Reply to Marchesk I agree with you, which is why I think it's too easy to reject leftism flat out. But I also think many of TGW's points are spot-on.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 07:01#323070 likes
Reply to Marchesk The abolition of slavery was also a human atrocity in the form of the Civil War.
How would a conservative end slavery, if not with the death of hundreds of thousands of people? Well, I'm not a miracle-worker, but here is a suggestion: buy out the slave owners' trade and release the slaves. It'd be a lot less expensive than a war, too. Then destroy the infrastructure that makes holding slaves economically viable, and once the whole institution has atrophied, sneak legislation in that outlaws it.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 07:01#323080 likes
I think that leftism isn't sustainable and collapses societies, often with a high toll in human suffering.
Another way to look at this is that societies aren't sustainable and inevitably collapse themselves. I guess this is my view. And I guess I'm not a firm leftist. Maybe a meta-conservative with a tragic outlook? I think plugging the dam is as doomed as revolution, so I don't see any especial merit in either. Or I do see the virtues in both. They're both necessary (inevitable?) so I can't really come down one way or the other. I think Marchesky is right that we'd still have slavery without leftists. But then we wouldn't have the civil war (and but also there's the conservatism of northern factory owners, and it's very complicated.)
Would we better off with ancien regime France and no revolution? idk.
But again, this has been going on since the beginning of time and will probably never stop. Many of the OT prophets fit your leftist diagnosis to a T.
EDIT: posted this before I saw you'd already posted on the civil war.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 07:07#323090 likes
Reply to csalisbury Everything collapses, yes. But not everything collapses quite so badly as it does in Bolshevik Revolutions.
I don't feel like one really needs an answer to this question, because I'm not committed to the preservation of a single society in the abstract, or even of humanity as a whole – we're all gong to die too, of course, and humanity itself isn't something to be eternally enshrined, but will pass away. What is important is to disavow atrocity when it's in front of you, and go step by step. The wheel turns. This is, incidentally, something that I think rationalist philosophies generally are less capable of understanding.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 07:12#323100 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever Yes, I think it comes down to an individual stance. And I think being an adult is probably finding a way to balance the two tendencies and knowing which tendency to indulge when. And this sounds like your initial defense of conservatives - empirically reacting to problems as they arise. But then, I guess there's a point, where you can't really decide one way or another - the situation doesn't tell you - and you still have to act.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 07:13#323110 likes
Relevant to the race question and delusions of the approach of the left.
Reply to The Great Whatever I suppose on the points he makes I'd just say that my experience is different with the left. I'd say that Killer Mike is partially correct about leftists, depending on the leftist group. It's important to not get lost in rhetorical dreams in turning political beliefs into action. And there are people who won't necessarily draw out the conclusions of the words they are saying.
Of course you've said that your beliefs about the left are confirmed by experience too, and I'm more than willing to concede that experience is far from all encompassing or representative.
But when he listed those skills -- I was like, well, yes! (and it's actually very very hard to organize politically along those skills)
However, I tend to think of race, and the politics of race, as a different issue from left/right too. Leftists care about race, for sure, but I'd say it's a bit odd to frame the issues of race as strictly leftist issues. There's the dialogue of race within leftist circles, there's a dialogue of race within other circles, and there's a dialogue on race within different racial groups and within their own racial groups. The biggest lack of dialogue on race, by my lights, is actually between groups.
There are both liberal and conservative political proposals and beliefs about race, and at the end of the day black people organize regardless of party or political ideology in order to obtain power and pursue self-interest. I don't mean that in a negative way -- I tend to think that this is what politics not only is about but should be about (not always, but tend to). This is only to say that the politics of race, as I view them, are not strictly leftist, though race is certainly a part of leftist concerns in general (however that happens to manifest in a particular setting or group).
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 07:57#323140 likes
Reply to Moliere The skills like hunting, etc. could be metaphorically recast as any sort of independence or knowhow for survival apart from the system you are raving for dismantling. I.e., you want something overthrown because it displeases you, but you are ignorant of how it actually functions or why, and the way in which your survival is bound up in it.
Reply to The Great Whatever
Just restricting myself to the characterization of leftism, then: Even metaphorically -- this is what I mean by I think our experiences are just different. I can say I have seen what you describe. I can say I've participated in it, and will probably do so again.
But, in my experience, there's more than that, too.
Let's take capitalism. Do communists dream big dreams? Yes. Why not, after all? But do they recognize them as dreams? Well, depends on the communist. And, after all, an American communist is of course trained to live within a capitalist society, they just believe that communism -- whatever that happens to be -- is better than capitalism.
But how could that be unless they had some notion of how it functions and why? And wouldn't a self-critical communist also come to realize, at some point, they are very much part and parcel to the system of capitalism and they don't know how to survive in a communist system?
On that latter point, especially -- I mean, in my experience, leftists are poignantly aware of that fact.
Hence why I agree with Mike -- he's bringing his analysis of society back to the level of survival, which is in fact the sorts of things you would have to think about in any society. It doesn't have to be hunting, as you note, but just know-how to live in that society. And sometimes the better choice in the moment is to have "more lawyers" and fewer "revolutionaries", just to keep with the communist drift. (that wouldn't mean they are political revolutionaries if they are lawyers -- but they may still harbor communist sentiments, at least).
But, I'm willing to say that these are merely what I've seen, and isn't necessarily representative of the left. But I see leftists in not just idealist terms, but much more pragmatic and earthly terms too, just going off of what I have experienced.
Leftism is in principle committed to deep reality denial, in my view, and generally demoralizes people by telling them to revel in being weak, ugly, victimized, self-abasing, and trapped in victimhood. It's a philosophy of resentment and isn't compatible with self-respect or maturity.
It seems to me that Kurt Vonnegut wrote a story satirizing this. (OK, here I did a Google: it was "Harrison Bergeron", published in a sci fi magazine in 1961.) Vonnegut wrote...
Vonnegut:In the year 2081, amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, radios inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic.
There is a sub-culture of resentment out there, no doubt--self-centered people whining and nattering about the various impositions they have to suffer under.
You are quite right that this posture is not compatible with self-respect or maturity.
Is this leftist? I suppose it is, if you call the reformers who wrote the Americans with Disabilities Act leftists. By extension, I suppose, you could arrive at the view that the whole business of being handicapped, deficient, victimized as a way of life is "leftist". "Leftist" serves you as a bucket into which you are tossing a lot of unpleasant stuff. I'd prefer you get a different bucket to collect all this stuff in, because my "leftist" bucket has different stuff and it gets confusing to me as to which garbage we are talking about.
We real leftists do complain a lot, that is true, but mostly it's about the deep institutions of the economy and politics.
How would a conservative end slavery, if not with the death of hundreds of thousands of people? Well, I'm not a miracle-worker, but here is a suggestion: buy out the slave owners' trade and release the slaves. It'd be a lot less expensive than a war, too. Then destroy the infrastructure that makes holding slaves economically viable, and once the whole institution has atrophied, sneak legislation in that outlaws it.
Like we could end the world drug trade by buying out cannabis, opium, and cocaine farmers, and closing down all the factories that make the precursors to methamphetamine? Supposing that this could be done, we can't overlook the fact that there is a demand market that pulls these substances in. How does a conservative solve that side of the problem?
Slavery couldn't be 'bought out' like one railroad could buy out a competitor and thereby get rid of it because...
The value of slaves was the largest asset in the pre-civil war country. There wasn't enough cash in the US to carry out such a maneuver.
The production of a high volume of raw cotton at a low price depended on slavery (at the time, in the US south).
The economics of slave production were deeply entangled in England's textile industry, and northern banking, shipping, and wholesale interests.
Slave states (the Confederacy) were not only pro-slave, they were also against centralized government, any kind of governmental regulation, industrialism, and social mobility. (For instance, southern states didn't want to cooperate with each other even on railroads; each state built short, non-connecting lines.)
The Civil War was not just about ending slavery; it was also about denying states the prerogative of leaving the union (California secessionists, take note).
War is preferable to a financial solution IF you have a lot of disposable men (the North had more than the South), and if war will be profitable to manufacturers, bankers, financiers, etc. (it was very profitable).
The North intended to pursue a Hamiltonian future of strong central government, large infrastructure investment, industrialism, and social development. The South liked it's Jeffersonian agrarian, conservative values, ideas about chivalry, personal honor, personal independence, and so on. The secessionists departure was a watershed, make-or-break moment.
Cf. Thorongil's comments on the professor who would prefer Islamic theocracy to living in America: I take it he's telling the truth about that, anyway!
I am, I assure you. My fellow grad students who took the class can confirm it, as it's a running joke between us.
I doubt the professor reads this forum, so I can give a bit more detail. We were talking about one of the caliphates one day in relation to Foucault. According to Foucault, power in liberal democracies is highly diffuse and invisible, meaning that it infects all aspects of life without one necessarily realizing it, instead of being concentrated at the top or seen in the form of visible institutions. This makes the people in such societies more oppressed, dominated, surveilled, and punished than in other societies. So the professor concluded, based on this line of reasoning, and with a smile at first, that he would prefer to live in said caliphate than in modern day America. When pressed, he doubled down on his assertion.
I don't feel particularly oppressed despite all the diffusions of power. I can go wherever I want (money permitting), buy whatever I want, say what I want, organize protests, start a business, associate with whom I want, report my own news, run for office, move where I want, etc.
Is there a little too much surveillance and commercialism? Yeah, but it seems mostly aimed at creating more effective ads than denying me any rights. Would I feel more free in an Amish community? I doubt it. Have there been plenty of other societies which were less free? Absolutely. Could the political situation be reformed to make our votes count more? Most likely. But is it better than most political situations in the history of the world? Most likely.
A big fat nope to bodily movement. If I tried to "freely move" across some farmer's land around here I'd be shot, tits up dead.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 19:16#324040 likes
Reply to ????????????? Well I think we all agree the remarks of Thorongil's professor are pretty dumb, and, if rendered accurately in the anecdote, suggest a pretty facile reading. But it's not like there's nothing in Foucault that lends itself to this kind of thinking. Are you familiar with F's take on on the Iranian Revolution?
[quote=Foucault]To me, the phrase "Islamic government" seemed to point to two orders of things.
"A utopia," some told me without any pejorative implication. "An ideal," most of them said to me. At any rate, it is something very old and also very far into the future, a notion of coming back to what Islam was at the time of the Prophet, but also of advancing toward a luminous and distant point where it would be possible to renew fidelity rather than maintain obedience. In pursuit of this ideal, the distrust of legalism seemed to me to be essential, along with a faith in the creativity of Islam.
A religious authority explained to me that it would require long work by civil and religious experts, scholars, and believers in order to shed light on all the problems to which the Quran never claimed to give a precise response. But one can find some general directions here: Islam values work; no one can be deprived of the fruits of his labor; what must belong to all (water, the subsoil) shall not be appropriated by anyone. With respect to liberties, they will be respected to the extent that their exercise will not harm others; minorities will be protected and free to live as they please on the condition that they do not injure the majority; between men and women there will not be inequality with respect to rights, but difference, since there is a natural difference. With respect to politics, decisions should be made by the majority, the leaders should be responsible to the people, and each person, as it is laid out in the Quran, should be able to stand up and hold accountable he who governs.
It is often said that the definitions of an Islamic government are imprecise. On the contrary, they seemed to me to have a familiar but, I must say, not too reassuring clarity. "These are basic formulas for democracy, whether bourgeois or revolutionary," I said. "Since the eighteenth century now, we have not ceased to repeat them, and you know where they have led." But I immediately received the following reply: "The Quran had enunciated them way before your philosophers, and if the Christian and industrialized West lost their meaning, Islam will know how to preserve their value and their efficacy."
When Iranians speak of Islamic government; when, under the threat of bullets, they transform it into a slogan of the streets; when they reject in its name, perhaps at the risk of a bloodbath, deals arranged by parties and politicians, they have other things on their minds than these formulas from everywhere and nowhere. They also have other things in their hearts. I believe that they are thinking about a reality that is very near to them, since they themselves are its active agents.
It is first and foremost about a movement that aims to give a permanent role in political life to the traditional structures of Islamic society. An Islamic government is what will allow the continuing activity of the thousands of political centers that have been spawned in mosques and religious communities in order to resist the shah's regime. I was given an example. Ten years ago, an earthquake hit Ferdows. The entire city had to be reconstructed, but since the plan that had been selected was not to the satisfaction of most of the peasants and the small artisans, they seceded. Under the guidance of a religious leader, they went on to found their city a little further away. They had collected funds in the entire region. They had collectively chosen places to settle, arranged a water supply, and organized cooperatives. They had called their city Islamiyeh. The earthquake had been an opportunity to use religious structures not only as centers of resistance, but also as sources for political creation. This is what one dreams about [songe] when one speaks of Islamic government....
....At the dawn of history, Persia invented the state and conferred its models on Islam. Its administrators staffed the caliphate. But from this same Islam, it derived a religion that gave to its people infinite resources to resist state power. In this will for an "Islamic government," should one see a reconciliation, a contradiction, or the threshold of something new?
The other question concerns this little corner of the earth whose land, both above and below the surface, has strategic importance at a global level. For the people who inhabit this land, what is the point of searching, even at the cost of their own lives, for this thing whose possibility we have forgotten since the Renaissance and the great crisis of Christianity, a political spirituality. I can already hear the French laughing, but I know that they are wrong.[/quote] - excerpts from What are the Iranians Dreaming About? - 1978
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 19:27#324070 likes
Reply to csalisbury America lacks spirituality in its politics, yeah. I think the Amish and Mormons have something like this, though some would argue that they (mostly the Mormons) have it in a repulsive way. Maybe in some respects, but I think there's an underlying jealousy in that criticism. No one, I take it, is afraid of Amish totalitarianism – or is that naive?
The closest thing to spirituality mainstream America has is Game of Thrones, which is like, okay, man can't live on Mountain Dew alone.
Personally, I would not elect to live in any sort of Islamic state, and would consider fleeing if the Muslim population got too large. I just think it's not safe to be a non-Muslim anywhere, with a Muslim majority, ever.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 12, 2016 at 20:14#324120 likes
They would not end it at all. Such a conservative free their slaves and... everyone else's would keep doing what tradition and power dictated.
Now there are many alternatives than a "magic" and immediate cure to slavery, to getting up and saying: "It's wrong. Cast it out with violence tomorrow," but any of the alternatives end in making a disruptive ethical proclamation in public.
If I just talk about freeing my slave with my close friends, they're going to ask why I did it, and if I answer honestly and without burying my own ethical concerns, I will raise the problem with the given tradition. Now, if they do the same as me, our limited ideas will grow into a movement. We will become public and the established tradition will react.
We'll either have repression of our idea or, if we have a will and power to survive, war. Unless, we've built up a culture which accepts changes without jumping to war to defend tradition, culture or an idea.
Your reading of the Left is, well, ignorant. The idea it views images as a solution is an illusion created by only looking at wide-eyed advocates. For most of the Left, the question of oppression is descriptive, not utopian. We walk in the hall of mirrors which show us all the horrors. From our ivory towers, we watch and see all the different instances of oppression. And what use is it to avoiding them? Frequently none. A lot of the time we don't even pose a solution to and oppression we identify, but them I don't think that was really ever the point. Many of us know there isn't one, at least within the time frame people usually think in. Our project is a knowledge, for a limited impact on some oppressions.
What "progressivism" really does is disrupt our image of survival. Under it, our survival is no longer sacred. We destroy our myths that we, or our way of life, must always continue. It doesn't mean we must die, but it does mean we are not above death. The next generation may live utterly differently to how we do. There may even be no next generation at all. It's not really "nihilistic" or "tabla rasa" at all. What it cuts downs is the idea we are made by something other than ourselves (including our instincts and traditions), so we have no guarantee of survival. We may always by wiped out. The image of our own necessity is lost.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 20:22#324160 likes
Reply to ????????????? Are you saying that Foucault wouldn't accept the Iranian revolution while other, less canny thinkers would? Or that Foucault qua analyst of power wouldn't accept the revolution that Foucault qua wishful thinker would, if only briefly?
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 12, 2016 at 20:26#324180 likes
Descriptively, it's right. In the secular liberal democracy, who is more "oppressed" (here this means "has their values, ideas rejected and organisation of power rejected" ) then the spiritual theocrat who wants religion to be an integral part of politics and everyone's lives? Just about no-one.
Power is also diffuse (many different values respected, rather than everyone having to follow God) and "hidden" in a sense (everyone thinks even else is free to be the individual who they are-- the theocrat will be insulted with: "You aren't "oppressed. You are free to practice your individual religion").
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 20:28#324190 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness Yes, 'spiritual theocrats' are oppressed by liberal democracies if, by 'oppressed,' we mean 'not allowed to be theocrats.' That's true.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 20:53#324240 likes
Reply to ????????????? Ok, gotcha. It does seem complicated though. What allowed someone so constantly on guard and critical to let his guard down, to think so wishfully? I don't think it can be chalked up entirely as a mere flight of fancy.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 12, 2016 at 21:11#324330 likes
Indeed, I think it's the critical mind that saw him make the argument. A description of secular democracy's "oppression" of a society where power is defined by religious belief, and how that might make the Iranian Revolution attractive to some, even if it did offer a warped image of those traditions and values. He's not thinking wishfully. He's describing relations and motivations of power.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 21:36#324440 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness I disagree - his analysis clearly exceeds the bounds of a neutral analysis of motivation.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 21:43#324450 likes
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 21:52#324480 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness I'm talking about a government buyout of slaves, like what happened in England. I know I'm giving England a lot of cred lately.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 12, 2016 at 21:52#324490 likes
For sure, the point is to describe what is lost for a point of view "oppressed" with secular liberal democracies. If he were "neutral" (whatever that supposed to mean), he would be hiding what was lost. He would not be honest about our rejection of the value and power structure in question. We would not understand that, in our values and power structure, we were putting down another and their values.
In the sense of power, the Iranian Revolution is similar to any other movement for change within our history. Those who's values and beliefs aren't respected within the power structure (theocracy in this case), imagine a world in which they are (often the "utopia" ) and rise up to change it.
The "oppressive" power structures in question is replaced by one that respects the values or beliefs in question, at least in some way (revelations differ in their degree of success).
This is all descriptive though. In saying this, he not making the argument the Iranian revolution is ethical, just that it driven by developing a society which respects a value or belief rather than repressing it.
Reply to Heister Eggcart What's the point of your reply? Any society consisting of more than one individual is going to entail limitations on absolute freedom. If one wants to be absolutely free, they can opt to live in the deep wilderness. Of course you lose the advantages of being in society, and thus the ability to do a great many things you can't on your own.
It looks like that essay is focused on the motivations behind the creation of an Islamic state... which can be beautiful. No more beautiful than the vision behind liberal democracy, though. In both cases the reality is screwed up.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 12, 2016 at 22:07#324620 likes
I know... but that's not going to happen if everyone else behaves if they ought to own slaves. Even if you start privately and small, if it going to have an effect, it will become a movement that grows a public profile, one which is arguing people ought to give-up their slaves.
No doubt a buy-out would offer a way to avoid conflict in some circumstances, but would it have worked in the US? I mean would the government had the funds to buy out the many slaves? What happens when people say no to the buyout (and likely they would, given the social and economic place of slaves in the US)? And if the buyout isn't mandated, what does one do when the tradition of slavery continue to be passed down? Given the context of the US at the time, we end-up with a situation where any method of effective change is going to lock horns with the deeply embedded tradition. Does it mean war? Not necessary (that would be up to how people handle challenge to tradition), but the change will not occur with the presence of behaviour that slavery is a problem.
There's a very strange marriage between far left radicalism and fundamentalist Islam. I've yet to fully understand why, but it's something I keep seeing. My current explanation is that it has something to do with the white guilt complex TGW talks about. Teh brown folks seem oppressed! And since they obviously can't oppress themselves (being brown), it must be the West and white males who are the cause of their misfortune.
White, non-religious leftist academics in the humanities and social "sciences" in particular are infatuated with Islam, but their research always has an apologetic tone to it. Contrast this with most academics who study Christianity. There's no desire to understand how the Quran was written, who wrote it, Muhammad's place in history, etc. No, just endless books and articles being created on how queer black Muslims in Belgium negotiate relations of power. Blegh. My professor is merely typical in this regard.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 22:10#324640 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness A buyout would have been cheaper than a war. I think people only pay lip service to traditions until there's incentive to abandon them. Just pay them.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 22:14#324650 likes
Reply to Thorongil I'm also fascinated by the left's defense of Islam. This isn't a genius idea or anything, but I think it may stem from the coherency of the enemy: white, male, capitalist, straight, cisgendered, Christian and so on. Any deviation from this is grounds for alliance, regardless of whether the different sorts of deviations from it are mutually conflicting (as with the European attempt to reconcile Islam with LGBT acceptance). Once your enemy isn't monolithic, things get complicated.
I also get the vague impression that leftists closer to the source, especially those fleeing Muslim countries for persecution, have far less patience for it. It's easier to tint it with roses when you don't have to deal with it. And it's of course the oppressive Christian countries in which you're free to be openly critical of the 'reigning' religious values.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 12, 2016 at 22:18#324680 likes
It would be, but are other people going to agree with it? To open with a policy of: "I'll pay you to free your slaves" is a great, but will people agree to it? Some will, no doubt, if you offer enough. But what of those people who's identity is tied-up in being owners of slaves? They'll read the buyout as a betrayal of how people need to live and recognise it as a existential threat to their way of life. We could well have war anyway.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 22:20#324690 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness I don't know the amount of people who went along with it in England, and of course America's economy was more deeply tied to slavery, but it certainly isn't without precedent or fantastical.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 22:33#324720 likes
Also, I believe the Radical Abolition Party in mid 19th-centry America went around buying out individual slaves and releasing them, on the eve of the Civil War. I believe a man by the name of Smith of that party proposed a mass buyout before Congress, citing Britain as precedent. He was apparently trying to forestall war in doing so.
England's Emancipation Act of 1834 was essentially a mass buyout of all slaves in the British Empire – they paid off the slave owners with recompense to have it pass.
I read about this in some book, but I can't remember the details, and don't have good citations.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 22:46#324730 likes
Reply to Thorongil Whatever one thinks about the left's relationship with Islam,
this:
There's no desire to understand how the Quran was written, who wrote it, Muhammad's place in history, etc.
is a dumb thing to say.
There are tons of books on these subjects. I took a middle east studies 101 course by a suuuper liberal professor and we covered - tho in a brief 101 way - precisely these topics. They were an integral part of the course.
There are some points you make I agree with, but stuff like this makes it seems like either have no idea what you're talking about or just like the sound of your own rhetoric. You're poisoning your own well.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 12, 2016 at 22:52#324750 likes
It's more to do with recognising the "oppressive" impact the West has on other cultures. Not so much a question of creating monolithic enemy, but being careful of putting down another culture and its people, pretty much regardless of the exact ethical worth of their practices. I mean does Saudi Arabia needs us in their country spreading our "enlightened" values to their ignorant people? Or are they their own people, with their own values, who a worth enough to practice the culture the believe in?
The point is there is a racism in our insistence that we must know better. If we are to say, for example, that Islam is a tradition of war that has no just place in our world, as is the standard of many critics, we are really calling for a genocide of the tradition in a favour of our own.
"Islam" becomes a scapegoat. In our denouncing of Islam, we create an image that we are addressing a problem (Islamic terrorism, local oppression within Islamic countries, tensions between Islamic immigrants and our culture, etc., etc.) which makes us feel safer. But does nothing of the sort. All the problems we are so worried about continue, only we now dump derision upon the way of life of many respectful and peaceful people within our own communities too.
Or we support a situation and policy which have deeply damaging effects on Muslim communities around the world (e.g. the war in Iraq, Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, etc.,etc.), where our political interests (e.g. oil, rallying our community around an enemy, the safety of Israel) are more important than Muslim lives and communities.
