Pro Bono - What we are doing to the planet really matters. What the US is doing matters a lot, because why should poorer countries restrain themselves if the US won’t.
There is that, and also the data suggests that the top 1% of the world are responsible for 2/3 of the warming measured since 1990, and we have over 900 billionaires in our country. China is next closest with 516, and only 3 other nation states have more than 100.
But then here is another shocker - to be in the top 1% worldwide, you need only to make $60,000 a year*, so I'd guess that most of us writing here are in that 1%.
*If we are talking income rather than wealth. Wealth is probably a better measure, but it's also a harder measure to come by.
wonkie - Maybe the Republican party wouldn’t have degenerated into the corrupt, fascist, anti-Constitutional front for religious extremists and oligarchs that it is today if the rest of us had spent the last twenty-five years LOUDLY DENOUNCING THEIR FASCIST PROPAGANDA instead of trying to be “reasonable” while politely engaging in discussion of issues.
...or if the "concerned republicans" had actually been critical of the alt-right and had chosen to ally with the centrist democrats rather than choosing to conciliate their radicals and blame the "radical liberals."
There's a whole lot of quiet complicity enabling this lawless administration, and all of this hindsight is blame shifting.
This is, in many ways, the dynamic that defines reactionary centrism: the right must be understood, but never blamed. The left can be blamed, but need not be understood. One thing that follows from this is a hyper-sensitivity about treating the right fairly. John Rentoul, for instance, the chief political commentator for the Independent, is no cheerleader for Reform UK. Yet his theory of how to defeat the party often involves scoldingthe left for directly stating the nature of the threat: “Oh dear, m’lud: It’s never a good idea to call people Nazis if they are not Nazis” (that might sound like a mean-spirited parody of a British establishment type, but it’s actually the title of one of his columns).
This being just a taste, not the sum total of what I think is apropos. Again, worth a read.
It seems weird to me to be discussing whether or not Omelas was in better shape under Biden or under Trump when the part of the story that is being ignored in order to make this response is that Trump has decided that too few children have been tortured in order to make Omelas great, and that Biden was a pussy for having not had the courage to grab more kids to torture in order to launch Omelas into high gear towards greatness.
Oh, and everyone else in the world sucks compared to Omelas and needs to jump on the kid torturing regime ASAP or else their countries are going to sink just like Omelas under Biden.
wj - As so often, we wonder just what definition of “elite” is being used here.
He covers that earlier: The real answer is that the most powerful liberal institutions – the Democratic establishment, major donors and the professional class around them – are captive to outdated etiquette.
It'sthe DNC and those with input into the strategy side.
In elite liberal spaces, the expectation is always the same: stay quiet, exit gracefully, never make a scene. Yet nonviolent unruliness has power precisely because it breaks the code of composure. Psychologists call this the “expectancy violations theory”: when behavior defies what’s anticipated, it commands outsized attention and carries significant weight. That impact is magnified when it comes from insiders with status or access.
This dynamic suggests that liberalism’s best strategy is to subvert its own norms. Critics may argue that spectacle undermines substance, or that breaking etiquette diminishes the credentials that lend Democrats authority. But in today’s attention economy, spectacle is often how substance gets noticed. Breaking strict decorum is not the enemy of liberalism; it may be the very tool that keeps it alive.
Worth a read. Someone will hopefully send it to Chuck Schumer.
russell - I also disagree with nous’ thought that health care “codes” as a management issue. At the policy level, it does. At the level of “do I have to choose between health insurance and rent” it does not.
Then we agree, because that is what I was trying to get at with my: It doesn’t register for workers as a policy thing so much as it does a wages and benefits thing. The voters that the Dems are losing are going to tune out as soon as the conversation starts focusing on the details of health policy, same as rank-and-file union members start getting sore feet and shuffling as soon as the rep with the bullhorn starts babbling on about the importance of changing the language in Article 5 Part 3 of the CBA.
Keep the language focused on struggles and outcomes and whose side you are fighting on. And if there are cleavage lines over policy choices, focus on the need for solidarity.
