I put this as a comment so as not to distract. The post is wonkie's, but the image of a spade is what I found at Amazon.
I'm grateful for her guestpost and want to encourage others if they have something they want to say. I think I have demonstrated that posts don't need to be airtight. Just send them over the transom to libjpn@gmail.com.
Some might wonder what would happen if a submission came in that I and the powers behind the screen (Russell, janiem and wj) were vehemently opposed to. Well, we can burn that bridge when we come to it. So give it a try, what do you have to lose?
Big thumbs up for Josh Johnson. It is astonishing to me that he can craft a bit that is structured and crafted, but sounds like someone telling a story at a party off the cuff to a bunch of friends. Pretty amazing.
Another tweak, wpDiscuz only allows the comment box at the top, so I've set the order for Newest to appear first, so anything you are replying to should appear immediately below the comment form box.
I'm not sure about that, I'll never see them in a show, and from a lot of the articles, it looks like they have been slammed with fan mail. They may feel like they are being villianized (is that a word?) and canceled for 'just' telling jokes and trying to make a living, but I think they are fooling themselves pretty profoundly and a letter from a person who occasionally watches a joke they do on Youtube is not really going to have the traction that is needed.
I've changed text color. I'm wondering if the dark version, where it is white on a black background might be better.
As Michael notes, you've got to use the tools at the bottom, going old school with the tags doesn't work. The tools also include adding an image attachment, which people have struggled with.
So, in e.g. the case of Gay, the fact that she is a second generation Haitian immigrant could certainly make one understand why in the wake of a lifetime of discrimination and recent accusations that Haitians have been eating Americans’ dogs and cats, she might be enraged enough to make an argument that civility is unnecessary, or a mistake. But it doesn’t make the argument right.
I didn't find Gay's argument to be growing from her rage, her discussion was rational and straightforward. If I were her, I'd be a lot angrier. And if I were to talk to Leslie, I might ask, as Coates did of Klein, wasn't silence a possibility?
While it may be just 'textual analysis', Gay notes We are at such a dangerous and delicate moment in American history. The onus is on all of us to reject the fantasy of civility in favor of repair. This country is broken, but that need not be permanent.
So you and/or Leslie are claiming that Gay rejects civility, but it seems to me that Gay is saying instead that civility is something that the other side is only doing performatively and so is something we (may?) have to forgo (or at least acknowledge how it can be used for bad aims) if we want to repair what has been broken in the US.
I'm sure that you disagree, which is fine, but for me, rather than the paragraph Leslie takes as summing up Gay, I take this one as being key Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control.
Gay's essay exists in a context where immediate calls for civility have been ways that those in power have been trying to control a narrative, especially in the wake of the Kirk assassination. Gay's essay is two weeks after the event so to transpose it to some sort of eternal 'civility is fantasy' is a misreading.
It's also important to note what happened in those two weeks. Accused of not being civil, the left has been protesting that everyone has been 'civil' with no one burning Kirk in effigy or organizing protests. It seems to me that the 'incivility' has been people expressing opinions on social media, where it is not clear if they are saying something to others or just expressing a level of frustration that is off the charts. However, the right response is oh no, not all of you are civil so all of you are uncivil. Efforts to assert that civility is something that is somehow lacking really just plug into the push of the right to claim the left is 'uncivil', and no amount of performance of civility will change this. So it is important at least for me, to understand that civility, in this case, is simply the right demanding a kowtowing to things they claim are true.
CharlesWT's tut tutting about the broken door at the ICE facility is of a piece with this. That broken door was presented as a synecdoche for a massive level of violence and destruction carried out by 'antifa', but closer examination reveals it is nothing of the sort. I feel like the accusation that Gay is rejecting civility forever and ever has a similar feel.
Buttigieg? Pritzker? I’d prefer either of them
As a note, in Kamala Harris' recent book, she said that she wanted Buttgieg, but thought that it was 'asking too much of America' (if I remember the quote correctly). I'm not second guessing that, I'm just imagining an America where it wouldn't be asking too much.
And I suppose I quote this to show why I think it worth zeroing in on the arguments people actually make, rather than those people’s origins, past statements etc.
This is interesting in light of a lot of the conversation, both here and out in the world. A lot of the martydom of Kirk requires overlooking his origins and past statements. The discussion between Klein and Coates features Coates pointing out the history behind a lot of this and Klein basically wanting a clean slate, which has him suggest that that if the Democrats would just run pro-life candidates in Nebraska, everything would be fine.
Newsom is an interesting case, he's setting himself up as anti-Trump, but his whole history is one of virtually limitless ambition and very much wanting to be President. In an ideal world, people wouldn't be looking to him or people like him for leadership, but it may be all we have.