Reply to csalisbury I was making a comparison. Quranic scholarship is a joke compared to Old and New Testament scholarship. That's simply a fact. Muhammad is not scrutinized or written about as Jesus is either.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 22:59#324790 likes
Modern academia in the West has a historically exceptional place with regard to Biblical scholarship, though, since as a historical fact numerous disciplines and techniques in the humanities were launched from German Protestant Biblical exegesis and historical inquiry.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 22:59#324800 likes
Reply to Thorongil It strikes me that there's one very obvious reason why anglo-european countries would have significantly deeper and richer scholarship re: christianity.
I voted for Trump because in the debate when asked what he was looking for in a Supreme Court Justice, he, unlike Clinton, mentioned the word "Constitution." Yes, their job is Constitutional interpretation, not contemporary morality enforcement.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 23:04#324820 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness Do you think it's racist to disapprove of Islam? Is it racist to disapprove of any religion? Is it ever fair to disapprove of a religion? What would a religion have to do, or what would it have to teach, to be worthy of disapproval?
Alright, so let's ask ourselves why it lags behind. The reason is quite simple. Sure, the West was Christian, thus resulting in scholarship on the Bible. However, the Islamic world doesn't value or permit critical scholarship of their religious texts to any comparable degree. And for many of the Western scholars who do work on Islam, in say "Islamic studies" departments, they are primarily not interested in the things I listed. Instead, you'll find a lot of stuff to do with leftist identity politics, postmodernist theory, and so on.
Fear and intimidation are also things to take into consideration.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 23:16#324850 likes
Reply to Thorongil It is interesting to me that I cannot say, draw a chalk picture of Muhammad on the ground in the middle of a Western university. What does a religion have to be like that people fear for their safety in doing these sorts of things, even in the hearts of supposedly liberal institutions? It's not a good situation. And I'm not comfortable with people coming to the defense of Saudi Arabia with accusations of racism if anyone decides to be critical. But OK, I have heard this discussion before and understand that there are genuinely racist people who hate Muslims.
VagabondSpectreNovember 12, 2016 at 23:18#324860 likes
The Civil War was not just about ending slavery; it was also about denying states the prerogative of leaving the union (California secessionists, take note).
As far as I understand it, the succession from the union was indeed first and foremost about preventing central - or northern - authority from being exercised on the lower states given that the north had been growing much faster, and with the addition of Minnesota and Oregon in 58 and 59, basically had tipped the balance of power in congress.
In a letter to Horace Greeley in the midst of the civil war, before the emancipation proclamation, (although he would have been working on it) Lincoln wrote the following:
Lincoln:I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
Kinda reminiscent of modern political maneuvering if you ask me. The north wanted to keep the south in the fold, freeing the slaves was just something that helped to achieve that.
In terms of how it usually manifests within the West, yes. Islam is the "The Other," a people with a history and culture considered outside anything worthwhile, something understood to be so savage that it ought to be wiped off the face of the Earth. I would go as far to say a lot of us think of Muslims as "savages" who we must enlighten.
To disapprove of a religion is certainly discrimination. Whether it is racist will depend on how deeply a religious tradition is embedded and tied to a racial or ethic group. Given the place of most major religions in their culture, I would say that most disapprovals of religion would be racist, if they are suggesting the religion is entirely Other to culture and civilisation.
Religions teach many unethical things. Most, if not all, have I would say. Islam is no exception to that (whether it be "textually supported" or merely "cultural" ). As such I'd say they are all worthy of disapproval in some way or another.
The point is our criticisms don't usually talk about these issues effectively. We don't name a particular issue and how to build a just society from the point of view of the religious tradition (i.e. we-the religious tradition- were wrong). Rather, we call for the tradition to be wiped out, acting like it gave nothing of value or provided nothing to a community, turning entire populations of people into "savages" who never had a civilisation (unlike us enlightened liberal Westerners).
Reply to The Great Whatever Your mentioning Saudi Arabia reminds me of just how hostile that country has been to scholars trying to discover more about the Islamic and pre-Islamic past of the region.
So no, @csalisbury I don't think I'm being dumb. I was making a comparison of the amount and level of critical scholarship on Islam and Christianity, concluding that the latter is greater than the former, which I don't see how you can dispute. As such, it was intended to be a very general statement, so your anecdote is quite irrelevant. Plus, I would love to have sat in your class to confirm your impression.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 23:34#324910 likes
I don't really have a priori respect for religious traditions, Willow – it seems to me that in the same way Christianity was a faith-healer and apocalyptic grassroots revolt that spun out of control, Islam was a war campaign that spun out of control. It's not obvious to me why any movement deserves a priori respect just for existing. The 'but my culture' line is appealing, but the problem is liberals aren't willing to grant it to the Confederacy, so on pain of consistency something has to give. You cannot love the religion and hate upwards of everything it actually does. Yet if you don't hate upwards of everything it does, you can't consistently be a liberal and dislike those things only when they happen at home.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 23:36#324920 likes
My point was that many muslims aren't "white," and so acting like Islam is just savagery amounts to equating their way of life, and so them (the non-white muslim), with nothing but a heinous harm to the world.
In terms of ethic identity, it may even end-up getting white muslims-- what do you think would be the reaction of many to white muslim who defined Islam? Accusations they had betrayed all that was good for a savage way of life.
dukkha:And we DO know better. Homosexuality can be punished by death in Saudi Arabia. Surely you can't excuse this with an appeal to cultural relativism?
Do we know better? What of all the muslims in Saudi Arabia who find that punishment abhorrent? Us Westerners aren't the only ones capable of recognising the worth of gay people. People from Islamic cultures and traditions can do so too. Just as we, from a Christian culture and tradition that despised gay people, did (at least to some degree).
and so acting like Islam is just savagery amounts to equating their way of life, and so them (the non-white muslim), with nothing but a heinous harm to the world.
This is pure insanity. A belief system and a person are two different things. Criticizing the former doesn't harm anyone. For your claim to get off the ground, you would have to expand the notion of harm to near meaninglessness.
What it also says about you is that you don't value free speech, which is good to know, if only to know that I will have people like you to thank for putting me in jail in the future for speaking ill of a particular religion.
DeleteduserrcNovember 12, 2016 at 23:44#324970 likes
There's no desire to understand how the Quran was written, who wrote it, Muhammad's place in history, etc. No, just endless books and articles being created on how queer black Muslims in Belgium negotiate relations of power.
should have been charitably understood as this:
" I was making a comparison of the amount and level of critical scholarship on Islam and Christianity, concluding that the latter is greater than the former"
then, yeah, you're being dumb (ok, ok, disingenuous.)
Reply to csalisbury You don't have to pretend, you just have to see that that's what I was trying to say. I'm sorry you didn't get it. Now let's stop this silly conversation.
The Great WhateverNovember 12, 2016 at 23:48#324990 likes
Us Westerns aren't the only ones capable of recognising the worth of gay people.
Do you think the West in the las 50 or so years has had a unique and unprecedented relationship with homosexuality? This is something I don't know the answer to, but looking at the world stage as it is now, it can certainly feel that way. There seems to be exactly one culture on this planet that's even pretending to give a shit about you if you're south of straight. When I want to fuck men, I'm going to go to the whitest, most Western place possible, ASAP. And I'm going to stay the hell away from Muslim nations (and Muslim neighborhoods).
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 12, 2016 at 23:59#325010 likes
That was never the point though. You are only speaking of the (classical) liberal utopian myth, where every person gets whatever they want, whenever the want it.-- "everyone equal no matter what"
At some point, whether at home or abroad, someone's doesn't get their values and beliefs respect. They are discriminated against and it is just--e.g. those who want to own slaves don't get what they want. The question is when such discrimination applies.
The "universal" application isn't needed at all. In some cases it may make sense for the discrimination to apply in one place (e.g. one's home) but not in another (e.g. another culture which has slavery enshrined). Slavery in the US, for example, can be addressed by us (whether it results in war or occurs by some better means). Deeply embedded prejudice against gay people within Islamic culture in other countries? We can't really touch that. It needs to be addressed from the inside.
Consistency isn't what makes ethics. That's the old myth that ethical significant comes from an image. Difference is what makes ethics, an expression of a particular time and place, which means some actions are preferable to others. Sometimes this means living with people and actions you disagree with.
The Great WhateverNovember 13, 2016 at 00:01#325020 likes
Deeply embedded prejudice against gay people within Islamic culture in other cultures? We can't really touch that. It needs to be addressed from the inside.
OK, but I just don't believe this. Being from somewhere else on the planet doesn't give you free reign to do whatever you want to gay people. And they matter more than the feelings of Muslims whose religion gets criticized.
And if the 'disagreement' is between wether you get to live or die because of your sexual proclivities, then no, I don't have to live with people who disagree with me on that, and I won't be cowed into 'respecting' that opinion. I'm not interested in the relativist slant.
DeleteduserrcNovember 13, 2016 at 00:10#325030 likes
Reply to Thorongil I'll leave you with this though, the course offerings for Islamic Studies at Georgetown University:
- ISLAMIC STUDIES
ARAB-351-352 Introduction to Arabic Culture (3, 3)
ARAB-373 Women in the Qur’an (3)
ARAB-444 Introduction to Islamic Civilization
ARAB-525 Qur’anic Exegesis (3)
ARAB-535-536 The Qur’an (3,3)
ARAB-555 Introduction to Arabic and Islamic Studies
ARAB-609 The Qur’an in History (3)
ARAB-610 Science in the Islamic World
ARAB-611 Islamic Thought on the Eve of Modernity
ARAB-627 Intro to the Hadith (3)
ARAB-760 Arab Historiography (3)
THEO-350 Readings in Sufism (3)
For sure. We, a society and culture previously prejudiced against gay people, changed to one that was not (or at least so much).
A question of our behaviour, not anything necessarily unique to our heritage. Islamic culture could alter in a similar way. It would take a lot of change, perhaps even within the major tenets of the religion itself (the notion of God as an authority above challenge is a bit of a barrier here, but then culture of our history thought much the same at some point).
The Great Whatever:OK, but I just don't believe this. Being from somewhere else on the planet doesn't give you free reign to do whatever you want to gay people. And they matter more than the feelings of Muslims whose religion gets criticized.
Neither do I. I don't know anyone who agrees with the argument: "Yes, killing gay people is good. They ought to be doing it." The point is our reaction ( "Islam is savagery which has no place in civilised society" ) isn't about that sort of issue. It's just us lashing out at a present problem which we can't fix more or less immediately-- well, unless you're into genocide.
The Great WhateverNovember 13, 2016 at 00:18#325060 likes
DeleteduserrcNovember 13, 2016 at 00:19#325070 likes
Reply to Thorongil Well anecdote (which means here an actual course listing at an actual top tier college) beats bare assertion which is all you've offered but I assume your take is based on a broad survey you've undertaken of the nation's islamic studies programs?
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 13, 2016 at 00:31#325120 likes
Clearly not. Let's give you an example. If I say: "Radical Islam is the greatest philosophy ever. All other beliefs are nonsense and we ought to abandon them." is this statement harmless? Would you accept me saying it all over the place and it garnering respect from all corners of society?
Words, understanding, lives and belief systems are all bound up together. What we say and think about others matters.
Criticising someone's beliefs, actions and values is to attack their place in society. It is to say they are too heinous or savage to belong. And that's the problem with the West's discourse surrounding the problems of Islam. They don't attack the belief and actions in terms of Islam (e.g. it's wrong, under Islam, to think gay people ought to die or for tradition to be beyond criticism, etc., etc.), but in terms of people with a history within Islamic culture of being unable to participate in civilised society. We scapegoat people to feel like we are making an impact on problems we recognise.
The Great WhateverNovember 13, 2016 at 00:39#325130 likes
I voted for Trump because in the debate when asked what he was looking for in a Supreme Court Justice, he, unlike Clinton, mentioned the word "Constitution." Yes, their job is Constitutional interpretation, not contemporary morality enforcement.
Both candidates "mentioned the word." (Probably because the question they were responding to was literally something like: What's your stance on the interpretation of the constitution?") Do you mean that that the job of justices is to take an originalist stance toward interpretation and to have no truck with 'living document' talk? Because I could maybe see where you're coming from with that - it's just not what you said at all.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 13, 2016 at 00:49#325160 likes
I mean there are different levels. If follow you about repeating what you are saying back to you, you'll find me annoying and criticise me. You'll think me annoying and unsuitable company until I stop-- until I behave differently, I will not belong around you. But that's about as far as it will go. You won't think of me as an living embodiment of a culture and history which cannot fit with a civilised society.
The point about Islam is our reaction is frequently the latter. And we mistake this prejudice for being serious about injustices within Islamic cultures.
Reply to csalisbury Why, have you? If not, then as I suggested earlier, let's cease this.
DeleteduserrcNovember 13, 2016 at 01:05#325220 likes
Reply to Thorongil Listen, you made the claim that leftists make no attempt to understand the Qu'aran, Mohammad's place in history etc. and that it's entirely Queer theory & that kind of thing. The handy thing about a statement structured like this a single example falsifies it. (and it would be easy to multiply examples.)
But, yeah, we can drop it. Your statement was a throwaway one from the beginning ( the same kind of thing as "all men hate women", or "all white people are racist ") so I'm not sure why I'm getting so involved. It just bugged me, I guess?
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 13, 2016 at 01:07#325230 likes
In the sense that a neo-nazi or KKK member might change their culture, sure. Like a muslims (or anyone else), they are no less capable of devloping an ethical position on particular people or issues.
The problem is, at that point, what is left of neo-nazi or KKK identity? Neither of those groups a historical tradition bound-up with the everyday life and functioning of a society that extends beyond racial (and other unjust forms of discrimination). It make senses to speak, for example, a pro-gay muslim. A neo-nazi or KKK member in favour of multicultural society? Not at all.
Reply to csalisbury You must have a low estimation of my intelligence if you think I would make such a statement while thinking it admitted of no exceptions. The fact that I have gone out of my way to qualify it for you also ought to deflate your concern.
The Great WhateverNovember 13, 2016 at 01:15#325260 likes
It make sense to speak, for example, a pro-gay muslim.
It also makes sense, I think, to speak of a pro-bacon Muslim, or an atheist Muslim. To want Muslims to be this that and the other, antithetical to the standard Islamic position on all of these issues, seems to me to be just a way of saying that you just want Muslims to be Westerners, except they wear hijab or something. Which is just a roundabout way of saying that Islam is incompatible with whatever you imagine polite society to be. It gets tricky, for example, if you ask people what they think about the relative authority of Sharia versus a Western constitution.
DeleteduserrcNovember 13, 2016 at 01:17#325280 likes
Reply to Thorongil Fair enough. I'll revise my understanding of your statement to be something like "I have had some personal experiences of leftists talking about Islamic in pomo terms and have also seen that on the internet and I don't like that." I can't argue with that and I'm sure it's true.
Reply to csalisbury Yes, it's that and it's that Islamic scholarship is smaller and less critical than Christian scholarship. Again, I don't see how anyone can deny that.
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 13, 2016 at 01:24#325320 likes
Absolutely. Muslims being "westerners" is effectively where the argument ends up: we are demanding changes to Islam which make it, in practice, more or less indistinguishable from the culture in Western democracies. It's saying practices of Islamic culture are unethical and they ought to change.
The point is that it is done with Islamic identity, as our society changed with history of Christian tradition, rather than viewing Islam and its people as an identity that needs to be wiped off the Earth (no doubt traditional Islam being abandoned, but that was the point all along).
The Great WhateverNovember 13, 2016 at 01:26#325330 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness To demand that Islam be reformed to foreign influence until it is unrecognizable, in order to fit in with polite society, strikes me as no different from denying that Islam is incompatible with polite society. I mean, to even be coherent, you'd at least have to give everyone a 'hey, don't take the Qu'ran too seriously, mannnn' primer.
(And yeah, Christianity was destroyed form the inside and is in the process of dying off).
Reply to Thorongil The requirements for being recognized as a Muslim scholar are pretty extensive. That's a position within the global Muslim community.
Critical scholarship? I'm curious.. what sorts of writings are you thinking of there? Just religion studies?
TheWillowOfDarknessNovember 13, 2016 at 01:31#325370 likes
Parts of Islam as it's currently practiced? For sure.
Islamic identity and history? No. Muslims can disavow those parts (even if they are big) of Islam without saying that everything about how the lived, their past and where they think of themselves as belonging, is savage.
Reply to Mongrel You're thinking of a theologian. I mean a secular scholar (who may or may not be religious personally) who studies the religion.
The Great WhateverNovember 13, 2016 at 01:36#325390 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness I see your point, but it doesn't strike me as an interesting distinction. It seems like a polite way of saying euthanasia is preferable to murder, but either way Islam as it is has to go. What would remain would be unrecognizable as present Islam.
Reply to Thorongil Sure. Such scholarship abounds. A lot of it is by topic, not religion. So for instance, Bernard McGinn edits a collection of essays on apocalypticism. Islam is definitely in there. If you're looking for history, Richard Foltz, but again.. the overall topic is the history of Central Asia with a particular focus on religion.
If it's something more current you're looking for, we're too close to it for a full-bodies analysis. I think that's true going back at least 100 years. Too much has happened to Islam for scholars to do much digestion. But there's plenty of info out there.
All that said, my opinion is that Christianity is the most ideologically complex of the global religions. That's kind of like saying cheetahs are the fastest cats, though. So what?
DeleteduserrcNovember 13, 2016 at 04:42#325570 likes
Reply to ????????????? I have a hunch that you've read more Foucault than I have, but I'm familiar with the general contours of his thought. I think it's fair to say that many of his early works are characterized by a deep sense of.... maybe not oppression, but of an inescapable, often invisible, entanglement that undercuts the possibility of real agency. Dispotifs run deep, so deep that they control how you think about them, even when you're trying to think critically. There's an undeniable paranoiac element to 'early' Foucault - both the man in the tower, unseen and seeing & and the fear of something in me that isn't me (though, to be more precise, it's more like 'me' is a kind of 'fold' in-and-of greater forcefields of power...and the man in the tower is himself in me)
The (perhaps cartoonish) understanding I have of Foucault is that it's only in his later work that individual agency, and all the positive stuff takes off (the technologies of the self etc.) Is that fair?
If there is a rupture between early and late Foucault - and the rupture is something like how I've characterized it (and I'm open to criticism here, I may have totally botched it) - isn't his whole Iranian flirtation contemporaneous with the shift?
In terms of how it usually manifests within the West, yes. Islam is the "The Other," a people with a history and culture considered outside anything worthwhile, something understood to be so savage that it ought to be wiped off the face of the Earth. I would go as far to say a lot of us think of Muslims as "savages" who we must enlighten.
Reply to csalisbury Clinton did not mention the Constitution and did not indicate that constitutional interpretation was the role of Court. Trump did. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/19/the-final-trump-clinton-debate-transcript-annotated/?0p19G=c.
Clinton's only reference to the Constitution was in her complaint that the Senate had failed to vote on Obama's appointment.
People rejoicing over a Trump presidency should stop and think about the fact he was elected on a platform of anger and hate. Our country cannot move forward on anger and hate; it can only move backwards.
If there's one guy that can reign in Trump, it could be retired Marine general Mattis. A tough-talk Marine with a nick-name like 'Mad Dog' is something that Trump obviously listens. Yet the important quotes (actually hopefully) don't come to the ears of the alt-right and other Trumpists, because Mattis has critisized Trump quite heavily:
- Regarding Trump’s contention that U.S. allies are not paying their “fair share” of costs to support the alliance, Mattis called the claim “about as kooky as [if] a president were to call our allies freeloaders.”
- On Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigrants, Mattis — who rarely gives media interviews — was also sharply critical, saying that such talk prompts U.S. allies to think “we have lost faith in reason.”
Perhaps the best quote comes from President elect Trump himself, describing in a recorded session with NY Times his meeting with general Mattis:
Trump:
General Mattis is a strong, highly dignified man. I met with him at length and I asked him that question. I said, what do you think of waterboarding? He said — I was surprised — he said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful.’ He said, ‘I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture.’ And I was very impressed by that answer.
Any real soldier knowd that intel with torture is bad, but Trump seems to be really surprised. After this Trump actually tells about himself (and about his supporters much) of how much they know about fighting insurgencies (or terrorism)... and their ignorance and naive thinking. From the talk you can notice this is a real transcript of Trump btw.
I was surprised, because he’s known as being like the toughest guy. And when he said that, I’m not saying it changed my man. Look, we have people that are chopping off heads and drowning people in steel cages and we’re not allowed to waterboard. But I’ll tell you what, I was impressed by that answer. It certainly does not — it’s not going to make the kind of a difference that maybe a lot of people think. If it’s so important to the American people, I would go for it. I would be guided by that. But General Mattis found it to be very less important, much less important than I thought he would say. I thought he would say — you know he’s known as Mad Dog Mattis, right? Mad Dog for a reason. I thought he’d say ‘It’s phenomenal, don’t lose it.’ He actually said, ‘No, give me some cigarettes and some drinks, and we’ll do better.’
That kind of grasp of reality is what the Trump cabinet needs.
Reply to ssu I think Trump is already showing signs of living down to expectations, by refusing to put his interests in a blind trust, cronyism with family members, engaging in Twitter wars with journalists who write critical articles about him. The only possible hope for Trump is that he can rise above himself, but there is little sign of it.
I think Trump is already showing signs of living down to expectations, by refusing to put his interests in a blind trust, cronyism with family members, engaging in Twitter wars with journalists who write critical articles about him. The only possible hope for Trump is that he can rise above himself, but there is little sign of it.
If Hillary would have won, the Republicans would have started to talk immediately about impeachment. With Trump, that impeachment might be a reality. Not only have the children and son-in-law have had a huge impact during the campaign (like starting from picking Pence as a running mate) If Trump is saying that his children will take care of his business ventures (which isn't at all a blind trust), what does it tell that he meets the Japanese Prime Minister with his daughter and son-in-law? Nobody would have minded if it would they would have posed for a picture with Melania, but with Ivanka sitting there through the meeting? I suspect that picture people will get the correct message.
It's a similar move like that his Washington DC hotel are targetting diplomats... if they in the Capitol. To put it simply: the corruption goes to a totally different level with Trump that it would ever be with the Clintons, who basically played the game as it's intended (with corporations giving money to the right charities etc.) What happens when Ivanka starts the next multi-million hotel Project? Likely those foreign entities who give the loans can have other agenda's than just to make money.
And Twitter wars? Nevermind the Trump's whimsical theatre tweeting, It's telling that Trump got the UK government officially responding that they have an able embassador in the US already (Trump tweeted that Farage would be a great UK ambassador to the States). Trump unlikely will not get it that he's not just tweeting with similar celebs as he used to do.
Yet why I bring the example of Mattis here is that the worst thing Trump can do if there is absolutely nobody in his cabinet speaking reason to him. The damage can simply be phenomenal. Trump's Russia connection is actually alarming as it's extremely naive to think that a "reboot" in relations would be a great thing.
So, is it OK if POTUS is a liar? Trump claiming that Clinton was beneficiary of 'millions of illegal votes', with not one shred of evidence or on any grounds. Is it OK if the 'world's most powerful man' engages in twitter wars about such matters? Seems ridiculous to me.
So, is it OK if POTUS is a liar? Trump claiming that Clinton was beneficiary of 'millions of illegal votes', with not one shred of evidence or on any grounds. Is it OK if the 'world's most powerful man' engages in twitter wars about such matters? Seems ridiculous to me.
Well, he's not POTUS yet. But yeah, he needs to take a four year break from those kind of shenanigans.
Comments (516)
I see that now.
I guess that trumped any possible or perceived downsides to the candidate.
