Been thinking about this and I'm hard pressed to come up with a horrible behavior that hasn't at some point been acceptable to some community somewhere.
It seems that if you can categorize some identifiable group as "those other people who aren't like us", you can find a way to do whatever your imgination can summon up.
The narratives in the Abrahamic religions tend to be set more of a historical context. That is, the actors are presented as real human figures who lived in particular places and times.
In that context, I'd say the trickster figure in that tradition is Jacob. Supplanted his brother and stole his inheritance by guile, repaid his father-in-law Laban's deception around his marriageable daughters by engineering spotted progeny in the herd of sheep he managed (and so got to keep). Wrestled an angel all night for a blessing. And so on.
There's actually a lot of... hinky behavior in the Genesis narrative - Abraham pretending his wife was his sister (twice!), Joseph concealing his identity from his brothers, and so on.
But Jacob is the guy for whom tricksy behavior and sharp dealing seems part of his identity as a character.
"Be aware that anyone who posts negative comments to the Park Service regarding the grotesque Nazi arch that cock blocks Abraham Lincoln will be subjected, with their families, to harassment from the IRS, every fascist federal law enforcement agency, and will be disallowed from entering National Parks in perpetuity."
Fuck 'em.
I'm probably already on all of their shit lists, and likely have been for some time.
I don't completely understand all the differences between a parliamentary system and what we have here, but my general impression is that parliamentary polities have room for more than two parties, and that even fringe-ish parties can end up having a voice when it's time to assemble a governing coalition. For good or ill.
Whereas here we basically have to shoehorn all points of view into (R) or (D).
And of course, parliamentary polities have there own issues. But it seems more likely that less predominant points of view can be represented in government.
I'd be interested in knowing how we ended up with (and continue to have) only two meaningful parties, if any of the more poli-sci aware among could explain.
There is no move to Canada in my future because (a) I'm too old and they don't want me, (b) moving is a PITA under any circumstances, (c) I'm too rooted where I am and don't feel like starting over someplace new, even if it's a friendly place like Canada.
And (d) it's too freaking cold.
Re: Maine - I would have preferred Mills or Costello, Platner is an obvious hot mess and it's a distraction. But he's connecting with people there, and it ain't my call. If he gets in, I'll be mostly fine with it. It really depends on whether he'll be able to actually get stuff done, or if he just ends up being a weirdo ranting over in the corner.
I'm registered as non-enrolled, which is the MA designation for somebody who isn't registered in any party. I vote for (D)'s because they are generally closer to my own values than (R)'s are. I will not vote for any (R), ever, full stop, as long as the MAGA thing is going on.
There is no party at this point that really reflects my own values. (D)'s seem to be all in on the neo-liberal thing, (R)'s are just revanchists at this point. Maybe the Democratic Farmer-Labor folks in Minnesota come close. Or something like distributivism, only without the Catholic overlay and with greater consideration for public goods.
Basically, I should probably be living in Denmark or similar, but that has the same issues as emigration to Canada. Someplace with a Mediterranean climate would be perfect.
But basically I'm not going anywhere. We have things too dialed in, and we're too old to think seriously about trying to reconstruct all of that from scratch.
Our government absolutely sucks right now, but there are other ways to make things better. Some things, anyway.
Watched this - it was pretty interesting. I'm not sure I fully grasped all of it.
What mostly struck me was how utterly unprepared we here in the US are for what's coming.
What also struck me, not just from Tooze's speech but also just from living here at the moment, is that we really don't have a functional government right now. Some institutions are still hobbling along because the people who work in them actually want to do the right thing if they can. But most of the leadership are just fucking clowns. And not the funny kind.
We - the US - will be occupying a diminished place in the world, mostly through our own bad behavior. And we are not used to thinking of ourselves that way. A lot of folks will simply not be able to accept it.
Just returned yesterday from a weekend back on Long Island (land of my birth) where I got together with a bunch of my cousins and went to a high school friend's 70th birthday party.
Over the last year or so, I've gotten back in touch with people who I haven't really been in contact with for decades. People who were a big part of my formative years. I've been moved to find that I was part of theirs as well, and to find that I have been missed, and that my renewed presence in their lives is welcome.