Still, I don't have to post his memes or start fighting with people who do (at least I don't think I need to) From the Marshall quote, a distinction I'd make is that when Marshall is talking about commentators, he means people with a mass audience, like Klein, who have a tightrope to walk because their livelihood depends people following and agreeing with their arguments.
For us everyday folks, I realize it might be tiring to have to keep up with this, and we all dream of being able to set aside the history. It's an alluring fantasy to think that we can separate ourselves from history and rely on our expressed good intentions. Part of the fury at 'woke' is that it may seem like good intentions mean nothing, and it just becomes history all the way down and for some people, there is a glee in pointing out these things. But it seems like an important part of the puzzle that Gay is Haitian-American and Leslie is British and it illuminates (at least for me) a good bit of why, though the UK has not gotten as bad as the US, Starmer is flailing so badly in regards to Reform.
Historically, these sort of efforts (denazification, debaathfication) haven't gone so well. Lustration (the process of decommunization) was a mixed bag (Czechoslovakia good, Poland and Hungary, so/so, Romania pretty bad) but when you think that Czechoslovakia split and you see what has happened in Hungary and nearly failed in Poland, (and Romania is still a basket case) rooting out the Trumpist elements will probably not work. Spain offers another model (the "Pact of Forgetting" or Pacto del Olvido, but that would probably have folks here (including me) rip out our hair with the level of collective false memories that would be generated.
Well, we are probably at the end of the line for talking about this, but I do subscribe to Descartes line that "the heart has reasons the mind will never know" so that may be what you are relating 'stakes' to. However, just because they are in the heart rather than the mind does not exempt those reasons from scrutiny, it should encourage us to investigate those as well. I'm not suggesting that people without visible stakes cannot participate, here's an example of people with no apparent stakes entering an issue and affecting a change
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/O5yK7XiYQvU
But that seems to me to be different from a Heritage Foundation flunky complaining about Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan or Vance and others complaining about the lack of civility. And in a blog, where people don't have to be forthcoming about how they are getting to their position, it can be a problem, so "stake" provides a useful rule of thumb. Like all rules of thumb, it's not perfect, but it works on the whole. For example, Russell is a bit more familiar with Leslie than I am, but I have to ask, is his taking issue with Gay on civility related to a book that he is flogging about how much we need civility?
Nous and Pro Bono are having a much more interesting conversation about what shape post Trump America could take if it were to avoid running off the cliff and with that in mind, these two LGM posts from Dan Nexon and Paul Campos are worth your time.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/10/is-our-constitution-learning
and
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/10/notes-for-next-time-2
I especially appreciate the gallows humor in the title of Campos' post.
I've read a good bit of Gay, (my daughter recommended her book Bad Feminist which led me to her other books) but Ian Leslie wasn't a name that I was familiar with. However, it was niggling at the back of my mind about their backgrounds. I see that Leslie is a British author who was originally "communication strategist for some of the world’s biggest brands, at ad agencies in London and New York; he still advises companies on workplace culture and strategic communication" https://ian-leslie.com/about/
He also has just come out with a book titled Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together. I haven't read that, but his wikipedia bio says "The second half of the book is devoted to ten "rules of productive argument", which Leslie deduces from encounters with specialists in interrogation and hostage negotiation," which has me wonder if he considers civility a useful ruse in order to get to an outcome you want. Which is obviously something you want to do if you are negotiating with a hostage taker, (and that might be a good description of a lot of the right), but it's not really a ringing endorsement for civility.
On the other hand Gay is a second generation Haitian-American, so I'm marvelling a bit at a white British writer who was a corporate communication strategist telling a Haitian American, in Oct 2025 after an election where Haitians in the US legally were accused of eating pets, that she's wrong about civility. Perhaps Leslie is blissfully unaware of Gay's ancestry, but I am not, and I think it should be noted.
I get the same vibe from the earlier Klein-Coates interview. Klein is wondering how it can be possible that these ideals of respect for others humanity can be so debased and Coates says well, welcome to Black America. Maybe I'm being too hard on both Leslie and Klein, but that's where I'm sitting now.
About stakes, we all have our individual ones. A lot of people seem to have a stake in the I/P conflict that demands they support Israel, but if examined closely, that crumbles. And if one has discussions about this, it's a point to consider.
But I also think of the phrase 'it's not always about you'. People are influenced by not only their past, but also to lots of other things that are happening in their life. People also hold positions on lots of things that they don't directly affect them. My feeling is that if that is the case, they need to be careful to make sure that their arguments can be checked for their logic and their facts can be verified. Charles posting about the Portland ICE facility reveals that the damage happened in June, before Operation Overpriced Kombucha was even an unformed notion in the Dear Leader's mind seems like one of those things that people can be doubtful as to what it represents. It could be said that I am being uncivil in pointing this out, but I think Charles has enough of a record lauding libertarian ideals of taking the government out of everything that one has to wonder when he applauds unrequested military intervention to protect 4 month old broken doors.
