Reading through that transcript, I can't help but notice that Klein's fixated on determining what it is that Dems have done to lose "the center." What he thinks of as "the center" seems fairly hard to pin down. Sometimes it seem like he means "the Midwest" and "rural voters." Sometimes it's "people scared of radical change, like LGBTQ+ stuff." He never seems to linger long on any one such group, or to try to dig in and get to the deepest urges that drive each of those groups fears, and I think that's because his question is what can be done to "win them back." He reminds me a lot of the campus Christian groups I was a part of back in the day whose conversations revolved around how to "win hearts for Jesus." We were all looking for ways to appeal to the others around us, to be cool and relatable, to listen to them and find the needs and hurts that they were expressing so that we could understand how and when to convince them to join the team - being all things to all people so that by all means we could win some.
It was a transactional view of people. We cared to the degree that we thought we might be able to win them over. We were nice to everyone, but we didn't really want to spend any time in community with them unless we thought they were "on the path" to our way of things.
I see this most clearly when Klein muses over needing more Democrats in the midwest who will not alienate anti-abortion people. He's adjusting the sales pitch, trying to get a sale by avoiding conflict. It's a good way to win a sale in the short term, but it does nothing to build coalitions or to create understanding across differences. It leaves marginal communities on the margins and makes it seem tactically acceptable to abandon those communities for the sake of avoiding conflict when solidarity becomes hard.
Coates is coming from that margin and knows the peril of it. He's lived his entire life feeling like he was a target for political violence that saw him in that instrumental, transactional way, not as someone to be won, but as someone to be feared for the sake of winning that same centrist that Klein wishes to add to the D column. Coates sees that the problem for a lot of people is not political violence per se, but rather that political violence was threatening *to touch them.* "Getting out of hand," "spinning out of control" implies that what came before those dangerous moments was not a threat and was happening in a controlled and acceptable manner. Eric Brown? Not *political* violence. Not a sign of a society that had lost its way and was dangerously polarized.
I don't want to tip things over into the same conversations we have had about "white fragility" because I don't see that those conversations have been particularly productive, but I will say that I think the sort of tactical approach that Klein seems to want to take makes it nearly impossible to have a deep conversation about our shared issues that does not turn transactional.
I'd like to say more, but I can again feel this threatening to turn into something that requires examples and footnotes and explanations that I don't have the resources or the time to support on the night before I start my Fall teaching, so I'll have to be satisfied with this quick stab at what nibbles at me when I read Klein.
To Tony's question, and Michael's reply, yes, there are likely millions who think Kirk was "doing Christianity the right way".
And there are many, likely millions, who see Christianity in it's nationalistic form as falling somewhere in the range from harmfully misguided to plainly idolatrous.
So, no single point of view there.
My own perspective, FWIW, is that Kirk's America is not my America, and I do not hear the voice of Jesus in anything he had to say.
Thanks for sharing this LJ, I had not seen it. I have a lot of thoughts, I'll try to boil them down and be concise.
First, my general impression of the podcast is that Coates is very clear about his positions, but Klein seemed to be struggling to be as clear - to articulate the points he was trying to make. Some of this may be due to the different roles they see themselves in - Klein seems to see himself more as someone who is politically active, trying to find ways to persuade other folks to his point of view. Coates is very clear that he is not a political strategist, he is here to speak truth as he sees it. Those are really different jobs.
I think Klein is correct to say the (D)'s as a party are flailing. My personal take on why they have lost "the heartland" - the "common people" - is that with very few exceptions they've kind of stepped away from the parts of the country, and the demographics, that we normally associate with those folks. I mean, literally - they have failed to fund and support local (D) organizations and infrastructure in lots of places. They've basically written off a lot of the country. That worked for a while, now it doesn't. And hasn't.
Just show up and listen would solve a lot of problems.
He's also correct to say that a lot of folks feel that the institutional (D) party basically doesn't like them. They don't. Don't understand them, aren't interested in them, think they are idiots for voting for (R)'s and don't seem highly motivated to figure out what those folks are about.
There are a lot of places they could be winning, that they likely don't even know exist.
All IMO. And so, enough from me about the (D)'s as a party.
Klein is correct to say that Kirk was "doing politics the right way", if you assume the goal of politics is to amass power. Kirk was an ambitious, even driven, hard working dude, and he built an electoral organization that kicks ass. He was very very good at *politics*. At creating the conditions to win.
What Kirk was absolutely *not* about was engagement and dialogue with his political opposites. After his murder, I felt obliged to at least watch some of his debates and other appearances. Kirk was not there to hear or understand any point of view other than his own, other than as a means of building his own counter-arguments. He was there to repeat, repeat, repeat, and repeat his talking points. And he was there to make conservative young people feel like it was cool to be a conservative on campus.
And much of what he had to say was straight-up bigotry. White supremacist sexist bigotry. Full stop.