You can tell the difference between the Dems with close union ties and allies and the ones who have never been a part of a union and only have ties to people in management.
Healthcare codes as a management concern. It doesn't register for workers as a policy thing so much as it does a wages and benefits thing. Policy details don't land with working class voters because those decisions are made by other people. What matters is whether they are feeling like government is fighting for workers or for the big people.
I really think it's that simple. Low information voters don't listen to policy discussions, and they don't trust people who spend all their time talking about that stuff. It's a cultural divide.
I found the video interesting in pieces, but the combination of a uncertain sync between video and audio and the lower fidelity of the audio made it hard for me to stay focused. It made Solti's conducting feel less than intuitive and had me constantly wondering if what he was signaling was the moment I was hearing.
Chasing down the audio recording in full fidelity on Apple Music and losing the video completely eliminated that feeling of disorientation, as did chasing down a more recent live performance video from Dudamel where the conducting seemed better matched to the audio.
Between watching that and another performance with Gatti conducting, I started to really get a sense for the different impressions that one can get based on where one's visual attention is drawn. The gaze plays a powerful role in what the ear seems to hear in these videos.
One thing that I have found effective in teaching is that the moments when I am being critical of something are always more powerful for the class when I can find a way to tell them from the perspective of "we," rather than "I," and when that narrative incorporates how "I" learned to view the problem through a perspective that helps put "us" back in a position with more agency to address "our" problem.
That, and starting with questions and listening rather than with advice and instructions seem to be the magic mix.
My biggest complaint about the assessment culture that has set in across academia (and the overall rise of big quant that coincides with the monetization of big data) is that there are a lot more people with the tools to gather and measure the data than there are people who have the understanding, expertise, and rigor to tease out when the things we measure actually measure the right things.
I'm interested in reading Limits of the Numerical one of these days: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo146791774.html
It seems the sort of book that can take on the technocratic push for quantitative over qualitative data gathering and analysis. I find that the voices that most often get amplified in management meetings dealing in quantitative assessment are the voices that are on the wrong side of Einstein's admonition that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Not just pain of whatever they have suffered either, GftNC. They also have to give up the narrative justification that gave that suffering purpose, and they have to take on the additional sting of shame for having embraced that hate. That's a lot to swallow.
People will do a lot of shameful things in order to avoid feeling shame.
I should add, I'm more concerned here with gaining the upper hand in how the issues get framed than I am with electability. Newsom fits fewer prejudices than do Pritzker or Buttigieg. I just don't think that what he is saying cuts through enough to change the conversation, and I think the conversation we are having is a losing conversation for the Dems.
lj- 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.
I understand this reaction, but what wj had asked for was:
...someone else who a) is willing to stand up, and b) has the media expertise available to get the message out effectively.
I think Mayor Pete offers more of this than does Newsom. And I think that if the Dems want to break through, they are going to have to find someone that is more a brawler than a point fighter. Newsom is all jab with no follow-up, and he's too much of a lightweight to land a knockout with a jab. Both the guys I countered with seem capable of landing some body blows.
wj- <i>I’d vastly rather look to someone else. But that requires there be someone else who a) is willing to stand up, and b) has the media expertise available to get the message out effectively.</i>
Buttigieg? Pritzker? I'd prefer either of them. Don't know where I'd stand on Beshear vs Newsom. Beshear seems like exactly the sort of person that Klein is dreaming of for The Great Centrist Messiah, and I mistrust that instinct immediately.
And despite all this, I am happy that Newsom is taking the stands he's taking and poking the old, gouty, amber colored badgers that he's poking. Newsom is the Killian's Irish Red of American politics, he looks fancy and he's better than a bland American pilsner, but he's still coming out of a big dollar brewery despite the fancy looking label.
bobbyp - I read your link and I will admit that I have thought the same thing about our situation more than once.
I think that the constitution could be saved, but it would take another Lincoln or FDR to do it, and a lot of pushing through structural changes to shore up the weakest parts that are making it so hard to prevent the willful vandalism and disregard of the rule of law. I don't think that their critics are wrong to say that they used extra-constitutional means to achieve their ends, but part of their end in both cases was not just to preserve the union, but to preserve the constitution and keep continuity of government.