In the example of Afghanistan (and other Islamic countries), a lot of justification of confronting those countries is based on their approach to the rights of women. And if one has that as a main focus or even an important focus, that's fine. But when you have people using that as a justification for intervention, if they don't examine their motivations, they can't be surprised if someone else does it for them, perhaps unfairly. The answer to me is [the generic] you need to examine your motivations and set them out or have it done for you.
In Afghanistan, for example, consider how Trump signed the withdrawal in May 2020 and ordered a RIF down to 2,500 5 days before Biden's inauguration. Biden carried it out and was accused of neglecting the rights of women, like in this Heritage Foundation piece by Anthony Kim
https://www.heritage.org/middle-east/commentary/the-tragic-betrayal-afghan-women-year-after-bidens-botched-troop-withdrawal
There were some on the left who complained about this, and I'd take what they said seriously. But when conservatives who supported Trump come up with that, really?
Now, Anthony is not here, but if he were, couldn't we wonder about his other positions and how they mesh? And do we serve civility by pretending to take all his comments at face value?
This is one reason I'm so noisy about providing links rather than 'I read this on X and [opining]' I realize that not everyone has time to do this, and information has gotten a lot more diffuse so it can sometimes be impossible to reference something seen in passing, but that should demand a lighter touch in presenting it as evidence, imho.
A bit of color on your comment. Japan is interesting (and this transfers to other places) in that if you went back to before Meiji, everyday Japanese would probably never even define themselves as Japanese, they were from their fiefdom. And before the unification of Japan as what we think of as a nation state (1615), that was even more the case. However, the Meiji Restoration made a goal of creating a a polity that exhibits the characteristics that wonkie mentions.
One of the things they did was make it part of education extend the notion of nationhood back thru time. In fact, every Japanese student learns the historical date of 1192 as ii kuni skuro which is a goroawase, a mnemonic peculiar to Japanese. It marks the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate and means 'let's make a beautiful country', even though the idea of a nation-state is ahistoric. But it helps solidify an 'our nation' ethos that you see not only in Takaichi's philosophy, but more generally among the Japanese population. (ed to fix the italics, cause it really bugs me...)
Sure, Leslie isn't implying that. But since Gay starts her essay with Vance's demand for civility, don't you think it is a bit disingenuous to summarize Gay's argument by not even noting that? Unfortunately, he starts off by taking issue with Gay in order to valorize civility when Gay places it in a particular context.
I found what is close to a transcript of Gay's TED talk here
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/02/bad-feminist-roxane-gay-extract
About stakes, I think it is worthwhile to work from cases we might all agree with and then move out to edge cases where we have to tease out things. So, a case that might serve would be the weaponization of anti-antisemitism. While I'm thinking of the Trump administration going after universities because of a claimed failure in dealing with antiseminism. I think, if you look at this in hindsight, you can draw a line to the antisemitism accusations against Labour and Corbyn. It doesn't absolve anyone from charges of anti-semitism, but recognizing that many of the people who are baying for blood have absolutely no stake in it, except as a way to undercut their political opposition is essentially a question of 'stakes'. Going back to civility, if the accusations were being made by a person who actually acknowledged how much their stake is, I think we would have some foundation for civility. But when it is done by someone who has no 'stake' in the issue, it means that civility is a sham.
I won't bring up recent events here, except to say that when someone drops in to specifically set people against each other, that is not linked to any definition of civility in my dictionary, and it would suggest that the person would argue the opposite side if they thought it would achieve their aims.
There is also the problem of fighting distant problems while turning a blind eye to problems closer to home. Chinese must feel this happens when they see people going on about Uyghur and Taiwan, or the usual suspects complaining about how women are treated in Islamic countries. These problems definitely exist, but looking at who has a 'stake' in it can be relevatory.
I've been reading the Memoranda of Conversations in the run up to Nixon going to China. Basically, Kissinger was throwing Taiwan under the bus in order to achieve a rapproachment with China
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v17/d139
Now, Nixon had to take all this back to Congress and the China Lobby basically took out a lot of these things. Understanding US history and politics can make this understandable, but when viewed from the Chinese side, it seems like Taiwan is not something that the US is interested in unless it is a way to undercut China. I don't suggest that we cede Taiwan to China, though I'm not sure how far the US should go in defending it (cf Ukraine), but it reveals, at least to me, that people who make Taiwan their key point in opposing China are perhaps responding to prejudices they have about China rather than considering the actual history and circumstances.
