I’m really hoping that someone who has been an open and consistent opponent of Netanyahu would be credible enough for “the benefit of the doubt”, at least among informed and unprejudiced people.
It depends on how you read 'benefit of the doubt'. I took Harari as trying to diagnose the problems with liberalism and perhaps it is just me, but I'm thinking 'physician, heal thyself". I mean, he makes this big defense of nationalism as if the bad parts can be clearly delineated. He's got to make that defense cause he's got to create a situation where liberals could support a national enterprise such as Israel. But if that national enterprise include apartheid, I'm not really sure how you say 'I'm a liberal, but those folks over there don't count.' And if you start off with a rousing defense of nationalism, you've kind of lost me.
I listened to the podcast with half an ear but didn't feel like it was really enlightening. Whenever ezra uses 'steel man' as a verb, it usually means he wants to slip in some point that he knows he can't support as a position. I always think of him as saying 'I want to steelman the idea of cannibalism? What if it does taste just like chicken?'.
Harari has been a consistent opponent to Netanyahu, but he's Israeli. it's getting to the point where I don't think folks are prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Here's something that maybe only nous will be interested in, but this
https://youtu.be/7Pon3wUr6mw?si=3Z6ihzEW1oIrxHVk
Of Adam Tooze and Wang Hui discussing the intersection of European and Chinese history as well as what to make of Schmitt, was interesting.
I guess Mohamed Gula, director of Emgage, contains the multitudes. Though I'm sure I've done it, I've never been a big fan of 'let me tell everyone what you are saying', and this is an illustration of that.
The article is about Dearborne.Michigan Arab Americans, but Gula is based in Virginia
https://emgageusa.org/staff-member/mohamed-gula/
And this podcast has Gula discussing the nuances of Emgage's qualified endorsement of Harris
https://youtu.be/-a8Ob8lKKLU?si=U5Do89xyS3mBsCUA&t=434
Here is the key graf I said well technically I am a political strategist and I give advice to what would be the best political decision for our community. And he said okay what would you do? and and I told him my honest advice would be to go with Harris.
Really? So why why is that?
It it is because that the conditions that we need to advance Muslim policy and overall the movement even for Palestine could only we only saw that pathway through the Democratic party. It wasn't about Harris herself. It was about the reality that we did not have the Supreme Court. It was about the reality that we did not have the the House of Representatives. In that moment, we did have the Senate, but we knew that we would lose it based on...
So your 'we' is a little off as might be the feet and guts that are being shot.
(As a bit of synchronicity, the podcaster asks why Muslims didn't support Massie and Gula goes into some interesting discussion about why he doesn't think going after the America First vote is an option.)
In short, we’re so upset at getting repeatedly shot in the foot that we’re going to shoot ourselves in the gut. Just to demonstrate how upset we are. Because that’s what this amounts to.
I'm not sure the metaphor is very helpful in this case. Who is 'we', whose foot, whose gut? And even if we could figure that out, would the other people in the we agree?
A a friend posted on Facebook about an anecdote about how Mickey Mantle was a rookie who stood up for Elston Howard, first African-American player for the Yankees. He pointed out that the problem was that Mantle was a rookie in 1951 and Howard didn't join the Yankees until 1955, so it was impossible for the rookie Mantle to take a stand for Howard. So while there might have been some truth Mantle standing up for Howard, the idea that Mantle as a rookie had his value system so straight that he didn't blink is bs.
It's interesting that LLMs are able to target our desire for a happy ending/stirling anecdote. It's designed to move us and make us feel better about ourselves. This is why nous' comment "It’s aiming dead center of the human sentiment bell curve" is so on target.
Steve, the place is matching my energy. If I were the hard charging person in my 20's, convinced the world was changing and I could do something, I'd probably find it agonizing, but at this point in time, it suits me fine. My wife is a bit upset at inflation and often points out x is more expensive or do we really need to buy y and it worries me too, but more for my daughters than for me.
I detected an AI generation whiff to it, but it seemed more with the author polishing it up rather than one of those 101% AI generated things, which is what I want my students to do, so I'm not as sensitive to that. Unfortunately, I'm asking my students to do research, but a lot of the things they find are AI generated, but if I were to demand that they only find things related to the subject that are not AI generated, they would probably have analysis paralysis (the good ones, the bad ones would just churn it out).
Why are we not awash in more socialist policies? Well, there’s [list]
Also, in recognition of Tulsi Gabbard's defenstration, I'd also add that encouraging the anti-science, 'I do my own research' vibe has the effect of peeling off people. The left has the problem of having to create societal movement when individual factions feel that their faction is more important than all the others. If someone decides that say PETA is the be-all, end-all of liberal efforts, it becomes easy to complain about efforts for other goals.