A simple life blessing.
So, this post was timely, for me.
Also - don't forget, boys and girls - AI is not your friend. AI doesn't have friends, doesn't know what a friend is, other than a word to match on.
Re: Barney Frank - I appreciate what he's saying and generally agree, more or less. But the incremental acceptance of gay rights would not have happened without Stonewall.
Similarly, women getting the vote would not have happened without all the suffragettes who took beatings and spent time in jail. Basic legal equality for black people would not have happened without Selma, to say nothing of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. The 8 hour day and the weekend would not have happened without the radical and often violent labor activities of the late 19th and early 20th C. Blair Mountain, y'all.
As far as the DSA vs the Democrats, the DSA is in the position of not having to actually govern. So they can make relatively more extreme demands. And if nobody does that, the needle doesn't move.
The Overton Window opens in more than one direction.
As a kind of sidebar, I'm about to start reading Peter Maurin's "Easy Essays". The whole distributivist / personalist perspective is one I don't fully understand, and am curious about. And it's one that had a pretty broad consituency once upon a time, but seems to have been forgotten.
With all respect to the Democrats, who consistently get my vote and my money such as it is, what we have now is not working.
It's hard to know where to jump into this discussion.
FIrst, I think Pro Bono's take on wj's conservatism is correct. Chesterton's fence captures it pretty well. From his writing here, wj's conservatism appears essentially to call for considering the consequences of any changes you want to make before making the change. Not assuming you are the smartest person in the room with all the answers to a given problem. Circumspection and modesty.
These are good things, actually.
The problem actual conservatives - people like wj, if I may speak for him - have is that the brand has been taken over by reactionaries and irresponsible greedheads.
It's really hard to talk about liberalism because the word has meant so many different things. Everything from the Manchester School to FDR's New Deal and the Great Society of the 60's. Now, in this country, it basically means an expansive role for government - and the federal government in particular - in addressing social and economic issues, and a focus on extending civil rights to more marginal demographics.
So much crap has been loaded onto both terms that it's hard to boil it all down, but I think the above is reasonably accurate.
I see the "elite" thing as more of a regional issue than a left-right one. The majority of public media is generated in larger cities, and in particular larger cities on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. And it reflects the perspective of people there, with the occasional condescending "common man diner interview" a la the NYT.
People who don't live in those places feel under-represented and talked down to. Not just conservative people, a highly educated raging liberal gay friend who lives in Cincinnati feels this way.
And they have a point.
Public policy at the federal level is also set in Washington, which is an in-the-general-area-of-coastal big city. And a disproportionate number of folks setting policy (both liberal and conservative) were educated in institutions in coastal areas.
So, the perception is not completely imaginary.
Regarding hippy-ish artists, the many working musicians I know work incredibly hard for not a lot of money. Some have spouses or partners with day jobs, which among things makes health insurance available. Many of them achieve something like a middle-class life, but it often takes them well into middle age to get there. Some never do.
I probably get 6 to 10 requests a year to chip in on a GoFundMe program for a musician who got sick.
I'm somewhat skeptical of Platner - I wonder if he's gonna be another Fetterman - but I think his perception that the true class divide is between people whose income comes from their work, and people whose income comes from there money, is pretty accurate.
What I really wish we could get to is a model where ownership of productive enterprises was more widely distributed. More or less something like employee ownership. That, and a recognition that there are essential goods that the market does not - and in some cases can not and never will - provide in a fair and equitable way, and that providing those goods should be the job of the public sector, i.e. government.
And yes, Klein seemed oddly intent on catching Rosenblatt out during the interview. I guess he feels a need to be "edgy". I thought she handled herself pretty well - it seemed like he put her on her back foot a bit, but she didn't really take the bait.
"Armed urbans launching raids into rural areas? Not as clear."
I don't really see a significant level of interest among urban people to invade rural areas. And to be honest, I don't really see a significant level of interest among rural folks to invade cities.
We have seen Trump try on invading blue cities under the banner of immigration enforcement, and the generally horrified reaction of people in general has forced him to scale that way back. He was able to pull that off using ICE and CBP but I don't think the actual military would stand for it. Not so far, anyway.