If I were to speak to your particular situation, I'd need to have a pan-opticon view of your exchanges and ideas and the context of those, so yes, in the absence of having complete knowledge of that, one has to grant people principles that they feel they hold deeply. To transpose your example, Australians have been at the forefront of anti-racism efforts and the efforts by individual Australians, such as Peter Norman. But when politicians argue that somehow they, by being members of an Australian polity, are somehow anti racist, that seems a bit strained, not only given Australia's problems of race relations, but also in regard to specific policies and programs. Those principles can and should be examined to reveal places where they might not match up with other principles brought forward. And if those become the topic of conversation among individuals, folks should give the respondent the time and space to make their case, something that is not always easy or even possible. But rather than pretend that we will reach agreement, I think civility demands that we accept that there are going to be points that we just disagree on. Fortunately, we are all works in progress and we do have the possibility of change so ideally, in an environment that has civility, people will be able to change. However, if civility carries the demand that we have to reach agreement, it is, as Gay points out, performative.
Not quite Russell-esque in length and certainly not in content, but we do our best.
Leslie plucks a small bit out of Gay's essay (the full essay (from a facebook friend) is at
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/opinion/civility-fantasy-power-kirk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok8.2ekW.yooo9wXkJKQX
but seems to have missed the first paragraph
After encouraging podcast listeners of the recently deceased Charlie Kirk to become online vigilantes in search of anyone “celebrating” Mr. Kirk’s death, Vice President JD Vance said last week: “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility. And there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”
Vance was doing what conservatives often do — conjuring people up so his followers have someone specific to foment against. This brand of demagoguery is incredibly dangerous, because when informally deputized vigilantes realize that few real enemies exist, they accept any substitute. They direct their manufactured ire toward innocent people, marginalized groups and, eventually, one another.
I'm curious if Leslie thinks Vance (and others) are practicing 'civility' by making claims that a large portion of the left was somehow celebrating Charlie Kirk's death. It seems to me that civility has to start with some sort of acceptance of reality, not creating a false one and then demanding that everyone kowtow to that.
Gay also gets a shot in at Klein when she writes; In the fantasy of civility, if we are polite about our disagreements, we are practicing politics the right way. If we are polite when we express bigotry, we are performing respectability for people whom we do not actually respect and who, in return, do not respect us. The performance is the only thing that matters. Ouch.
A couple more paragraphs And the notion of two groups— civil and not — is predicated on the idea that we’re all playing by the same rules, and we’re standing on equal footing, untroubled by the inequities and bigotries of the world. As I said, civility is a fantasy, because our political discourse never happens in a vacuum. It happens in the beautiful mess of the real world. It is naïve, at best, to believe civility is more important than who we are, what we stand for and how.
and these two Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control.
Civility is wielded as a cudgel to further clarify the differences between “us” and “them.” It is the demand of people with thin skin who don’t want their delicate egos and impoverished ideas challenged. And it is a tool of fearful leaders, clinging to power with desperate, sweaty hands, thrilled at the ways they are forcing people, corporations and even other nations to bend to their will but terrified at what will happen when it all slips away.
Good stuff, and I recommend her book 'Bad Feminist'. Her TED talk is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxt_MZKMdes
For berserk, there are two etymologies, one is bare-shirt (suggesting that the warriors wore no armor) or bear shirt (wore bear skins). It's in Old Norse, but doesn't appear in Old English. My Old English teacher favored the bear shirt etymology, because of the etymology of the word bear, 'brown one' in Indo European, This is because the actual word for bear (*rktos) was a taboo word, and no one wanted to summon or anger one of those bad boys. Which is precisely the opposite of having something like 'going postal' become an everyday phrase of annoyance.
I should also note that 'gawp' tends to have a positive meaning, so it is not the right word. Appalled or aghast might be closer, but there's not a word for when something just short circuits any sort of judgement and you just stand there, slack-jawed.
Interesting stuff. My own feeling is that a big problem arises when people take positions that they don't really have a stake in, but use it to fight against the other side. This raises the question of whether an issue is something that a person is really committed to or if it is 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. So when Charles argues, after a long history of arguing for libertarian principles, how front doors of ICE facilities need National Guard protection, I wonder if he's for real or just trolling or possibly just doesn't know the difference.
It is rather illiberal to argue that someone's opinions doesn't matter, but I can think of a number of examples on both sides of people seemingly taking on opinions that don't really have a lot to do with them but arguing for them vehemently. This goes hand in hand with the larger issue of astroturfing and fake identities. It may be a lost cause, especially for larger platforms, but we can try to do a Candide and cultivate our gardens.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
I put this as a comment so as not to distract. The post is wonkie's, but the image of a spade is what I found at Amazon.
I'm grateful for her guestpost and want to encourage others if they have something they want to say. I think I have demonstrated that posts don't need to be airtight. Just send them over the transom to libjpn@gmail.com.
Some might wonder what would happen if a submission came in that I and the powers behind the screen (Russell, janiem and wj) were vehemently opposed to. Well, we can burn that bridge when we come to it. So give it a try, what do you have to lose?
