Ides of March Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, March 15, 2024
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100 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Nah, no anti-semitism, just ‘anti-zionism’ in the Left:
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Progressive ‘tolerance’ has always been intolerant. I laughed when I first heard the notion of ‘intersectionality.’ Identity politics has always been a mistake. White identity, Black identity, pick your identity, intolerance of others is inherent. It just chops the pie up into smaller and smaller pieces – Judean People’s Front vs. People’s Front of Judea.
Interesting POV for a man with a trans daughter.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Not at all, it’s part of what alerted me to the problem. See, she is trans, she’s also White, and a quarter Jewish, well-to-do, urban, a techie, a gourmet, a genius, a lover of British comedy, and many, many more things. Reducing her to a trans identity means creating a hierarchy in which her gender/sex is the most important identifier. It forces big and complex into a small box, shaving off bits and pieces to make it fit.
It’s also exactly what the other side does to trans people. And it’s what they do when they make White their identity. It is not logical to despise those who identify as White while lauding those who identify as Asian. We are not our skin color, or our genitals – something we used to know, something we used to proclaim. We are more than that, and reductive hypocrisy is an intellectual, moral and political error.
@Michael Reynolds:
I hope she isn’t a lover of Benny Hill…..
The headline of the day- Zimbabwe police arrest apostolic ‘prophet’ and rescue 251 children from compound
The
end is near businessheadline of the day- McDonald’s suffers global tech outage forcing some restaurants to halt operations@Michael Reynolds: As I said earlier this week, bigotry is built into humans. The need to find an “other” and go after them is deep within our animal nature. The only difference between people is which groups they deem “other”, and how well they master their inner animal to overcome that innate bigotry.
And if being shit upon made people less likely to shit upon others, we would have had peace and harmony millennia ago. Instead, it causes most people to go looking for someone else they can shit upon. And for most of those, it is someone they deem “weaker”.
@Bill Jempty:
No, no, I said comedy.
@MarkedMan:
A true if depressing assessment of homo sapiens.
I’ll make this prediction: if Trump wins we will see death squads in this country. As with all death squads they’d be officially disavowed by government and gleefully encouraged with winks and nods.
When was this magical, mythical time, Michael? Certainly not in this country, not anytime in the past 65 years (my life time). Pretty damned sure not anytime before ’58 either.
eta: and the only reason I brought your daughter up is because of how often you have identified her as trans. Which is fine, she is different because of that and faces different issues because of that.
Trying to say that the problem is not the actual differences we all have, but acknowledging those differences is ridiculous. To me? That is just head in the sand wishful thinking.
Some people like to say, “I don’t see color.” which is just an out and out lie. They may believe it, but if so they are even sadder for that fact.
Aaron Rogers:
Ah, the ol’ non-denial denial that so many fall for (see, for example Cat Stevens and the fatwa). So there were tragic events at Sandy Hook. Were they the actual ones, the murder of innocent children? Or perhaps it was the tragic events in your head, you know, the events you claim were government actors posing as parents of non-existant children, because, reasons?
@OzarkHillbilly:
For liberals, my entire life. That’s the ‘we’ I was referring to. The United States is meant to be an aspirational nation, a process of improvement. Like the speed of light we can get closer to, but of course never achieve, perfection. It’s a “more perfect”, not perfect union.
Progress is not made through balkanization, it comes from common ideals, from different people working toward similar goals. I’m not Black, Hispanic, Asian, gay or trans, but I have always supported their equality under the law, their right to be treated as equal members of American society. Not colorblind, as you say that’s nonsense, we see what we see. But the interpretation of what we see is in our power. We should not abandon just goals because we are impatient with the pace of progress, we should rather work harder to move the ball the next few inches.
Let me give you a personal story. When I was a kid I was involved in an incident where I could easily have come away with racist and/or anti-gay feelings. Even as a kid I knew that would be a mistake. What happens, happens. How we digest and analyze and respond to events, is ours to decide. I was raised by a father who was a soldier from Iowa, himself raised as a conservative Christian. And by a mother who was raised a secular Jew. I did not have an idyllic childhood, but I understood that racism or antigay bigotry is a failure of intellect, as well as a moral failure, and a poison you can choose to ingest, or spit out.
Fani stays in the game. Sorry, Honest Don.