EDIT: It's also the ridiculous smugness of the Democratic party leadership that led them to even have Clinton as the candidate. It wasn't as if it wasn't clear from the beginning that Clinton was a controversial figure for many Democrats and non-Democrats alike. In hindsight, Michelle Obama should've run for president.
What I said.
Although I hope in all this, to be wrong. If Trump turns out OK, and I'm wrong, it would be a much better outcome.
I cannot believe the madman actually did it haha. What an incredible achievement! With almost the entire world against him - Clinton, the democrats, Obama, the entire mainstream media, the polling companies, most world leaders, United Nations, most celebrities, the list goes on and on - he still managed through the will of the American people a decisive victory! Incredible! The American people have spoken loud and clear! Senate! Congress! White House wooooooo it's a clean sweep!
MAGA!!! WOOOOOOO I AM ACTUALLY SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW
Haha cheer up you doomsdaying democrats above! Were you actually even *excited* for a Clinton victory? You're probably only disappointed that trump won, not that Hillary isn't Madame POTUS!
Also how ungracious was it for Hillary to not even give a concession speech?! If trump lost and did the same the entire freaking world would be outraged. She just had podesta send everyone home with a 'it's not over till it's over speech' and then right after called trump and conceded! Weak!
MAGA! What a historic day!
Maybe Trump can actually start mending the problem! A Hillary win would have just been another 4 (or God forbid, 8!) years of the same divided and polarised nation were living in right now. Literally nothing would have changed. For example, we have had a black president for 8 years and yet race relations are worse now than they were before Obama took office. Electing a more establishment (and corrupt) version of Obama wouldn't have made this any better.
You might say that things will be even worse and more divided under Trump, but we'll just have to wait and see! Trump made it this far against all odds, so what's to stop him going even further and actually making a greater country? I'm optimistic and you should be too!
MAGA!
For the record, I predicted this, all the way down to the Pennsylvania win (rust belt state that lost manufacturing jobs), and I won a free lunch from it.
I'd also say the media has been atrocious, acting as a PR machine for Clinton, not taking a candidate seriously, and abandoning its duty to just report the news. In truth, that rallied Trump supporters, a defiant group to begin with. The worst thing you can do is tell those folks what they have to do.
This really is a devastating blow to the Obama legacy, where his every accomplishment will be dismantled.
Crazy how Trump was right all along about the poll numbers not being right and he's campaigning with a silent majority. Although I'm not sure even he really believed it!
From what I've read there are plenty of Republicans who disagree with Trump. The fact that he's a Republican president doesn't entail that a Republican-controlled Congress will inevitably support him (or vice versa).
Guess he was wrong about the election being rigged, though. I wonder how many of his other accusations of corruption are also wrong?
What a bullshit reply to my observation that it's sad somebody can be this happy about the schism existing in the USA. Yes, it's a winner-takes-all system and no, I'm not even surprised. We already had Bush jr. for 8 years which was a farce as well. In the meantime popular votes for both candidates are almost equal. But never mind what a lot of other people think because the Republicans won. Just because Republicans won the election doesn't make your fellow Democratic countrymen irrelevant, nor their wishes and hopes for what the US government should be.
So yeah, I'm saddened by people celebrating that they're going to destroy things a lot of other people worked hard to achieve.
It took a multi billionaire to buck the establishment. I don't think his victory proves the system is open to outsiders.
Fat chance. Trump won, not backing the winner will be political suicide.
Perhaps I wasn't clear. Hanover claimed that Trump wouldn't be gridlocked by a Republican-controlled Congress, where Obama was. My point is that even though Trump is a Republican it doesn't then follow that the same can't happen to him.
All Presidents were the winners, but they still face opposition from the legislature.
Same can be said about Iran, and yet we still criticise their decisions.
Quoting Benkei
The country has been a divided, polarized mess before Trump got elected. You can think Obama for that.
Americans have show that they are united against govt. corruption - the lying, the cheating, the double standard in the judicial system for elites vs. the rest of us, and the silencing of millions of voters with Clinton being handed the nomination by the elitists in the Democratic party. It's good day.
I voted for Trump. I actually consider myself a "socialist libertarian" at this point (in lieu of something better to call myself . . . my views are a mixture of socialism and libertarianism, but my views are also extremely idiosyncratic), but I voted for Trump partially because there was no way I wanted Hillary to win. I've never liked Hillary, I didn't like Bill when he was president, and I'd rather have someone in office who isn't a career politician.
If I had been voting for the person whose views I most agree with, I would have voted for Jill Stein--I voted for her in 2012. Not that I agree with her on everything, but she was the best choice in my opinion. Of course, we're still nowhere near any party other than Republican and Democrat being a viable option for achieving the presidency, so a vote for Jill Stein from me this time around would have simply made it easier for Hillary to win.
I used to be pretty strictly capital-L Libertarian, a la the U.S. Libertarian party, and to a point where I was involved with the Libertarian party on local and national levels at one point in the past, but I no longer agree with them on economic issues.
I think that is entirely possible. I come from one of those working class families with many members who supported Trump, and can say with confidence that not all Trump supporters were motivated by bigotry and hate. That was a caricature disseminated by popular media, the motivation perhaps being to shame decent folk away from any association with Trump. I don't think that grotesque aspect of his candidacy was essential to all or even most of his voters. What was essential was the fact that a large segment of US citizens have been hit hard over the past 40 or so years in material and psychological terms, with loss of jobs, the breakup of families, increased drug use, the loss of status within the community and nation, etc. Those social, political and economic conditions were exploited by Trump, but not created by him. Dems bailed out on this group of what should have been their natural allies many years ago, and their cynical manipulation by the Republican establishment (based upon cultural rather than economic considerations) is now thankfully over.
I doubt Trump will truly serve the interests of this group he's made many promises to, but as mentioned they are now class conscious and anti-establishment. It's going to be a good opportunity to really battle over what it means to be an American now, as that question is far from settled. Hopefully an inclusive and forward-thinking answer to this question will be put forward, with a fixation on identity politics and other divisive things (although noble in intention) ultimately giving way to more transcendent and elevated sense of communal and environmental responsibility. This may take the next 20-30 years if not longer (again, Trump will not be able to provide the long-term answer IMO), but that corrupt status quo of unchecked capitalism with its dominance by moneyed interests is thankfully over, at least for the time being. Now the battle for the soul of America begins and us working-class stiffs will have a voice in that conversation.
Just trying to find the silver lining in this result. It requires separating Trump the fraud from the real conditions of hopelessness he tapped into and appropriated to his advantage. He's a consequence rather than cause of our predicament, and looking at it like this offers a bit of solace and hope. He's unwittingly doing a temporary service for a movement much larger and potentially greater than himself. That vague narrative is at least the illusion I'd like to maintain right now. Giving form to that amorphous group of disaffected will definitely take plenty of work, but it's a fresh start.
Of course you know better how I feel. How stupid can your comments get? >:O
And it's not the preservation of legacy I'm concerned with but tearing down something in its entirety that a slight majority of the people seem to support (or a slight minority, depending on how the popular vote will play out). But never mind them, because they lost, right? Here's the picture though, if voters would be evenly distributed according to their statistical occurence then your left door and right door neighbours would be Democrats.
Finally, not every vote for Trump was a vote for ending Obamacare as not every vote for Clinton was a vote for continuing Obamacare. The opinions of the candidates (or party line for that matter) do not reflect the myriad of interests of citizens that exist in the US and this is why representative democracies fail and will ultimately disintegrate. The USA is a very good example of that with its latest election. I'm looking forward to another 4 years of schadenfreude.
Ah yes, because Donald Trump has consistently resisted any temptation to protect his wealth by less than scrupulous means like false advertising, tax avoidance, and outsourcing and is in constant search of an ethical economic system! In no way is he going to use this Presidency to line his pockets and reward his rich friends!
This may be a bad theological analogy (my understanding of these matters is minimal), but it's almost like a corrupt preacher who lives a secret life of debauchery and possibly even unbelief somehow inspiring others with the message of the gospel. His motivation may have been to get their money through tithing, or to gain power and influence within that particular community, but the end result may have also been to change lives amongst the flock and make them somehow aware of their sin in a way they may not have understood before. I see no reason why the insincerity of the one (preacher) should necessarily lead to the insincerity of the other (church members or parishioners or whatever they're called). Like I said, that may not be a great analogy but I do think it makes the point to a certain degree. Trump appealed to the working class in a cynical and manipulative fashion, I think, but that doesn't mean his message didn't resonate amongst this large bloc of voters.
Sounds like you're sad because you don't believe in democracy!
I doubt you'd be crying over the electoral system right now if Hillary was POTUS!
One of the smartest things Trump did was to focus on Americans who have lost their jobs, and subsequently their homes, etc., because of companies sourcing work out to other countries. That's a tremendous amount of people. Whether Trump can actually do something about this is another matter, but the fact that he said he wants to do something about it was important. And that's why he won states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc.--those states have been hit hard by factories etc. closing down.
Yes, as I said in another thread, it doesn't matter which monkey pushes the button and when Baden was trying to call it I again I stated I don't care who'd win. Maybe if you'd have a bit more knowledge about democratic systems (historic and contemporary) you wouldn't be so hung up on the shitty system you have.
I considered her a marginally better option than Trump but effectively it's the same difference.
Actually yes. He wildly overspent on this campaign. He has failing businesses on his hands and he's going to want a slew of lawsuits to go away so can expect to have to dig deep to settle them on the quiet. I really can't see him wanting to come out of the Presidency as 'poor' as he'll be going into it.
But even if he didn't need it, when has that ever stopped rich men desiring to get richer? Isn't it that apparently needless and reckless adding of billions to personal fortunes that has gotten us, by which I mean pretty much the entire Western world not just USA, into this mess in the first place? I just don't see, for all the rhetoric, this leopard changing his spots.
I think that that is the worst decision that someone in your circumstances - someone who has socialist views, and views with much in common with those of Jill Stein - could have made. And I think that it is nothing short of a travesty that relatively large numbers of people in similar circumstances voted that way - including, and especially, Bernie supporters.
I follow Jill Stein on Twitter, so I was aware of her focus on attacking Hillary Clinton. But, although that might have been advantageous for her and her party, I think that, outside of that context, it was a mistake once Hillary became the Democratic candidate, given that Hillary was the better, and Trump was the worse, of the only two candidates with a realistic chance of winning.
It is completely against socialist interests 1) not to have voted for Hillary Clinton, in light of her clear socialist policy proposals and priorities, such as those relating to taxation and economic inequality, which no other candidate would have had a hope in hell of enacting; and 2) to have voted for Trump, in light of his policy proposals and priorities, again, such as those relating to taxation and economic inequality, the latter of which would be exacerbated, and the former of which would be relaxed in places where it should be maintained, if not increased.
Its like I keep saying, in over ten years of asking if anyone knows the simple distinction between a lynch mob and democracy I have yet to hear the correct answer. You simply can't have a democracy when nobody knows the meaning of the damned word and spends all their time arguing over the definition of stupid and who is the better example. What you have instead is Mob Rule. Its empire baby, and this train ain't stopping until she derails.
The money is doing all the driving because the lights are on, but nobody is home. Ranting and raving and complaining or even rioting won't make any significant difference because nobody is listening. At best such things will only temporarily address the worst symptoms of the problem. Your constitutional rights have been suspended indefinitely and almost every police department in the country has been buying surplus military equipment, while congress has already given the military the legal right to round up citizens like cattle and made all the necessary preparations to do so.
Sooner or later people might catch on, but I'm not holding my breath. The real worry is that the US could produce the next Adolf Hitler.
No it ain't. Don't kid yourself.
Trump has said he will significantly cut corporation tax, and, according to analysis, his plans would mean that the top 1% of earners would see their income increase by double-digits. This is not in the interests of the working class, it is in the interests of large corporations and the fattest of fat cats.
Trump looked scared during his speech. Maybe he was just tired from the whole election campaign. But I suspect he also was finally understanding the gravity of the situation.
As I said about my views, "in lieu of something better to call myself . . . my views are a mixture of socialism and libertarianism, but my views are also extremely idiosyncratic"
I can't stand Hillary. I didn't like Bill when he was president either. (And I didn't like Hillary when she was first lady either.) I don't dislike Trump. In fact, I like many things about him. I just do not agree with all of his views. But there is never a presidential candidate where I agree with all of their views, and I don't even usually agree with most of any candidate's views.
Also, another consideration is if something were to happen to the president. Tim Kaine comes across to me as completely sleazy/untrustworthy. I definitely do not agree with all of Mike Pence's views--he's very religious for one, but he comes across like a pleasant, even-keeled, intelligent guy who easily would have a presidential quality. There's no way in hell I'd want Kaine to be president.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/
http://journal-neo.org/2016/03/26/president-trump-us-war-machine-rolls-on/
https://thecolossus.co/2016/06/01/an-interview-with-noam-chomsky/
I stopped reading that one at "unconvicted sex criminal."
So, not only did you make the worst possible decision, you did so on shaky grounds. Is that supposed to be a defence?
If I can't stand waters that aren't infested with sharks, and I don't dislike sharks, but in fact like many things about them, should I go swimming in shark infested waters?
You know that "worst"/"best" etc. are subjective, right?
Quoting Sapientia
What does "can't stand" have to do with anything I said about Trump?
Ah, that old chestnut.
They are relative terms. And in this case, I'm talking about what is in the best/worst interests of you or of society, as opposed to mere preference or what you happen to like or dislike.
Quoting Terrapin Station
It doesn't. It has to do with what you said about Clinton. In the analogy, Clinton is the safe waters, Trump is the sharks, and voting for trump is swimming in shark infested waters.
It didn't stop being true at any point.
Quoting Sapientia
Yes, and subjective, and noncognitive. Statements containing those terms are never correct or incorrect, true or false. There is no coherent distinction to be had where those terms do not refer to preferences.
How about my second question?
How about you added that in after I had already begun to reply, so I didn't notice it? I have answered it in the edit to my reply.
If trump is the sharks, but I can't stand Clinton, then you'd be equivocating "sharks"
What? How so?
I applied the same form of argument as you did in a different context in order to show that it's a poor basis for reaching a decision, and I think that I have succeeded in doing so. You haven't answered my question because you know that it forces you to either accept a stupid conclusion or tacitly accept that that basis for reaching a decision is poor.
Ah--I misread you as saying "If I can't stand waters that ARE infested with sharks"--I didn't read it as "AREN'T" That's why it made no sense to me.
So yeah, if you like sharks, you can't stand waters that don't have them (which isn't what I said, but okay, we can go with that) and you want to go swimming with them, then sure, you should.
Okay.
Quoting Terrapin Station
>:O
So you bit the bullet and went with the stupid conclusion. At least you're consistent.
I believe that there are some pretty clearcut cases where prioritising preference over what's in one's best interests is more likely to lead to worse outcomes, and that worse outcomes should usually be avoided.
How are you attempting to separate preferences and best interests, outcome assessments, etc.? What's the distinction you attempt?
I don't know who they are. But I think you know what I'm getting at. The analogy doesn't have to be perfect.
Sure, so how are you attempting to separate preferences and best interests, outcome assessments, etc.? What's the distinction you attempt?
Right on the mark. Note the observation about 'changing democracy into dictatorship'.
Well, for starters, they each have distinct and inequivalent meanings.
Moreover, if it is possible for one's best interests to not always correspond to one's preferences, then they are separate. And if that specific knowledge can be obtained, then it can be used to differentiate between the one and the other.
The finer details aren't as important, since pointing to cases like the one in my analogy is sufficient to show that making decisions based on preference with disregard to what is in one's best interest can lead to detrimental consequences. The only way out of that one is to bite a bullet that most people wouldn't bite for good reason.
The question of what is in one's best interests, and the question of what is the best or worse outcome, are secondary questions, and open to debate. There is strong intuitive appeal in some cases, but perhaps the strongest arguments are based on using the person's own account of what is in their interests, and then comparing that with a decision which is counterproductive to those interests, as can be done in your case of voting for Trump.
That's the lesson to be learned from this. There are a lot of people who need to let sink in just how wrong they were. The media stations are all reporting that nobody saw it coming.' Yes, they did. You didn't see it coming. Because you are deeply, deeply deluded and incompetent.
Which I'm challenging analyzes to anything coherent.
Quoting Sapientia
Can you support how that would be possible? That would be a step in suggesting a coherent distinction.
I can raise a [i]reductio ad absurdum[/I] against the alternative. If it isn't, then examples like the one that I provided wouldn't make any sense. But they clearly do. There are numerous and clearcut cases of this. You yourself have no doubt found this out the hard way through experience, just like the rest of us - although I wouldn't be surprised if you deny this, like in our previous discussion, where you seemed to prioritise consistency at the expense of plausibility.
That's the polite way of saying we've merely traded one mob rule with more of a pretense of democracy for one that has fewer illusions. Its a rude awakening for many of the democrats and republicans alike, but at least its more honest. It is what the I-Ching describes as a possible "turning point". Hitler's Nazi Germany had its ugly side, but that is precisely what the German people needed to come to the realization of after the war, that they could not continue on with business as usual constantly going to war with their neighbors and supporting their traditional extreme authoritarian culture and bigotry.
I'm challening you to make sense of it not being (a) or (b).
Saying "it clearly makes sense" isn't any sort of philosophical support.
He's a demagogue, pure and simple.
The people who can't distinguish between media and reality are those who took anything CNN, Fox, or MSNBC said seriously for a second.
Well, given that Clinton seems to have won the popular vote I don't think it right to say that they're completely out of touch. They just underestimated Trump's support (or at least its geography).
But, you know, with only a 55.6% turn out, it's even more questionable.
Yeah, I'm pretty upset with the results, but I agree with this 100% (There were a few prescient voices among liberals, but they were drowned out by the consensus of their peers)
My original point was that swimming with sharks, as opposed to not swimming with sharks, for example, might not be in one's best interests. And that, if it isn't, then swimming with sharks would be a worse outcome than not swimming with sharks. And that swimming with sharks because one likes sharks wouldn't change that. And that swimming with sharks for that reason would therefore be a poor reason for deciding to swim with sharks.
Whether or not [i]not[/I] swimming with sharks being in one's best interests is (a) a subjective judgment of an individual, and (b) about their preferences, is irrelevant to my original point, and seems to have been a red herring from the start. What's your point? What if it is?
Quoting Terrapin Station
That it wouldn't make sense is a consequence of your position, which, when the evidence suggests otherwise, can indeed be used as part of an argument against your position.
Would you like me to elaborate on why it wouldn't make sense?
What I'd like is for you to give the specific characterization of the two terms that makes a distinction between them coherent.
Yeah, particularly people who came to the country legally and who worked hard to change their status to permanent resident and then citizen, who worked hard above the table to make money to pay for the things they own, etc., tend to resent immigrants whom they see as being given a free pass--having their status changed just because they snuck into the country, went into the underground economy, maybe received other government assistance, etc.
This isn't entirely true. Corporations don't like him. They didn't give much to his campaign (whereas loads of them donated to Hillary) and they hate his trade protectionism. Look at the markets today, too. They will rebound, but there was real uncertainty about his presidency coming into the day.
People are more likely to tell you what you want to hear if they think you're publically pressuring them, just to make you happy and go away.
Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty liberal myself, but it's hard not to see this dynamic at play.
Universities are heinous.
What is in a person's best interests need not be what that person likes or prefers. Hence, I can like sharks, and I might prefer swimming with sharks to watching them from afar, but, on the other hand, it might not be in my best interests to swim with sharks - for a number of possible reasons, and which may be related to other preferences, likes, or dislikes. But I don't see why that last part is presumably relevant, so what I'd like is for you explain that. [i]Quid pro quo[/I].
Well, it's relevant because that's all that I'm arguing and that you're supposedly arguing against--that "best interests" is a matter of preferences.
There is an important difference between these reactions.
Yes, good point. There's probably a reason for that. But I doubt they'll be complaining about the cuts to corporation tax.
No it isn't. Whether or not it's in a child's best interest to eat chocolate and drink sugary drinks every day is not simply a matter of the child's preferences. It's in their best interests that they don't, even if the child would prefer otherwise. The same with swimming in shark-infested waters. You might want to, but you shouldn't.
No, that doesn't argue against my original point, which I reiterated not long ago. So, why did you change the subject?
Best interests can be related to, or dependent on, preference. They can relate and overlap in some cases. But it certainly doesn't follow that they are one and the same, nor that basing a decision on preference rather than what is in one's best interests can't be a poor basis for reaching a decision.
What determines that in your view?
It wasn't changing the subject from my perspective. It was always what I was talking about.
Quoting Sapientia
And on that view, I'm asking you to specify a distinction.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/michael-moore-meet-the-man-who-got-this-election-right-20161109-gslwmd.html
Many of his stump speeches were improvised rants on whatever ideas were in his twitter feed. A very large percentage of his commentary was in exchanging insults and denigrating his opponents. So there's just nothing to show that he will now be able to turn around and act like a professional instead of a demagogue that manipulates public opinion.
(But the trouble with arguments like that is, they have big words, like 'manipulate' and 'demagogue'. 'Lock her up' is a much easier concept to understand.)
It wasn't changing the subject from your perspective, therefore it wasn't changing the subject? If that is what you are suggesting, that is a [I]non sequitur[/I].
Looking back, I see that you [i]did[/I] address [i]part[/I] of my comment when you responded with that question bringing up subjectivity, but you did not address the main point, which was that it is a poor basis for reaching that decision. And it's a poor basis for reaching that decision because, based on your own interests in the case of you voting for Trump, or based on my own interests if I am the person in the shark example, it will likely lead to consequences counterproductive to those interests.
It could be from your perspective (and obviously it was). It's always from someone's perspective.
What are my interests that voting for Trump will be counterproductive to in your view?
The thought, judgement, belief, etc., is. But that isn't as significant as you might think.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I already mentioned a few. Climate change is another one that might be applicable, given what you said about Jill Stein.
4 or 5 congressional cycles ago the Republican Party began a major effort to corral reasonably affluent (upper working class through upper class), suburban, more or less white voters and win control of state legislatures. This turned out to be very prudent. They were prepared in 2010 to control reapportionment based on the 2010 census (a process generally under the supervision of legislatures). In succeeding elections they had more friendly districts and were able to more efficiently elect Republicans to governorships, the senate, and house -- in state and federal elections.
Liberals, Democrats, etc. are going to have to work on this project too. They are also going to have to take more strenuous positions in the interests of the white working class, millennials--white or colored--African Americans, Latin Americans, et al. This isn't easy to do, because those interests are often at odds with the industrialist and ruling class interests. But Bernie Sanders showed that there is a large block ready to go that route.
Liberals and Democrats, etc. are, in a word, going to have to get "smarter" about winning. Running Hillary Clinton, who had a large following of people who already hated her at the beginning of her campaign--even if running a woman as candidate for president was a bold step--was not a good idea.
I'm not saying anything about significance quantification. It's just that whether something is still the same subject or not is always a matter of individual interpretation.
Quoting Sapientia
Upon what are you basing what's in my interests re climate change and climate change policy? Or are you just assuming that I'd have a particular view on that because I voted for Jill Stein and you're assuming I'd agree with her on that issue? Again, my views have just in much in common with Libertarianism, although my views aren't the same as either any other socialists, any other libertarians, or any other Green party members, etc. I've never met anyone else who has the same political views as I do, or in fact, anyone who feels that my political views are a good idea once I explain them in more detail, haha. That's why I call myself a "socialist libertarian" only in lieu of something better to call myself. No matter what I call myself, I'd have to just explain what my views are in detail.
This is so untrue on so many levels. I'm surprisd you would think that a Republican sweep would solve it if not exacerbate it.
Empirically demonstrable effects on health, with "best interests" being defined in part as good health.
Yes.
And people reading the polls (like me) need to be more careful. For instance, many of the polls I read have a "margin of error" of say, 3%. That means that there is a 6% range that can not be known. If the poll says Clinton is 3% ahead of Trump, it may be that they are actually tied. In a 3% MOE poll, a 2% lead may mean that the Clinton is actually behind Trump.