Of course both ended up having their work undone, and here we are again.
My fear is that this time the current GOP will force a suspension of the constitution and turn tyrant with the intent of undoing the constitution and replacing it with a Christian Nationalist authoritarian government. If so, then I don't know how the union is going to hold.
That's because you are seeing Republicans as people who have a different worldview and position, and trying to understand them in order to live with them as a part of your community. That's not the way that the core of the GOP thinks about Democrats. To them we are not Americans with a different point of view that must be negotiated. To them we are not really Americans, and their job is to protect America from us.
I'm not saying we should be uncivil to them. I'm saying that we fall outside of their view of what counts as civitas.
Following on russell's comment, I'm going to talk Carl Schmitt again. I know I've written some of this before, but that's all in the archive now, so here it is again for the new site.
I get why russell says that civility is no longer on offer. US conservatism has taken a hard turn into political theology (as described by Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political) since 9/11. Schmitt was very concerned with the concept of sovereignty and where the authority to govern resides. For him the sovereign is the person, or entity, that is authorized by the people to make the distinction between friend and enemy, and decide who is or is not a part of the people when conflicts become existential - the State of Exception. I see this political theology deeply reflected in pretty much everything that the Roberts court has given us. They are always thinking about executive sovereignty and crises.
Civility is not on offer because the base of the GOP has decided that Democrats, and Democratic voting states, are on the enemy side of the friend/enemy distinction. If you doubt this, just look at what Vance has said about the shutdown. He says that the Democrats are "holding the American people hostage." That literally puts Democratic officials - and all the Americans who elected those officials - on the side of the enemy with which the GOP will not negotiate.
The GOP and their core voters do not see this as a political disagreement to be negotiated over. They see Democrats as the enemies of America, to be expelled or subdued in the name of The People.
OED says "bought the farm" is recent (1950s) USAF slang originally for a fatal plane crash. They speculate it could be about compensation for the farmer whose land was destroyed, but I also wonder if it isn't a humorous extension of "plowing" into the ground.
I think a lot of people found the way that the early centrist blogs performed that even-handedness that russell identifies above to be productive and valuable for getting past ideological positions to something more dynamic. It was widespread enough that people learned how to do it as a sort of generic exercise. A lot of bright people have a hard time knowing how to get at that sort of cross-cutting commentary without falling back on the structures they have learned for writing those sorts of commentary.
That's not always a failure of good faith, sometimes it's just a struggle with form combined with an impatience with impasse.
But the effect of that, of course, is to create a sort of artificial leveling of the sides through equivocation, which hollows out the resulting conversation. That leads to a different form of impatience and frustration.
I don't think the fault lies in CharlesWT so much as in the devolution of what passes for mainstream right wing politics. There's no way to structure things in a way that looks even and balanced when the right has decided that they don't need to listen to, work with, or care about anything and anyone on the other side.
An entire genre of blog commentary cannot function anymore, no matter how we try to replicate it.
Afterword to my earlier comment about "play stupid games, win stupid prizes..."
I'd prefer that the prizes that people won for playing stupid games were the most gentle possible version of the prize that would actually relieve them of the urge to play stupid games and steer them into playing smart games that have prizes we all get to share to our mutual benefit.
CharlesWT - Some journalists who have been beaten to the point of brain injury may wish to quibble.
I assume that this is about Andy Ngo. Important to note that Ngo does not usually wear anything identifying himself as a member of the press, and often follows groups like Patriot Prayer to film confrontations with antifa groups. He also is known for doxxing antifa protesters on his own channel, and selectively editing them.
His lack of any press identification while traveling with Patriot Prayer is going to get him in the middle of things and mistaken for being a member of that group while they are engaging in their own violent provocation. They may not be "attacking a journalist" so much as they are just trying to hold their own in a clash between violent groups, and they have no indication that Ngo is not a member of Patriot Prayer or associated with them.