@Michael Reynolds: I have certainly had thoughts and feelings very similar to what you are expressing here this morning. I’m less agitated by it these days, though being neither Jewish nor Muslim allows me some distance from current events.
“Intersectionality” was developed as a concept to reduce and/or eliminate binary thinking, did you know that? It’s a tool meant to help one see the world more richly, and understand how people are different. However, as Octavia Butler says, human beings love hierarchy, and will grab any tool at hand to bully people.
The concept is simple. White women – no, let’s make that all women – can experience certain patterns of bad things living in a culture. Black women have all of those, and an additional set of bad experiences. And knowing about this is how a white woman who has been raising consciousness of the structure, the patterns working against her, can learn to uncenter on herself, and that the patterns are different, even if still bad, or usually worse, for black women, and that some consciousness of this is necessary in order to build a connection and an alliance between them.
Humans being what they are, though, will grab anything at hand and use it as a club when they feel like fighting.
@Michael Reynolds: I think the problem with this particular bit of OTB discourse is that you define “identity politics” in an utterly reductive way (and in as negative a way as possible).
We all have identities (you started all of this talking about anti-semitism) and those identities are rather important to politics. That some people are overly simplistic, or even stupid about these facts does not obviate them.
You can’t talk about fighting anti-semitism or fighting for trans rights without some amount of identity politics being part of the conversation.
@Jay L Gischer: Indeed.
Completely unrelated to anything:
Heinlein’s Disease: The conviction not only that one is right and everyone else is wrong, but that one’s ways are the only valid ways (similar but not the same as Red Queen’s Disease).
Carry on.
I managed a quick trip to the store today. There was some pineapple juice, but not tangerine juice. No fresh tangerines, either (past its season).
Not everything is a fight for justice or rights. Half of ‘identity politics’ is due to progress and openness. Men listening to women, white people listening to black people, cis to queer. It’s like the term ‘safe space’. Women who trust and love men tell them they make them feel safe. Is this some sort of weird divisive act? Of course not.
That’s why colorblind is such a pointless term. You can be a white man married to black woman and ‘colorblind’ to a fault, but you are going to listen to a person who deals with a non-colorblind society. That’s just the way it is. Almost all of the arguments against ‘identity politics’ center on a desire to go back to a much less intimate society, where men don’t have to hear about women taking a shit because it’s too much.
What’s annoying about all of this is that for my entire life up to a certain point liberals (especially liberal men) have been cast as exactly as the type of weak feminized afflicted people who will listen and sympathize rather than act–i.e. hippie-loving San Francisc0-living limp-wristed dopes. But suddenly, because there’s a new generation of liberals, the old ones have become explorers of the deep unknowns of pure justice.
And now, for something completely different…
In this year’s British Wildlife Photography Awards (BWPA), more than 14,000 incredible wildlife images were whittled down to a single grand prize winner, photographer Ryan Stalker.
https://petapixel.com/2024/03/14/the-breathtaking-winners-of-the-british-wildlife-photography-awards/
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I am excited to see that after its starring turn in Castaway, Wilson eschewed the celebrity life and decided to retire and start a family.
Yet another mind shift on poor ole Luddite’s brain today
As previously discussed, I was largely raised by my maternal grandmother and her two bachelor brothers. Ed and Al ran what was (in the 40’s through 60’s) considered to be a large dairy operation (300 cows on a quarter section of land). They had a custom milking parlor and vacuum electric milking equipment, enabling them to milk up to six cows simultaneously.
What really stunned me on the linked article was the picture. I cannot envision any operation of any size with a milking parlor as shown in the picture. This example of corporate “farming” explains many of the water runoff problems surrounding the dairy industry in America…
Oregon Supreme Court considers ‘misleading marketing’ case against Tillamook creamery
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/03/14/tillamook-creamery-misleading-advertising-lawsuit/
@Steven L. Taylor:
Trying to separate identity from politics is like trying to separate economics from politics or economic and fiscal policies from social policies.
Or an example that cannot be rationalized away, attempting to separate biology from chemistry; chemistry from physics.
Rather, the people who rail against identity politics have a tendency to pick and choose which identity card is within the rules to play. Or they rename the card and modify the artwork so it can be called something else–identity embedded within a different rank and suit. It’s a way of changing the rules without altering the words in the rulebook.