Early on, the distance between the candidates was very large and the MOE didn't matter very much. But as they came closer and closer, MOE mattered more and more.
The other thing people (like me) need to remember is that A POLL RESULT IS NOT A FACT. It may be that 2000 of 3000 people polled said they preferred Clinton. That doesn't mean they are definitely going to vote for Clinton, especially when the election is weeks or months off. It doesn't mean they are going to vote at all.
quoted Michael Moore saying last summer that "Donald Trump is going to win." Moore isn't the Oracle at Eleusis, but one does have to use "gut response" in prognostication. And one needs to watch out for crowd bias. Everyone I hang around with liked Clinton. If I suspected that somebody liked Trump I shied away from them. My siblings live in the small town America that grooved on Donald's affronts to good taste. We avoided the topic.
But people do the defining, right?
But that's irrelevant. The point is that when we say that such-and-such is in someone's best interests we're saying that such-and-such is going to help someone achieve good health (for example). Whether or not such-and-such is going to help someone achieve good health isn't simply a matter of preference.
You can't avoid getting fat from eating chocolate and drinking sugary drinks simply because you'd prefer not to.
First off, that's not people?
I'm going to address what we type sentence by sentence. If that's not addressing "the actual relevant point" in your view, then I suppose so. Addressing stuff sentence-by-sentence is how I do discussions like this (where there's a disputational tenor to the proceedings with a host of core disagreements).
Au contraire, BC, I think they've tried 'smart' and it hasn't worked. Trump won by trying 'dumb' - slogans, fear, hatred, 'the other', anger, doubt, and appeals to greed ('Look how rich I am'). So 'smart' is what has failed. Dumb is the new smart.
Smart in this case would presumably refer to "being able to recognize what's required to win and being able to successfully adapt to that."
I think it is objectively the case. You recall the long period when Sanders was refusing to concede, and there were a series of debates between he and Clinton. They were about policy - you know, 'policy' - how funds should be dispersed for healthcare, public education, tax rates, and so on. They went for hours, over periods of months.
Meanwhile, what was Trump talking about? He was stirring up headlines by making statements that most politicians wouldn't - Mexicans being thieves, Muslims being terrorists, women being suitable targets for horny celebrities who can grope them with impunity because they're famous.
You think there's no difference between hate speech and policy debate? Is that distinction beyond your powers of discrimination?
You may be right, but I think Thorongil did a good job of pointing out that many within the Republican establishment - those primarily concerned with protecting large corporate interests - have been extremely hostile to Trump. If he's a typical Republican, why the discomfort? Not sure what this development portends, but it does seem to buttress Trump's self-portrayal as the anti-establishment candidate (along with Bernie Sanders) who will represent the neglected interests of working class Americans.
But sure, his vague mentions of preferred economic policy did not sound very populist to me, especially his plan to lower taxes on the wealthy even further, ostensibly as a means of getting them to set up shop and do business in the US once again. My main point was that IF he doesn't follow through with his promises to represent the economic interests of average people, then someone else will be there to rally this group that he (and Bernie) energized. If nothing else, I do see that wedge he's driven between normal people and the economic elites whom they used to support, and uncritically at that, to be a positive development. And while isolationism may not be a realistic possibility in this day and age, if it leads to less meddling in the internal affairs of foreign countries to protect American or MNC business interests, that could be a good thing as well.
I'll keep abreast of the latest developments and information as it arises and reassess my views accordingly. That's the good thing about not being an ideologue or party hack who interprets facts to fit an agenda and only sees what they want to see. I'll try my best to avoid the blatant hypocrisy I've seen from both sides and search instead for the truth, which is clearly not what motivates political partisans.
I don't believe that's true. You do not need to show that something is worse than something else, to prove that it is bad. You just need to describe the thing, and explain why the described thing is bad. That there may be other things which are worse, is not relevant.
Dumb may be the new smart but I'll stand by what I said. Redistricting is a critical process, because it enables the party in power to tailor districts to suit. This might not affect the vote on a Trump or a Clinton, but it makes a lot of difference for who will occupy the US Congress and the state houses. Trump would be less of threat IF the Senate was controlled by Democrats.
The thing is that we have hard data to look at and see the result of having Republican leadership at the helm and economic progress of the middle class. The data seems point out that the interests of the middle class are not aligned with the interest of special interest groups that practically dictate national economic policy.
Poorly functioning systems of government are all bad.
An efficiently run and relatively humane dictatorship beats a scatter-brained and cruel dictatorship. A failed democracy would not be better than a failed dictatorship.
Democracy in the US or UK is not failed. It is hobbled, at least in the US, by several factors: the way politics are financed, the way primaries are tallied (winner take all), the way the electoral college works, and so forth. Having money fed into the campaigns by a high pressure hose doesn't help either. All of these, and other factors, could and should be reformed.
I have done so. More than once. Here, for example.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Even if so, importantly, it's not [I]just[/I] about that. It's also about correctness. It's not 'anything goes'. Some interpretations are more correct than others.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I just told you: what you said about Jill Stein. And I only said that it [i]might[/I] be applicable. It was an educated guess. I'm not a mind reader.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I made no such assumption. I qualified with "might". But it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that you would likewise approve of policies which treat climate change as a priority, rather than seek to undermine it. And Trump, in stark contrast to Stein, has a poor track record in that regard.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Riiight. So, what does socialism mean to you? How do you justify using that term to form part of the position you identify with? Or is it just a hollow word for you? Little more than a label you kind of like the sound of?
No, that's claiming that there is a distinction. It's not specifying what the distinction is supposed to be--that is, what the specific properties of each are supposed to be that make the distinction.
It was as if the Clinton campaign had a horrible smugness to it - a lot of people voting democrat seemed CONVINCED of the moral righteousness of their choice. "Only a bigot would vote for Trump". It was crazy seeing not just how disappointed but utterly SHOCKED people were by the result. I mean the result was a little surprising given the polls showed a marginal Democratic lead right up until the vote, but it was as if people hadn't even thought it was possible Hillary might NOT become POTUS. I CANT EVEN HOW COULD THIS BE?!
You must be so completely out of touch with the desires of the ordinary American. It's as if people occupy this liberal bubble and can't even grasp there's a world beyond it!
No, it isn't. It's stating what the distinction is. The distinction has to do with necessity. There are two distinctions which can be made:
1. What a person likes or prefers need not be what is in that person's best interests.
2. What is in a person's best interests need not be what that person likes or prefers.
This can easily be illustrated with examples, as I have done, and as Michael has done, and as you yourself can probably do.
Quoting Terrapin Station
So now you want me to talk about properties? No. Not if that entails more than what I've already provided. That'd be moving the goal posts. I have explained why they're not equivalent, and have illustrated that with an example.
But here, I'll throw in another distinction for free, because I'm generous. Although it's really just another way of putting what I've already said:
What is in one's interests is what is beneficial to those interests, whereas what one likes is just what one likes, and need not be beneficial to those interests. [U]The former is necessarily, by definition, beneficial to those interests, whereas the latter is not.[/u]
one could easily cobble together a vid of alt-righters being dumb for example
So I don't think the criticism has to be on their terms, as saying 'no, I'm actually smarter than you.' The point is to take it away from a battle of intelligence, which is really not about intelligence anyway, but a surrogate for class, and ultimately to deny the premises on which they predicate their worldview, as a product that you're not interested in buying.
So, what are you suggesting? That the American public that elected him and with it the majority that the Republican party has in the House and Senate... are uneducated and misinformed?
That sadly seems to be my conclusion on the matter.
Is clickhole like The Onion? I was raised in a center-left household where that sort of humor (Onion, Funny Times, Daily Show) was what we grew up on, and while I think it has its place, there's a sense in which it can't be truly, gut-bustingly funny.
Here is a dose of the respect Clinton supporters have for women.
(I'll be honest, I didn't watch that vid because I can't stand the young turks and I don't need to watch it to know I won't like it.)
But the alt-right shitlord troll-memes aren't really that funny. They're 'edgy.' Who cares? They have shock value, and shock value is good, even necessary, to progress through your teenage years.You have to embrace it before you can authentically move beyond it. But if you still find shock-value shit deeply funny at 27 (my age) then something went horribly wrong. Yes, whoa, you're very edgy, mannn, wow, you make jokes about 9/11?? and Muslims?? & Jews too!!!
jeez, no one can hold you back!
whoa wait, feminists and SJWs too?
dammmn.
No, stoppp, you wouldn't dare, about blacks too? About MLK? mann soo good! no fucks given, lol, amirite?
How is "beneficial to interests" different from meeting one's preferences with respect to interests?
(And how are one's interests not just preferences?)
Also, aren't you conflating "best for one's interests" and "best interests"? And then within that, you're pretending that a preference for meeting interests isn't a preference.
& I also understand that the alt-right has grown out of that kind of IDGAF messageboard ethos.
But the ethos & sense of humor I could empathize with gets lost when ppl go hard-alt-right.
Because it gets less funny!
I believe that plenty of legitimately funny 4channers went hard-right. But I think they probably got less funny as a result of that in the same way other funny ppl got less funny when they started pulling hard for HRC
I used to think that the humor was an endless spiral, and that maybe there was a sort of ethical duty to remain committed to it, which precluded ever adopting a 'serious' ideology. The people who stick too hard to the alt-right have found their serious ideology, and so it can make the humor fade, because they won't suffer a joke to the thing that they now take seriously. I don't know if I feel that way anymore, and I think I would adopt an ideology if it was something worthwhile, even at the risk of not seeing the funny as clearly anymore.
Also, once something becomes mainstream, the population becomes composed of people who don't have the years of subtle in-group training baked into their experience. So when you see a 14 year old Canadian girl or whatever talk about how she's 'red pilled' and wants immigrants to leave it's not really anything but sad.
Yeah, this is where I'm at. I love the anarchic comedic spirit (I've mentioned him before but Donald Barthelme is my saint here and is far funnier (and more morally and politically serious) than any alt-righter who thinks he can transcend any category through sheer outrage (Nigger! Normie! blahhh)
(and, sure, saying 'anarchic comedic spirit' is already to lose it, but w/e)
At a certain point, you have to ask: Is a slightly more sophisticated version of a COD player calling everyone else a fag really where I want to stake my claim?
It might be. Some insults are clever because they cut so deep, toward subconscious inadequacies people have. There is no limit to how mad you can potentially make a complacent person.
With respect to Trump, here is the gist as I see it. There are roughly two sorts of people, who have different reactions to the following video:
One sort will becomes more sympathetic to Trump after seeing it, the other sort will be horrified. This was intended as a video critical of Trump – but it just doesn't work. Trump is funnier than the creator, and arranging why he is funny in artful sequence only emphasizes that.
You have to have some sense of humor to see Trump as worth a vote. People will respond and say that when it comes to their safety, etc. they can't afford to find things funny, because their lives are at risk. But then, I think this is grandstanding and crocodile tears. Because again, when complacent you lack a sense of humor.
I considered earlier today, that maybe all of the free publicity through criticism of Obama had a lot to do with his winning so well, and in this case may have had a lot to do with his winning.
And I agree with you, complacency kills a sense of humor. But not-being-complacent is necessary, not sufficient. You can be a radical or outside the mainstream and still be super fucking boring.
I'm very arrogant about my sense of humor. As arrogant as Trump is about other things, maybe. And the alt-right isn't all that funny. They're a little funny on a first pass. But they have one or two jokes and they beat them to death and then get serious about their real concerns.
Everyone knows a meme dies after a few cycles. But the alt-right will keep posting pepe the same way normies keep posting gene wilder looking smug or picard being bewildered.
I feel that this is an example of something on the verge of being too serious. But it's far more inventive than Pepe – although, to be fair, there was some amazingly creative Pepe stuff, especially around the time that Kek was first getting popular, and earlier in the poo-poo pee-pee and good boy points eras (look that stuff up if you want examples of the 'good' Pepe stuff).
That video is hilarious... but not because of Trump's politics or policy. It's funny because being right doesn't matter. He contradicts himself, speaks nonsense and doesn't say the right thing, but all of that has no bearing on anything. On he goes, no matter how ridiculous or outrageous. Nothing is held back to save face or follow somebody's rules. Comedy isn't made on politics, but, in a certain sense, an expression of power of being who you are.
I think you feel sympathy for the alt right (at least more than others) because they are the underdog, more so than because they're particularly funny in comparison to anyone else.
American Voters didn't do anything "resounding'. Clinton (seems to have) won the popular vote, and though she lost the Electoral College race, it was by 50 votes, not 200. She won a good share of what was needed, but close doesn't count, of course.
American voters were split down the middle. Trump didn't earn the mandate of a landslide and Clinton wasn't cast aside by a landslide.
Watching it, I thought it could work either as a sincere expression of white supremacy or a satire criticising it, which is probably a good sign. I think it's funny either way.
As a sincere love song between alt-righters, I think it works much better than you give it credit for. There's a level of disruption, between family, identity, culture and relationship to politics, which makes it much funnier and substantial than just re-purposing popular media. I think there is disruptive a story-- I was actually thinking "How nice for them. Their fascist white supremacy will be so beautiful" watching it.
I think it works as best as neither criticism nor sincere expression, but as just a kind of strange crossing of two realms that would never otherwise meet - disney, with all that carries, and alt right. (tho even to spell it out like that kinda ruins it) Maybe that's what you mean by a level of disruption.
"I was actually thinking "How nice for them. Their fascist white supremacy will be so beautiful" watching it."
Ha, yeah, I think that's why it works.
I disagree with this reading.
It's funny because it expresses the unspoken and unspeakable emotional undercurrents two powerful white ppl (say a news anchor(ess) and idk a senator) might feel, but would irl chalk up to something very different (just like a movie! a perfect romance! like a french novel!). lt's not funny bc it's about underdogs - it's because it presents that which is usually unspeakable due to repression and good manners , as spoken in naive, shame-free open disney-level musicals.
Nah, most rich successful white ppl are repressed as fuck. It's a psychological minefield, every day, of what's speakable and what's not.
Wealth I can agree on. Wealth works anywhere. But if you're really rich, there is a sense in which you can say whatever you want.
I'm not sure what you mean. I think by and large white people are in power, yeah, but there are important social/class things that come into play and make it impossible to talk it about it strictly as white/non-white thing.
What's the non-naive understanding of white people and power?
I think a non-naive understanding would be that white people have a unique relation with racial guilt and masochism that makes them self-hating and resentful of the idea of working toward their own interests, and that there are a host of words and ideologies that can be employed against them at any time not only by other white people but anyone non-white to enforce this. This is something that non-white people of any stripe simply do not have to deal with.
On the world stage, things get even more complicated -- white people there have a unique status, implicitly or explicitly, that they are the only large ethnic group not entitled to a homeland, IMO. This is one of the talking points of the alt-right, and I don't think it's crazy, I think it's quite plain. It's another fact what one is to make of it.
I know, but I think that's wrong. The significance is disruption, not in being the (political) underdog. (Political) underdogs make rote and unfunny statements all the time, no matter how shocking the might be to the elite or powerful. Simply offending and hurting the elite or powerful (or frequently, less powerful, since something like protection form hate speech is distinct from an individual power) is not enough to make something funny. Indeed, sometimes it is just a vile expression of power.
You are, I think, more interested in annoying, hurting or seeing proponents of doxa get a comeuppance than in what's funny.
This doesn't mean that the people we currently identify as "white" don't get to participate in their unique ethnicity, unlike everyone else. It just means that we stop treating people descended from a continent as belonging to one race, be it white, black or otherwise.
I think that's actually a super complicated question. Couldn't you flip this and say the taboo on racial slurs is an expression of white racial security? Don't need to put someone in their place, who knows their place, kinda thing. Imagine a subtly abusive husband who fucks with his wife in subtle ways but acts calm and in control while she launches insult after insult, and remains respectful especially when he's talking about her in public
I don't think it's as simple as the image, but it's also not as simple as whites under the heavy thumb of pc speech-policing.
Oh, I definitely agree, but I think we differ on why the unspeakable stuff in it is funny.
See... that's political, not comedy. Supposedly, there is this grave double standard in how racism is treated. How unjust you cry. What could be funnier than seeing those people ignorant of racism against white people ground into the dust?
No doubt, but that's to be expected here. "Comedy" is heavily tied into expressing political power. One laughs at the failure, stupidity, pain or inferiority of their opponents as rhetoric. You are (sometimes) laughing not because what you've seen is really funny, but because it hurts those who you disagree with. What could be better than taking down those ignorant students of Western hegemony?
Quoting csalisbury
Yes, and I would agree with that. I think that white people exert a feeling of superiority in thinking that they have transcended culture and have a duty to bring the other mud people, still tied down to base tribalist sentiment, to their level. Hence the self-deprecating white insistence that they 'have no culture,' which simultaneously harms and exalts white people, hence why they make a sport out of how much they hate other white people, etc.
Quoting csalisbury
Agreed. There is a tendency for white people, mostly liberal white people, to treat minorities as animals and pets of various sorts, and to show 'solidarity' with them in condescending ways, by showing how they can take an insult like an adult while a minority can't and must be protected (and 'can't help but violently protest' and so on). This is all common knowledge.
Quoting csalisbury
It isn't – but poor white people, for example, are actually under the thumb in significant ways, whereas wealthy and educated white people use the thumb to throw poorer white people under the bus for various ingratiation strategies. Yes, it's all very complicated.
It's not unjust. It's reality, and I'm commenting on it.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I think that comedy is deeper than that, but okay.
So do we consider Persians to be white? They're not European, but they don't identify as Arabs. What about Aborigines? Are they black? South Asians with very dark skin, what are they?
Which I never said. I stated that being white or black (or Asian, etc) is a social construction.
Your arguments seemed to suggest that people are mistaken for arguing racism only applies to white people. You have sympathy for the alt-right because, on some level, you think they are unjustly treated. Supposedly, we don't let them claim their homeland like any other ethnic group.
[quote=The Great Whatever]I think that comedy is deeper than that, but okay.[/quote]
A lot of the time (hopefully), it is. My point is that it's quite sometimes not. People laugh to assert hierarchy, to bask in a victory over an opponent. I'm saying that you seem to fall into this a lot-- where comedy is reduced to nothing more than upsetting the powerful.
Yes, but why lump them into one category called "white", "black" or "red"? The reason this happend is because of racism during the colonial era to justify the economics of slavery, and driving natives off their land.
I don't think it's just or unjust. Again, I think it's reality.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Ultimately I think that comedy is not for upsetting the powerful because it gives the powerful too much center – the humor is for the one laughing as much as the object of laughter. If that object is 'the powerful,' then the powerful are the powers that be in a deeper cosmic sense, the archons or metaphorical rulers of the universe, given that humor is fundamentally disruptive of rule. But this disruption is far deeper than politics.
Yes... if we are talking in terms of understanding and categorisation. That we put people of a certain body in a particular category is always our discourse. It's constructed in how we understand people. The presence of a body doesn't put anyone within a category.
You mean like how Northern Europeans look different than Southern Europeans? What about red head, freckled Irish people with their light skin? Are they more white than someone from Romania?
Yes, Europeans are different from each other, but they are more different from Africans.
This is seriously not hard to understand.
Particularly with the Neanderthal genes, but at any rate, the history of being in the white or black race is one of slavery and then deep discrimination, so it's something a bit more than just noticing that people descendended from different geographic locations tending to look different. Also, it includes a history of which Europeans groups got to be considered white, and which weren't, depending on the time period.
Alright, I don't know why the topic went this direction, but I have to go to bed. Night.
That's what I said.
What we wouldn't have, if we didn't talk, think or understand it, is the ethnic category. If everyone looked at a white person and saw someone belonging to the category of "black person," there would be no white ethnic group identity in our culture. There would be black bodies and white bodies, yes, but no-one would be thought of as having an ethnic identity of "white person."
There was no such thing as being "white" or being "black" before a certain time. There were various ethnic groups competing and sometimes allying with one another. They didn't consider themselves to be all one race.
And anyway, unless you are an albino, nobody actually has white skin. So it's a false categorization to begin with.
Postmodernism alert!
*ducks*
Well, some things are "socially constructed". Maybe there is a better way of saying it. How about, people have considered themselves and others to belong to varying groups over time, and being white is no exception to this. In the European past, it could have been Roman, or Spartan, or Scottish, or Jewish (which isn't always accepted as white).
So Romans considered various non-Roman groups to be barbarians. Jews called the non-Jewish Gentile. Various Germanic tribes would have had their own naming for the other. The point is that all of this made up by culture. Who is part of a group and who is an outsider, and how you think about that outsider, whether they are to be feared or conquered, or treated as savages.
Or consider the long history of ethnic conflicts in Palestine which is even smaller and littler. Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, Samaritans, Judeans, Israelites, etc. Twelve tribes of tiny Israel?
Here we see the motte and bailey technique of the postmodernist on display. Make provocative claims when skirmishing at first, such as "being white is a social construction," and when challenged, retreat back into safety by making an utterly banal and unchallengeable point. People have considered themselves and others to belong to varying groups over time? Gee whiz, you don't say! Next you'll be telling me that people have dressed differently over time! But see, that wouldn't prove that cotton, silk, or wool are "social constructions."
You can't get away with making a prima facie absurd claim like "being white is socially constructed" as if it were self-evident. The "better way of saying it," as you put it, is in fact not a way of saying it at all. It's to say something completely different. So pick one and stick to it.
The point is that people in Europe didn't consider themselves to be white before a certain point. They considered themselves to be in other categories, usually associated with their homeland, culture, language and religion.
What is the counter argument to this obvious observation? That Europeans were white before they considered themselves to be white? Based on what? Their lighter skin color compared to certain populations in other parts of the world?
Let's ask a different question. What is the usefulness in calling an entire continent of people "white" or "black" or whatever? What role does it serve?
Nonsense. Are you honestly going to tell me that ancient Europeans failed to notice their own skin tone? If not, then by "white" you mean something other than "white," in which case you ought to use different vocabulary so as to avoid equivocating.
You mean like "pink" or "tan" or even light brown? I'm sure people have always noticed differences. A red headed, freckled person who burns easily in the sun can look significantly different from someone else of the same ethnicity. So can a tall skinny person compared to someone stocky. So how do we go about grouping regarding difference? Do you think the Vikings considered themselves kin with Italians?
You're assuming that all Europeans would have agreed that they belong in some common group based on relatively lighter skin color than people from different geographic locations, despite all the regional differences amongst various European groups throughout history.
What would make a Spaniard or Italian more white than an Arab to a Northern or Eastern European? Is it because the Arabs have to cross a sea?
Yes. You're catching on.
Quoting Marchesk
Not much. It's just a very generalized descriptive fact. I'm with Morgan Freeman:
Quoting Marchesk
No, but they would have noticed that the Italians had a similar complexion to themselves, one noticeably lighter than their Moorish friends, for example.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/race/#HisConRac
Or how about this. Leopold II's letter to missionaries:
http://www.fafich.ufmg.br/~luarnaut/Letter%20Leopold%20II%20to%20Colonial%20Missionaries.pdf
Is that like abstract expressionism?
Is it like we're discussing a Jackson Pollock?
How deep does the humour run in the dribbles of paint on canvas?
I was shocked to see you use this word. Are you from that part of the world, or did you know someone from those parts?
(I come from there and even I would never use that phrase)
There was a Simpsons episode with Homer saying he was going to avoid his comeuppance. May have been when he became a food critic.
Maybe, the word travelled back over the pond, because folk over here thought it was one of their words.
For me, it's the McChicken. The best fast food sandwich.
I have explained this multiple times now. I don't know why it isn't getting through to you. Let's be honest, you already know the difference, and behind all of this posturing, you know that I'm right.
For the last time, one's preferences obviously don't have to be beneficial to one's interests.