No amount of "civility" - a sort of observance of debate-team rules - can white-wash that.
Folks say he was "reaching out to the other side". He was not. He was reaching out to folks who agreed with him, or thought they might, and were uncomfortable out it in a campus environment, so that they could feel like they weren't alone.
A thing that folks don't seem to want to say, because it will seem like they're being mean to college conservatives, is that the whole "militant Christian nationalist capitalist western civilization strong men do big things" mythology doesn't stand up well to critical thought. Which is sort of the point, or at least one of the important points, of higher education.
It's meant to teach you to think. Some ideas don't survive critical thought.
I appreciate the good intentions of folks who believe the solution to where we are at is to let the marketplace of ideas play out. The best ideas will win out, right?
But that requires an openness of mind, and a willingness to engage your opposites in good faith and with respect. And that is not on offer.
I'm with Coates when he says there are folks who have crossed a line, and that a fruitful conversation with them is not likely to happen. I have my own lines, which are pretty much summed up in Coates' "not at the expense of my neighbor's humanity".
I won't, as Clinton did, call my political or social opposites "deplorables". But I will say that many of the things they believe and say and so are, in fact, deplorable, and I'm not interested in debating them about it.
Blacks are prowling the streets looking for whites to prey upon.
Blacks have descended into criminality and dysfunction since desegregation.
SCOTUS justice Jackson is intellectually inferior and is taking a white man's place.
Transgender people are mentally ill freaks.
And so on.
No. No to all of that. And no, I'm not going to debate about it with you as if we were discussion "who's better, Beatles or Stones?".
There are conversations I won't have, because I'm not going to give the time of day to that kind of delusional toxic nonsense. Not least because it supports and engenders some of the cruelest policies and actions we've seen in a long time.
I also second Coates when he points out that political violence is absolutely nothing new in our national history. The folks who say "this isn't who we are" are... mistaken.
First, thanks GftNC for the additional link, it's really appreciated.
I'm going to start categorizing posts and this one is Politics, though I think it is more (though isn't everything nowadays) I wish Klein had taken a bit more onboard from Coates and not kept trying to nail Coates down on where he would draw the line. I appreciate that they must have had discussions before and Klein really must have taken offense at Coates saying that he whitewashed Kirk, but Coates could have asked what Charlie Kirk would have to had said before Klein would have to conclude that he shouldn't write about Kirk. I also thought it was telling that Coates pointed out that MLK was actually speaking about love and he got assassinated. Klein should get credit for not hiding, but I still think he should take a dose of self-reflection.
...could anyone, even Ezra Klein, assert that Charlie Kirk was “doing Christianity the right way”?
Tony, I believe there are tens of millions of people in the United States who believe in straight white male nationalism with a side of selective interpretation of biblical texts and assert that Charlie Kirk was doing Christianity the right way.
Without having read any of the links yet, I have to ask this: could anyone, even Ezra Klein, assert that Charlie Kirk was "doing Christianity the right way"?
bc, thanks for your reply. I am sorry to say it depresses me. Your tenor seems to be that Kirk was just a little too ... strident? extreme? Which word is more apt depends on whether he was mainly a provocateur or an ideologue. I think he was both, of course, but YMMV.
The "Prove Me Wrong" schtick was theater, not debate. Whether your position is popular or not, odious or not, sincere or not, the burden of proof in a debate is on you, the person asserting the position. Imagine me asserting that "Santa Claus is real" and demanding to be proved wrong.
Anyway, thanks again for replying. Maybe we do have some common ground in at least one way: canonizing Charlie Kirk is just a little too much.
Although I do see where he's coming from. It's the same old debate: do you express ideas that only reflect exactly, purely what you believe, or do you modify your words so that people who might agree with most of what you believe do not feel demonised and despised, and collaborate with you and thereby help pass more progressive policies to benefit more of the people you care about. As Obama did.
There's no question that saying Kirk was "doing politics right" was a really careless and misleading choice of words (misleading even for what Klein meant), and I do totally see that someone like TNC from a historically (and currently) oppressed community might find it almost impossible to do that (although there are people who have managed it), but I think Klein's intention has a lot of merit if what you really care about is getting power, and using it to benefit the most people.
Great points, novakant. I don't know as much as I should about Iran and its history, so I agree that Wood's background and in-country experience is not something I dismiss out of hand. Of course, claiming to represent civilization isn't something restricted to Iranians, Stephen Miller said this at Charlie Kirk's memorial We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion. Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry.
Erika stands on the shoulders of thousands of years of warriors, of women who raised up families, raised up city, raised up industry, raised up civilization, who pulled us out of the caves and the darkness into the light.
Words fail.
I would recommend Marjane Satrapi's graphic novels Persopolis (1 and 2) are excellent and her newest, Women, Life and Freedom is something I'm getting for my school library.