How many people watched Katie Britt’s speech and saw it as an instance of identity politics? None of us can know that for sure, but I doubt there were many. Here is a transcript. I selected one quote:
One more example. The phrase “heritage not hate” has often been used as a defense of flying the Second Confederate Navy Jack. That phrase likely doesn’t evoke identity politics for most people, especially those who use it, but “heritage” is inextricably tied to identity. It’s no different from Senator Britt’s use of “DNA.”
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I’m significantly less concerned about the “misrepresentation” then I am about the welfare of the animals and the destruction of water table. The area around Boardman is “caprock” country, with a deep water table. Environmental requirements are difficult (I’d say impossible) to maintain with herds of this size, leading to pollution of the water table underneath the basalt. There are a number of dairy operations in the area (including several from California) that have 20,000+ cows. There is ongoing litigation regarding the ultimate destruction of the local water table that citizens rely on.
Pro Publica has recently featured stories about similar practices in Wisconsin, another dairy state, while a number of California mega operations expanded out of state.
I was sent on business travel to Northern Virginia this week, and it ended up making me appreciate Southeast Pennsylvania even more.
For all of its Pennsyltucky reputation, I’ve had surprisingly little issue with my social transition there, whereas in Northern Virginia I found myself constantly being subjected to hostile stare downs from strangers…
@Bill Jempty: Interesting, and thanks. I was wondering how a tech failure would close a Mickey D’s; app failure didn’t occur to me until I realized that we have a McDonald’s here that never really opened its seating area after Covid.
@Kurtz: Surely a white, southern woman in a kitchen wearing a golden cross around her neck (who pointed out she was a mom) had nothing to do with identity!
@Michael Reynolds:
Honest Don got exactly what he wanted, weeks of delay and an odor of corruption around the prosecution.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Policing the misrepresentation is the only way to enforce the animal welfare though. I gave to spend time looking for pasture raised animal products because I want the animals I consume to be well treated. If any company is free to lie about that without consequence, then I suddenly have no way of doing so.
This feels like another example of us treating open fraud by corporations as a legitimate practice rather than a crime.
@Michael Reynolds:
It might surprise you that I don’t think this is depressing at all. I mean, yes, we come from animals and have an animal nature. But despite that we have created sophisticated concepts of justice and fairness and the most successful societies on the planet are ones that strive to realize those concepts.
I’m not depressed at our venal nature. I am awed that despite all the odds, we have created societies better than that nature. As someone a lot smarter than me once said, “…the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” It does, but it doesn’t have to. Given the coarse clay that is our natures, it seems much more likely that it would bend the other direction. If I believed in a biblical god I would see him in that fact. As it is, I can’t explain it.
@Steven L. Taylor & @Kurtz:
I can’t believe that both of you are missing the key point that identity politics (like judicial activism) is something that THEY do. We’re just being ourselves as we are (or reaching the correct decision).
@Flat Earth Luddite: Wait a minute. Are you also going to tell me that Umpqua can ship its ice cream throughout the Western US for reasons other than that they simply have the hugest family* in history?
I’m sooooooooooooo disillusioned. 🙁
*For the uninitiated, Umpqua bills itself as “the largest *family* dairy in Oregon.”
What do you do when the boss says something monumentally stupid?
Briefly: on the 13th an agency published a request for proposals at about 9:30 pm. They scheduled a mandatory visit to their facilities for the 14th at 8 am. I saw the publication on the 14th around 9:15 am. By then it was too late to take part in the process.
Now, this is a trick some agencies sometime use, to make sure only their preferred supplier will be able to take part. It’s not illegal per se, but it’s really bad faith and sneaky. It also violates the spirit of the law, which mandates such requests be open to all interested parties.
I didn’t get blamed for missing it, but then the boss said “We can’t afford to miss such things.”
What the F**k does he want me to do? Check the acquisitions portal at 10 pm every day? Or only when we have no clue an agency may try some scurvy trick like this one?
It’s so frustrating to be told things like that.
@Kurtz:
[Raises hand]
Well, in fairness, I only watched excerpts, and almost immediately someone here commented that they recognized her voice as “Fundie Baby Voice” and, given that I’ve read she doesn’t normally talk like that, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that she was hoping to be Trump’s VP pick for the same reason Pence was his former pick, liason to the fundamentalists. In her case, she checks the “Woman” box too. I don’t know if it would work, or if Trump could bring himself to be on stage with a woman as his chosen successor.