But also, more than a few of the antifa people may know who Ngo was, and were going after him because of his having doxxed them or one of their friends. Ngo has given Portland antifa plenty of reasons to hate him personally. He could have been targeted for a beat down, but "journalist" is far too innocent and anodyne a description of his role in context. No one is attacking him for being there and trying to document things while staying out of the confrontation. He's an active participant on one side using his ambiguous position as a journalist to cast himself in a more innocent light.
I'm not defending antifa here. I'm sure that more than a few among them were engaged in felony violence. I'm also sure that many among them were also victims of felony violence and that some of that felony violence was committed by the people who were personal associates of Ngo.
I've lost count of the number of times I've heard or read an alt-right associate say "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" to footage of college students being beaten by police, or by a right-wing activist during an escalation. Ngo is an avid player of stupid games. He's made his name as such, and has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, not all of whom are Russian bots.
A bit about antifa violence and videos, including some of Ngo's work - from Bellingcat:
I have a hard time watching any Ngo video and video of neutrally positioned (and clearly identified) journalists being targeted and fired upon with pepper balls and rubber rounds by riot police, and feeling like that's a legitimate comparison for both-siderism.
Any economic philosophy that is reliant on growth is going to be struggling as it runs up against the reality of climate change. As far as population reduction goes, that's going to take care of itself whether we do anything or not.
Let me add +1 to russell's list of black bloc types - RW accelerationists wanting to turn up the temperature and provoke things like the Guard call-up.
No, I don't think that any of them are in the antifa camp in Portland. The people in the camp are either real antifa types, or are undercover feds (again, I think not, but that has been the case with the RW militias, so I leave open that possibility). The antifa folks would not take kindly to finding a Boogaloo Boy in their midst.
But, for example, in Minneapolis after George Floyd there were RW militia kids who were caught driving in from WI to loot and burn and try to provoke a violent response from the authorities.
If I see a single person in black with a mask wearing visible antifa markers, I automatically assume that they are false flag assholes. The usually get chased off by the activist leaders, but they hang around just far enough away to provoke.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Mother-in-law defense”
Pro Bono - What we are doing to the planet really matters. What the US is doing matters a lot, because why should poorer countries restrain themselves if the US won’t.
There is that, and also the data suggests that the top 1% of the world are responsible for 2/3 of the warming measured since 1990, and we have over 900 billionaires in our country. China is next closest with 516, and only 3 other nation states have more than 100.
But then here is another shocker - to be in the top 1% worldwide, you need only to make $60,000 a year*, so I'd guess that most of us writing here are in that 1%.
*If we are talking income rather than wealth. Wealth is probably a better measure, but it's also a harder measure to come by.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
wonkie - Maybe the Republican party wouldn’t have degenerated into the corrupt, fascist, anti-Constitutional front for religious extremists and oligarchs that it is today if the rest of us had spent the last twenty-five years LOUDLY DENOUNCING THEIR FASCIST PROPAGANDA instead of trying to be “reasonable” while politely engaging in discussion of issues.
...or if the "concerned republicans" had actually been critical of the alt-right and had chosen to ally with the centrist democrats rather than choosing to conciliate their radicals and blame the "radical liberals."
There's a whole lot of quiet complicity enabling this lawless administration, and all of this hindsight is blame shifting.
"
May be apropos to the current discussion:
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/70966/what-is-a-reactionary-centrist-does-uk-have-them
This being just a taste, not the sum total of what I think is apropos. Again, worth a read.
"
It seems weird to me to be discussing whether or not Omelas was in better shape under Biden or under Trump when the part of the story that is being ignored in order to make this response is that Trump has decided that too few children have been tortured in order to make Omelas great, and that Biden was a pussy for having not had the courage to grab more kids to torture in order to launch Omelas into high gear towards greatness.
Oh, and everyone else in the world sucks compared to Omelas and needs to jump on the kid torturing regime ASAP or else their countries are going to sink just like Omelas under Biden.
On “The Mother-in-law defense”
wj - As so often, we wonder just what definition of “elite” is being used here.