Questions that should be asked more often when it comes to evaluating Iran's place in the international community is:
"What has Iran actually done geopolitically to deserve its reputation in, say, the past 25 years, what have other nations operating in the ME done and how does it compare? What is the death toll that resulted from Iran's actions and how does it compare to that of other nations operating in the ME?"
I think any objective observer will find that, if you set aside the rhetoric, the actual actions of the Iranian regime amount to very little compared to those of other nations. The operative phrase here is "setting aside the rhetoric" because since the hostage crisis and later Ahmadinejad, a narrative has emerged that describes the "islamofascist theocracy" in Iran as the "greatest danger to ME peace". This is completely unjustified if you look at the historical facts.
The geopolitical argument against Iran is then often bolstered by bringing up the domestic policies of the Iranian regime, which are certainly deplorable. However, they are sadly not unique in the region and elsewhere and despite claims to the contrary the regime does not have totalitarian grip on the very complex and multilayered society of Iran.
What is also almost completely ignored is the fact that the regime is more about money and power than about religion. Most observers simply are ignorant of or choose to ignore the vast amount of wealth the ruling elite from Khamenei down to the rannk and file revolutionary guard member control and their understandable desire to hold on to it. One tool to perpetuate this control is religion, but I would say in and of itself it is actually secondary.
Finally, as much as parts of Iranian society are westernised, even they don't want a society determined by US money and influence - many might hate the regime but they want to do their own thing and understandably view foreign interference with strong suspicion. And that is much more so the case with much of the conservative, religious population who just have different ideas about how to live.
I think Wood is actually better postioned than most to comment on Iran because of his educational background and having actually travelled in the country, though that seems to have been a while ago. However, he seems to succumb in part to the usual US foreign policy establishment groupthink which prioritises regime change narratives. I would just challenge everyone fixated on this to tell me what an Iran post-regime change would look like, especially considering the many different ethnic groups that make up the country.
As for Iran being an old civilization, that's certainly one source of the national pride, though it depends on who you talk to, because it can sit uneasily with the grim current relity. It's also kind of a running gag among some, who make fun of this tendency to trace back every invention and accomplishment of the past 2000 years to the Persian empire. I heard the Greeks do the same and there is apparently a scene in "My big fat Greek wedding" making fun of this.
One thing is for sure, no matter what the results of the next election: His Orangeness will cry fraud and try to overturn those parts he does not like. Iirc he already tries to persuade courts to forbid gerrymandering in blue states while allowing it in red ones. His campaign to have voting by mail declared illegal will also play a part (even if the courts do not agree).
Good on you, wj. Every further development (e.g. Comey's indictment, and the firing of anyone who tries to support the rule of law, see below) supports the conclusion that neither election to the house nor the senate can continue to be gerrymandered so as to give the Rs, and therefore Ubu, an ironclad control of American politics and the unfettered ability to continue to subvert the constitution.
Last week, Mr. Trump fired a U.S. attorney in Virginia who determined there was insufficient evidence to indict James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, and Letitia James, the New York State attorney general, both political targets of the president. The Virginia prosecutor was replaced by a Trump loyalist who convinced a federal grand jury on Thursday to indict Mr. Comey on two counts.
Documents reviewed by The New York Times show that the July 15 firing of Ms. Beckwith occurred less than six hours after she told Mr. Bovino, the Border Patrol chief in charge of the Southern California raids, that a court order prevented him from arresting people without probable cause in a vast expanse that stretches from the Oregon border to Bakersfield. She was removed not only from her post as acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of California, but from the office altogether.
Can I just say, I was talking (and thinking) very carelessly upthread @4.05 on Charlie Kirk. For clarity's sake, I have no idea whether or not Kirk's influence was "malevolent", since I have no idea what his real wishes were. I do not necessarily take his Christianity at face value, and not only for the excellent reasons lj gives immediately above. But there is nonetheless no doubt in my mind that his influence was malign, and despite the undoubted tragedy of his murder, and the terrible and understandable grief of his family, it is somewhat sickening to see the rightwing glorification of this deeply problematic person. He might have changed for the better, as bc seems to suggest was a possibility, but he might also have changed for the worse. Murder and political violence are a curse wherever they occur, and neither their perpetrators nor their victims need by glorified in order to condemn them.
We just got the materials for the Special Election November 4. I'm working this one, not just because I usually try to work elections, but because these days it's an affirmation that elections will happen.
The only item on the ballot is Proposition 50: AUTHORIZES TEMPORARY CHANGES TO CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT MAPS IN RESPONSE TO TEXAS' PARTISAN REDISTRICTING. Talk about brutally honest proposition titles! (Something that has not been universal here, in my observation). The ads are already starting to run. On one side, Governor Newsom talking about defending democracy from Trump. On the other, arguments for preserving the nonpartisan redistricting that we established, for excellent reasons, back in 2010. Perhaps I am a bit biased, but I note that this doesn't abolish the Redistricting Commission, just allows a one-time redistricting outside the usual process. The Con ads (deliberately) make it sound like a permanent change.