But if he can get past that I don’t think she fatally damaged her cause and may have actually enhanced it. Sure, she’s damaged goods in the general public but that doesn’t matter. From what I understand, the people she is supposed to reach will feel personally attacked by the mocking and contempt directed at her, which may well make them even more on board with her. And the fact that outside this group she is viewed negatively, well, Trump likes to pick damaged people. He picks people that see him as their best chance to get a little higher. She falls into that category now.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Sure. But you should never go into a fight accepting your opponents’ framing of the battlefield. They attack ‘Blacks’, you defend with, ‘human rights.’ They attack ‘trans’ you counter with the inherent rights of any individual to define their place in the world. You don’t help the enemy by agreeing to his definitions. Whatever the avenue of the attack, you defend on universal grounds – freedom, fairness, justice, individual rights – because segmentation works for them, not for us. ‘They’ are the majority, so you need to counter by referencing the same rights they have, pointing out their attacks also harms their rights.
@Kurtz:
I don’t, so don’t include me in that generalization. I’m arguably Jewish, but my rights are universal human rights. I defend on that ground. You have no right to do XYZ to me. Me. A human being. We hold these truths, etc… To accept their framing rather than insisting on your own is a weak position. To emphasize and prioritize a reductive definition of me as part of a group, is an invitation to collective guilt. Don’t come at me because ‘my identity group’ does this or that, deal with me, and my actions.
And I will repeat that you cannot talk about Black/brown/female/gay/trans rights without expecting to hear about White/male/straight/cis rights. You cannot have A and deny B. We are created equal, equality is not granted, it can only be taken away, so the question is, on what grounds are you proposing to take away my rights?
It is also the case that if an attack is on an identity group, other groups get a free pass to leave it to that group. Whereas all humans have an interest in human rights.
@Jay L Gischer:
Intersectionality is basically a mutual defense pact. It doesn’t work because it ignores the obvious fact that there are differing interests amongst the groups that form that pact. See: the article I linked. Jews are a minority, a long-persecuted minority, and the mutual defense of intersectionality was tossed out the window on October 7. See also: Blacks and Asians, some feminists and trans, and a number of progressive organizations riven by internal conflict.
If the current approach were working, we would not have anti-trans laws in two dozen states and counting. You couldn’t get away with it if all the ‘identities’ supposedly intersectionalizing fought back as a unified force. Are gays campaigning for abortion rights? Are Hispanics fighting for trans people? Are the Muslims whose rights Jews very often defended, fighting back against anti-semitism? Intersectionality is naive nonsense.
@Michael Reynolds:
Which is why you start this whole thread today with anti-semitism?
BTW, I think that the specificity is necessary, but you are both claiming a specific kind of discrimination (linked to a specific identity) and then pretending like you are an above-it-all universal rights guy.
You bring up your jewishness all the time, which I have no problem with, but you aren’t being consistent.
Your whole ongoing rant about men, likewise, is not universalist.
@Michael Reynolds:
Ha. Imagine being naïve enough to believe the bigots attacking women, gays, trans, blacks, immigrants etc. would be standing down in red states if the victims and targets of their harrassment took a different “approach.”
Some of privileged who are not targeted always think they know better than thode actually experiencing discrimination. It’s a mixture of arrogance and cluelessness. Because they usually don’t.
Rev. Dr. King, calling out this blame-shifting, from the Birmingham jail in 1963:
The people criticizing minorities’ “approach” today are the same types who were attacking Dr. King’s approach back then, back when he was widely hated. These fairweather allies were embarassing and wrong then, and they still are. Dr. King’s approach — militant, nonviolent direct action — was fine. The problem was haters’ hatred.
President Biden deserves a lot of credit for standing with the trans and nonbinary communities instead of blaming them; by doing so, he has precluded backsliding from downballot Dems. Old white man ftw.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I suppose the general impression of mechanized agriculture, is that machines are used to do the work of farming.
This is so, but incomplete. It also means we’ve turned crops and animals into biological, living machines for producing food.
The next step would be tissue farming. growing only the parts we’ll consume and not the rest. It will be more efficient, cheaper (possibly), and easier to standardize the products. But at least living animals won’t be needed any more.
@Matt Bernius: Indeed! I should have seen it earlier.
@Kurtz:
I saw a clip of her the other day, where she said she was being attacked because they’re afraid of a conservative woman.