On “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk”
Big thumbs up for Josh Johnson. It is astonishing to me that he can craft a bit that is structured and crafted, but sounds like someone telling a story at a party off the cuff to a bunch of friends. Pretty amazing.
His bit on Bad Bunny has some points that I want to use in a future post, but for now, just enjoy.
https://youtu.be/QU93N7saW_E?si=vJCj4XdfM9fEkjwM
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Well, I can start watching this guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb0Vd-XnlkU
On “Excelsior 2.1”
Another tweak, wpDiscuz only allows the comment box at the top, so I've set the order for Newest to appear first, so anything you are replying to should appear immediately below the comment form box.
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Tony P. and all, how about this?
On “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk”
I'm not sure about that, I'll never see them in a show, and from a lot of the articles, it looks like they have been slammed with fan mail. They may feel like they are being villianized (is that a word?) and canceled for 'just' telling jokes and trying to make a living, but I think they are fooling themselves pretty profoundly and a letter from a person who occasionally watches a joke they do on Youtube is not really going to have the traction that is needed.
On “Excelsior 2.1”
I've changed text color. I'm wondering if the dark version, where it is white on a black background might be better.
As Michael notes, you've got to use the tools at the bottom, going old school with the tags doesn't work. The tools also include adding an image attachment, which people have struggled with.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
So, in e.g. the case of Gay, the fact that she is a second generation Haitian immigrant could certainly make one understand why in the wake of a lifetime of discrimination and recent accusations that Haitians have been eating Americans’ dogs and cats, she might be enraged enough to make an argument that civility is unnecessary, or a mistake. But it doesn’t make the argument right.
I didn't find Gay's argument to be growing from her rage, her discussion was rational and straightforward. If I were her, I'd be a lot angrier. And if I were to talk to Leslie, I might ask, as Coates did of Klein, wasn't silence a possibility?
While it may be just 'textual analysis', Gay notes
We are at such a dangerous and delicate moment in American history. The onus is on all of us to reject the fantasy of civility in favor of repair. This country is broken, but that need not be permanent.
So you and/or Leslie are claiming that Gay rejects civility, but it seems to me that Gay is saying instead that civility is something that the other side is only doing performatively and so is something we (may?) have to forgo (or at least acknowledge how it can be used for bad aims) if we want to repair what has been broken in the US.
I'm sure that you disagree, which is fine, but for me, rather than the paragraph Leslie takes as summing up Gay, I take this one as being key
Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control.
Gay's essay exists in a context where immediate calls for civility have been ways that those in power have been trying to control a narrative, especially in the wake of the Kirk assassination. Gay's essay is two weeks after the event so to transpose it to some sort of eternal 'civility is fantasy' is a misreading.
It's also important to note what happened in those two weeks. Accused of not being civil, the left has been protesting that everyone has been 'civil' with no one burning Kirk in effigy or organizing protests. It seems to me that the 'incivility' has been people expressing opinions on social media, where it is not clear if they are saying something to others or just expressing a level of frustration that is off the charts. However, the right response is oh no, not all of you are civil so all of you are uncivil. Efforts to assert that civility is something that is somehow lacking really just plug into the push of the right to claim the left is 'uncivil', and no amount of performance of civility will change this. So it is important at least for me, to understand that civility, in this case, is simply the right demanding a kowtowing to things they claim are true.
CharlesWT's tut tutting about the broken door at the ICE facility is of a piece with this. That broken door was presented as a synecdoche for a massive level of violence and destruction carried out by 'antifa', but closer examination reveals it is nothing of the sort. I feel like the accusation that Gay is rejecting civility forever and ever has a similar feel.
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Buttigieg? Pritzker? I’d prefer either of them
As a note, in Kamala Harris' recent book, she said that she wanted Buttgieg, but thought that it was 'asking too much of America' (if I remember the quote correctly). I'm not second guessing that, I'm just imagining an America where it wouldn't be asking too much.
On “Excelsior 2.1”
I think that if you choose Newest instead of Oldest at the top, you should see what you are responding to.
On “What do you mean ‘we’, kemosabe?”
Testing the wpDiscuz plugin
On “Where are the 5 words?”
And I suppose I quote this to show why I think it worth zeroing in on the arguments people actually make, rather than those people’s origins, past statements etc.
This is interesting in light of a lot of the conversation, both here and out in the world. A lot of the martydom of Kirk requires overlooking his origins and past statements. The discussion between Klein and Coates features Coates pointing out the history behind a lot of this and Klein basically wanting a clean slate, which has him suggest that that if the Democrats would just run pro-life candidates in Nebraska, everything would be fine.
Newsom is an interesting case, he's setting himself up as anti-Trump, but his whole history is one of virtually limitless ambition and very much wanting to be President. In an ideal world, people wouldn't be looking to him or people like him for leadership, but it may be all we have.