I am personally strongly in favor of our nonpartisan approach. In fact, at one point I applied to be on tthe commission. But, "circumstances alter cases." I suspect that the economy will be sufficiently trashed by 2026 that the Democrats end up with a majority in the House regardless of Republican efforts elsewhere. Especially as some of the hardest hit places are already being deep red rural areas. But I'm also in belt-and-suspenders mode these days.
bc, thanks for this too. I knew of Charlie Kirk, but I didn't follow much, so I'm not going to try and dig up stuff, I think that was a mode of commenting that caused/causes a lot of problems (remember fisking?)
However, I have to say that his turn to Christianity seems a bit of a grift. In a podcast recently, he claimed it was 5th grade when he saw the light, but there is no sign of that until after Trump's second election. While it's possible that his marriage was an important influence (his wife graduated from Liberty University), the claim about the 5th grade conversion is probably a lie.
btw, you can see turning point ads (and find other ads) here
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/1E9X/turning-point-usa-help-us-take-back-our-country
There are a few with nods to Christianity, but those seem to be in conjunction with Trump trying to please that demographic.
Thanks bc! Glad you liked it. I had a checkered career as a horn player (I've hung it up) and one disappointment is that I never played much French orchestral music. I mentioned that to the conductor of the university orchestra here and he said well, French orchestral music, as opposed to German (and I suppose that Tchaikovsky et al is really stuff in the German tradition) requires a lot more from the strings.
Love the Saint-Saëns piece. Always nice to hear the horn played well. I played his Cavatine in music school. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kKUuFECQ48
And I had a chance to hear some of his choral works sung in the place where they were intended to be sung last year when my son's college choir toured France and sang in La Madeleine (where Saint-Saëns was the organist).
Regarding autism, I dealt with a neurologist professionally as an expert for TBI in accident cases. He had an interesting take on autism diagnosis. He was bothered because autism and ADHD and other mental and behavioral disorders are primarily diagnosed based solely on symptoms rather than focusing first on potential physical or neurological causes. 20/20 had an episode and showed one child diagnosed for years with severe autism. He rocked back and forth much of the time ignoring the outside world. An MRI was normal, but the specialized EEG this doctor had developed showed brain seizures. Anti-seizure meds had the kid going from something like a 30-word vocabulary to 200 in a month, and up to speed in fairly short order. It always has me wondering when I meet a kid on the spectrum at the severe end of the scale what an MRI, this specialized EEG and neuropsych eval might reveal.
I worked on a paper for a while where I argued that we might want to consider autism a cultural trait. Here in Japan, students often behave in ways that are similar to what people have said are symptoms of autism. Unfortunately, though I thought it was very enlightening (and continues to be as I deal with student post covid and see their adaptations to changed circumstances) I was never able to get the right tone. It may have been, like novakant says, I was instrumentalizing autism to deal with some debates about Japanese students and education, but I did think I was on to something interesting.
btw, I love the first link with the links to papers in each section. So much better than trying to follow Youtube vids!!
Ages ago I took part in a seminar at uni that looked at autism within the context of the philosophy of mind, specifically the old problem of naturally assuming but not being able to prove that others have mental states ("other minds"). The question was that if autism is characterised in part by having difficulties conceptualising other people's mental states, can that tell us anything about how "normal people" do this. I remember "mindblindness" being a term used to characterise autism and Simon Baron-Cohen (not the comedian) drawing some interesting if controversial conclusions regarding ethical responsibility. Back then it seemed fascinating, but also a but like autism research was being instrumentalised by philosophers to liven up age old debates, rather than to help those who have to deal with the condition.
It seems that the debate has moved on since then towards a more inclusive view:
I still think it is important though to hold on to the diagnostic category of autism, while being aware of all the caveats and avoiding stigmatising those falling under it, in order to support those displaying signs of the condition especially children.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Ezra Coates DESTROYS Ta-Nehisi Klein!!!”
Reading through that transcript, I can't help but notice that Klein's fixated on determining what it is that Dems have done to lose "the center." What he thinks of as "the center" seems fairly hard to pin down. Sometimes it seem like he means "the Midwest" and "rural voters." Sometimes it's "people scared of radical change, like LGBTQ+ stuff." He never seems to linger long on any one such group, or to try to dig in and get to the deepest urges that drive each of those groups fears, and I think that's because his question is what can be done to "win them back." He reminds me a lot of the campus Christian groups I was a part of back in the day whose conversations revolved around how to "win hearts for Jesus." We were all looking for ways to appeal to the others around us, to be cool and relatable, to listen to them and find the needs and hurts that they were expressing so that we could understand how and when to convince them to join the team - being all things to all people so that by all means we could win some.