@DK:
I think Michael’s trans daughter makes him targeted. Family is family.
As for him being arrogant and clueless… look, I defended him on one claim, I can’t do everything!
@Michael Reynolds:
Nobody wants to take away anyone’s rights. White/male/straight/cis rights have always been respected. That’s a big part of what privilege is, it’s the default to respecting of one group’s rights while not respecting the rights of another group. And nobody wants to quit respecting the rights of the former group, but you’re putting the truth into the saying “for the privileged, equality feels like oppression.”
What you’re saying above basically boils down to “all lives matter.” Yeah, all lives matter, but it’s not White/male/straight/cis lives that are threatened daily simply because of their identity.
@Michael Reynolds: I see you are going full “All Lives Matter”…
@Steven L. Taylor: Is there a reason all of my posts go into moderation?
We’ve practiced identity politics in this country (territory) since Europeans encountered indigenous peoples, and before, tribe v tribe, and famously since 1619. But a fish don’t know it’s wet.
An interesting “devil is in the details” (and isn’t it always?) discussion about the housing problem. One takeaway:
@Kylopod: I assumed that would happen. For a group of people who decry “liberal snowflakes,” it’s honestly hard to find anyone who whines more about being victims than actual conservatives.
@SKI: Dunno. But you have been liberated!
@Jen: What I find most striking about these types of comments is the almost gleeful way they are delivered. They’re never spoken from a sense of outrage, but rather as a gotcha against Dems.
I saw another example of this a while back in an interview with Ramasawamy. He went on about how there’s no significant racism in America; literally a moment later, without missing a beat, he accused Dems of being racist against him.
I’ll give him credit for one thing, though: at least he didn’t make a laughable attempt to fake being upset.
@Gustopher:
Would that it were so. Slaveowners and segregationists had black children. I wonder if Storm Thurmond ever thought about his black daughter when he was filibustering the Civil Rights Act.
There are millions of queer people who will tell you all the ways their families have been clueless allies — or bad allies or outright enemies. My parents are loving and pretty tolerant, but it’s a stretch to claim they’ve faced homophobia to the same degree I have. They’ve been adjacent, at best.
@Kathy:
I always used to go with, “Yeah. Kinda hard to make the meeting when my first notice was 30 minutes after it ended, but I’ll try to do better.” Either that, or I’d just walk away muttering to myself and shaking my head.
Bosses–can’t live with ’em, can’t chop ’em up in little pieces and bury ’em in the woods. What to do…
@Michael Reynolds: A rise in antisemitism was always a predictable response to Israel killing over 30,000 Palestinians.
This is one more way in which Israel’s brutal behavior is making itself, and Jews around the world, less safe.
And, if 30,000 dead Palestinians are enough to cause a rampage on elite campuses half a world away, what do you think it’s doing to the Palestinians living through it? Killing 2.5% of the population and bombing everyone out of their homes is how you create the generational trauma that gets brought up decades if not centuries later to get people to kill their historical oppressors.
The Field of Blackbirds (1389) is part of the founding myths of Serbia, and was weaponized by Milosevic during the fall of Yugoslavia to go slaughter a bunch of Muslims. What makes you think Gaza (2024) isn’t going to become that? It sure looks like it will become that.
You’re going to do your “but what should Israel do?” And my response is simply this: not do the thing that will create generational trauma that will bite them on the ass for decades if not centuries to come.
There are a lot of antisemites in anti-Zionist groups, who use the anti-Zionism as a cover to make their antisemitism look respectable.
There are also a lot of Zionists in the anti-antisemitism movement who are quick to label any anti-Zionism as antisemitism. This actually makes it harder to distinguish the actual antisemites.
And finally, you quote French quoting a complainer:
This is a great example of mixing antisemitism and anti-Zionism together. (It’s also an example of French finding someone to say what he wanted to say, while putting a little distance there, because French didn’t say it, he just quoted someone…)
Since the leaders of Israel, and the voters who elected those leaders, have rejected a two state solution, and worked hard to prevent it, Israel is not a Jewish state. It is a multiethnic state that is 1/3 Muslim and treats that third like shit.
Israel does not have a right to exist. Nor does any state. States are fictions that we agree upon to protect the people inside that state, and Israel is failing a third of that population.
Just as Israel should not be doing the thing that causes generational trauma that will bite them in the ass for decades if not centuries to come, we should not be helping them do that.