What is likely, because it's already here, is free lance ideological violence. It's likely to continue. Some of it is disgruntled individuals, but some of it is more organized. The latter is more concerning, and could actually lead to something like the Troubles.
What I really wish is that the feds would crack down on the militias, who are basically unaccountable private armies. It's astounding to me that they have been allowed to exist. They're mostly clownish but even clowns can shoot. But I think any attempt in that direction would result in real violence a la Timothy McVeigh, mostly directed toward federal institutions, but possibly more generally.
To me, the argument for something like partition is basically pragmatic. People in this country have wildly different understandings of what civic governance is supposed to do, and no single point of view holds a commanding majority.
So nothing gets done. Or, not exactly nothing, but we can't seem to settle on a single coherent solution to some pretty basic civic problems.
We flail.
I'm not sure if partition is an achievable solution. How would you actually do it? I don't think most folks would sign up for or even tolerate a shooting war. Something like the partition of Czechoslovakia might work, but it's hard to say where you'd draw the lines. Michael's map is pretty good, but it would get complicated pretty fast.
Maybe we need some kind of regional entity, smaller than the whole country, but larger than a single state, and then devolve a lot of what are currently federal responsibilities to those. It would be a hell of a lot easier to get a workable consensus about a lot of stuff in, for example, New England or the upper Midwest or the mountain west, than it is when the whole country is involved.
It is unfortunately true that there is nothing that unusual about somebody trying to assassinate a sitting POTUS.
I don't really know enough to have much of an opinion about whether security was lax or not. It seems like it would be kind of hard to lock down an entire hotel, and the Secret Service et al stopped the guy before he could do much harm.
My own guess is that the IRGC will take an even larger and more explicit role in running the place. Basically a military dictatorship with the blessing of the mullahs.
The President and Parliament will be increasingly irrelevant.
So probably most like Pakistan rather than the others on the list, but more explicitly theocratic.
The description of George III's treatment at the hands of Dr Willis makes me grateful that psychiatric medicine has (mostly) advanced in the years since then. I'm not sure how being bound and gagged would result in him gaining a "better opinion" of himself.
My guess about Trump's future is that he's gonna end up like his father, with minions bringing him meaningless things to sign so he thinks he's still the boss, while they run things in his stead. Who knows, he might basically be there now.
If it did, restrictions would also apply to labor unions and other organizations favorable to the left. You may consider that a worthwhile tradeoff.
My own position on this has been, for years, that only natural human persons should be allowed to contribute to political campaigns and candidates.
I'd extend that to groups of natural human persons created explicitly for the purpose of bundling contributions from natural human persons. And each person's contributions to such an organization would be limited to whatever limits applied to the contributions they could make. directly.
Citizens only.
If you can't vote, you can't contribute.
Full stop.
Will this happen in my lifetime, or basically ever? No. But that's my position.
And I consider bc to be reasonable and thoughtful, not at all antagonistic in the way that McKinney came to be.
As do I. I mostly don't agree with bc but that is a different issue.
Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO.
I hate to say this, because I hate that it is true. But the EU and the "middle powers" (as Carney calls them) really do need to assume that the US under Trump is unreliable. Is stepping away from any commitments that do not benefit Trump and his family, personally.
And I don't understand the dynamics of his relationship with Putin but it's pretty obvious that Putin holds the upper hand there.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Monkey business”
Been thinking about this and I'm hard pressed to come up with a horrible behavior that hasn't at some point been acceptable to some community somewhere.
It seems that if you can categorize some identifiable group as "those other people who aren't like us", you can find a way to do whatever your imgination can summon up.
It's depressing
"
The narratives in the Abrahamic religions tend to be set more of a historical context. That is, the actors are presented as real human figures who lived in particular places and times.
In that context, I'd say the trickster figure in that tradition is Jacob. Supplanted his brother and stole his inheritance by guile, repaid his father-in-law Laban's deception around his marriageable daughters by engineering spotted progeny in the herd of sheep he managed (and so got to keep). Wrestled an angel all night for a blessing. And so on.