It was a transactional view of people. We cared to the degree that we thought we might be able to win them over. We were nice to everyone, but we didn't really want to spend any time in community with them unless we thought they were "on the path" to our way of things.
I see this most clearly when Klein muses over needing more Democrats in the midwest who will not alienate anti-abortion people. He's adjusting the sales pitch, trying to get a sale by avoiding conflict. It's a good way to win a sale in the short term, but it does nothing to build coalitions or to create understanding across differences. It leaves marginal communities on the margins and makes it seem tactically acceptable to abandon those communities for the sake of avoiding conflict when solidarity becomes hard.
Coates is coming from that margin and knows the peril of it. He's lived his entire life feeling like he was a target for political violence that saw him in that instrumental, transactional way, not as someone to be won, but as someone to be feared for the sake of winning that same centrist that Klein wishes to add to the D column. Coates sees that the problem for a lot of people is not political violence per se, but rather that political violence was threatening *to touch them.* "Getting out of hand," "spinning out of control" implies that what came before those dangerous moments was not a threat and was happening in a controlled and acceptable manner. Eric Brown? Not *political* violence. Not a sign of a society that had lost its way and was dangerously polarized.
I don't want to tip things over into the same conversations we have had about "white fragility" because I don't see that those conversations have been particularly productive, but I will say that I think the sort of tactical approach that Klein seems to want to take makes it nearly impossible to have a deep conversation about our shared issues that does not turn transactional.
I'd like to say more, but I can again feel this threatening to turn into something that requires examples and footnotes and explanations that I don't have the resources or the time to support on the night before I start my Fall teaching, so I'll have to be satisfied with this quick stab at what nibbles at me when I read Klein.
"
To Tony's question, and Michael's reply, yes, there are likely millions who think Kirk was "doing Christianity the right way".
And there are many, likely millions, who see Christianity in it's nationalistic form as falling somewhere in the range from harmfully misguided to plainly idolatrous.
So, no single point of view there.
My own perspective, FWIW, is that Kirk's America is not my America, and I do not hear the voice of Jesus in anything he had to say.
"
Thanks for sharing this LJ, I had not seen it. I have a lot of thoughts, I'll try to boil them down and be concise.
First, my general impression of the podcast is that Coates is very clear about his positions, but Klein seemed to be struggling to be as clear - to articulate the points he was trying to make. Some of this may be due to the different roles they see themselves in - Klein seems to see himself more as someone who is politically active, trying to find ways to persuade other folks to his point of view. Coates is very clear that he is not a political strategist, he is here to speak truth as he sees it. Those are really different jobs.
I think Klein is correct to say the (D)'s as a party are flailing. My personal take on why they have lost "the heartland" - the "common people" - is that with very few exceptions they've kind of stepped away from the parts of the country, and the demographics, that we normally associate with those folks. I mean, literally - they have failed to fund and support local (D) organizations and infrastructure in lots of places. They've basically written off a lot of the country. That worked for a while, now it doesn't. And hasn't.
Just show up and listen would solve a lot of problems.
He's also correct to say that a lot of folks feel that the institutional (D) party basically doesn't like them. They don't. Don't understand them, aren't interested in them, think they are idiots for voting for (R)'s and don't seem highly motivated to figure out what those folks are about.
There are a lot of places they could be winning, that they likely don't even know exist.
All IMO. And so, enough from me about the (D)'s as a party.
Klein is correct to say that Kirk was "doing politics the right way", if you assume the goal of politics is to amass power. Kirk was an ambitious, even driven, hard working dude, and he built an electoral organization that kicks ass. He was very very good at *politics*. At creating the conditions to win.
What Kirk was absolutely *not* about was engagement and dialogue with his political opposites. After his murder, I felt obliged to at least watch some of his debates and other appearances. Kirk was not there to hear or understand any point of view other than his own, other than as a means of building his own counter-arguments. He was there to repeat, repeat, repeat, and repeat his talking points. And he was there to make conservative young people feel like it was cool to be a conservative on campus.
And much of what he had to say was straight-up bigotry. White supremacist sexist bigotry. Full stop.
No amount of "civility" - a sort of observance of debate-team rules - can white-wash that.
Folks say he was "reaching out to the other side". He was not. He was reaching out to folks who agreed with him, or thought they might, and were uncomfortable out it in a campus environment, so that they could feel like they weren't alone.
A thing that folks don't seem to want to say, because it will seem like they're being mean to college conservatives, is that the whole "militant Christian nationalist capitalist western civilization strong men do big things" mythology doesn't stand up well to critical thought. Which is sort of the point, or at least one of the important points, of higher education.
It's meant to teach you to think. Some ideas don't survive critical thought.
I appreciate the good intentions of folks who believe the solution to where we are at is to let the marketplace of ideas play out. The best ideas will win out, right?