Now, stop this, because it is beginning to look like trolling.
Quoting Terrapin Station
You must enjoy me repeating myself. Because they're different. Those words mean different things, and they can, and do in fact, refer to different things in some cases, which aren't difficult to discover, and which you yourself can discover from thinking about your own experience. If you tell me that you've never experienced anything you like which wasn't in your best interests, then frankly you are full of crap.
Quoting Terrapin Station
No.
So I'm just being dishonest to aggravate you or something in your view?
I suspect you of willful ignorance. You are clinging to your position, even if it means accepting falsehoods, which, perhaps deep down, you know to be falsehoods.
So now you're positing unconscious beliefs too?
What do you think the motivation for "willful ignorance" would be?
okay, I am likely done
for today
maybe
(Y)
Sales of Rosary Prayer Beads and Mala Prayer beads are flying off the shelf! I may not have a free moment away from my jewelry bench for the next four years!
And the backtracking begins. I guess that quote of Trump saying he'd lie his way into the White House was accurate.
So much for Crooked Clinton. It's Dishonest Donald.
Note: criticising the lying, not the reversal.
As for the 'no one is really white' thing, give me a break, that has to be disingenuous.
No, I haven't read either of those books (could've, should've, would've). Why do you ask? Did I inadvertently step on a sore toe?
(I do know something about who the two people are, and I have read bits and pieces about them.)
I've been reading that "white" as a racial term has a short history for a couple of decades now, and hadn't checked any references.
I did a quick (separate) search of "white" and "racial" in the OED (on-line) and found that "white" as we apply it to race does indeed have a relatively short history. ("White" describing a color of course goes back to Old English and further.) "Racial" has a shorter history.
Google Ngram charts words by the frequency of their appearance in texts which are part of their corpus of printed books (it's big). Here is a result.
Note that in 1800, the incidence of the two terms (black race and white race) was extremely low. The term "black race" was used for 200 years at about the same, fairly low rate, while the term "white race" was much higher and fluctuating.
Of course, just because Chaucer, Spencer, or Shakespeare didn't describe any characters as "white" doesn't mean there wasn't an appreciation of differences that we would call "racial" prior to the 19th century. In the eponymous play, Othello (1604) is described as “the Moor” (I.i.57), “the thick-lips” (I.i.66), “an old black ram” (I.i.88), and “a Barbary horse” (I.i.113)."
Making racial distinctions doesn't make sense where there is little regular inter-racial contact. Americans are predictably indifferent to the ethnic (dis)similarities of central African or Siberian peoples, because we have no regular contact with peoples from these areas bearing differences. In reverse, the residents of Central Africa or Siberia would likely have little awareness of differences between the Ojibwa and Navaho Indian peoples, or Incas and Aztecs.
Scientific classification probably had a role in highlighting racial differences and similarities.
I never said people weren't aware of ethnic differences. I said people considered themselves and others to belong to different groups over time, depending on the criteria. And being white is relatively recent. It's origin is the justification of colonialism and slavery. The idea of being white is the idea that you're skin color determines your status in society, and if your skin color is dark enough, you deserve to be a slave, or have less rights.
This is true, but I would add especially in the context of radical change. The radical change in Anglo-American culture was the rise of abolition, the end of the slave trade, and the events preceding (and following) the American Civil War.
The English ended their participation in slave trading in 1807. They didn't do this because it was unprofitable. The Anglo-American Abolition Movements began within the Quaker and Evangelical Christian groups on the grounds that slavery was un-Christian. A concern for civil and human equality followed later - quite a bit later.
"Whiteness" and "Blackness" wouldn't be so intense a concern in a settled, enforced system of slavery. Racial difference would become a hot issue once the settled enforced system of slavery was blown open and former slaves suddenly were presented as equals. Racial distinctions would now be critical in establishing a new social order.
I would guess that many Europeans--who hadn't previously thought a lot about racial and ethnic differences--suddenly became sensitive to these differences with the sudden arrival of waves of refugees. People having difficulty making accommodating too much too fast change aren't necessarily racists.
There was an interesting lecture from the BBC Reith Lectures series on the radio -- something like 3:00 in the morning in the US. Don't remember who was speaking, but he was pointing out how "white people" pride themselves on having "European heritage" and being inheritors of "Western Civilization", while actually knowing almost nothing about it.
If my suspicion of what you mean is correct (upper-class narcissists), no. Otherwise, I'm not really familiar with its history or cultural usage.
My usage was deliberate though. I thought its self-important, sneering glee at the pain and suffering of others was a fitting description of thinking shallow annoyance or offence of an opponent was hilarious.
We aren't doing that. The "evilness" of white people is a description of how social relations have been expressed in our societies more or less since colonialismand after. It's not white skin that's a problem. Nor is it white enthic identity. The issue is a social advantage white people have had for a period of time, a description of a social power and dominance the white enthic group has had over others.
This is why some people say "white people can't be subject to racism" in the West. Not because people of the white ethnic group cannot be discriminated against, but because the don't live is a society which defines their ethnic identity as a second class citizen.
People who say white people can't suffer racism are (rightly) concerned that suggestioning otherwise will lead to an equivocation of the treatment of white people with those of other ethnic groups, leading to an invisibility to the latter.
We actually saw this in your post earlier. You treated racism as if it was merely a question of being unable to take pride in one's identity, as if not being able to say: "White people are the greatest people" belonged in the same catergoy as the dispossession, slavery and social inequality that constitutes our society for many people if other enthic groups.
You are right that (white)Western liberal culture views people without identity. The "free" everyman who's distinctions don't matter is the defining idea of the classical liberalism our culture has grown out of.
Part of the post-modern critique is this is a myth. Since people have their own identity, distinctions matter. In terms of our understanding and categories, the might only be a social construction, but that doesn't mean they are not real.
Earlier you pointed out that racial distinction is of great importance to the post-modern critic. This is absolutely true. They know that just saying the distinction doesn't matter does not reflect how people are treated.
Contrary to the classical liberal narrative, the post-modernist is saying that distinctions always matter, for each individual is distinct. If someone is living is a society, they need a place as a distinct person. Just saying the are "free" isn't enough. Distinction matters and we have to be careful of how our understanding of it impacts on people-- thus, the dominate group doesn't get go around proclaiming itself as the greatest, for it implies the exclusion of others from value.
It seems to me (provincial that I am) that actual races do exist side by side with race-used-as-a-vehicle-to-suppress-those-groups-and-elevate-these-groups. Blacks, after all, are black because of their recent place (last 25k years) of origin, and whites are white for the same reason. Aboriginals have been separated from other groups long enough to take on some unique characteristics. NONE of the characteristics that different groups feature are bad. The features are just different. NONE of the groups are superior in significant ways. Each group has some metabolic features (on the level of detail more than anything else) that are unique to that group -- just as males and females have metabolic differences.
Personally, I like the existence of people who look consistently different, who have characteristic skin tones, differences in hair, and so on. I think we are more interesting as different than if we were all coffee-with-cream colored with tightly curled hair.
One of the confusions that occur that make race much more problematic than it would otherwise be is that people link particular cultures to race. Black/violent; white/smart; blacks easy going; whites uptight; asians/smart; Indians/drunk, and so on. Of course these cultural stereotypes are harmful, because most blacks aren't violent. Blacks, whites, asians, and indians are all represented similarly on a distribution of basic intelligence and a long list of other variables.
It IS the case that many blacks in America do poorly in academics, from the get-go. We have good reason to think this has nothing to do with basic intelligence and everything to do with more cultural factors like the impoverished language culture of poor people (in this case, blacks). Poor people living in a culture of impoverishment do not express themselves the same way that better off people living in
a cultures of sufficiency or advantage. Poor American Black children arrive in kindergarten having heard perhaps 20-30 million fewer words spoken by parents or caregivers, and have heard far more negative and command language than children from cultures of sufficiency or advantage. These deficits appear to be lifelong -- not readily remediated after the age of 7 or 8.
Because language is formed early and is difficult to change, some people have assumed that differences in school performance was genetic. It isn't, of course. It's cultural.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Various European groups did not colonize other peoples to prove that they were better than colored people. They colonized other people because it was economically, militarily, and politically advantageous to subjugate other peoples and extract their wealth from them.
Many of the elites that profited from a lot of the colonialism that occurred are still in place, still benefitting from their acts of exploitation, still exploiting fresh people. It is entirely possible for the rich, white, elite to discriminate against poor, white, people -- and to do so just as viciously as they would exploit colonialised brown people.
Exploitation, colonialism, subjugation, and so forth is primarily an economic process -- not a racist, sexist, white-run social operation.
No, it stems from the fact that people come from different places and look different ways based on where they come from. There would still be white, black, etc. people whether or not this were used to attribute superiority or inferiority.
Not quite. It views white people as without identity. Although the moderate right does evoke the 'colorblind' position.
It views everyone without identity. Everyone is invisible, which is how the myth functions. It doesn't matter if you are black, white, rich, poor, gay, straight, trans, etc., etc., any person is thought to be a free individual who can do anything. It is the "colourblind (and everything else too)" position. The are no issues or problems because everyone is considered a priori equal and the same to everyone else. An imagined freedom and equality, rather than a lived one.
No doubt this is not what people think in practice. They think about identity the time, including white identity ("European heritage" ), but it's not what registers in understanding of society.
For sure. Do you think that makes it any better? Are native americans meant to take solace that they were disposed of their lands, had their cultures destroyed and a genocide committed against because the powerful white Americans just want to get richer, rather than prove the superiority of the white race( though that happened too, as an excuse to exploit other ethnicities for resources)?
Let me put in terms you might understand. What do you think has a greater "racist" impact? A cabal sitting around talking about how they will "prove" white people are superior and plotting instances of deliberate hate crime to rally people to their cause? Or an economic vision of manifest destiny which sees entire cultures and its people wiped out? How can you say that the deliberate killing of someone for their ethnicity is "racist," but then turn around and say that the dispossession and genocide of entire ethnic groups is not "racist" just because it was done to make someone richer? I mean the latter is the former multiplied by the thousand if not million.
Racism isn't about intention. It's about effect.
But there wouldn't be white, black , etc racial categories. Those were invented during the colonial era. There is no scientific evidence for a "white" race, anymore than there is for a "red" or "yellow" one. In fact, it's absurd on the face of it.
Consider, who belongs to the "brown" race? Mexicans, Arabs, Indians? That's three very distinct groups from different geographical locations. Who all is "black"? Do you count Aborigenes? What color are Polynesians? Are Eskimos "redskins"? Are Siberians or Hindus "yellow"?
There are no such races. It's a complete myth.
What exactly do you think is absurd? That there are ethnic groups? I seriously don't know what you're trying to say here, nor how protesting that classifications of things can be made along different lines changes anything.
Quoting Marchesk
What are you even saying here? There is one race, but they vary along a ton of physical dimensions that has to do with where they come from. Okay, so how is that different from race? If you don't want to use the word 'race' for political reasons, whatever. But you're being incoherent right now. Would it make you feel more comfortable to say there are different ethnic groups? And that these vary in greater or lesser details roughly in correlation to their native homelands? But if you agree with that (and you would have to be delusional on an unbelievable scale not to), what exactly are you even arguing about?
A mystery regarding white people: if there's no such thing as them, how do they keep causing all the world's problems? How can everything be the fault of people who don't exist?
Or another riddle: if there are no white people, how is it possible for white people to hate themselves so much?
And now there is a republican majority in the house and senate.
The one thing that will probably happen is they will do both supply side and Keynesian economics at the same time.
They will cut taxes and increase government spending, Trump is already talking about infrastructure stimulus.
I wish republicans understood that doing both stimulus and tax cuts is what, in reality, bloats deficits.
You would think this should be obvious and of some concern to them considering how much they complain when democrats fail to fix their mistakes quickly enough.
Pick one or the other, but tax cuts and stimulus is wrong economics.
1) There are different groups of people who originated in different parts of the world.
2) These groups of people, due to breeding with those close to them, have differing physical features that are easily recognizable.
3) These groups are all different from each other, but they are more different from those who originated yet farther away from them.
4) One's belonging to one of these groups has serious implications for the sort of identity politics one can engage in, in the Western World.
I've never denied ethnicity. I've denied the concept of race based on skin color. The idea that an entire continent of people could be considered belonging to the same racial group, or that it's even meaningful to say that there are such racial groups, because their skin color is similar.
There part of many different groups, migrating in and out, fighting and conquering one another across an entire continent over thousands of years. You wouldn't claim that all Asians or Africans belong to a single racial group, would you?
If Europeans don't form a genetic group, how is it possible that genetic testing can trace your ancestry to its place of origin, including Europe?
Are you denying that people who originated from places closer on the globe have a greater genetic similarity to each other? If so, that's clearly absurd; but if not, I don't understand what you take yourself to be denying in distinguishing 'race' from 'ethnicity.'
Yes, by and large, European people have a common genetic ancestry in virtue of originating from the same continent. This does not mean that they are all the same, or that all Africans are the same, or anything like that.
1). They didn't originate there, unless it's sub-Saharan Africa, but okay, their ancestors lived there long enough to adapt.
2). To the extent it's passing genes on and not a common adaptation across multiple groups, sure. That said, do you believe that the entire continent interbred?
3). Does the science back this up? Are you sure that any given Scandinavia is more similar genetically to any Frenchman than a Korean?
4) The reason for identity politics is a reaction to the result of racial categorizations during Colonialism.
OK, I legitimately can't tell. Are you serious?
But you wouldn't say the same about Asia, right, considering that Hindus, Chinese, Siberians and natives of Paupa Guinea vary considerably? Just as you don't think of Arabs when mentioning blacks. So what makes Europe different? That it's too small to have large enough differences? That they're all closely enough related such that they can be lumped into one racial category? Because Portuguese and Ukrainians are so much alike?
And no I wouldn't say that about all Asians, because I never said there was a 'one ethnic group' or 'one race' per continent rule. It just so happens that a certain group of people were by and large established on a certain continent. That you would think that because there are other continents (the definition of 'continent' being arbitrary anyway) that have a larger ethnic diversity in them, whether because of size or whatever, this is somehow negated, this baffles me.
Also, it doesn't change the historical fact that Europeans didn't consider themselves belonging to a continent spanning racial category called white until rather recently (and there's always been a dispute over which ethnicities from Europe get to be called white).
I suspect not, at least in the sense you're thinking.
In terms of identity though, yes. Race and ethnicity are both categories or discourse, as opposed to the presence of either a cultural practice or a particular genome. We may say that, for example, that someone of Korean descent living in France has no less belonging to the category of Frenchman than either a Scandinavian or a Frenchman of European descent.
Genetics do not constitute our understanding of someone beginning to a particular category. It's just, to borrow from similar analysis on sex and gender, the body. The identity categories we use, they are our understanding, our sorting of people within our conceptual frameworks, no matter how many "factual" markers (e.g. skin color, genetics, genitals, chromosomes, etc.,etc.) we happen to use.
What does this even mean? Does it mean that we talk about them? Okay, yes we do. But that is a weird way of saying that.
Does it mean that ethnicity is literally somehow made out of words or constituted by discourse? Okay, it's obviously not. So why would you say it?
Yes, it does. Particular experiences, to be entirely accurate. Ethnic identity is only our thoughts and words. If people, for example, thought of black people as white people, then within our categories they would be "white."
Bodies remain what they are (e.g. white skin and black skin) obviously, but that runs on a different axis. It's a descriptive discourse of someone's bodily trait, which doesn't carry with it belonging to a particular discourse of identity. To say someone belongs within a category because of their skin (e.g. a white person has the identity of "white" and a black person has the identity of "black") is entirely a social construction, our moulding of the meaning of an individual within our community that is parasitic on states we have observed (and many then falsely proclaims that identity is defined by the existence of those bodily states).
It correlated with being of European descent, particularly from countries like England, Spain, France, Germany, etc. But what being white meant was being the group in power who gets to dominate the inferior people from other areas of the world.
They would be "white?" Well, they would be black ex hypothesi, as you just said. We could use the word "white" to mean what we now mean by "black," sure. But that wouldn't make black people white. This is a use-mention confusion.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Not at all – there are different groups of people, and one of the outward signs of this is a different superficial experience, e.g. in skin tone.
White people aren't white, and black people aren't black, if you want to get technical about it. So obviously we can use colors to denote something other than the actual skin pigment.
Missing the point. I didn't say to would make black people white (i.e. change the colour of their skin). Nor did I say that "white" meant "black." I mean, literally, that black people might be considered part of the same identity category as white people, a category of "white."-- an instance where skin colour doesn't matter to belonging to the category of "white" or where it is thought someone of black skin ought to belong to the same category as someone of "white skin."
[quote=The Great Whatever;]Not at all – there are different groups of people, and one of the outward signs of this is a different superficial experience, e.g. in skin tone.[/quote]
Not in terms of our understanding of others. Who belongs to a group depends on whether we categorise them as a part of it. We all have different bodies, yes, but that's not enough to define belonging to a different social identity. Differences might, for example, not be thought about by us, so we just think of everyone as "human" (as opposed to "male" or "female" or "black" or "white"). We need to group people before they register in this sense. It's our action, not a pre-existing fact defined by the differences between us.
Granted this seems to be what some people actually believe – but I'm just pointing out it's incoherent.
Not at all. Who belongs to a group depends on the qualities of the person and the qualities composing the group. We can change labels for groups, and categorize more or less broadly, and change which words we use to refer to which groups, or decide to focus on some groups to the exclusion of others as more salient or important for categorization, but that affects nothing about whether someone belongs to a particular group or not.
No... just the identity of "white" or "European heritage" (social identity category).
European descent (i.e. having ancestors who lived in Europe) is about the history of bodies and remains true.
There would be related groups of people from sub-Sarahan Africa, southern Asia, and Australia who had darker skin than everyone else. But they wouldn't be considered "black" in the sense of belonging to a racial category that is somehow inferior to groups of related lighter skinned people descended from elsewhere on the planet, particularly in Europe.
Yeah... that's the falsehood we are trying to get past here. Identity is not a constraint (e.g. tick these boxes and you count as X) but an expression (e.g. you are X if you express X). Who belongs to a group can change, it may expand or reduce, depending on who is understood to have that identity. All it takes is the right expression.
So by that you mean they are more closely related to one another and have darker skin? Do you think we would recognize an all-encompassing category based on skin pigment?
So in our accurate description of ethnic groups, do we consider Eskimos to be yellow or red?
But the point here is it doesn't. In the situation I was pointing out, "European heritage" or "white" is a social identity category. The one of the various European societies who came to dominate the globe in the last few centuries. It doesn't mean "my ancestors were European." It means: "I am of the ethic group which colonised the world between the 16th and 21st century."
[quote="The Great Whatever" ]In the case of ethnic identity? Clearly not. No amount of expression will make it so that your ancestors originated from somewhere other than from where they actually did.[/quote]
That's not ethic identity. It a description of where your ancestors lived. It's not subject to any sort of doubt here. The point is not that expression makes your ancestors come from somewhere else, it is that it defines how people are understood to belong, the social groups of a particular time and how they relate to others.
If all we cared about was noting that people descend from certain geographic locations, why not just use European, African, Indian, North American, etc?
Yes it does. It may also be that being of European descent puts you in a historically privileged class. That does not mean that this is the meaning of the word, or that white people were 'invented' in the last several hundred years.
For instance, if you say someone in America is white, you mean they're of European descent. You may connote that they are racist or horrible slavers or whatever, but that's not what the word means, and it can be used connotation-neutrally as well.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
That's what ethnic identity is.
Are you asking me why people use words to group things into certain categories?
I already know the reason, and it's not to identify the geography of one's ancestors.
The definitions of "white" and "black" Marchesk is using appear to be specifically related to New World slavery or S. African apartheid. And yea.. All sorts of dark skinned people would qualify as black. S. Africans identified the Chinese as black and the Japanese as white. Go figure.
On the other hand, as we climb into the 21st Century and note that the Ottoman Empire favored European slaves, we may say: "Those slaves were white". Anyone who has difficulty understanding what that means has a rigid outlook which probably causes perpetual confusion.
Of course the reason this is so stupid is that you could tell the difference, because well...
It was a social construct that having light skin meant one was from a superior racial category that rightfully gets to dominate as a result. Or are you just going to overlook that part of history?
You don't have to go to university to understand that racism, even if it's the subtle kind, is still an issue. But don't believe me, go ask any American minority what it means to be a minority compared to being white.
No, but the idea of being white as a racially superior category was.
The idea of whiteness is, not the pinkish skin pigment, or relative relatedness on the European continent.
Quoting Marchesk
Yes it is. There's literally nothing else to being white.
I'd be interested to know what you think isn't delusional, since it seems you think everyone is delusional about the issue.
In such a world, how would we view dark and light skin?
See how that works?
So you then the racial issues around slavery and Jim Crow laws in the past ceased being a problem shortly after the Civil Rights movement, or perhaps a decade ago or something?
It's the different things people would think about dark people that is the entire issue of racism.
That doesn't change the fact that black people were considered property, then were denied various rights and targeted by hate groups for a long time.
Clearly not.
People would, as you say think differently about dark people. They would not have the ethnic identity of "black" they do now. A different set of social relations and would apply to them. You've literally pointed out that the idea of being "dark" (i.e. the social significance of a dark person to society and other people)would-be different.
Are you white btw?
Absolutely. It's tied up in our culture and desire for superiority. The principles of knowledge, technology and domination which drove the Enlightenment and colonisation, in a sense, drive our concern for identity politics. We will be the ones who overcome, through our "civilised" culture and society, to make people's lives better. It's, in a sense, a desire of empire building.
I mean it is a bit of an accident of being the world power, in that it they who are usually concerned with the maintenance and development of power in society, but it's still the same sort of focus on building a nation greater than any other. We aren't, you know, content to sit back and live out century old traditions. The world is ours to know and improve (or so we think).
It's irrelevant to this particular discussion on whether "whiteness" is a relatively recent invention.
I agree except I think that we are in a post-enlightenment epistemology, since a true enlightenment spirit emphasizes the common intellectual faculty of all people, whereas this has given way to identity-based intellectual faculties split across race, gender, etc., without a common sphere of reason (or rather, reason as a universal notion is seen as 'too white' and 'too male').
It's really not a pretty world, in any sense. We can only hope for something new soon, where no one is ashamed of who they are and everyone is strong and spiritually productive and wonderful.
We are "post-enlightment" in the sense we worked out the Enlightenment was telling us a great big lie with regards to "common intellectual faculty"; it effectively meant "rich white male." A spirit blind to how power is express on and by individuals ("colourblindness," the free everyman of classical liberalism), where there is only the stagnate facts of the world to investigate (e.g. someone has white ancestors), rather than a conflux of interacting people who each define the lives of the other (e.g. a white identity which defines how a person belongs to a social context.
In the last two or so centuries, the enlightenment spirit ate itself. Reason and concern for knowledge turned to describing out society power relationships, where upon we found the "common sphere of reason" was not common at all-- the poor are missing (Marxism), people of other ethnic identities are missing (Racism), women are missing (sexism), queer people were missing (LGBTIQA+ discrimination), etc., etc.
In a sense it is not a pretty world, no longer is there the illusion of common freedom, but then when there was, the ugliness was just hidden.
I have to say, I think it is this illusion you covet. The "post-enlightment" doesn't demand anyone be ashamed who who they are per se, at least not unless they are doing something wrong (which is, you know, par for ethics). It demands we be honest about the impact of our actions on other people or how, that we recognise when we have destroyed others or taking away their power, rather than passing it off as "nature" or just giving savages what the deserve. I think it's this conflict, the awareness of ugliness and/or wrong done, which irks you. You'd rather just hide it away so people could get on with their lives rather than spending their days worrying about power relationships.