There's actually a lot of... hinky behavior in the Genesis narrative - Abraham pretending his wife was his sister (twice!), Joseph concealing his identity from his brothers, and so on.
But Jacob is the guy for whom tricksy behavior and sharp dealing seems part of his identity as a character.
On “Open Thread”
"Be aware that anyone who posts negative comments to the Park Service regarding the grotesque Nazi arch that cock blocks Abraham Lincoln will be subjected, with their families, to harassment from the IRS, every fascist federal law enforcement agency, and will be disallowed from entering National Parks in perpetuity."
Fuck 'em.
I'm probably already on all of their shit lists, and likely have been for some time.
Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
"
'It seems pretty clear that we are going to have to rethink how we do Eection Day in-person voting"
We could do what George Washington, father of our country, did, and serve beer.
On “What’s wrong with liberalism?”
"It’s Duverger’s Law"
Thank you nous
"
I don't completely understand all the differences between a parliamentary system and what we have here, but my general impression is that parliamentary polities have room for more than two parties, and that even fringe-ish parties can end up having a voice when it's time to assemble a governing coalition. For good or ill.
Whereas here we basically have to shoehorn all points of view into (R) or (D).
And of course, parliamentary polities have there own issues. But it seems more likely that less predominant points of view can be represented in government.
I'd be interested in knowing how we ended up with (and continue to have) only two meaningful parties, if any of the more poli-sci aware among could explain.
"
There is no move to Canada in my future because (a) I'm too old and they don't want me, (b) moving is a PITA under any circumstances, (c) I'm too rooted where I am and don't feel like starting over someplace new, even if it's a friendly place like Canada.
And (d) it's too freaking cold.
Re: Maine - I would have preferred Mills or Costello, Platner is an obvious hot mess and it's a distraction. But he's connecting with people there, and it ain't my call. If he gets in, I'll be mostly fine with it. It really depends on whether he'll be able to actually get stuff done, or if he just ends up being a weirdo ranting over in the corner.
I'm registered as non-enrolled, which is the MA designation for somebody who isn't registered in any party. I vote for (D)'s because they are generally closer to my own values than (R)'s are. I will not vote for any (R), ever, full stop, as long as the MAGA thing is going on.
There is no party at this point that really reflects my own values. (D)'s seem to be all in on the neo-liberal thing, (R)'s are just revanchists at this point. Maybe the Democratic Farmer-Labor folks in Minnesota come close. Or something like distributivism, only without the Catholic overlay and with greater consideration for public goods.
Basically, I should probably be living in Denmark or similar, but that has the same issues as emigration to Canada. Someplace with a Mediterranean climate would be perfect.
But basically I'm not going anywhere. We have things too dialed in, and we're too old to think seriously about trying to reconstruct all of that from scratch.
Our government absolutely sucks right now, but there are other ways to make things better. Some things, anyway.
On “Adam Tooze and the Polycrisis”
Watched this - it was pretty interesting. I'm not sure I fully grasped all of it.
What mostly struck me was how utterly unprepared we here in the US are for what's coming.
What also struck me, not just from Tooze's speech but also just from living here at the moment, is that we really don't have a functional government right now. Some institutions are still hobbling along because the people who work in them actually want to do the right thing if they can. But most of the leadership are just fucking clowns. And not the funny kind.
We - the US - will be occupying a diminished place in the world, mostly through our own bad behavior. And we are not used to thinking of ourselves that way. A lot of folks will simply not be able to accept it.
On “The quiet grief of adult friendship”
You might be (likely will be) pleasantly surprised.
"
Just returned yesterday from a weekend back on Long Island (land of my birth) where I got together with a bunch of my cousins and went to a high school friend's 70th birthday party.
Over the last year or so, I've gotten back in touch with people who I haven't really been in contact with for decades. People who were a big part of my formative years. I've been moved to find that I was part of theirs as well, and to find that I have been missed, and that my renewed presence in their lives is welcome.
A simple life blessing.
So, this post was timely, for me.
Also - don't forget, boys and girls - AI is not your friend. AI doesn't have friends, doesn't know what a friend is, other than a word to match on.
It's a slippery time we're heading into.
On “What’s wrong with liberalism?”