But that requires an openness of mind, and a willingness to engage your opposites in good faith and with respect. And that is not on offer.
I'm with Coates when he says there are folks who have crossed a line, and that a fruitful conversation with them is not likely to happen. I have my own lines, which are pretty much summed up in Coates' "not at the expense of my neighbor's humanity".
I won't, as Clinton did, call my political or social opposites "deplorables". But I will say that many of the things they believe and say and so are, in fact, deplorable, and I'm not interested in debating them about it.
Blacks are prowling the streets looking for whites to prey upon.
Blacks have descended into criminality and dysfunction since desegregation.
SCOTUS justice Jackson is intellectually inferior and is taking a white man's place.
Transgender people are mentally ill freaks.
And so on.
No. No to all of that. And no, I'm not going to debate about it with you as if we were discussion "who's better, Beatles or Stones?".
There are conversations I won't have, because I'm not going to give the time of day to that kind of delusional toxic nonsense. Not least because it supports and engenders some of the cruelest policies and actions we've seen in a long time.
I also second Coates when he points out that political violence is absolutely nothing new in our national history. The folks who say "this isn't who we are" are... mistaken.
And so, I fail to be concise.
"
First, thanks GftNC for the additional link, it's really appreciated.
I'm going to start categorizing posts and this one is Politics, though I think it is more (though isn't everything nowadays) I wish Klein had taken a bit more onboard from Coates and not kept trying to nail Coates down on where he would draw the line. I appreciate that they must have had discussions before and Klein really must have taken offense at Coates saying that he whitewashed Kirk, but Coates could have asked what Charlie Kirk would have to had said before Klein would have to conclude that he shouldn't write about Kirk. I also thought it was telling that Coates pointed out that MLK was actually speaking about love and he got assassinated. Klein should get credit for not hiding, but I still think he should take a dose of self-reflection.
"
...could anyone, even Ezra Klein, assert that Charlie Kirk was “doing Christianity the right way”?
Tony, I believe there are tens of millions of people in the United States who believe in straight white male nationalism with a side of selective interpretation of biblical texts and assert that Charlie Kirk was doing Christianity the right way.
"
Without having read any of the links yet, I have to ask this: could anyone, even Ezra Klein, assert that Charlie Kirk was "doing Christianity the right way"?
--TP
On “Precursors”
bc, thanks for your reply. I am sorry to say it depresses me. Your tenor seems to be that Kirk was just a little too ... strident? extreme? Which word is more apt depends on whether he was mainly a provocateur or an ideologue. I think he was both, of course, but YMMV.
The "Prove Me Wrong" schtick was theater, not debate. Whether your position is popular or not, odious or not, sincere or not, the burden of proof in a debate is on you, the person asserting the position. Imagine me asserting that "Santa Claus is real" and demanding to be proved wrong.
Anyway, thanks again for replying. Maybe we do have some common ground in at least one way: canonizing Charlie Kirk is just a little too much.
--TP
On “Ezra Coates DESTROYS Ta-Nehisi Klein!!!”
Meanwhile, this (also in today's NYT) talks further about the effect Kirk's glorification is having on the groups he denigrated:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/magazine/charlie-kirk-rhetoric.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pU8.E_Qk.vE_VAYwg6Chi&smid=url-share
On “Notes about commenting”
Hello
Decus et tutamen, or something like that.
On “Ezra Coates DESTROYS Ta-Nehisi Klein!!!”
Although I do see where he's coming from. It's the same old debate: do you express ideas that only reflect exactly, purely what you believe, or do you modify your words so that people who might agree with most of what you believe do not feel demonised and despised, and collaborate with you and thereby help pass more progressive policies to benefit more of the people you care about. As Obama did.
There's no question that saying Kirk was "doing politics right" was a really careless and misleading choice of words (misleading even for what Klein meant), and I do totally see that someone like TNC from a historically (and currently) oppressed community might find it almost impossible to do that (although there are people who have managed it), but I think Klein's intention has a lot of merit if what you really care about is getting power, and using it to benefit the most people.
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Ezra does a lot of rationalizing when he ought to just say, "Yeah, I fucked up. He wasn't doing politics right."
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I'd just finished reading it myself when I saw this. Very interesting:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ta-nehisi-coates.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pU8.aWZg.aGJWstjBZKnl&smid=url-share
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Funnily enough I'd just finished reading it! Here's a gift link - I hope it gives the transcript, i think ive had trouble with that before:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ta-nehisi-coates.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pU8.aWZg.aGJWstjBZKnl&smid=url-share
On “Ran, ran, ran, I blog Iran”
Great points, novakant. I don't know as much as I should about Iran and its history, so I agree that Wood's background and in-country experience is not something I dismiss out of hand. Of course, claiming to represent civilization isn't something restricted to Iranians, Stephen Miller said this at Charlie Kirk's memorial
We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion. Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry.