Once again, the lack of melanin in the skin of Europeans was a fact about them before there was a society to allegedly construct it. There's nothing to discuss here. TGW has so thoroughly interred your stupid claim into the ground that you now appear a sucker for punishment.
My argument was never about the range of melanin in Europeans (notice how Northern Europeans tend to have less than Southern). TGW decided to make it about that. Anyway, history says different about the racial categories of white and black.
But then postmodernists conveniently claim that simply being white is to be in the wrong, the very point of dispute here. This is have one's cake and eat it too, so don't talk about the Enlightenment eating itself. It doesn't propose any such monstrous relativism.
Oh? So stop equivocating, then.
What the word white refers to.
Quoting Marchesk
:-O
I have to wonder though, considering your past posting history on metaphysics. Do you believe anything is objectively real?
But I haven't suffered any loss.
I haven't really given hard thought to metaphysics in a while. I have Gnostic sympathies.
No, they don't. They describe horrors and wrongs which "white (the ethnic identity of the last few hundred years, as opposed to someone skin color)" people have enacted upon the world. To simply be "white" isn't to do anything wrong. Sure, it means to have racial advantage in the West, but that's not any sort of (un)ethical act a person performs.
I talk about the Enlightenment eating itself becasue post-modernism isn't really "relativistic." Rather it is concerned with the objectivity of our relationships as subjects. The same concerns: knowledge, reason, social improvement, individual freedom, which drove the Enlightenment also drive post-modernism-- it was born in realising the narrative of the liberal enlightenment (the free everyman individual) was not happening for many people.
If we are to value reasons and knowledge above all else, the Enlightenment was always going to dissolve into post-modernism because the universal is an inadequate description. People are always distinct. The "Enlightenment spirit," the universal story, cannot be maintained unless we abandon knowledge and reason when it comes to describing the individual. Without this ignorance of distinction, the world dissolves into an array of objective subjectivities.
So would have Eurasia, which relates to the point of arbitrary categorizations, although I think land masses are a bit less arbitrary than super ethnic groups.
Now I'm curious if all ethnic groups of European descent are actually more closely related than obviously different ones in Asia (to one another).
Good. I have no further issue with you on this point.
It's not about being of European descent or a light skin pigment. It's about the concepts of whiteness, blackness, yellowness, etc that we inherited from a very discriminatory period of time.
Sure if it's just a word game and has no social implications, like who gets favored treatment in a society, and who gets looked down on, based on skin color.
Will we still consider Europeans to be white? What if the aliens want to call themselves white, and insist that Europeans are really pinkish? Furthermore, since the true white aliens are technologically superior, and get to lord it over us, all sorts of notions are attached to being truly white, as opposed to less nice notions of being pinkish.
Is that not a social construction by the aliens, forced on us?
This is an extremely tendentious usage. One has to go out of one's way to think that more than a handful of your friends use "white" in that way.
When I say "I am white" I definitely do not denote the meaning ""I am of the ethic group which colonised the world between the 16th and 21st century."" I mean that my ancestors came from Britain. The ruling class of Britain colonized the world, not the peasants of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, or England, for Christ's sake. My ancestors were not ruling class, either -- not in Britain and not in the US.
It is true that some non-ruling class subjects of the various colonizing crowns of Europe served in their majesties' armed forces (willingly or not) and were sent hither and thither to back up the colonial forces. Most of them didn't have much choice in that service. For the most part, the shat upon in Britain were not a lot better off than the shat upon in Nigeria or India.
Your usage of the word white (and the meaning you load into it) is as lazy and stereotypical as you think racist language is.
After weeks of learning that this essentializing was not based upon the 'objective' search for truth (there is no such thing) but was instead entirely in the service of power, I told the teacher that it seemed like Mr. Said was doing precisely what he accused others of doing: essentializing Europeans as greedy, self-serving, deceitful and just plain evil.
His response to my naïve comment/inquiry, after months of telling us how identities were not grounded in reality but were 100% social constructs: 'Well, aren't they?'
I wasn't satisfied with his response but didn't press further on whether he felt identities were drawn from actual facts (or at least interpretations of facts) or were complete fictions guided by nothing more than power interests. Seemed like he wanted it both ways for some reason; complaining incessantly about the injustice of European hierarchies and domination while simultaneously perpetuating his own sort of inverted hierarchy with its own type of essentializing. Reminds me of Nietzsche's take on the successful Christian inversion of Greco-Roman values in the world of antiquity.
Anyhow apologies for that irrelevancy. I'm finding this discussion very interesting too and don't have a settled opinion on the matter.
I am Han Chinese
I am North African
I am Native American
I am European
I am South American
I am Arabian
I am Russian
I am Norwegian
I am East African
I am yellow, black, white, red, brown, beige...
I am -- any number of geographically located adjectives -- they generally are identifying as something that is good in their experience.
We derive our meaning as persons from many layers of experience, including religion, language, race, ethnicity, diet, altitude (sea side to alpine), landscape, education, music, and a few dozen other factors. If people want to claim that one of their layers is race, I think they are entitled to that, and they are entitled to think positively about it.
I would not appreciate you, WOD, or anybody else telling me that my religion, diet, clothing (or lack thereof), sports, or anything else -- including race and ethnicity -- were actually negative factors that I should apologize for or remain silent about. I would be inclined to invite you to go fuck yourself in some politically incorrect way.
Some people say "I am Black and Proud" because they are or wish to be. Their ancestors may have been a slave, they may be the progeny of a white slave owner somewhere along the line. They may have been a poor sharecropper; they may have been in jail; they may have been screwed by every guy in the cell block; they may be illiterate; but they now claim Proud Black Man because that is how they think of themselves, and perhaps that pride came at a high price. Who are you to say "Well, that's not what black means!"
No, it doesn't.
Now if people want to make the case that all those negative connotations around race disappeared in the recent past, so that being white or black or red is no longer an issue, then go for it. And here I mean on a societal level, not whether a given individual is racist, or delusional about race.
So in that context, it is the idea of being white, black, etc. at a societal level, stemming from several centuries ago, that is being challenged as a negative social construct.
I tend to view things more in terms of class and culture, and the many assumptions that are made regarding these things. Perhaps that's just my 'white privilege' speaking, and I'm not being facetious in suggesting that possibility.
Black people get stopped by police more often because they (on average) commit far more crime than other races. They don't get stopped because there's some racial conspiracy involving black hating cops inconveniencing people with needless traffic stops.
"Black people are more likely to receive bad service at a restaurant than other races because they are black"
Even if it were true that black people are more likely to receive bad service, it's probably for a different reason than waiters not liking black people due to their race and 'punishing' them with bad service. Blacks are notorious among waiters for being bad tippers, for example.
I really don't buy this ''white privilege systemic racism microagression invisible toolkit'' bullshit. Universities are cancer.
It's just a different usage than a lot of people would use when referring to themselves of describing the skin colour of their ancestors. I'm not talking about that specific usage of "white."
You might use that just as a description of your skin colour rather than attempting to claim a history and superiority of the "white" identity, but that doesn't make any difference to my argument.
I'm talking about the expression of "white" identity as a dominating culture of the few hundred years, a culture we are a part of regardless of how we might otherwise use "white" as a description of our ancestors skin colour. It's neither lazy nor stereotypical. Just a description of a identity category expressed within our society and the West in the (relatively) recent history.
This is where the usage of "white" that I'm talking about frequently becomes muddled with the description of ancestors. Various aspects of religion, language, race, ethnicity, diet, altitude (sea side to alpine), landscape, education, music and the dozens of other factors become bound up with thinking about our ancestors. People don't just think of them being fine for their skin colour, but that all their ideas, actions, etc., etc. were fantastic. They refuse to admit their ancestors did harm to some people.
Since people treat identity "essentially," they can't make the distinction between having skin colour and worth of action, idea or tradition. You won't, for example, admit the economically driven manifest density of the American colonisation particularly racist and unethical action because you think it reflects badly on you. It as if, by having white skin, you were the one who committed the genocide and are in the wrong.
Do I need to point how nonsensical that line of thought is? Your identity is not your ancestors. Even if they belong to the same "ethnic group (whether spoken by you or someone else)," you are not the one who committed the acts in question. Your identity as someone who has white skin not theirs. To point out their failings, including those involving "white identity," is not to say that you fail in the same way.
No doubt you might to appreciate people talking about horrible things ancestors have done and their relationship to the culture you are connected to, but that is sort of beside the point. We don't sit back and let the rich heir say that his society's tradition of Capitalism never harmed anyone, just so they can think their ancestors have a "perfection" which they inherent. It's no different for any other issue (e.g. racism, sexism, gay rights, trans rights, etc.,etc.). We don't get to ignore the harm which has been caused to people becasue we don't like to look at it.
I don't. If I was using "black" to refer to the identity which was socially oppressed, it would be a different usage. One that was describing a social relationship, rather than an individual's expression of worth. Their usage of "black" means what it does just fine.
Well, he's sort of right to say that. The point of these social analysis is they are descriptive of a social relations between people. Does the West greedily exploit other countries? Absolutely, sometimes more, sometimes less (and perhaps sometimes they managed to avoid it). In this respect, they are, in a sense "evil" and self-serving. It's a descriptive fact of behaviour. Did the West treat other cultures equal, give a fair price in trade, respect the rights of individuals in other cultures? Not in the many situations we are talking about. One cannot accurately describe what has happened without mentioning this exploitation-- it's in a sense "essential," the logical expression of the part of the world we are talking about.
It's not essential to any identity though. Europeans aren't destined to always exploit. To have a European identity doesn't somehow mean your destiny is to exploit someone else. The exploitation identified is only the acts of some Europeans-- their behaviour towards other people and their understanding of themselves in relation to others. The only Europeans who "must be" "self-serving and evil" are those who have acted that way.
Identities are both. They are all socially constructed (a discourse we use), but they are also facts (a way people are understood and how this relates to others and the world around them).
The Aztecs conquered surrounding tribes before the Spaniards set foot in the New World. Ditto for the Incas. The Iroquois fought the Huron. The Lakota fought the Comanche. The Arabs conquered many lands and peoples during the rapid spread of Islam - including some in Europe - and before that fought amongst themselves until one group became dominant. The Ottomans did the same at a later stage, also spreading into Europe and subjecting the population to their interests. The Chinese fought amongst themselves until finally being consolidated by the strongest contending power, and then were conquered by the Mongols and later by the Manchus. The Japanese sought to expand into China and other parts of southeast Asia. The Persians attempted to subject the Greeks (amongst others). I'm not too familiar with sub-Saharan African history, but in modern times we've seen a large amount of intertribal warfare. The list goes on and on.
So it would be something like Nietzsche's understanding that what is being attributed strictly to Europeans may be an essential fact of life more generally - life as 'essentially' appropriation, exploitation, excretion, aggression, etc. - rather than a particular feature of any one region or race or ethnicity. I would stop short of his view, as I understand it, that IF this behavior is congruent with life as honestly assessed (instead of the way we'd like it to be), then it should be seen as 'good', or, at the very least, 'beyond good and evil'. I have my reasons for disagreeing with his tacit metaphysics and perspective, but that may be a topic better handled at another time.
I am, however, very much open to the idea that there's something peculiar about the modern European drive to dominate and oppress. It's a topic that intrigues me a great deal in fact and I'm curious to hear your opinion on the matter.
As far as I understand it, the actual electoral college votes around December 13th or something. The popular vote of Nov 8th determines electoral college votes based on the assumption that the electors will carry out the will of their state based on only a pledge.
The vote is anonymous for at least some states, and while some states have laws designed to circumvent the possibility of a faithless elector, this can in fact happen and in theory could change the results of an election...
So I'm wondering... What are the chances of the "protesting" that is going on right now challenging the faith of enough electors? Wouldn't that beat all?
It would have to be a hell of a lot more protest for this to have any chance. But let's say the electors could be motivated to vote Hillary in instead. How do you suppose the Trump supports would respond to that? What would the Republican Party do? What of all the red states? How would their governments respond?
Their would no longer be any smooth transition of power, of that I can guarantee you. There's a reason why the losing party is gracious in defeat and talks of working together, even if that doesn't actually happen. There's a reason why none of the Democratic leaders are joining in the protests, or encouraging them, or asking the electors to vote other than who their state chose.
So let's say the electoral college does this, and the country doesn't go down in flames. What happens the next presidential election? Now a precedent has been set. The electors can defy the states and vote in someone else. How will people feel about voting then?
I don't know. I would probably feel angry personally if I was American, as if hoodwinked, but some people would be happy surely. It could lead to some crazy shit, for better or for worse.
Quoting Marchesk
Yea I do get that, but I would not put it beyond either party to try and make a move if enough unrest was there to help it fly.
Quoting Marchesk
Well the electors would be committing party suicide I reckon. I'm not exactly sure where they all come from but I do know that they are in part chosen for their loyalty and reliability in voting for who they're told to vote for; their career as an elector would be over for certain being replaced by new electors. A new degree of precedent would be there for sure, but to be honest it could also lead to some serious reform down the road (the electoral college is certainly a peculiar beast to say the least).
Since the fall of Sanders I've been morbidly hoping for Trump to win as a kind of last ditch way of throwing a spanner into works of the current political establishment in hopes of somehow enabling electoral and other forms of political reform. Now that he's elected I find myself speculating about how such reform could come about.
One way would be for Trump to get impeached in a year or two. The willingness might be there by then, and conceivably congress could try to take action against any executive orders contravening or obfuscating their role in the political process. If pence then takes over he would pretty much be in janitor mode (congress having flexed it's arm) and the following election would be approached with such apprehension and resentment that serious reform or even independent reform candidates would have more of a shot than ever before. If Trump were to be usurped via faithless electors though, admittedly I could not even guess at what the short or long term ramifications might be. I know I would have even less faith in the system that I do now... I still like to wonder what else could be changed as a result...
A constitutional change to the election process. The President is elected by popular vote. Then one needn't worry about faithless electors as there won't be an electoral college.
Notice that he did not frame the debate in terms of how white people have historically been seen, or something like that. That would have made what he said true rather than false, but it would have been totally uninteresting from the perspective of what he was trying to claim, which was that being white was itself a social construct, and this is why he didn't say it.
I think the alt-right is another example of how the relativism of their worldview comes back around to bite them in the ass. You can't enthrone victimhood and identity politics and not expect white men to start playing the game at some point. And because of the postmodernist's commitment to cultural, moral, and epistemological relativism, there's not a damn thing they can do about it; except, of course, to contradict themselves by making the essentializing claim that white men can't be victims, which they often do. Rational consistency does not matter to these people.
Because the Clinton campaign and the rules of the Democratic Party (like the use of super delegates) prevented him from winning.
May I join you in a howl of lamentation that Sanders is NOT the President-elect?
He's still Senator and has two years left. He's 75; he might be willing to run again as Senator -- I don't think 79 year olds make good presidents because the job is so demanding. The Senate is important but it's demands are much less grueling for it's members.
My guess is that he will not run for President again.
Another "Bernie Sanders" is probably not on the assembly line. His history isn't solitary and unique, but there are a limited number of people who would be like him. That said, he wasn't the last energetic, clear-headed progressive in the country. There are probably a couple of hundred idealistic clear-headed ambitious very progressive people who could run for President on the Democratic ticket. (No, I do not have a list.) A few of them might have a chance to win.
The problem is keeping out the ambitious, energetic, opportunistic pragmatists who would, if elected, deliver more of the same. The two Parties are always prepared to deliver more of the same. Democrats and Republicans institutionally embody "more of the same".
The kind of sweeping political changes that could call forth high-quality leftist-progressive politicians might be constructed in the next 4 years. It depends on how intense the reaction to Trump is, and how soon it jells into an effective movement. Demonstrations of the sort we have had for the last 2 or 3 days are a good start, but that would have to turn into an mass organized campaign within a few months if it were to have a political chance in the next biannual and quadrennial election. If it's BS as usual for the next three years, and then somebody pops out of the woodwork in 2020 to run on a reform platform, nothing much will change.
:(
What we have is not a relativism biting anyone in the arse, but an ideology reacting in an attempt to avoid it's subjugation and destruction. The alt right wants to oppress women in ways the feminists rightly argue are objectivity immoral.
Men have always played the game, proclaimed and thought themselves superior. The alt right rhetoric about women can be found all over commentary about women's nature and place prior to the rise of feminism. It's not new.
Calling someone black who's 95% european and 5% african - this goes way beyond simple description doesn't it?
So when you say "[white] as is actually used it means people of European descent," this certainly hasn't been exactly true in the past (and really still isn't, the one-drop thing still operates on a subconscious level and you can see it everywhere) ). People primarily of european descent were/are often still considered black first.
Again, this isn't necessarily an arcane or archaic understanding of whiteness - just look at how people agree on the race of celebrities of mixed descent. If there's any ambiguity, people tend to err on the side of black (or 'foreign' or something.)
Two, I agree that there's a notion of white as the absence of ethnicity rather than an ethnicity, which plays into a host of complicated mythologies surrounding white exceptionalism on both sides – that you can't be racist against whites, that there is a such thing as 'people of color' (white not being a color, but the absence of color, in this mythology), that white people have 'no culture,' that to be white is to be a colonizer, that cultural appropriation can only flow from whites to other people, that white people are the only ones with no right to a homeland, that there are no 'indigenous' white people anywhere in the world, that Nat Geo feels that showing white breasts is for some reason less okay than showing non-white breasts (white people having transcended animality or physicality that comes with gross ethnic ties), that white people are not 'allowed' to get angry or identitarian in quite the same way as non-white people, because they are expected to be adult and above that, white virtue including self-abasement and lack of in-group loyalty, and whiteness as a moral/spiritual/social and not physical category, primarily focused on evil in a narrative of crime and redemption.
All of this is out there, and all of it is nonsense, but I think it's mostly liberals that play this sort of stuff up, and it comes out of academia, not the way people organically think. Liberalism is not the way people naturally think, and requires politically-charged educational institutions to keep it in place. On the conservative side, the notion that being mixed spoils your blood, this is just obviously not a notion particular to being white. Obama was half white, and for political reasons that had to be suppressed in the popular imagination. But in the hood, well, you tell me how black he could have stayed.
Well, it's certainly liberals who elaborate whiteness in the ways you point out. But I think that same academic bubble you decry may, despite your best intents, may be operative in how you're approaching and thinking about this. None of this stuff is born in academia, it's just a foreseeable articulation of something already brewing from beneath.
Like, I have academic interests and skew liberal, but that's not the world I live in. I spend half of my work hours talking to tow truck drivers. People do organically think this way. That's what I was getting at with the none-too-academic past-time of deciding the ethnicity of a celebrity. It's a good litmus test for the way people spontaneously understand race. Maybe it's not 95-5, but you can bet 66-33 will score 'black' for white people watching tv. And, I think, many black people as well.
Yes, but that's the point. If Obama is black as America's president, yet white as just another guy in the hood, then things are very complicated here - it's not as simple as european vs african descent (though obviously it's tightly woven with real genotypic & phenotypic differences.)
Obama as a black president is a media creation, and I'm skeptical about that as a litmus test because the media can claim whatever it wants with virtually no basis in fact – they could have called him Asian on grounds he was from Hawaii, if that was what the narrative needed. So that doesn't speak to me about racial attitudes so much as media virtual reality.
My point was just that, the pop view of ethnicity sees mixed people as, well, mixed. And it's a universal tendency among people to favor their ethnic in-group and to dislike mixing with others. If it were true that whiteness had a special role here, then it would make no sense for half white-black and half asian-white kids to feel an identity crisis on either side, which they often do. They can feel between worlds, not firmly of the non-white one.
Quoting csalisbury
Do you think that black people disavow mixed white-black children as non-black?
Quoting csalisbury
I think the self-reproach is caluclated and manufactured in academic institutions. Not to say academic institutions aren't themselves real, but they like the media exist in a kind of hyper- or virtual reality, and you have to specifically indoctrinate young white people to be self-effacing, which is what such institutions do. In other words, it's a real phenomenon, and organic in the sense that all real things are organic, but it has no natural inertia behind it. If you destroyed the institutions, you would destroy the sentiment, whereas destroying the more grounded ethnic sentiments I've alluded to would require destroying far deeper (maybe even biological) institutions. Which, to be fair, seems to be part of what constitutes leftism as an ideology independent of any particular political position: the upheaval of older, more grounded institutions by newer, less grounded ones in order to impose a priori reorderings of the universe according to rationalistically determined lines of the way things ought to be.
stopped watching lol
First, the idea that racial attitudes can be neatly separated from media virtual reality doesn't make sense to me. Second, I was introduced to Obama by a political nerd long before his campaign and I immediately saw his picture and thought of him as black. Maybe I'm not representative. Maybe other white people would have seen him as asian. But I doubt it. What are your intuitions here?
I agree, and admitted as much in my first post on the 'one-drop' thing. That's why those in power tend to install their own ethnicity as an absolute and create a 'one-drop' rule. This is the social-construct piece. It takes a an actual irl set of physical characteristics and makes of them this metaphysical and pure center, any deviation from which immediately casts you outside the center. I don't think this is a uniquely european thing. But in America History, white people have tended to have the power.
I honestly don't know. I live in Maine and don't have much irl experience with this. My 'many black people as well' comment is based entirely on things I've read (You'll love this - one main source is Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye). And I may be entirely wrong.
Certainly white people spontaneously, reflexively view mixed white-black children as black.
I'm assuming, based on your comment about Obama in the hood that you think it cuts both ways?
Yes, and no? It's certainly manufactured there, but no one coldly, rationally built the blueprint. I think it's probably more an emergent phenomenon. It comes from somewhere.
He looks both white and black to me. It shows in his accent and mannerisms as well. He can affect both white and black English, and he affects either depending on the audience he's talking to, very naturally, suggesting native competence with both dialects. He can never go into full AAVE because that's just not allowed, but he does slip in some 'ain't nobody's' when talking to a majority black audience, and drawls his vowels appropriately.
Worth watching:
(Note the preacher's use of the word 'negro' as well)
Quoting csalisbury
OK, then we're in agreement. Desire for racial purity and mythology situating one's own ethnic group at the metaphysical center of everything are way older than history, history is a wee baby by comparison.
Quoting csalisbury
I don't really either, because I think southern California where I grew up is desensitized to certain kinds of ethnic admixture, especially white-Mexican. So all I can go off of is what people say online, and I've seen some Eurasian and white-black people report these sorts of things, and I have no reason to disbelieve them.
More recently I've lived for a couple years in a black neighborhood and then a Hispanic one in Chicago, and people generally seem to be more racist and aware of racial divides, though I'm not sure how it affects mixed people.
Quoting csalisbury
I disagree that it's not done rationally. Maybe not coldly, because I think emotions – even hysteria – are mixed in. But curricula are not quite the same as spontaneous cultural lore. And part of keeping it in place is actively suppressing people's natural repulsed reaction to it.
My wake-up moment with the whole classic self-flagellating white guilt thing was William T Vollman's Argall. It's the Pocahontas story told by an author who has no clear sympathies and seems to have read every source there is to read (it's a novel, but the book is littered with quotes from all sorts of contemporary texts, and the authorial voice is constantly changing.)
In it, both sides are violent and self-serving and dazed by their own myths, sometimes ( tho rarely ) noble, and both are consumed by in-fighting, often using the interracial conflict as leverage for their own intramural grabs for power.
To Vollman, the actions of the Europeans were neither noble nor deeply evil (well, there is a bit of cosmic pessimism to the book, but that's a broader evil.) They just had better technology, is all.
But the thing is the book just seemed super fucking respectful. To both sides. Like felt respectful. You can usually feel the bullshit, but I got none of that.
Could you briefly explain what you mean by "liberalism"? I'm putting you on the spot, but not uncharitably. You said "adulthood" and "liberalism" aren't compatible. How so? Why?
(A lot of people dislike liberals: radical leftists, conservatives, people who don't know what else to accuse somebody of being, and so on.