As fun as it is to whale on wj, I'll take a stab at addressing wonkie's comment. I don't know if it is because I'm here in Japan, but I find I cannot anticipate objections and alternate proposals if I don't know the history of the constructs that are being discussed. Pro bono notes the divergence between the UK and the US in terms of 'liberal', and I do think that a lot of play in the term. It's not as funny as Brits, when they first got CNN, were horrified when talking heads were discussing IRA contributions, but it's second.
So understanding what the words mean now is important, but I don't think we can unless we think about the history. I remember Charles Bird complaining that liberal came from the idea of liberty i.e. freedom, so he couldn't understand how us perfidious liberals could be so hypocritical about it. I think I replied to him (and I may be enhancing my response in my mind) that it was 'free' but it was related to a social class of people, i.e. non-slaves, so it wasn't that warmed over bullshit libertarianism that he liked to run up the flag pole from time to time. Again, I may be misremembering this, so take that with salt. But over at LGM, there was this post with a tweet quoting Massie saying
"All this time," Massie explained, "I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along."
Maybe I'm making too much of a stretch, but Massie sounds like a person who really didn't think what libertarian entailed. I don't know how the world would be different if he had some awareness about that, but if it took Trump to play who's your daddy with him to figure it out, why is anyone surprised about this dumpster fire?
At the risk of sounding a bit snippy, I didn't see any of the earlier qualifications. Something like believing in the common good, the commons (be it environmental, knowledge, creative, or public infrastructure), early adoption of social causes, accepting non-violent protest and free speech, recognizing the strength of diversity, etc etc.
I'd edit that the liberal bona fide you mention to be
liberals know there are things that all people need and know that we all need to take steps to make sure that they have them.
If you can afford to be a “hippy-ish artist” you’re plenty financially secure.
says wj while scrambling to reassert his conservative bona fides.
My first major was music and I still know plenty of 'hippy-ish artist' types and I assure you, they are not 'financially secure'. Maybe things have changed and I just went to school with a group that had no financial sense, but all of them are a medical blip away from bankruptcy (I think 99% of the population is a medical emergency away from bankruptcy, but for these folks, it isn't something that you'd need to call the Mayo clinic, it might be something much more mundane, like a blown out knee or some other mundane thing) And they would probably take as much umbrage at being told they shouldn't worry about their financials, cause they are 'plenty financial secure' (I tend to think that 'plenty' is what poker players call a tell...)
My hippy-ish artist friends might say "I can't really afford to be a worker drone" when asked why they don't dump their artistic shit and go all in on some other career, assuming they would still speak to me after I assure them they are 'plenty financial secure'
I'm reminded of Phillip K. Dick's observation about poverty
People are under the illusion that poverty teaches you things. They think it builds character. It does nothing of the sort. It only teaches you to be very careful about counting. You count pennies, you count slices of bread, you count how many days until the first of the month. It narrows the mind; it doesn’t broaden it.
That observation comes at a time when Dick was probably at his most productive, so were he still with use, he might also have some questions about this.
Concerning Musk, I tend to think that he would like to have the conflict continue between the Ukraine and Russia, because it allows him to play kingmaker. If one or the other side won, he might have to modify his behavior.
wj, that's true, but my reason is that women, because they have only relatively recently been able to make the strides they have, they understand better than most the tradeoffs that a Chinese century might bring.
You can contrast Liu with Rogoff (I'm not positive is this is the exact interview I'm thinking of, but I think it gets close https://youtu.be/P2b4TjQa4gk?si=9etkI4l0WsJxHh1w ) Rogoff has a lot of insight, but he views the world for the perspective of a white guy stakeholder and isn't really able to see how that perspective might blind him to other possibilities.
wj, interesting, that. The reason I said that it wasn't coincidental was my thinking that the things I'm interested in (cultural and social change) would be best relayed by women, who might have more of an interesting view about the pros and cons of modernity in society.
I belatedly realize that my post sounds like an invitation to engage in pizzagate levels of speculation, which is probably a mistake.
My own take on what exactly it was or was not is who gives a shit. I suppose it would be nice to know exactly what transpired or to know if it was set up with that level of lax security to encourage an event like this. I assume that the people who haven't decamped have the same sense of control that Trump has or had when he thought that what he did with Maduro could be replicated with the mullahs.