Erika stands on the shoulders of thousands of years of warriors, of women who raised up families, raised up city, raised up industry, raised up civilization, who pulled us out of the caves and the darkness into the light.
Words fail.
I would recommend Marjane Satrapi's graphic novels Persopolis (1 and 2) are excellent and her newest, Women, Life and Freedom is something I'm getting for my school library.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/16/marjane-satrapi-interview-persepolis-woman-life-freedom
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Questions that should be asked more often when it comes to evaluating Iran's place in the international community is:
"What has Iran actually done geopolitically to deserve its reputation in, say, the past 25 years, what have other nations operating in the ME done and how does it compare? What is the death toll that resulted from Iran's actions and how does it compare to that of other nations operating in the ME?"
I think any objective observer will find that, if you set aside the rhetoric, the actual actions of the Iranian regime amount to very little compared to those of other nations. The operative phrase here is "setting aside the rhetoric" because since the hostage crisis and later Ahmadinejad, a narrative has emerged that describes the "islamofascist theocracy" in Iran as the "greatest danger to ME peace". This is completely unjustified if you look at the historical facts.
The geopolitical argument against Iran is then often bolstered by bringing up the domestic policies of the Iranian regime, which are certainly deplorable. However, they are sadly not unique in the region and elsewhere and despite claims to the contrary the regime does not have totalitarian grip on the very complex and multilayered society of Iran.
What is also almost completely ignored is the fact that the regime is more about money and power than about religion. Most observers simply are ignorant of or choose to ignore the vast amount of wealth the ruling elite from Khamenei down to the rannk and file revolutionary guard member control and their understandable desire to hold on to it. One tool to perpetuate this control is religion, but I would say in and of itself it is actually secondary.
Finally, as much as parts of Iranian society are westernised, even they don't want a society determined by US money and influence - many might hate the regime but they want to do their own thing and understandably view foreign interference with strong suspicion. And that is much more so the case with much of the conservative, religious population who just have different ideas about how to live.
I think Wood is actually better postioned than most to comment on Iran because of his educational background and having actually travelled in the country, though that seems to have been a while ago. However, he seems to succumb in part to the usual US foreign policy establishment groupthink which prioritises regime change narratives. I would just challenge everyone fixated on this to tell me what an Iran post-regime change would look like, especially considering the many different ethnic groups that make up the country.
As for Iran being an old civilization, that's certainly one source of the national pride, though it depends on who you talk to, because it can sit uneasily with the grim current relity. It's also kind of a running gag among some, who make fun of this tendency to trace back every invention and accomplishment of the past 2000 years to the Persian empire. I heard the Greeks do the same and there is apparently a scene in "My big fat Greek wedding" making fun of this.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
One thing is for sure, no matter what the results of the next election: His Orangeness will cry fraud and try to overturn those parts he does not like. Iirc he already tries to persuade courts to forbid gerrymandering in blue states while allowing it in red ones. His campaign to have voting by mail declared illegal will also play a part (even if the courts do not agree).
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Good on you, wj. Every further development (e.g. Comey's indictment, and the firing of anyone who tries to support the rule of law, see below) supports the conclusion that neither election to the house nor the senate can continue to be gerrymandered so as to give the Rs, and therefore Ubu, an ironclad control of American politics and the unfettered ability to continue to subvert the constitution.
Last week, Mr. Trump fired a U.S. attorney in Virginia who determined there was insufficient evidence to indict James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, and Letitia James, the New York State attorney general, both political targets of the president. The Virginia prosecutor was replaced by a Trump loyalist who convinced a federal grand jury on Thursday to indict Mr. Comey on two counts.
Documents reviewed by The New York Times show that the July 15 firing of Ms. Beckwith occurred less than six hours after she told Mr. Bovino, the Border Patrol chief in charge of the Southern California raids, that a court order prevented him from arresting people without probable cause in a vast expanse that stretches from the Oregon border to Bakersfield. She was removed not only from her post as acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of California, but from the office altogether.
On “Precursors”
Can I just say, I was talking (and thinking) very carelessly upthread @4.05 on Charlie Kirk. For clarity's sake, I have no idea whether or not Kirk's influence was "malevolent", since I have no idea what his real wishes were. I do not necessarily take his Christianity at face value, and not only for the excellent reasons lj gives immediately above. But there is nonetheless no doubt in my mind that his influence was malign, and despite the undoubted tragedy of his murder, and the terrible and understandable grief of his family, it is somewhat sickening to see the rightwing glorification of this deeply problematic person. He might have changed for the better, as bc seems to suggest was a possibility, but he might also have changed for the worse. Murder and political violence are a curse wherever they occur, and neither their perpetrators nor their victims need by glorified in order to condemn them.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
We just got the materials for the Special Election November 4. I'm working this one, not just because I usually try to work elections, but because these days it's an affirmation that elections will happen.