I see the basic impetus behind leftism roughly as a kind of hyper-rationalism. The leftist has an a priori idea of how the world ought to be, and is outraged that it is not that way. The leftist proposes that the world ought to be changed to be that way, preferably as swiftly and with as little compromise as possible. So leftism is a radicalism in that, insofar as the world is imperfect, it seeks to perfect it, and since it cannot be perfected, it will perpetually be calling for immediate radical change and the dismantling of deep institutions, in favor of new institutions with no historical roots that better match reality as it ought to be.
This means that leftism fundamentally privileges representation over reality in a certain systematic way. I read this cheesy fantasy story that had a great line, where the keeper of the observatory told a visitor that the model of the universe was not perfectly representative of the universe, and when the guest asked, 'so it is imperfect?' the observatory keeper responded 'the universe is imperfect. One day it will be remedied, to fit the observatory.' This is essentially what I see as the guiding impetus of leftism. It is representations that determine reality rather than vice-versa. In this it is fundamentally rationalist in the sense that it believes humanity imposes itself on the world, rather than the world imposing itself on humanity, which is the empiricist bent. The world is as people make it to be, and conforms, and will conform, to the categories constructed for it and placed upon it. This is of course the deep metaphysical source of social constructionism in its various forms, and of the perpetual leftist call to radical political action and revision.
Wherever the leftist sees something that isn't perfect, where the empiricst of conservative impulse is to change oneself to match the world, the leftist impulse is to change the world to match oneself. Rather than meeting a pre-existent standard, like the conservative, the leftist protests that the standard is wrong, and ought to be place elsewhere. Hence the leftist generally does not seek to be beautiful, but to redefine the ugly as beautiful (and even to problematize and hate beauty if it proves too recalcitrant), because he believes, at bottom, that there is no substance to the world other than what he places on it (notice that nihilism of some sort is considered self-apparent to many leftists, or more softly the belief that 'the world has the meaning you give to it'), and so there is a kind of delusion or fantasy of power and control, reflected in the desire for central planning in government and statism generally. This further leads to a conflation between intentions and ends: the leftist thinks that because all reality is malleable to representations, what one needs to do in order to achieve some effect is simply to intend to change the world in a certain way and marshal enough money or power to do so. Hence why the leftist believes that if something is bad, the best thing to do is illegalize it, and so on. There is a kind of naive believe that intentions generate realities. This, in my opinion, is why leftism is grounded on a deep denial of reality, not just as an after-effect (all of us deny unpleasant truths), but as a matter of principle. There is a sense in which the leftist believes that he ultimately cannot be wrong, and where the world bumps against him, the world must move. It also may in turn mean that there are certain things that, while true, cannot or should not be believed, because that would cause one to represent reality in an evil way, making one evil, and so unpleasant truths have systematic reasons to be denied or at least suspended in various forms of doublethink.
This is the reason that the leftist critiques tertiary social phenomena in the media, because they think the media has the power to control thought and behavior rather than vice-versa, and why they put so much emphasis on 'representation' in media and how the media can be used as a tool to change the way people think. This is also why it is utterly obsessed with policing language – it thinks, in a way, you can speak truths into being. Leftism is a top-down ideology, while empiricism and conservatism are, if you like, bottom-up in believing that there are organic features of reality that naturally arise and that one has to accept and conform to if one wants to live. The leftist is in deep denial about the way representations interact with the world, and holds out a secret hope that he can control these representations, and so control all of reality. But this will never work, and so the moral hysteria surrounding trying to perpetually doctor these representations is ongoing and perpetually radical / destructive. Leftism in a way saps adulthood, which is why it makes sense for a university to provide Play-Doh to upset leftist students to calm them after a troubling experience, while doing such a thing is confusing or absurd for conservative students.
All of these, I believe, are features of childhood. The confusion of representation and reality (lack of object permanence), the belief in the malleability of the world to one's desires, the refusal to face unpleasant truths, the insistence that everything ultimately be molded to one's wishes. This creates a desire for childlike narratives and a liking for comic books, superheroes, and so on, along with simplistic moral axes of oppressor-oppressed that create a sort of identity-based template for knowing who is in the wrong when, to emphatically and uncompromisingly support the side that is being hurt by the ones in the wrong. This in turn leads to the basic oppressor/oppressed distinction, which has no fundamental way of being questioned, but only multiplied and complicated by infinitely expanding axes of oppression based on increasingly minutely defined representational categories. And the desire to use this distinction for political gain in enforcing the privilege of one's own representation (and hence reality, since representations determine reality) leads to a weaponization of the notion of oppression, and the glorification of victimhood, weakness, emotional instability, infantilization, and so on. It also leads to the co-opting of natural human emotions, such as grief and anger, into deliberately evoked stratagems employed for specific political reforms. All of this is an endless, destructive spiral that can never be satisfied (since reality will always defeat the representations, while the leftist insists on the opposite), and makes everyone miserable insofar as nothing works insofar as it systematically denies reality.
But this is the behavior of a child – the first thing a child learns to do with its emotions is to artificially invoke them for instant gain, to make its desires a reality. Along with resentment and strategies for revenge against reality when one's desires aren't fulfilled.
––––
OK, scattershot, but that about covers it.
This I agree with entirely, buut....
I don't agree with this. I think both conservatives and liberals can take up the comic-book vision, and I think both conservatives and liberals can rise above it. This actually seems self-apparent to me, and I'd question how seriously you think that manichean good v evil narratives are more characteristic of liberal thought.
And then the resigned wisdom of the realistic, pessimistic conservative can very easily become the twisted humanism of the plantation owner who wishes the world wasn't structured like this, but that's how it is, and always has been, and there have always been slaves and always will be, so the best one can do is make slavery as humane as possible. A kind of Ecclesiastes argument.
Edit: posted this as you were posting your response to BC which may or may not have rendered this post moot. Reading it now.
Haven't read the book so I can neither praise nor criticize it. But perhaps your source of knowledge about self-flagellating white guilt should come from experience and first hand observation rather than from Vollman's (or anybody else's) book.
In your life experiences, do you find white people who flagellate themselves about their white guilt? Have you witnessed ordinary white people engaging in behavior toward blacks, asians -- whoever -- that would merit self-flagellation?
Quoting csalisbury
Maine you say. I grew up in a rural 99.9% white county in Minnesota. I knew 1 black person by the time I graduated from high school, and he was from Uganda (exchange student). There weren't many blacks at the state college I graduated from, either. In 1968-69 I spent two years living and working in the black community of Boston. Shock immersion moving from Winona, MN to Roxbury, MA. I found that the black people I lived and worked among were not different than the white people I had grown up with. Oh sure, different food, different accent. Perhaps I was too stupid and naive to notice actual differences, but over the 40 years since then as I have worked with other black people, had black and white lovers, and so on, I haven't found significant cultural differences related to race.
Biased? Sure: my bias is that people are pretty much all alike. (in a 99.9% NW European descendent rural community, they would be.) Yes, trivial differences, especially comparing one individual to another. In the mass, no. The same things make people tick. Love, sex, desires, wishes, fears, the importance of their parents, and so on. People all seem nourished by the same thing: good work, enough income, decent environment, social connections, rich cultural life, all that. And people are starved by the same thing: bad jobs, poverty, crappy surroundings, isolation, impoverished cultural life, and so on.
The older I get, the more suspicious I am of other people's writings, whether it's books, NYT columnists, New Yorker authors, leftish magazine writers, etc. It isn't that I'm getting anti-intellectual in my old age, it's just that so many writers seem wrapped up in a package of such very narrow and specific ideas. They are tendentious, pretentious, etc.
I find that books published quite a few years ago (like 40 or more) have better balance and reflect a clearer understanding. It isn't that people thought better 40 years ago; it's just that if the book survived, it was probably pretty good to start with. Though a current book that I think is quite good is Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States (it's a good review for a lot of history that I have forgotten if I ever knew). White Trash: The 400 year Untold History of Class in America is good too.
Isn't this almost tautologically false? The conservative, by definition, does not change. After all, the world doesn't change - the sun rises and the sun sets. But while he doesn't believe anything essential changes, he does concede that the world is in flux. So he reacts, meeting this or that irruption with force, in order to restore things to the way they were. He may not try to change the world to serve the observatory, but he's endlessly vigilant against the weeds that threaten his well-manicured garden. The conservative changes, a bit, but he changes to stay the same.
But what does the conservative do about stuff he believes is bad? He defends the laws already in place. Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. A resigned, even ironic, acceptance. But still acceptance.
Do you consider strict guidelines about how one may or may not depict God leftist by virtue of their focus on representation?
You said a lot of interesting things, some of which I would agree with or ring more or less true, but this part is troubling. Institutions do change over time, and the results on society can be large. If one were to take your critique of liberalism fully, then the various movements for equal rights in the US and elsewhere would be seen as a waste of time. But the result of those movements was more rights granted to those lacking and changes to various institutions, sooner or later.
A criticism of conservative views toward deep institutions is that it does not admit to progress. It doesn't allow for the possibility that old institutions can be flawed in ways that could be amended. It doesn't allow for the possibility that things may have been different prior to the setting up of such institutions, and they can be different after.
As if deep institutions reflect a kind of permanent social structure which can only be made worse by trying to change it. I don't think humans are like that. Human organizations vary a lot over time and place. Humans are adaptable, and our values vary. So things can be changed. Things have changed. Massively.
Compare the modern world in Europe today to what it was 500 years ago. It's night and day different.
That's most unfortunate. Different views need to be heard, especially ones challenging the official doctrine. That's what academia should be about. Or am I preferencing representation (my ideal academia) over how humans actually behave in academia?
Also, I'm skeptical generally of the notion of progress. I agree some situations are better than others, and you should try to better yourself. But 'progress' is politicized.
What I mean was that it was a wake-up-call about how narcissistic and useless white self-flagellation is for understanding and interacting with non-white people. I more or less agree with TGW that this kind of self-flagellation is the default in middle class, liberal circles. Flagellation is a way of keeping the focus on oneself, often at the expense of reducing other people to mere occasions for one's pious penitence.
But yes, in my experience I do find white people flagellating themselves. And I have certainly witnessed atrocious behaviors by whites toward non-whites. We're mostly white, up here, but there are quite a few Somalian refugees in Portland.
Regarding the rest of what you've written, I agree that people are mostly the same. But I don't think that means they're mostly good.
What I meant was simply that white people literally see a half-white half-black person as black. That's the reflexive reaction. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that they don't see them as devoid of desires and fears.
I see the hatred of representation of the divine to be an affirmation that reality is above representation, God being held to be reality par excellence. A distrust of idolatry is a call to never mistake the image for the real thing, or love it more. A leftist dismantles the possibility of idolatry in a principled way by disavowing that there are any realities.
Quoting csalisbury
Maybe so, but reactive law is incredible. Again, it's what built England. You wait for a problem to arise, then judge when you have to on what ought to be done. Over the years an intricate, deeply woven house of natural institutions is built. The leftist by contrast is Cartesian, and demands (notice, the leftist always demands) that an entire constitution be written up from scratch, on the spot, and immediately enshrined, not in response to the organic problems the world rises and solving them, but from an a priori conception of the way the world ought to be.
There's a difference between ethnicity and race. An ethnicity can contain multiple races. And a race can contain multiple ethnicities.
For the former: Hispanic is an ethnicity. It includes people who are brown, black, mestizo.
For the latter: White is a race. It includes people of Jewish, Scottish, and Scandinavian ethnicities.
Ethnicities have to do with culture, heritage, country, origins. Race is a mark which designates certain character traits which then assign you a relative position within a social group.
Obviously both of these definitions aren't accepted by everyone, and I wouldn't even say they are the best on offer. But there's certainly a difference between the two.
Ok, you have a liberal/leftist picnic basket full of sour tomatoes, bitter melon, rancid olives, spoiled meat, and other delicacies. Some of it I recognize, some of it is a bit too chewed up to identify with.
I won't, but my liberal/leftist picnic basket would have some unappetizing items in it too.
The leftism I was first exposed to was, merciful god, old-fashioned. It focused on Marx and some early 19th/20th century American socialists like DeLeon. It was not flavored by the University marxism of the 1980s-present which frankly doesn't smell at all like the Marxism I like.
Quoting The Great Whatever
This strikes me as the phony marxism of POMO. Quoting The Great Whatever
Quoting The Great Whatever
It seems to me that Marx (who I use as the anchor of "leftist") was pretty well historically informed and viewed history as a process involving contending forces and interests. Yes, in the end he saw a world in which Man came into his own, no longer a wage slave, no longer a master, but in a classless society (a nice big thick hunk of shining glittering idealism for you). My belief is that Marx and Engels can not be the source of quick-perfection schemes. Historical processes take their time, and their time is not our time. Sure, I'd like to see a socialist approach to health care, to full employment, to basic income, to the diet farm for the 1%, and so on, but being in a hurry is a recipe for leftist despair.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Don't get carried away here; it's not good for your blood pressure.
The currently victorious conservatives are finding plenty that isn't "perfect" and do not seem poised to fit into the world they see. Rather, they seem poised to do some major league changing.
there is no substance to the world other than what he places on it Right. Well people who think there is no substance other than what they place on it, whatever their political views, are chock full of shit. If they are leftists, then they need to be taken away and drummed out of the leftist movement.
Quoting The Great Whatever
I agree that these are characteristics of childhood persisting into adulthood (sometimes into senescence, even). I don't think this has anything to do with left-center-conservative politics; it has to do with delayed personal intellectual and social maturation. You know, a lot of the stuff you are talking about is spouted by college students. If neuroscience is correct, and the brain isn't fully developed until around 25, that means even graduate students are still spouting immature texts. In the case of severe developmental delays one may find some tenured professors babbling this way. (In fact, one does.)
I get where you are coming from. Thank you for the thorough response. I appreciate it. Reading is hard work, and I don't want to tire anyone's brains out too much here, so... that's that.
If one faces a forced choice, then I suppose--yes, a half & half black-white person would be sorted into the black group. But people are not always in forced choice situations. The people that I grew up among were concerned about a lot less than 50% black, even though there weren't any actual blacks around for them to worry about -- mostly just television screens.
But the times are changing. White working class and middle class people (whatever the terms mean) are becoming much more accepting of mixed-race couples and mixed-race children, right here in 83% white Minnesota, even. "More accepting" isn't color blind, of course, nor (IMHO) should people be color blind. That's a kind of erasure of one of one's and others' real characteristics.
The times are changing, but progress isn't as swift, sure, and final as we would like. Patience, patience. We'll get there.
But there's one really big problem with this view. The conservative is wise enough to confront the problems that arise as they are and then determine what ought to be done. The leftist on the other hand demands that things be built from scratch based on ideals. But so how does one confront the leftist? Because one problem that arises, among many, is a bunch of people demanding that things be built from scratch and based on ideals ( this is not new, or particularly cartesian - it goes back to the prophets, and further)
And which one would consider abolishing slavery? Would that occur to the conservative? Or would the conservative just argue that is the way God intended institutions to be set up? What problem would the conservative confront to convince them to abolish slavery?
As I've said, I think it can't survive without academia, and there's a sense in which academia is a sick place, that often harbors people whose ideas in society at large would be otherwise unrespectable, and leftism and apologia for totalitarianism of various sorts often go hand in hand. Cf. Thorongil's comments on the professor who would prefer Islamic theocracy to living in America: I take it he's telling the truth about that, anyway!
But how do you stop academia from breeding this sort of stuff? I don't know. Academia is in a sense inherently divorced from reality, and so there are no real checks on it from developing fantasies.
I can't consistently advocate for sweeping changes that eliminate the rise of leftism as a possibility, nor would I want to. The most you can do is take responsibility for yourself – to be tired of what leftism offers you as a person, and to be frank with other people about this, and not to let them feel ashamed for disagreeing with obviously false things.
How would a conservative end slavery, if not with the death of hundreds of thousands of people? Well, I'm not a miracle-worker, but here is a suggestion: buy out the slave owners' trade and release the slaves. It'd be a lot less expensive than a war, too. Then destroy the infrastructure that makes holding slaves economically viable, and once the whole institution has atrophied, sneak legislation in that outlaws it.
Another way to look at this is that societies aren't sustainable and inevitably collapse themselves. I guess this is my view. And I guess I'm not a firm leftist. Maybe a meta-conservative with a tragic outlook? I think plugging the dam is as doomed as revolution, so I don't see any especial merit in either. Or I do see the virtues in both. They're both necessary (inevitable?) so I can't really come down one way or the other. I think Marchesky is right that we'd still have slavery without leftists. But then we wouldn't have the civil war (and but also there's the conservatism of northern factory owners, and it's very complicated.)
Would we better off with ancien regime France and no revolution? idk.
But again, this has been going on since the beginning of time and will probably never stop. Many of the OT prophets fit your leftist diagnosis to a T.
EDIT: posted this before I saw you'd already posted on the civil war.
I don't feel like one really needs an answer to this question, because I'm not committed to the preservation of a single society in the abstract, or even of humanity as a whole – we're all gong to die too, of course, and humanity itself isn't something to be eternally enshrined, but will pass away. What is important is to disavow atrocity when it's in front of you, and go step by step. The wheel turns. This is, incidentally, something that I think rationalist philosophies generally are less capable of understanding.
survive the encounter - i know it has a very specific meaning here - but survive the encounter sounds about right.
Of course you've said that your beliefs about the left are confirmed by experience too, and I'm more than willing to concede that experience is far from all encompassing or representative.
But when he listed those skills -- I was like, well, yes! (and it's actually very very hard to organize politically along those skills)
However, I tend to think of race, and the politics of race, as a different issue from left/right too. Leftists care about race, for sure, but I'd say it's a bit odd to frame the issues of race as strictly leftist issues. There's the dialogue of race within leftist circles, there's a dialogue of race within other circles, and there's a dialogue on race within different racial groups and within their own racial groups. The biggest lack of dialogue on race, by my lights, is actually between groups.
There are both liberal and conservative political proposals and beliefs about race, and at the end of the day black people organize regardless of party or political ideology in order to obtain power and pursue self-interest. I don't mean that in a negative way -- I tend to think that this is what politics not only is about but should be about (not always, but tend to). This is only to say that the politics of race, as I view them, are not strictly leftist, though race is certainly a part of leftist concerns in general (however that happens to manifest in a particular setting or group).
Just restricting myself to the characterization of leftism, then: Even metaphorically -- this is what I mean by I think our experiences are just different. I can say I have seen what you describe. I can say I've participated in it, and will probably do so again.
But, in my experience, there's more than that, too.
Let's take capitalism. Do communists dream big dreams? Yes. Why not, after all? But do they recognize them as dreams? Well, depends on the communist. And, after all, an American communist is of course trained to live within a capitalist society, they just believe that communism -- whatever that happens to be -- is better than capitalism.
But how could that be unless they had some notion of how it functions and why? And wouldn't a self-critical communist also come to realize, at some point, they are very much part and parcel to the system of capitalism and they don't know how to survive in a communist system?
On that latter point, especially -- I mean, in my experience, leftists are poignantly aware of that fact.
Hence why I agree with Mike -- he's bringing his analysis of society back to the level of survival, which is in fact the sorts of things you would have to think about in any society. It doesn't have to be hunting, as you note, but just know-how to live in that society. And sometimes the better choice in the moment is to have "more lawyers" and fewer "revolutionaries", just to keep with the communist drift. (that wouldn't mean they are political revolutionaries if they are lawyers -- but they may still harbor communist sentiments, at least).
But, I'm willing to say that these are merely what I've seen, and isn't necessarily representative of the left. But I see leftists in not just idealist terms, but much more pragmatic and earthly terms too, just going off of what I have experienced.
It seems to me that Kurt Vonnegut wrote a story satirizing this. (OK, here I did a Google: it was "Harrison Bergeron", published in a sci fi magazine in 1961.) Vonnegut wrote...
There is a sub-culture of resentment out there, no doubt--self-centered people whining and nattering about the various impositions they have to suffer under.
You are quite right that this posture is not compatible with self-respect or maturity.
Is this leftist? I suppose it is, if you call the reformers who wrote the Americans with Disabilities Act leftists. By extension, I suppose, you could arrive at the view that the whole business of being handicapped, deficient, victimized as a way of life is "leftist". "Leftist" serves you as a bucket into which you are tossing a lot of unpleasant stuff. I'd prefer you get a different bucket to collect all this stuff in, because my "leftist" bucket has different stuff and it gets confusing to me as to which garbage we are talking about.
We real leftists do complain a lot, that is true, but mostly it's about the deep institutions of the economy and politics.
Like we could end the world drug trade by buying out cannabis, opium, and cocaine farmers, and closing down all the factories that make the precursors to methamphetamine? Supposing that this could be done, we can't overlook the fact that there is a demand market that pulls these substances in. How does a conservative solve that side of the problem?
Slavery couldn't be 'bought out' like one railroad could buy out a competitor and thereby get rid of it because...
The value of slaves was the largest asset in the pre-civil war country. There wasn't enough cash in the US to carry out such a maneuver.
The production of a high volume of raw cotton at a low price depended on slavery (at the time, in the US south).
The economics of slave production were deeply entangled in England's textile industry, and northern banking, shipping, and wholesale interests.
Slave states (the Confederacy) were not only pro-slave, they were also against centralized government, any kind of governmental regulation, industrialism, and social mobility. (For instance, southern states didn't want to cooperate with each other even on railroads; each state built short, non-connecting lines.)
The Civil War was not just about ending slavery; it was also about denying states the prerogative of leaving the union (California secessionists, take note).
War is preferable to a financial solution IF you have a lot of disposable men (the North had more than the South), and if war will be profitable to manufacturers, bankers, financiers, etc. (it was very profitable).
The North intended to pursue a Hamiltonian future of strong central government, large infrastructure investment, industrialism, and social development. The South liked it's Jeffersonian agrarian, conservative values, ideas about chivalry, personal honor, personal independence, and so on. The secessionists departure was a watershed, make-or-break moment.
I am, I assure you. My fellow grad students who took the class can confirm it, as it's a running joke between us.
I doubt the professor reads this forum, so I can give a bit more detail. We were talking about one of the caliphates one day in relation to Foucault. According to Foucault, power in liberal democracies is highly diffuse and invisible, meaning that it infects all aspects of life without one necessarily realizing it, instead of being concentrated at the top or seen in the form of visible institutions. This makes the people in such societies more oppressed, dominated, surveilled, and punished than in other societies. So the professor concluded, based on this line of reasoning, and with a smile at first, that he would prefer to live in said caliphate than in modern day America. When pressed, he doubled down on his assertion.
Is there a little too much surveillance and commercialism? Yeah, but it seems mostly aimed at creating more effective ads than denying me any rights. Would I feel more free in an Amish community? I doubt it. Have there been plenty of other societies which were less free? Absolutely. Could the political situation be reformed to make our votes count more? Most likely. But is it better than most political situations in the history of the world? Most likely.
Hummmmmmmmm.
Quoting Marchesk
Which means you can't go wherever you want...
Quoting Marchesk
Money permitting...
Quoting Marchesk
Holler 'fire!' in a crowded space and see then if you can indeed say whatever you please.
Quoting Marchesk
If they're peaceful.
Quoting Marchesk
I do love me some lemonade.
Quoting Marchesk
Terrorists wouldn't like you very much.
Quoting Marchesk
Unless you slander.
Quoting Marchesk
But win? Hmm.
Quoting Marchesk
A big fat nope to bodily movement. If I tried to "freely move" across some farmer's land around here I'd be shot, tits up dead.
[quote=Foucault]To me, the phrase "Islamic government" seemed to point to two orders of things.
"A utopia," some told me without any pejorative implication. "An ideal," most of them said to me. At any rate, it is something very old and also very far into the future, a notion of coming back to what Islam was at the time of the Prophet, but also of advancing toward a luminous and distant point where it would be possible to renew fidelity rather than maintain obedience. In pursuit of this ideal, the distrust of legalism seemed to me to be essential, along with a faith in the creativity of Islam.