And I have to admit, it flits around in the back of my mind (for example, I really would not want to be King Charles, I could see some Bannon/Miller wannabe thinking they could get the UK on side if Charles were shot by a crazed attacker who wanted to get Trump) and I'm depressed that this is the case, but this is what this administration has generated.
misogyny v homophobia debate is one of those that is crippled by our desire to rank
misogyny has basically been around for 5000 years straight
[so misogyny worse!]
and so women have been able to develop strategies to undercut it
[so homophobia is worse!]
Homosexuality has been accepted in various societies, but suppressed in western contexts
[so homophobia is worse!]
but women have been denied becoming the best versions of themselves
[misogyny worse!]
All due respect to everyone here talking about it, but it's not really a debate that produces a meaningful answer. I realize that won't stop people from talking about it, but bad shit doesn't always have to be put on a scale.
Color me unsurprised that Vance's Hahvahd education would set him up to convert to Catholicism in 2019 and 7 years later, have him lecturing the Pope on the fine points of [Catholic] doctrine. To be honest, I'm surprised that Vance hasn't issued his own encyclicals yet.
The NYT has always had longer pieces that are more news analysis than reportage. I'm not precisely sure of the relationship, but I think many of them were often found in the NYT Magazine. The Guardian adopted this with their 'long reads', but the NYT Times, never short on humility, calls them 'Great Reads'.
I couldn't figure out how to work this in the post, but this article, about a 14 year old hacker, quotes him saying this:
"It was disgusting, it was greedy, it was rooted in my own insecurities, it was wrong in every aspect," he said in the interview, two days before reporting to prison.
Why can't we have a president with the emotional intelligence of a 14 year old hacker?
On “What’s wrong with liberalism?”
I’m really hoping that someone who has been an open and consistent opponent of Netanyahu would be credible enough for “the benefit of the doubt”, at least among informed and unprejudiced people.
It depends on how you read 'benefit of the doubt'. I took Harari as trying to diagnose the problems with liberalism and perhaps it is just me, but I'm thinking 'physician, heal thyself". I mean, he makes this big defense of nationalism as if the bad parts can be clearly delineated. He's got to make that defense cause he's got to create a situation where liberals could support a national enterprise such as Israel. But if that national enterprise include apartheid, I'm not really sure how you say 'I'm a liberal, but those folks over there don't count.' And if you start off with a rousing defense of nationalism, you've kind of lost me.
It reminds me of all the plaudits rained on Thomas Massie and having someone send me this
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59543735
"
I listened to the podcast with half an ear but didn't feel like it was really enlightening. Whenever ezra uses 'steel man' as a verb, it usually means he wants to slip in some point that he knows he can't support as a position. I always think of him as saying 'I want to steelman the idea of cannibalism? What if it does taste just like chicken?'.
Harari has been a consistent opponent to Netanyahu, but he's Israeli. it's getting to the point where I don't think folks are prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Here's something that maybe only nous will be interested in, but this
https://youtu.be/7Pon3wUr6mw?si=3Z6ihzEW1oIrxHVk
Of Adam Tooze and Wang Hui discussing the intersection of European and Chinese history as well as what to make of Schmitt, was interesting.
"
I guess Mohamed Gula, director of Emgage, contains the multitudes. Though I'm sure I've done it, I've never been a big fan of 'let me tell everyone what you are saying', and this is an illustration of that.
The article is about Dearborne.Michigan Arab Americans, but Gula is based in Virginia
https://emgageusa.org/staff-member/mohamed-gula/
And this podcast has Gula discussing the nuances of Emgage's qualified endorsement of Harris
https://youtu.be/-a8Ob8lKKLU?si=U5Do89xyS3mBsCUA&t=434
Here is the key graf
I said well technically I am a political strategist and I give advice to what would be the best political decision for our community. And he said okay what would you do? and and I told him my honest advice would be to go with Harris.
Really? So why why is that?
It it is because that the conditions that we need to advance Muslim policy and overall the movement even for Palestine could only we only saw that pathway through the Democratic party. It wasn't about Harris herself. It was about the reality that we did not have the Supreme Court. It was about the reality that we did not have the the House of Representatives. In that moment, we did have the Senate, but we knew that we would lose it based on...
So your 'we' is a little off as might be the feet and guts that are being shot.
(As a bit of synchronicity, the podcaster asks why Muslims didn't support Massie and Gula goes into some interesting discussion about why he doesn't think going after the America First vote is an option.)
"
In short, we’re so upset at getting repeatedly shot in the foot that we’re going to shoot ourselves in the gut. Just to demonstrate how upset we are. Because that’s what this amounts to.