Still, I don't have to post his memes or start fighting with people who do (at least I don't think I need to) From the Marshall quote, a distinction I'd make is that when Marshall is talking about commentators, he means people with a mass audience, like Klein, who have a tightrope to walk because their livelihood depends people following and agreeing with their arguments.
For us everyday folks, I realize it might be tiring to have to keep up with this, and we all dream of being able to set aside the history. It's an alluring fantasy to think that we can separate ourselves from history and rely on our expressed good intentions. Part of the fury at 'woke' is that it may seem like good intentions mean nothing, and it just becomes history all the way down and for some people, there is a glee in pointing out these things. But it seems like an important part of the puzzle that Gay is Haitian-American and Leslie is British and it illuminates (at least for me) a good bit of why, though the UK has not gotten as bad as the US, Starmer is flailing so badly in regards to Reform.
On “What do you mean ‘we’, kemosabe?”
good point
https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/why-the-lone-rangers-anachronisms-make-its-history-lessons-hard-to-swallow-127703/
On “Ad futurum”
woo hoo! Great to see you Chuchundra! I'll be in touch in a couple of weeks for advice.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
Historically, these sort of efforts (denazification, debaathfication) haven't gone so well. Lustration (the process of decommunization) was a mixed bag (Czechoslovakia good, Poland and Hungary, so/so, Romania pretty bad) but when you think that Czechoslovakia split and you see what has happened in Hungary and nearly failed in Poland, (and Romania is still a basket case) rooting out the Trumpist elements will probably not work. Spain offers another model (the "Pact of Forgetting" or Pacto del Olvido, but that would probably have folks here (including me) rip out our hair with the level of collective false memories that would be generated.
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Well, we are probably at the end of the line for talking about this, but I do subscribe to Descartes line that "the heart has reasons the mind will never know" so that may be what you are relating 'stakes' to. However, just because they are in the heart rather than the mind does not exempt those reasons from scrutiny, it should encourage us to investigate those as well. I'm not suggesting that people without visible stakes cannot participate, here's an example of people with no apparent stakes entering an issue and affecting a change
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/O5yK7XiYQvU
https://secretireland.ie/grapefruit-ladies-ireland-the-tart-taste-of-triumph-how-dublins-fruit-rebels-cracked-apartheids-shell/
But that seems to me to be different from a Heritage Foundation flunky complaining about Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan or Vance and others complaining about the lack of civility. And in a blog, where people don't have to be forthcoming about how they are getting to their position, it can be a problem, so "stake" provides a useful rule of thumb. Like all rules of thumb, it's not perfect, but it works on the whole. For example, Russell is a bit more familiar with Leslie than I am, but I have to ask, is his taking issue with Gay on civility related to a book that he is flogging about how much we need civility?
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Nous and Pro Bono are having a much more interesting conversation about what shape post Trump America could take if it were to avoid running off the cliff and with that in mind, these two LGM posts from Dan Nexon and Paul Campos are worth your time.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/10/is-our-constitution-learning
and
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/10/notes-for-next-time-2
I especially appreciate the gallows humor in the title of Campos' post.
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I've read a good bit of Gay, (my daughter recommended her book Bad Feminist which led me to her other books) but Ian Leslie wasn't a name that I was familiar with. However, it was niggling at the back of my mind about their backgrounds. I see that Leslie is a British author who was originally "communication strategist for some of the world’s biggest brands, at ad agencies in London and New York; he still advises companies on workplace culture and strategic communication" https://ian-leslie.com/about/
He also has just come out with a book titled Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together. I haven't read that, but his wikipedia bio says "The second half of the book is devoted to ten "rules of productive argument", which Leslie deduces from encounters with specialists in interrogation and hostage negotiation," which has me wonder if he considers civility a useful ruse in order to get to an outcome you want. Which is obviously something you want to do if you are negotiating with a hostage taker, (and that might be a good description of a lot of the right), but it's not really a ringing endorsement for civility.
On the other hand Gay is a second generation Haitian-American, so I'm marvelling a bit at a white British writer who was a corporate communication strategist telling a Haitian American, in Oct 2025 after an election where Haitians in the US legally were accused of eating pets, that she's wrong about civility. Perhaps Leslie is blissfully unaware of Gay's ancestry, but I am not, and I think it should be noted.
I get the same vibe from the earlier Klein-Coates interview. Klein is wondering how it can be possible that these ideals of respect for others humanity can be so debased and Coates says well, welcome to Black America. Maybe I'm being too hard on both Leslie and Klein, but that's where I'm sitting now.
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About stakes, we all have our individual ones. A lot of people seem to have a stake in the I/P conflict that demands they support Israel, but if examined closely, that crumbles. And if one has discussions about this, it's a point to consider.