A religious authority explained to me that it would require long work by civil and religious experts, scholars, and believers in order to shed light on all the problems to which the Quran never claimed to give a precise response. But one can find some general directions here: Islam values work; no one can be deprived of the fruits of his labor; what must belong to all (water, the subsoil) shall not be appropriated by anyone. With respect to liberties, they will be respected to the extent that their exercise will not harm others; minorities will be protected and free to live as they please on the condition that they do not injure the majority; between men and women there will not be inequality with respect to rights, but difference, since there is a natural difference. With respect to politics, decisions should be made by the majority, the leaders should be responsible to the people, and each person, as it is laid out in the Quran, should be able to stand up and hold accountable he who governs.
It is often said that the definitions of an Islamic government are imprecise. On the contrary, they seemed to me to have a familiar but, I must say, not too reassuring clarity. "These are basic formulas for democracy, whether bourgeois or revolutionary," I said. "Since the eighteenth century now, we have not ceased to repeat them, and you know where they have led." But I immediately received the following reply: "The Quran had enunciated them way before your philosophers, and if the Christian and industrialized West lost their meaning, Islam will know how to preserve their value and their efficacy."
When Iranians speak of Islamic government; when, under the threat of bullets, they transform it into a slogan of the streets; when they reject in its name, perhaps at the risk of a bloodbath, deals arranged by parties and politicians, they have other things on their minds than these formulas from everywhere and nowhere. They also have other things in their hearts. I believe that they are thinking about a reality that is very near to them, since they themselves are its active agents.
It is first and foremost about a movement that aims to give a permanent role in political life to the traditional structures of Islamic society. An Islamic government is what will allow the continuing activity of the thousands of political centers that have been spawned in mosques and religious communities in order to resist the shah's regime. I was given an example. Ten years ago, an earthquake hit Ferdows. The entire city had to be reconstructed, but since the plan that had been selected was not to the satisfaction of most of the peasants and the small artisans, they seceded. Under the guidance of a religious leader, they went on to found their city a little further away. They had collected funds in the entire region. They had collectively chosen places to settle, arranged a water supply, and organized cooperatives. They had called their city Islamiyeh. The earthquake had been an opportunity to use religious structures not only as centers of resistance, but also as sources for political creation. This is what one dreams about [songe] when one speaks of Islamic government....
....At the dawn of history, Persia invented the state and conferred its models on Islam. Its administrators staffed the caliphate. But from this same Islam, it derived a religion that gave to its people infinite resources to resist state power. In this will for an "Islamic government," should one see a reconciliation, a contradiction, or the threshold of something new?
The other question concerns this little corner of the earth whose land, both above and below the surface, has strategic importance at a global level. For the people who inhabit this land, what is the point of searching, even at the cost of their own lives, for this thing whose possibility we have forgotten since the Renaissance and the great crisis of Christianity, a political spirituality. I can already hear the French laughing, but I know that they are wrong.[/quote] - excerpts from What are the Iranians Dreaming About? - 1978
The closest thing to spirituality mainstream America has is Game of Thrones, which is like, okay, man can't live on Mountain Dew alone.
Personally, I would not elect to live in any sort of Islamic state, and would consider fleeing if the Muslim population got too large. I just think it's not safe to be a non-Muslim anywhere, with a Muslim majority, ever.
They would not end it at all. Such a conservative free their slaves and... everyone else's would keep doing what tradition and power dictated.
Now there are many alternatives than a "magic" and immediate cure to slavery, to getting up and saying: "It's wrong. Cast it out with violence tomorrow," but any of the alternatives end in making a disruptive ethical proclamation in public.
If I just talk about freeing my slave with my close friends, they're going to ask why I did it, and if I answer honestly and without burying my own ethical concerns, I will raise the problem with the given tradition. Now, if they do the same as me, our limited ideas will grow into a movement. We will become public and the established tradition will react.
We'll either have repression of our idea or, if we have a will and power to survive, war. Unless, we've built up a culture which accepts changes without jumping to war to defend tradition, culture or an idea.
Your reading of the Left is, well, ignorant. The idea it views images as a solution is an illusion created by only looking at wide-eyed advocates. For most of the Left, the question of oppression is descriptive, not utopian. We walk in the hall of mirrors which show us all the horrors. From our ivory towers, we watch and see all the different instances of oppression. And what use is it to avoiding them? Frequently none. A lot of the time we don't even pose a solution to and oppression we identify, but them I don't think that was really ever the point. Many of us know there isn't one, at least within the time frame people usually think in. Our project is a knowledge, for a limited impact on some oppressions.
What "progressivism" really does is disrupt our image of survival. Under it, our survival is no longer sacred. We destroy our myths that we, or our way of life, must always continue. It doesn't mean we must die, but it does mean we are not above death. The next generation may live utterly differently to how we do. There may even be no next generation at all. It's not really "nihilistic" or "tabla rasa" at all. What it cuts downs is the idea we are made by something other than ourselves (including our instincts and traditions), so we have no guarantee of survival. We may always by wiped out. The image of our own necessity is lost.
Descriptively, it's right. In the secular liberal democracy, who is more "oppressed" (here this means "has their values, ideas rejected and organisation of power rejected" ) then the spiritual theocrat who wants religion to be an integral part of politics and everyone's lives? Just about no-one.
Power is also diffuse (many different values respected, rather than everyone having to follow God) and "hidden" in a sense (everyone thinks even else is free to be the individual who they are-- the theocrat will be insulted with: "You aren't "oppressed. You are free to practice your individual religion").
I doubt that he has.
Indeed, I think it's the critical mind that saw him make the argument. A description of secular democracy's "oppression" of a society where power is defined by religious belief, and how that might make the Iranian Revolution attractive to some, even if it did offer a warped image of those traditions and values. He's not thinking wishfully. He's describing relations and motivations of power.
That's an angle I hadn't considered, and it does make sense.
@Thorongil Is it possible he was trolling?
For sure, the point is to describe what is lost for a point of view "oppressed" with secular liberal democracies. If he were "neutral" (whatever that supposed to mean), he would be hiding what was lost. He would not be honest about our rejection of the value and power structure in question. We would not understand that, in our values and power structure, we were putting down another and their values.
In the sense of power, the Iranian Revolution is similar to any other movement for change within our history. Those who's values and beliefs aren't respected within the power structure (theocracy in this case), imagine a world in which they are (often the "utopia" ) and rise up to change it.
The "oppressive" power structures in question is replaced by one that respects the values or beliefs in question, at least in some way (revelations differ in their degree of success).
This is all descriptive though. In saying this, he not making the argument the Iranian revolution is ethical, just that it driven by developing a society which respects a value or belief rather than repressing it.
I know... but that's not going to happen if everyone else behaves if they ought to own slaves. Even if you start privately and small, if it going to have an effect, it will become a movement that grows a public profile, one which is arguing people ought to give-up their slaves.
No doubt a buy-out would offer a way to avoid conflict in some circumstances, but would it have worked in the US? I mean would the government had the funds to buy out the many slaves? What happens when people say no to the buyout (and likely they would, given the social and economic place of slaves in the US)? And if the buyout isn't mandated, what does one do when the tradition of slavery continue to be passed down? Given the context of the US at the time, we end-up with a situation where any method of effective change is going to lock horns with the deeply embedded tradition. Does it mean war? Not necessary (that would be up to how people handle challenge to tradition), but the change will not occur with the presence of behaviour that slavery is a problem.
White, non-religious leftist academics in the humanities and social "sciences" in particular are infatuated with Islam, but their research always has an apologetic tone to it. Contrast this with most academics who study Christianity. There's no desire to understand how the Quran was written, who wrote it, Muhammad's place in history, etc. No, just endless books and articles being created on how queer black Muslims in Belgium negotiate relations of power. Blegh. My professor is merely typical in this regard.
I also get the vague impression that leftists closer to the source, especially those fleeing Muslim countries for persecution, have far less patience for it. It's easier to tint it with roses when you don't have to deal with it. And it's of course the oppressive Christian countries in which you're free to be openly critical of the 'reigning' religious values.
It would be, but are other people going to agree with it? To open with a policy of: "I'll pay you to free your slaves" is a great, but will people agree to it? Some will, no doubt, if you offer enough. But what of those people who's identity is tied-up in being owners of slaves? They'll read the buyout as a betrayal of how people need to live and recognise it as a existential threat to their way of life. We could well have war anyway.
England's Emancipation Act of 1834 was essentially a mass buyout of all slaves in the British Empire – they paid off the slave owners with recompense to have it pass.
I read about this in some book, but I can't remember the details, and don't have good citations.
this:
is a dumb thing to say.
There are tons of books on these subjects. I took a middle east studies 101 course by a suuuper liberal professor and we covered - tho in a brief 101 way - precisely these topics. They were an integral part of the course.
There are some points you make I agree with, but stuff like this makes it seems like either have no idea what you're talking about or just like the sound of your own rhetoric. You're poisoning your own well.
It's more to do with recognising the "oppressive" impact the West has on other cultures. Not so much a question of creating monolithic enemy, but being careful of putting down another culture and its people, pretty much regardless of the exact ethical worth of their practices. I mean does Saudi Arabia needs us in their country spreading our "enlightened" values to their ignorant people? Or are they their own people, with their own values, who a worth enough to practice the culture the believe in?
The point is there is a racism in our insistence that we must know better. If we are to say, for example, that Islam is a tradition of war that has no just place in our world, as is the standard of many critics, we are really calling for a genocide of the tradition in a favour of our own.
"Islam" becomes a scapegoat. In our denouncing of Islam, we create an image that we are addressing a problem (Islamic terrorism, local oppression within Islamic countries, tensions between Islamic immigrants and our culture, etc., etc.) which makes us feel safer. But does nothing of the sort. All the problems we are so worried about continue, only we now dump derision upon the way of life of many respectful and peaceful people within our own communities too.
Or we support a situation and policy which have deeply damaging effects on Muslim communities around the world (e.g. the war in Iraq, Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, etc.,etc.), where our political interests (e.g. oil, rallying our community around an enemy, the safety of Israel) are more important than Muslim lives and communities.
Fear and intimidation are also things to take into consideration.
As far as I understand it, the succession from the union was indeed first and foremost about preventing central - or northern - authority from being exercised on the lower states given that the north had been growing much faster, and with the addition of Minnesota and Oregon in 58 and 59, basically had tipped the balance of power in congress.
In a letter to Horace Greeley in the midst of the civil war, before the emancipation proclamation, (although he would have been working on it) Lincoln wrote the following:
Kinda reminiscent of modern political maneuvering if you ask me. The north wanted to keep the south in the fold, freeing the slaves was just something that helped to achieve that.
Yes.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
White people can be Muslims too, Islam is not a race.
And we DO know better. Homosexuality can be punished by death in Saudi Arabia. Surely you can't excuse this with an appeal to cultural relativism?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Yes!
In terms of how it usually manifests within the West, yes. Islam is the "The Other," a people with a history and culture considered outside anything worthwhile, something understood to be so savage that it ought to be wiped off the face of the Earth. I would go as far to say a lot of us think of Muslims as "savages" who we must enlighten.
To disapprove of a religion is certainly discrimination. Whether it is racist will depend on how deeply a religious tradition is embedded and tied to a racial or ethic group. Given the place of most major religions in their culture, I would say that most disapprovals of religion would be racist, if they are suggesting the religion is entirely Other to culture and civilisation.
Religions teach many unethical things. Most, if not all, have I would say. Islam is no exception to that (whether it be "textually supported" or merely "cultural" ). As such I'd say they are all worthy of disapproval in some way or another.
The point is our criticisms don't usually talk about these issues effectively. We don't name a particular issue and how to build a just society from the point of view of the religious tradition (i.e. we-the religious tradition- were wrong). Rather, we call for the tradition to be wiped out, acting like it gave nothing of value or provided nothing to a community, turning entire populations of people into "savages" who never had a civilisation (unlike us enlightened liberal Westerners).
So no, @csalisbury I don't think I'm being dumb. I was making a comparison of the amount and level of critical scholarship on Islam and Christianity, concluding that the latter is greater than the former, which I don't see how you can dispute. As such, it was intended to be a very general statement, so your anecdote is quite irrelevant. Plus, I would love to have sat in your class to confirm your impression.
I wasn't saying white people couldn't be muslims.
My point was that many muslims aren't "white," and so acting like Islam is just savagery amounts to equating their way of life, and so them (the non-white muslim), with nothing but a heinous harm to the world.
In terms of ethic identity, it may even end-up getting white muslims-- what do you think would be the reaction of many to white muslim who defined Islam? Accusations they had betrayed all that was good for a savage way of life.
Do we know better? What of all the muslims in Saudi Arabia who find that punishment abhorrent? Us Westerners aren't the only ones capable of recognising the worth of gay people. People from Islamic cultures and traditions can do so too. Just as we, from a Christian culture and tradition that despised gay people, did (at least to some degree).
This is pure insanity. A belief system and a person are two different things. Criticizing the former doesn't harm anyone. For your claim to get off the ground, you would have to expand the notion of harm to near meaninglessness.
What it also says about you is that you don't value free speech, which is good to know, if only to know that I will have people like you to thank for putting me in jail in the future for speaking ill of a particular religion.
should have been charitably understood as this:
" I was making a comparison of the amount and level of critical scholarship on Islam and Christianity, concluding that the latter is greater than the former"
then, yeah, you're being dumb (ok, ok, disingenuous.)
Do you think the West in the las 50 or so years has had a unique and unprecedented relationship with homosexuality? This is something I don't know the answer to, but looking at the world stage as it is now, it can certainly feel that way. There seems to be exactly one culture on this planet that's even pretending to give a shit about you if you're south of straight. When I want to fuck men, I'm going to go to the whitest, most Western place possible, ASAP. And I'm going to stay the hell away from Muslim nations (and Muslim neighborhoods).
That was never the point though. You are only speaking of the (classical) liberal utopian myth, where every person gets whatever they want, whenever the want it.-- "everyone equal no matter what"
At some point, whether at home or abroad, someone's doesn't get their values and beliefs respect. They are discriminated against and it is just--e.g. those who want to own slaves don't get what they want. The question is when such discrimination applies.
The "universal" application isn't needed at all. In some cases it may make sense for the discrimination to apply in one place (e.g. one's home) but not in another (e.g. another culture which has slavery enshrined). Slavery in the US, for example, can be addressed by us (whether it results in war or occurs by some better means). Deeply embedded prejudice against gay people within Islamic culture in other countries? We can't really touch that. It needs to be addressed from the inside.
Consistency isn't what makes ethics. That's the old myth that ethical significant comes from an image. Difference is what makes ethics, an expression of a particular time and place, which means some actions are preferable to others. Sometimes this means living with people and actions you disagree with.
OK, but I just don't believe this. Being from somewhere else on the planet doesn't give you free reign to do whatever you want to gay people. And they matter more than the feelings of Muslims whose religion gets criticized.
And if the 'disagreement' is between wether you get to live or die because of your sexual proclivities, then no, I don't have to live with people who disagree with me on that, and I won't be cowed into 'respecting' that opinion. I'm not interested in the relativist slant.
- ISLAMIC STUDIES
ARAB-351-352 Introduction to Arabic Culture (3, 3)
ARAB-373 Women in the Qur’an (3)
ARAB-444 Introduction to Islamic Civilization
ARAB-525 Qur’anic Exegesis (3)
ARAB-535-536 The Qur’an (3,3)
ARAB-555 Introduction to Arabic and Islamic Studies
ARAB-609 The Qur’an in History (3)
ARAB-610 Science in the Islamic World
ARAB-611 Islamic Thought on the Eve of Modernity
ARAB-627 Intro to the Hadith (3)
ARAB-760 Arab Historiography (3)
THEO-350 Readings in Sufism (3)
For sure. We, a society and culture previously prejudiced against gay people, changed to one that was not (or at least so much).
A question of our behaviour, not anything necessarily unique to our heritage. Islamic culture could alter in a similar way. It would take a lot of change, perhaps even within the major tenets of the religion itself (the notion of God as an authority above challenge is a bit of a barrier here, but then culture of our history thought much the same at some point).
Neither do I. I don't know anyone who agrees with the argument: "Yes, killing gay people is good. They ought to be doing it." The point is our reaction ( "Islam is savagery which has no place in civilised society" ) isn't about that sort of issue. It's just us lashing out at a present problem which we can't fix more or less immediately-- well, unless you're into genocide.
Clearly not. Let's give you an example. If I say: "Radical Islam is the greatest philosophy ever. All other beliefs are nonsense and we ought to abandon them." is this statement harmless? Would you accept me saying it all over the place and it garnering respect from all corners of society?
Words, understanding, lives and belief systems are all bound up together. What we say and think about others matters.
Criticising someone's beliefs, actions and values is to attack their place in society. It is to say they are too heinous or savage to belong. And that's the problem with the West's discourse surrounding the problems of Islam. They don't attack the belief and actions in terms of Islam (e.g. it's wrong, under Islam, to think gay people ought to die or for tradition to be beyond criticism, etc., etc.), but in terms of people with a history within Islamic culture of being unable to participate in civilised society. We scapegoat people to feel like we are making an impact on problems we recognise.
Nah. This is crazy sauce. Yikes.
Both candidates "mentioned the word." (Probably because the question they were responding to was literally something like: What's your stance on the interpretation of the constitution?") Do you mean that that the job of justices is to take an originalist stance toward interpretation and to have no truck with 'living document' talk? Because I could maybe see where you're coming from with that - it's just not what you said at all.
Yikes indeed-- but it's true.
I mean there are different levels. If follow you about repeating what you are saying back to you, you'll find me annoying and criticise me. You'll think me annoying and unsuitable company until I stop-- until I behave differently, I will not belong around you. But that's about as far as it will go. You won't think of me as an living embodiment of a culture and history which cannot fit with a civilised society.
The point about Islam is our reaction is frequently the latter. And we mistake this prejudice for being serious about injustices within Islamic cultures.
Yep.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Yep.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Nope.
You do realize that to be consistent, you have to also extend your radical moral largesse to the KKK and neo-nazis, right?
Unless, I'm utterly misreading you and you're arguing for these kinds of attacks?
But, yeah, we can drop it. Your statement was a throwaway one from the beginning ( the same kind of thing as "all men hate women", or "all white people are racist ") so I'm not sure why I'm getting so involved. It just bugged me, I guess?
In the sense that a neo-nazi or KKK member might change their culture, sure. Like a muslims (or anyone else), they are no less capable of devloping an ethical position on particular people or issues.
The problem is, at that point, what is left of neo-nazi or KKK identity? Neither of those groups a historical tradition bound-up with the everyday life and functioning of a society that extends beyond racial (and other unjust forms of discrimination). It make senses to speak, for example, a pro-gay muslim. A neo-nazi or KKK member in favour of multicultural society? Not at all.
It also makes sense, I think, to speak of a pro-bacon Muslim, or an atheist Muslim. To want Muslims to be this that and the other, antithetical to the standard Islamic position on all of these issues, seems to me to be just a way of saying that you just want Muslims to be Westerners, except they wear hijab or something. Which is just a roundabout way of saying that Islam is incompatible with whatever you imagine polite society to be. It gets tricky, for example, if you ask people what they think about the relative authority of Sharia versus a Western constitution.
Absolutely. Muslims being "westerners" is effectively where the argument ends up: we are demanding changes to Islam which make it, in practice, more or less indistinguishable from the culture in Western democracies. It's saying practices of Islamic culture are unethical and they ought to change.
The point is that it is done with Islamic identity, as our society changed with history of Christian tradition, rather than viewing Islam and its people as an identity that needs to be wiped off the Earth (no doubt traditional Islam being abandoned, but that was the point all along).
(And yeah, Christianity was destroyed form the inside and is in the process of dying off).
Critical scholarship? I'm curious.. what sorts of writings are you thinking of there? Just religion studies?
Parts of Islam as it's currently practiced? For sure.
Islamic identity and history? No. Muslims can disavow those parts (even if they are big) of Islam without saying that everything about how the lived, their past and where they think of themselves as belonging, is savage.
If it's something more current you're looking for, we're too close to it for a full-bodies analysis. I think that's true going back at least 100 years. Too much has happened to Islam for scholars to do much digestion. But there's plenty of info out there.
All that said, my opinion is that Christianity is the most ideologically complex of the global religions. That's kind of like saying cheetahs are the fastest cats, though. So what?
The (perhaps cartoonish) understanding I have of Foucault is that it's only in his later work that individual agency, and all the positive stuff takes off (the technologies of the self etc.) Is that fair?
If there is a rupture between early and late Foucault - and the rupture is something like how I've characterized it (and I'm open to criticism here, I may have totally botched it) - isn't his whole Iranian flirtation contemporaneous with the shift?
Yes!
Cultural relativism is cancer. These people ARE savages.
Clinton's only reference to the Constitution was in her complaint that the Senate had failed to vote on Obama's appointment.
If there's one guy that can reign in Trump, it could be retired Marine general Mattis. A tough-talk Marine with a nick-name like 'Mad Dog' is something that Trump obviously listens. Yet the important quotes (actually hopefully) don't come to the ears of the alt-right and other Trumpists, because Mattis has critisized Trump quite heavily:
- Regarding Trump’s contention that U.S. allies are not paying their “fair share” of costs to support the alliance, Mattis called the claim “about as kooky as [if] a president were to call our allies freeloaders.”
- On Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigrants, Mattis — who rarely gives media interviews — was also sharply critical, saying that such talk prompts U.S. allies to think “we have lost faith in reason.”
- Asked about the reaction in the Middle East to Trump’s suggestion, Mattis said, “They think we’ve completely lost it. This kind of thing is causing us great damage right now, and it’s sending shock waves through this international system.“(See article Ex-military leaders at Hoover Institution say Trump statements threaten America's interests)
Perhaps the best quote comes from President elect Trump himself, describing in a recorded session with NY Times his meeting with general Mattis:
Trump:
Any real soldier knowd that intel with torture is bad, but Trump seems to be really surprised. After this Trump actually tells about himself (and about his supporters much) of how much they know about fighting insurgencies (or terrorism)... and their ignorance and naive thinking. From the talk you can notice this is a real transcript of Trump btw.
That kind of grasp of reality is what the Trump cabinet needs.
If Hillary would have won, the Republicans would have started to talk immediately about impeachment. With Trump, that impeachment might be a reality. Not only have the children and son-in-law have had a huge impact during the campaign (like starting from picking Pence as a running mate) If Trump is saying that his children will take care of his business ventures (which isn't at all a blind trust), what does it tell that he meets the Japanese Prime Minister with his daughter and son-in-law? Nobody would have minded if it would they would have posed for a picture with Melania, but with Ivanka sitting there through the meeting? I suspect that picture people will get the correct message.
It's a similar move like that his Washington DC hotel are targetting diplomats... if they in the Capitol. To put it simply: the corruption goes to a totally different level with Trump that it would ever be with the Clintons, who basically played the game as it's intended (with corporations giving money to the right charities etc.) What happens when Ivanka starts the next multi-million hotel Project? Likely those foreign entities who give the loans can have other agenda's than just to make money.
And Twitter wars? Nevermind the Trump's whimsical theatre tweeting, It's telling that Trump got the UK government officially responding that they have an able embassador in the US already (Trump tweeted that Farage would be a great UK ambassador to the States). Trump unlikely will not get it that he's not just tweeting with similar celebs as he used to do.
Yet why I bring the example of Mattis here is that the worst thing Trump can do if there is absolutely nobody in his cabinet speaking reason to him. The damage can simply be phenomenal. Trump's Russia connection is actually alarming as it's extremely naive to think that a "reboot" in relations would be a great thing.
Well, he's not POTUS yet. But yeah, he needs to take a four year break from those kind of shenanigans.