I'm not sure the metaphor is very helpful in this case. Who is 'we', whose foot, whose gut? And even if we could figure that out, would the other people in the we agree?
On “The quiet grief of adult friendship”
A a friend posted on Facebook about an anecdote about how Mickey Mantle was a rookie who stood up for Elston Howard, first African-American player for the Yankees. He pointed out that the problem was that Mantle was a rookie in 1951 and Howard didn't join the Yankees until 1955, so it was impossible for the rookie Mantle to take a stand for Howard. So while there might have been some truth Mantle standing up for Howard, the idea that Mantle as a rookie had his value system so straight that he didn't blink is bs.
It's interesting that LLMs are able to target our desire for a happy ending/stirling anecdote. It's designed to move us and make us feel better about ourselves. This is why nous' comment "It’s aiming dead center of the human sentiment bell curve" is so on target.
"
Steve, the place is matching my energy. If I were the hard charging person in my 20's, convinced the world was changing and I could do something, I'd probably find it agonizing, but at this point in time, it suits me fine. My wife is a bit upset at inflation and often points out x is more expensive or do we really need to buy y and it worries me too, but more for my daughters than for me.
I detected an AI generation whiff to it, but it seemed more with the author polishing it up rather than one of those 101% AI generated things, which is what I want my students to do, so I'm not as sensitive to that. Unfortunately, I'm asking my students to do research, but a lot of the things they find are AI generated, but if I were to demand that they only find things related to the subject that are not AI generated, they would probably have analysis paralysis (the good ones, the bad ones would just churn it out).
On “What’s wrong with liberalism?”
Why are we not awash in more socialist policies? Well, there’s [list]
Also, in recognition of Tulsi Gabbard's defenstration, I'd also add that encouraging the anti-science, 'I do my own research' vibe has the effect of peeling off people. The left has the problem of having to create societal movement when individual factions feel that their faction is more important than all the others. If someone decides that say PETA is the be-all, end-all of liberal efforts, it becomes easy to complain about efforts for other goals.
"
As fun as it is to whale on wj, I'll take a stab at addressing wonkie's comment. I don't know if it is because I'm here in Japan, but I find I cannot anticipate objections and alternate proposals if I don't know the history of the constructs that are being discussed. Pro bono notes the divergence between the UK and the US in terms of 'liberal', and I do think that a lot of play in the term. It's not as funny as Brits, when they first got CNN, were horrified when talking heads were discussing IRA contributions, but it's second.
So understanding what the words mean now is important, but I don't think we can unless we think about the history. I remember Charles Bird complaining that liberal came from the idea of liberty i.e. freedom, so he couldn't understand how us perfidious liberals could be so hypocritical about it. I think I replied to him (and I may be enhancing my response in my mind) that it was 'free' but it was related to a social class of people, i.e. non-slaves, so it wasn't that warmed over bullshit libertarianism that he liked to run up the flag pole from time to time. Again, I may be misremembering this, so take that with salt. But over at LGM, there was this post with a tweet quoting Massie saying
"All this time," Massie explained, "I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along."
Maybe I'm making too much of a stretch, but Massie sounds like a person who really didn't think what libertarian entailed. I don't know how the world would be different if he had some awareness about that, but if it took Trump to play who's your daddy with him to figure it out, why is anyone surprised about this dumpster fire?
On “Open Thread time”
Priest, if you'd like to do a front page post about Harden, let the kitty know!
On “What’s wrong with liberalism?”
Yet another liberal bona fide...
At the risk of sounding a bit snippy, I didn't see any of the earlier qualifications. Something like believing in the common good, the commons (be it environmental, knowledge, creative, or public infrastructure), early adoption of social causes, accepting non-violent protest and free speech, recognizing the strength of diversity, etc etc.
I'd edit that the liberal bona fide you mention to be
liberals know there are things that all people need and know that we all need to take steps to make sure that they have them.
but that doesn't have that salty taste.
"
Yet another conservative bona fide: conservatives know people better than they know themselves.
"
If you can afford to be a “hippy-ish artist” you’re plenty financially secure.
says wj while scrambling to reassert his conservative bona fides.
My first major was music and I still know plenty of 'hippy-ish artist' types and I assure you, they are not 'financially secure'. Maybe things have changed and I just went to school with a group that had no financial sense, but all of them are a medical blip away from bankruptcy (I think 99% of the population is a medical emergency away from bankruptcy, but for these folks, it isn't something that you'd need to call the Mayo clinic, it might be something much more mundane, like a blown out knee or some other mundane thing) And they would probably take as much umbrage at being told they shouldn't worry about their financials, cause they are 'plenty financial secure' (I tend to think that 'plenty' is what poker players call a tell...)