But I also think of the phrase 'it's not always about you'. People are influenced by not only their past, but also to lots of other things that are happening in their life. People also hold positions on lots of things that they don't directly affect them. My feeling is that if that is the case, they need to be careful to make sure that their arguments can be checked for their logic and their facts can be verified. Charles posting about the Portland ICE facility reveals that the damage happened in June, before Operation Overpriced Kombucha was even an unformed notion in the Dear Leader's mind seems like one of those things that people can be doubtful as to what it represents. It could be said that I am being uncivil in pointing this out, but I think Charles has enough of a record lauding libertarian ideals of taking the government out of everything that one has to wonder when he applauds unrequested military intervention to protect 4 month old broken doors.
In the example of Afghanistan (and other Islamic countries), a lot of justification of confronting those countries is based on their approach to the rights of women. And if one has that as a main focus or even an important focus, that's fine. But when you have people using that as a justification for intervention, if they don't examine their motivations, they can't be surprised if someone else does it for them, perhaps unfairly. The answer to me is [the generic] you need to examine your motivations and set them out or have it done for you.
In Afghanistan, for example, consider how Trump signed the withdrawal in May 2020 and ordered a RIF down to 2,500 5 days before Biden's inauguration. Biden carried it out and was accused of neglecting the rights of women, like in this Heritage Foundation piece by Anthony Kim
https://www.heritage.org/middle-east/commentary/the-tragic-betrayal-afghan-women-year-after-bidens-botched-troop-withdrawal
There were some on the left who complained about this, and I'd take what they said seriously. But when conservatives who supported Trump come up with that, really?
Now, Anthony is not here, but if he were, couldn't we wonder about his other positions and how they mesh? And do we serve civility by pretending to take all his comments at face value?
This is one reason I'm so noisy about providing links rather than 'I read this on X and [opining]' I realize that not everyone has time to do this, and information has gotten a lot more diffuse so it can sometimes be impossible to reference something seen in passing, but that should demand a lighter touch in presenting it as evidence, imho.
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
A bit of color on your comment. Japan is interesting (and this transfers to other places) in that if you went back to before Meiji, everyday Japanese would probably never even define themselves as Japanese, they were from their fiefdom. And before the unification of Japan as what we think of as a nation state (1615), that was even more the case. However, the Meiji Restoration made a goal of creating a a polity that exhibits the characteristics that wonkie mentions.
One of the things they did was make it part of education extend the notion of nationhood back thru time. In fact, every Japanese student learns the historical date of 1192 as ii kuni skuro which is a goroawase, a mnemonic peculiar to Japanese. It marks the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate and means 'let's make a beautiful country', even though the idea of a nation-state is ahistoric. But it helps solidify an 'our nation' ethos that you see not only in Takaichi's philosophy, but more generally among the Japanese population. (ed to fix the italics, cause it really bugs me...)
On “Where are the 5 words?”
Sure, Leslie isn't implying that. But since Gay starts her essay with Vance's demand for civility, don't you think it is a bit disingenuous to summarize Gay's argument by not even noting that? Unfortunately, he starts off by taking issue with Gay in order to valorize civility when Gay places it in a particular context.
I found what is close to a transcript of Gay's TED talk here
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/02/bad-feminist-roxane-gay-extract
About stakes, I think it is worthwhile to work from cases we might all agree with and then move out to edge cases where we have to tease out things. So, a case that might serve would be the weaponization of anti-antisemitism. While I'm thinking of the Trump administration going after universities because of a claimed failure in dealing with antiseminism. I think, if you look at this in hindsight, you can draw a line to the antisemitism accusations against Labour and Corbyn. It doesn't absolve anyone from charges of anti-semitism, but recognizing that many of the people who are baying for blood have absolutely no stake in it, except as a way to undercut their political opposition is essentially a question of 'stakes'. Going back to civility, if the accusations were being made by a person who actually acknowledged how much their stake is, I think we would have some foundation for civility. But when it is done by someone who has no 'stake' in the issue, it means that civility is a sham.
I won't bring up recent events here, except to say that when someone drops in to specifically set people against each other, that is not linked to any definition of civility in my dictionary, and it would suggest that the person would argue the opposite side if they thought it would achieve their aims.
There is also the problem of fighting distant problems while turning a blind eye to problems closer to home. Chinese must feel this happens when they see people going on about Uyghur and Taiwan, or the usual suspects complaining about how women are treated in Islamic countries. These problems definitely exist, but looking at who has a 'stake' in it can be relevatory.
I've been reading the Memoranda of Conversations in the run up to Nixon going to China. Basically, Kissinger was throwing Taiwan under the bus in order to achieve a rapproachment with China
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v17/d139
Now, Nixon had to take all this back to Congress and the China Lobby basically took out a lot of these things. Understanding US history and politics can make this understandable, but when viewed from the Chinese side, it seems like Taiwan is not something that the US is interested in unless it is a way to undercut China. I don't suggest that we cede Taiwan to China, though I'm not sure how far the US should go in defending it (cf Ukraine), but it reveals, at least to me, that people who make Taiwan their key point in opposing China are perhaps responding to prejudices they have about China rather than considering the actual history and circumstances.