"They live in modest homes in small towns"
Many of the working musicians I know, likewise.
Re: Barney Frank - I appreciate what he's saying and generally agree, more or less. But the incremental acceptance of gay rights would not have happened without Stonewall.
Similarly, women getting the vote would not have happened without all the suffragettes who took beatings and spent time in jail. Basic legal equality for black people would not have happened without Selma, to say nothing of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. The 8 hour day and the weekend would not have happened without the radical and often violent labor activities of the late 19th and early 20th C. Blair Mountain, y'all.
As far as the DSA vs the Democrats, the DSA is in the position of not having to actually govern. So they can make relatively more extreme demands. And if nobody does that, the needle doesn't move.
The Overton Window opens in more than one direction.
As a kind of sidebar, I'm about to start reading Peter Maurin's "Easy Essays". The whole distributivist / personalist perspective is one I don't fully understand, and am curious about. And it's one that had a pretty broad consituency once upon a time, but seems to have been forgotten.
With all respect to the Democrats, who consistently get my vote and my money such as it is, what we have now is not working.
"
"But I haven’t come up with a better label."
I'd vote for "sane". ;)
And agreed as to folks who have retired and are living, in part or completely, from investments made during a life of work. : raises hand :
"
It's hard to know where to jump into this discussion.
FIrst, I think Pro Bono's take on wj's conservatism is correct. Chesterton's fence captures it pretty well. From his writing here, wj's conservatism appears essentially to call for considering the consequences of any changes you want to make before making the change. Not assuming you are the smartest person in the room with all the answers to a given problem. Circumspection and modesty.
These are good things, actually.
The problem actual conservatives - people like wj, if I may speak for him - have is that the brand has been taken over by reactionaries and irresponsible greedheads.
It's really hard to talk about liberalism because the word has meant so many different things. Everything from the Manchester School to FDR's New Deal and the Great Society of the 60's. Now, in this country, it basically means an expansive role for government - and the federal government in particular - in addressing social and economic issues, and a focus on extending civil rights to more marginal demographics.
So much crap has been loaded onto both terms that it's hard to boil it all down, but I think the above is reasonably accurate.
I see the "elite" thing as more of a regional issue than a left-right one. The majority of public media is generated in larger cities, and in particular larger cities on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. And it reflects the perspective of people there, with the occasional condescending "common man diner interview" a la the NYT.
People who don't live in those places feel under-represented and talked down to. Not just conservative people, a highly educated raging liberal gay friend who lives in Cincinnati feels this way.
And they have a point.
Public policy at the federal level is also set in Washington, which is an in-the-general-area-of-coastal big city. And a disproportionate number of folks setting policy (both liberal and conservative) were educated in institutions in coastal areas.
So, the perception is not completely imaginary.
Regarding hippy-ish artists, the many working musicians I know work incredibly hard for not a lot of money. Some have spouses or partners with day jobs, which among things makes health insurance available. Many of them achieve something like a middle-class life, but it often takes them well into middle age to get there. Some never do.
I probably get 6 to 10 requests a year to chip in on a GoFundMe program for a musician who got sick.
I'm somewhat skeptical of Platner - I wonder if he's gonna be another Fetterman - but I think his perception that the true class divide is between people whose income comes from their work, and people whose income comes from there money, is pretty accurate.
What I really wish we could get to is a model where ownership of productive enterprises was more widely distributed. More or less something like employee ownership. That, and a recognition that there are essential goods that the market does not - and in some cases can not and never will - provide in a fair and equitable way, and that providing those goods should be the job of the public sector, i.e. government.
And yes, Klein seemed oddly intent on catching Rosenblatt out during the interview. I guess he feels a need to be "edgy". I thought she handled herself pretty well - it seemed like he put her on her back foot a bit, but she didn't really take the bait.
On “Open Thread time”
"Armed urbans launching raids into rural areas? Not as clear."
I don't really see a significant level of interest among urban people to invade rural areas. And to be honest, I don't really see a significant level of interest among rural folks to invade cities.
We have seen Trump try on invading blue cities under the banner of immigration enforcement, and the generally horrified reaction of people in general has forced him to scale that way back. He was able to pull that off using ICE and CBP but I don't think the actual military would stand for it. Not so far, anyway.