He covers that earlier: The real answer is that the most powerful liberal institutions – the Democratic establishment, major donors and the professional class around them – are captive to outdated etiquette.
It's the DNC and those with input into the strategy side.
"
In line with this discussion, Ryan Powers' op ed at the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/12/democrats-etiquette-dangerous-democracy
In elite liberal spaces, the expectation is always the same: stay quiet, exit gracefully, never make a scene. Yet nonviolent unruliness has power precisely because it breaks the code of composure. Psychologists call this the “expectancy violations theory”: when behavior defies what’s anticipated, it commands outsized attention and carries significant weight. That impact is magnified when it comes from insiders with status or access.
This dynamic suggests that liberalism’s best strategy is to subvert its own norms. Critics may argue that spectacle undermines substance, or that breaking etiquette diminishes the credentials that lend Democrats authority. But in today’s attention economy, spectacle is often how substance gets noticed. Breaking strict decorum is not the enemy of liberalism; it may be the very tool that keeps it alive.
Worth a read. Someone will hopefully send it to Chuck Schumer.
"
russell - I also disagree with nous’ thought that health care “codes” as a management issue. At the policy level, it does. At the level of “do I have to choose between health insurance and rent” it does not.
Then we agree, because that is what I was trying to get at with my: It doesn’t register for workers as a policy thing so much as it does a wages and benefits thing. The voters that the Dems are losing are going to tune out as soon as the conversation starts focusing on the details of health policy, same as rank-and-file union members start getting sore feet and shuffling as soon as the rep with the bullhorn starts babbling on about the importance of changing the language in Article 5 Part 3 of the CBA.
Keep the language focused on struggles and outcomes and whose side you are fighting on. And if there are cleavage lines over policy choices, focus on the need for solidarity.
"
You can tell the difference between the Dems with close union ties and allies and the ones who have never been a part of a union and only have ties to people in management.
Healthcare codes as a management concern. It doesn't register for workers as a policy thing so much as it does a wages and benefits thing. Policy details don't land with working class voters because those decisions are made by other people. What matters is whether they are feeling like government is fighting for workers or for the big people.
I really think it's that simple. Low information voters don't listen to policy discussions, and they don't trust people who spend all their time talking about that stuff. It's a cultural divide.
On “Weekend music thread #1”
I found the video interesting in pieces, but the combination of a uncertain sync between video and audio and the lower fidelity of the audio made it hard for me to stay focused. It made Solti's conducting feel less than intuitive and had me constantly wondering if what he was signaling was the moment I was hearing.
Chasing down the audio recording in full fidelity on Apple Music and losing the video completely eliminated that feeling of disorientation, as did chasing down a more recent live performance video from Dudamel where the conducting seemed better matched to the audio.
Between watching that and another performance with Gatti conducting, I started to really get a sense for the different impressions that one can get based on where one's visual attention is drawn. The gaze plays a powerful role in what the ear seems to hear in these videos.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
One thing that I have found effective in teaching is that the moments when I am being critical of something are always more powerful for the class when I can find a way to tell them from the perspective of "we," rather than "I," and when that narrative incorporates how "I" learned to view the problem through a perspective that helps put "us" back in a position with more agency to address "our" problem.
That, and starting with questions and listening rather than with advice and instructions seem to be the magic mix.
On “Chinese corruption”
My biggest complaint about the assessment culture that has set in across academia (and the overall rise of big quant that coincides with the monetization of big data) is that there are a lot more people with the tools to gather and measure the data than there are people who have the understanding, expertise, and rigor to tease out when the things we measure actually measure the right things.
I'm interested in reading Limits of the Numerical one of these days: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo146791774.html
It seems the sort of book that can take on the technocratic push for quantitative over qualitative data gathering and analysis. I find that the voices that most often get amplified in management meetings dealing in quantitative assessment are the voices that are on the wrong side of Einstein's admonition that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
Not just pain of whatever they have suffered either, GftNC. They also have to give up the narrative justification that gave that suffering purpose, and they have to take on the additional sting of shame for having embraced that hate. That's a lot to swallow.