My hippy-ish artist friends might say "I can't really afford to be a worker drone" when asked why they don't dump their artistic shit and go all in on some other career, assuming they would still speak to me after I assure them they are 'plenty financial secure'
I'm reminded of Phillip K. Dick's observation about poverty
People are under the illusion that poverty teaches you things. They think it builds character. It does nothing of the sort. It only teaches you to be very careful about counting. You count pennies, you count slices of bread, you count how many days until the first of the month. It narrows the mind; it doesn’t broaden it.
That observation comes at a time when Dick was probably at his most productive, so were he still with use, he might also have some questions about this.
On “Open Thread time”
Concerning Musk, I tend to think that he would like to have the conflict continue between the Ukraine and Russia, because it allows him to play kingmaker. If one or the other side won, he might have to modify his behavior.
On “It’s funny what gets left out”
Never really thought of Brooks as Burkean, just thought of him as a burk...
On “China, redux”
wj, that's true, but my reason is that women, because they have only relatively recently been able to make the strides they have, they understand better than most the tradeoffs that a Chinese century might bring.
You can contrast Liu with Rogoff (I'm not positive is this is the exact interview I'm thinking of, but I think it gets close https://youtu.be/P2b4TjQa4gk?si=9etkI4l0WsJxHh1w ) Rogoff has a lot of insight, but he views the world for the perspective of a white guy stakeholder and isn't really able to see how that perspective might blind him to other possibilities.
"
wj, interesting, that. The reason I said that it wasn't coincidental was my thinking that the things I'm interested in (cultural and social change) would be best relayed by women, who might have more of an interesting view about the pros and cons of modernity in society.
On “Clusterfucks r us”
too good not to share
An undocumented Latina child not being available, Stephen Miller uses his pregnant wife as a human shield
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/04/strictly-ballroom
"
I belatedly realize that my post sounds like an invitation to engage in pizzagate levels of speculation, which is probably a mistake.
My own take on what exactly it was or was not is who gives a shit. I suppose it would be nice to know exactly what transpired or to know if it was set up with that level of lax security to encourage an event like this. I assume that the people who haven't decamped have the same sense of control that Trump has or had when he thought that what he did with Maduro could be replicated with the mullahs.
And I have to admit, it flits around in the back of my mind (for example, I really would not want to be King Charles, I could see some Bannon/Miller wannabe thinking they could get the UK on side if Charles were shot by a crazed attacker who wanted to get Trump) and I'm depressed that this is the case, but this is what this administration has generated.
On “Your choice: an open thread”
misogyny v homophobia debate is one of those that is crippled by our desire to rank
misogyny has basically been around for 5000 years straight
[so misogyny worse!]
and so women have been able to develop strategies to undercut it
[so homophobia is worse!]
Homosexuality has been accepted in various societies, but suppressed in western contexts
[so homophobia is worse!]
but women have been denied becoming the best versions of themselves
[misogyny worse!]
All due respect to everyone here talking about it, but it's not really a debate that produces a meaningful answer. I realize that won't stop people from talking about it, but bad shit doesn't always have to be put on a scale.
On “Imagining a mad king”
Since I don't click on links Charles gives, I am now wondering if that is an Onion article...
"
Color me unsurprised that Vance's Hahvahd education would set him up to convert to Catholicism in 2019 and 7 years later, have him lecturing the Pope on the fine points of [Catholic] doctrine. To be honest, I'm surprised that Vance hasn't issued his own encyclicals yet.
"
Looking at the Isgur blurbs, it looks like she doesn't take into account the shadow docket at all.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/supreme-court-shadow-docket-tracker-challenges-trump-administration
"
The NYT has always had longer pieces that are more news analysis than reportage. I'm not precisely sure of the relationship, but I think many of them were often found in the NYT Magazine. The Guardian adopted this with their 'long reads', but the NYT Times, never short on humility, calls them 'Great Reads'.
"
I couldn't figure out how to work this in the post, but this article, about a 14 year old hacker, quotes him saying this:
"It was disgusting, it was greedy, it was rooted in my own insecurities, it was wrong in every aspect," he said in the interview, two days before reporting to prison.
Why can't we have a president with the emotional intelligence of a 14 year old hacker?
On “Your choice: an open thread”
Don't want to be a Pest...
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.