What is likely, because it's already here, is free lance ideological violence. It's likely to continue. Some of it is disgruntled individuals, but some of it is more organized. The latter is more concerning, and could actually lead to something like the Troubles.
What I really wish is that the feds would crack down on the militias, who are basically unaccountable private armies. It's astounding to me that they have been allowed to exist. They're mostly clownish but even clowns can shoot. But I think any attempt in that direction would result in real violence a la Timothy McVeigh, mostly directed toward federal institutions, but possibly more generally.
"
To me, the argument for something like partition is basically pragmatic. People in this country have wildly different understandings of what civic governance is supposed to do, and no single point of view holds a commanding majority.
So nothing gets done. Or, not exactly nothing, but we can't seem to settle on a single coherent solution to some pretty basic civic problems.
We flail.
I'm not sure if partition is an achievable solution. How would you actually do it? I don't think most folks would sign up for or even tolerate a shooting war. Something like the partition of Czechoslovakia might work, but it's hard to say where you'd draw the lines. Michael's map is pretty good, but it would get complicated pretty fast.
Maybe we need some kind of regional entity, smaller than the whole country, but larger than a single state, and then devolve a lot of what are currently federal responsibilities to those. It would be a hell of a lot easier to get a workable consensus about a lot of stuff in, for example, New England or the upper Midwest or the mountain west, than it is when the whole country is involved.
What we're doing now is not working well.
"
Just chiming in to say that I'm always amazed at the stuff you all know.
Carry on!
On “It’s funny what gets left out”
"you get two and a half times as many progressives say it’s justified as not.
I wonder where he gets that from?"
I think he pulled it out of his ass,
On “Wait, this isn’t from the Onion?!?”
We are living the Onion every day.
On “color me gobsmacked”
They're speaking his language.
If they can find a way to carve out some candy for Trump and his friends and family my guess is the war will end in about 10 seconds.
On “Clusterfucks r us”
I'm with cleek.
It is unfortunately true that there is nothing that unusual about somebody trying to assassinate a sitting POTUS.
I don't really know enough to have much of an opinion about whether security was lax or not. It seems like it would be kind of hard to lock down an entire hotel, and the Secret Service et al stopped the guy before he could do much harm.
On “What a wonderful world?”
My own guess is that the IRGC will take an even larger and more explicit role in running the place. Basically a military dictatorship with the blessing of the mullahs.
The President and Parliament will be increasingly irrelevant.
So probably most like Pakistan rather than the others on the list, but more explicitly theocratic.
On “Imagining a mad king”
The description of George III's treatment at the hands of Dr Willis makes me grateful that psychiatric medicine has (mostly) advanced in the years since then. I'm not sure how being bound and gagged would result in him gaining a "better opinion" of himself.
My guess about Trump's future is that he's gonna end up like his father, with minions bringing him meaningless things to sign so he thinks he's still the boss, while they run things in his stead. Who knows, he might basically be there now.
On “Maybe time for an Open Thread”
'market-friendly liberals and market-suspicious progressives"
In the interest of more or less re-framing this, I'd invite folks to consider the difference between free markets and capitalism.
We generally conflate them but I'm not sure that is accurate.
To take it a step further, perhaps consider the difference between policies that enable capital formation, versus capitalism as an "ism".
"
My own position on this has been, for years, that only natural human persons should be allowed to contribute to political campaigns and candidates.
I'd extend that to groups of natural human persons created explicitly for the purpose of bundling contributions from natural human persons. And each person's contributions to such an organization would be limited to whatever limits applied to the contributions they could make. directly.
Citizens only.
If you can't vote, you can't contribute.
Full stop.
Will this happen in my lifetime, or basically ever? No. But that's my position.
"
As do I. I mostly don't agree with bc but that is a different issue.
I hate to say this, because I hate that it is true. But the EU and the "middle powers" (as Carney calls them) really do need to assume that the US under Trump is unreliable. Is stepping away from any commitments that do not benefit Trump and his family, personally.
And I don't understand the dynamics of his relationship with Putin but it's pretty obvious that Putin holds the upper hand there.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.