People will do a lot of shameful things in order to avoid feeling shame.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
I should add, I'm more concerned here with gaining the upper hand in how the issues get framed than I am with electability. Newsom fits fewer prejudices than do Pritzker or Buttigieg. I just don't think that what he is saying cuts through enough to change the conversation, and I think the conversation we are having is a losing conversation for the Dems.
Pete might lose, but at least he would be heard.
"
lj- 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.
I understand this reaction, but what wj had asked for was:
...someone else who a) is willing to stand up, and b) has the media expertise available to get the message out effectively.
I think Mayor Pete offers more of this than does Newsom. And I think that if the Dems want to break through, they are going to have to find someone that is more a brawler than a point fighter. Newsom is all jab with no follow-up, and he's too much of a lightweight to land a knockout with a jab. Both the guys I countered with seem capable of landing some body blows.
"
wj- <i>I’d vastly rather look to someone else. But that requires there be someone else who a) is willing to stand up, and b) has the media expertise available to get the message out effectively.</i>
Buttigieg? Pritzker? I'd prefer either of them. Don't know where I'd stand on Beshear vs Newsom. Beshear seems like exactly the sort of person that Klein is dreaming of for The Great Centrist Messiah, and I mistrust that instinct immediately.
And despite all this, I am happy that Newsom is taking the stands he's taking and poking the old, gouty, amber colored badgers that he's poking. Newsom is the Killian's Irish Red of American politics, he looks fancy and he's better than a bland American pilsner, but he's still coming out of a big dollar brewery despite the fancy looking label.
"
bobbyp - I read your link and I will admit that I have thought the same thing about our situation more than once.
I think that the constitution could be saved, but it would take another Lincoln or FDR to do it, and a lot of pushing through structural changes to shore up the weakest parts that are making it so hard to prevent the willful vandalism and disregard of the rule of law. I don't think that their critics are wrong to say that they used extra-constitutional means to achieve their ends, but part of their end in both cases was not just to preserve the union, but to preserve the constitution and keep continuity of government.
Of course both ended up having their work undone, and here we are again.
My fear is that this time the current GOP will force a suspension of the constitution and turn tyrant with the intent of undoing the constitution and replacing it with a Christian Nationalist authoritarian government. If so, then I don't know how the union is going to hold.
"
Pro Bono - But I see no reason to be uncivil.
That's because you are seeing Republicans as people who have a different worldview and position, and trying to understand them in order to live with them as a part of your community. That's not the way that the core of the GOP thinks about Democrats. To them we are not Americans with a different point of view that must be negotiated. To them we are not really Americans, and their job is to protect America from us.
I'm not saying we should be uncivil to them. I'm saying that we fall outside of their view of what counts as civitas.
"
Following on russell's comment, I'm going to talk Carl Schmitt again. I know I've written some of this before, but that's all in the archive now, so here it is again for the new site.
I get why russell says that civility is no longer on offer. US conservatism has taken a hard turn into political theology (as described by Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political) since 9/11. Schmitt was very concerned with the concept of sovereignty and where the authority to govern resides. For him the sovereign is the person, or entity, that is authorized by the people to make the distinction between friend and enemy, and decide who is or is not a part of the people when conflicts become existential - the State of Exception. I see this political theology deeply reflected in pretty much everything that the Roberts court has given us. They are always thinking about executive sovereignty and crises.
Civility is not on offer because the base of the GOP has decided that Democrats, and Democratic voting states, are on the enemy side of the friend/enemy distinction. If you doubt this, just look at what Vance has said about the shutdown. He says that the Democrats are "holding the American people hostage." That literally puts Democratic officials - and all the Americans who elected those officials - on the side of the enemy with which the GOP will not negotiate.
The GOP and their core voters do not see this as a political disagreement to be negotiated over. They see Democrats as the enemies of America, to be expelled or subdued in the name of The People.
WTF are we supposed to do with that?