If I were to speak to your particular situation, I'd need to have a pan-opticon view of your exchanges and ideas and the context of those, so yes, in the absence of having complete knowledge of that, one has to grant people principles that they feel they hold deeply. To transpose your example, Australians have been at the forefront of anti-racism efforts and the efforts by individual Australians, such as Peter Norman. But when politicians argue that somehow they, by being members of an Australian polity, are somehow anti racist, that seems a bit strained, not only given Australia's problems of race relations, but also in regard to specific policies and programs. Those principles can and should be examined to reveal places where they might not match up with other principles brought forward. And if those become the topic of conversation among individuals, folks should give the respondent the time and space to make their case, something that is not always easy or even possible. But rather than pretend that we will reach agreement, I think civility demands that we accept that there are going to be points that we just disagree on. Fortunately, we are all works in progress and we do have the possibility of change so ideally, in an environment that has civility, people will be able to change. However, if civility carries the demand that we have to reach agreement, it is, as Gay points out, performative.
Not quite Russell-esque in length and certainly not in content, but we do our best.
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Leslie plucks a small bit out of Gay's essay (the full essay (from a facebook friend) is at
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/opinion/civility-fantasy-power-kirk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok8.2ekW.yooo9wXkJKQX
but seems to have missed the first paragraph
After encouraging podcast listeners of the recently deceased Charlie Kirk to become online vigilantes in search of anyone “celebrating” Mr. Kirk’s death, Vice President JD Vance said last week: “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility. And there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”
Vance was doing what conservatives often do — conjuring people up so his followers have someone specific to foment against. This brand of demagoguery is incredibly dangerous, because when informally deputized vigilantes realize that few real enemies exist, they accept any substitute. They direct their manufactured ire toward innocent people, marginalized groups and, eventually, one another.
I'm curious if Leslie thinks Vance (and others) are practicing 'civility' by making claims that a large portion of the left was somehow celebrating Charlie Kirk's death. It seems to me that civility has to start with some sort of acceptance of reality, not creating a false one and then demanding that everyone kowtow to that.
Gay also gets a shot in at Klein when she writes; In the fantasy of civility, if we are polite about our disagreements, we are practicing politics the right way. If we are polite when we express bigotry, we are performing respectability for people whom we do not actually respect and who, in return, do not respect us. The performance is the only thing that matters. Ouch.
A couple more paragraphs
And the notion of two groups— civil and not — is predicated on the idea that we’re all playing by the same rules, and we’re standing on equal footing, untroubled by the inequities and bigotries of the world. As I said, civility is a fantasy, because our political discourse never happens in a vacuum. It happens in the beautiful mess of the real world. It is naïve, at best, to believe civility is more important than who we are, what we stand for and how.
and these two
Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control.
Civility is wielded as a cudgel to further clarify the differences between “us” and “them.” It is the demand of people with thin skin who don’t want their delicate egos and impoverished ideas challenged. And it is a tool of fearful leaders, clinging to power with desperate, sweaty hands, thrilled at the ways they are forcing people, corporations and even other nations to bend to their will but terrified at what will happen when it all slips away.
Good stuff, and I recommend her book 'Bad Feminist'. Her TED talk is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxt_MZKMdes
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
For berserk, there are two etymologies, one is bare-shirt (suggesting that the warriors wore no armor) or bear shirt (wore bear skins). It's in Old Norse, but doesn't appear in Old English. My Old English teacher favored the bear shirt etymology, because of the etymology of the word bear, 'brown one' in Indo European, This is because the actual word for bear (*rktos) was a taboo word, and no one wanted to summon or anger one of those bad boys. Which is precisely the opposite of having something like 'going postal' become an everyday phrase of annoyance.
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Hartmut, holy shit...
I should also note that 'gawp' tends to have a positive meaning, so it is not the right word. Appalled or aghast might be closer, but there's not a word for when something just short circuits any sort of judgement and you just stand there, slack-jawed.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
Interesting stuff. My own feeling is that a big problem arises when people take positions that they don't really have a stake in, but use it to fight against the other side. This raises the question of whether an issue is something that a person is really committed to or if it is 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. So when Charles argues, after a long history of arguing for libertarian principles, how front doors of ICE facilities need National Guard protection, I wonder if he's for real or just trolling or possibly just doesn't know the difference.
It is rather illiberal to argue that someone's opinions doesn't matter, but I can think of a number of examples on both sides of people seemingly taking on opinions that don't really have a lot to do with them but arguing for them vehemently. This goes hand in hand with the larger issue of astroturfing and fake identities. It may be a lost cause, especially for larger platforms, but we can try to do a Candide and cultivate our gardens.