The only item on the ballot is Proposition 50: AUTHORIZES TEMPORARY CHANGES TO CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT MAPS IN RESPONSE TO TEXAS' PARTISAN REDISTRICTING. Talk about brutally honest proposition titles! (Something that has not been universal here, in my observation). The ads are already starting to run. On one side, Governor Newsom talking about defending democracy from Trump. On the other, arguments for preserving the nonpartisan redistricting that we established, for excellent reasons, back in 2010. Perhaps I am a bit biased, but I note that this doesn't abolish the Redistricting Commission, just allows a one-time redistricting outside the usual process. The Con ads (deliberately) make it sound like a permanent change.
I am personally strongly in favor of our nonpartisan approach. In fact, at one point I applied to be on tthe commission. But, "circumstances alter cases." I suspect that the economy will be sufficiently trashed by 2026 that the Democrats end up with a majority in the House regardless of Republican efforts elsewhere. Especially as some of the hardest hit places are already being deep red rural areas. But I'm also in belt-and-suspenders mode these days.
On “Un morceau de blog”
Fascinating stuff on autism - thank you novakant, lj and bc!
On “Precursors”
bc, thanks for this too. I knew of Charlie Kirk, but I didn't follow much, so I'm not going to try and dig up stuff, I think that was a mode of commenting that caused/causes a lot of problems (remember fisking?)
However, I have to say that his turn to Christianity seems a bit of a grift. In a podcast recently, he claimed it was 5th grade when he saw the light, but there is no sign of that until after Trump's second election. While it's possible that his marriage was an important influence (his wife graduated from Liberty University), the claim about the 5th grade conversion is probably a lie.
btw, you can see turning point ads (and find other ads) here
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/1E9X/turning-point-usa-help-us-take-back-our-country
There are a few with nods to Christianity, but those seem to be in conjunction with Trump trying to please that demographic.
On “Un morceau de blog”
Thanks bc! Glad you liked it. I had a checkered career as a horn player (I've hung it up) and one disappointment is that I never played much French orchestral music. I mentioned that to the conductor of the university orchestra here and he said well, French orchestral music, as opposed to German (and I suppose that Tchaikovsky et al is really stuff in the German tradition) requires a lot more from the strings.
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Love the Saint-Saëns piece. Always nice to hear the horn played well. I played his Cavatine in music school. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kKUuFECQ48
And I had a chance to hear some of his choral works sung in the place where they were intended to be sung last year when my son's college choir toured France and sang in La Madeleine (where Saint-Saëns was the organist).
Regarding autism, I dealt with a neurologist professionally as an expert for TBI in accident cases. He had an interesting take on autism diagnosis. He was bothered because autism and ADHD and other mental and behavioral disorders are primarily diagnosed based solely on symptoms rather than focusing first on potential physical or neurological causes. 20/20 had an episode and showed one child diagnosed for years with severe autism. He rocked back and forth much of the time ignoring the outside world. An MRI was normal, but the specialized EEG this doctor had developed showed brain seizures. Anti-seizure meds had the kid going from something like a 30-word vocabulary to 200 in a month, and up to speed in fairly short order. It always has me wondering when I meet a kid on the spectrum at the severe end of the scale what an MRI, this specialized EEG and neuropsych eval might reveal.
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I worked on a paper for a while where I argued that we might want to consider autism a cultural trait. Here in Japan, students often behave in ways that are similar to what people have said are symptoms of autism. Unfortunately, though I thought it was very enlightening (and continues to be as I deal with student post covid and see their adaptations to changed circumstances) I was never able to get the right tone. It may have been, like novakant says, I was instrumentalizing autism to deal with some debates about Japanese students and education, but I did think I was on to something interesting.
btw, I love the first link with the links to papers in each section. So much better than trying to follow Youtube vids!!
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Ages ago I took part in a seminar at uni that looked at autism within the context of the philosophy of mind, specifically the old problem of naturally assuming but not being able to prove that others have mental states ("other minds"). The question was that if autism is characterised in part by having difficulties conceptualising other people's mental states, can that tell us anything about how "normal people" do this. I remember "mindblindness" being a term used to characterise autism and Simon Baron-Cohen (not the comedian) drawing some interesting if controversial conclusions regarding ethical responsibility. Back then it seemed fascinating, but also a but like autism research was being instrumentalised by philosophers to liven up age old debates, rather than to help those who have to deal with the condition.
It seems that the debate has moved on since then towards a more inclusive view:
https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/theory-of-mind-in-autism-a-research-field-reborn/
https://embrace-autism.com/autism-and-theory-of-mind-whats-new/#:~:text=Theory%20of%20mind%20(ToM)%20refers,of%20our%20social%20communication%20struggles.
I still think it is important though to hold on to the diagnostic category of autism, while being aware of all the caveats and avoiding stigmatising those falling under it, in order to support those displaying signs of the condition especially children.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.