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
OED says "bought the farm" is recent (1950s) USAF slang originally for a fatal plane crash. They speculate it could be about compensation for the farmer whose land was destroyed, but I also wonder if it isn't a humorous extension of "plowing" into the ground.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
I think a lot of people found the way that the early centrist blogs performed that even-handedness that russell identifies above to be productive and valuable for getting past ideological positions to something more dynamic. It was widespread enough that people learned how to do it as a sort of generic exercise. A lot of bright people have a hard time knowing how to get at that sort of cross-cutting commentary without falling back on the structures they have learned for writing those sorts of commentary.
That's not always a failure of good faith, sometimes it's just a struggle with form combined with an impatience with impasse.
But the effect of that, of course, is to create a sort of artificial leveling of the sides through equivocation, which hollows out the resulting conversation. That leads to a different form of impatience and frustration.
"
I don't think the fault lies in CharlesWT so much as in the devolution of what passes for mainstream right wing politics. There's no way to structure things in a way that looks even and balanced when the right has decided that they don't need to listen to, work with, or care about anything and anyone on the other side.
An entire genre of blog commentary cannot function anymore, no matter how we try to replicate it.
"
Afterword to my earlier comment about "play stupid games, win stupid prizes..."
I'd prefer that the prizes that people won for playing stupid games were the most gentle possible version of the prize that would actually relieve them of the urge to play stupid games and steer them into playing smart games that have prizes we all get to share to our mutual benefit.
"
CharlesWT - Some journalists who have been beaten to the point of brain injury may wish to quibble.
I assume that this is about Andy Ngo. Important to note that Ngo does not usually wear anything identifying himself as a member of the press, and often follows groups like Patriot Prayer to film confrontations with antifa groups. He also is known for doxxing antifa protesters on his own channel, and selectively editing them.
His lack of any press identification while traveling with Patriot Prayer is going to get him in the middle of things and mistaken for being a member of that group while they are engaging in their own violent provocation. They may not be "attacking a journalist" so much as they are just trying to hold their own in a clash between violent groups, and they have no indication that Ngo is not a member of Patriot Prayer or associated with them.
But also, more than a few of the antifa people may know who Ngo was, and were going after him because of his having doxxed them or one of their friends. Ngo has given Portland antifa plenty of reasons to hate him personally. He could have been targeted for a beat down, but "journalist" is far too innocent and anodyne a description of his role in context. No one is attacking him for being there and trying to document things while staying out of the confrontation. He's an active participant on one side using his ambiguous position as a journalist to cast himself in a more innocent light.
I'm not defending antifa here. I'm sure that more than a few among them were engaged in felony violence. I'm also sure that many among them were also victims of felony violence and that some of that felony violence was committed by the people who were personal associates of Ngo.
I've lost count of the number of times I've heard or read an alt-right associate say "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" to footage of college students being beaten by police, or by a right-wing activist during an escalation. Ngo is an avid player of stupid games. He's made his name as such, and has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, not all of whom are Russian bots.
A bit about antifa violence and videos, including some of Ngo's work - from Bellingcat:
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/11/18/million-maga-march-unravelling-a-violent-viral-video/
I have a hard time watching any Ngo video and video of neutrally positioned (and clearly identified) journalists being targeted and fired upon with pepper balls and rubber rounds by riot police, and feeling like that's a legitimate comparison for both-siderism.
On “Japan unleashed”
Any economic philosophy that is reliant on growth is going to be struggling as it runs up against the reality of climate change. As far as population reduction goes, that's going to take care of itself whether we do anything or not.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
Let me add +1 to russell's list of black bloc types - RW accelerationists wanting to turn up the temperature and provoke things like the Guard call-up.
No, I don't think that any of them are in the antifa camp in Portland. The people in the camp are either real antifa types, or are undercover feds (again, I think not, but that has been the case with the RW militias, so I leave open that possibility). The antifa folks would not take kindly to finding a Boogaloo Boy in their midst.
But, for example, in Minneapolis after George Floyd there were RW militia kids who were caught driving in from WI to loot and burn and try to provoke a violent response from the authorities.
If I see a single person in black with a mask wearing visible antifa markers, I automatically assume that they are false flag assholes. The usually get chased off by the activist leaders, but they hang around just far enough away to provoke.
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