All aid, military and financial, should be contingent upon either progress towards a two state solution, or integrating the oppressed third of their population into their society as equals — I don’t really care which. One option leads to a give-or-take Jewish state, the other leads to a multiethnic state.
@MarkedMan:
Indeed! This type of thing is where a significant part of the “American Christians as oppressed minority” theme comes from.
@Mikey: @SKI: Wish I had more upvotes to give.
@Jen: On the other hand, they probably do fear conservative women. Who “they” is might be an open question, though. (Sometimes it is all about what “is” means. Hmmmm…)
@Gustopher:
I used to teach some of my students what French is doing for erasing (or at least blurring) their fingerprints on controversial ideas they wanted to embrace in arguments. It’s a more oblique technique than Trump’s clumsy “a lot of people say…”
@SKI: I really planned on staying out of this futile argument, but this really grinds my gears. Is there a more self defeating strategy than to call all people who say, “hey, all lives matter!” ignorant bigots?
@gVOR10:
[Emphasis added] So true. Animals, including people, are hardwired to “other”. The au currant idea that this somehow started with Europeans is giving way too much “credit” to Europeans. In virtually all cultures across 100K years, the fact that “those people” are lesser/evil/need to be killed and have their land stolen was standard operating procedure. Show me a group that has “historic rights” to a plot of land, and I’ll show you a group that wiped out an “other” that was there before them.
The fact that Israel is horribly mistreating the Palestinians does not make Hamas heroes. Hamas leadership are bloodthirsty killers, driven by animal passions, as are key parts of the Israeli leadership. This constant need to pick a side is pointless and harmful.
@Michael Reynolds:
Then you are an exception among every human being in history. Or you don’t consider yourself as an example of homo sapiens. Indeed, the point of my post is that politics is a performance of identity. That performance may be of a different type, or same type–different genre. But it doesn’t mean that one can ring the identity out of any of it. That rag will never fully dry.
And I’m not (only) arguing based on your post that kicked off this discussion invoking antisemitism. Though, do I really need to spell out to you that the state of Israel was founded on the basis of identity? Are you really going to try to defend that identity was incidental to its founding?
Again, look at the example I used. I focused on the words in Britt’s speech. A single paragraph contained multiple instances of appeals to identity. In addition to the already highlighted DNA line:
-“tamed the wild” invokes manifest destiny, a belief rooted in Christian and White identity. “The wild” includes ‘the Savages’ that lived there.
-“courage from those who bent the moral arc of the Universe” similar to manifest destiny, that phrase invokes American exceptionalism and again, a moral code found in, and in their telling, limited to specific denominations of Christianity.
Moreover, as Steven points out, the speech was given by a woman in a kitchen, wearing a gold cross around her neck. That isn’t a broadly Christian symbol in this context, it’s specific to a one group of Christians.
I don’t think we need to quibble about whether Britt’s costume and setting should be considered part of her speech or of a different type. Regardless of how you would answer that question, the point is that she is appealing to identity without directly saying it. Just as “taming the wild” doesn’t directly say chauvinism.
See? Identity embedded in the artwork of the cards being played. That King is just a King, it doesn’t say anything at all about identity as long as you ignore the rank and the raiment.
One might even say that euphemism for identity is the ace in the hole of [fill in the blank] superemacists. When necessary, it can be played as a 1 or an 11, high or low, depending on what game is being played. And no matter what the game is, one need not know their hand to win a pot, either. They have a 21 or a straight if the cards say they do.
But let’s return to your rhetoric, particularly your war metaphors. For someone worried about the impact of meeting bigots on their ground, you sure do love meeting them on their ground. This is their go-to metaphor, and you know it. Hell, in her speech, Britt described America as “a nation in retreat”. Your words justify the idea that this is an existential battle–that these people are soldiers defending themselves. In a war, collateral damage is justified, rights enumerated in the Constitution can be suspended, and the only way to win is total elimination of the Other.
Your idea about human rights is lovely, but ineffectual.
First, there is a long history of denial by many on the far-right of the very concept of human rights. Others in that cohort often do not outright deny the existence of that concept, but will emphasize the importance of national sovereignty. Why some sidestep the questions is probably a result of other foundational ideas they hold (e.g. natural rights) or perhaps policies they advocate that conflict with that foundation. Moving goalposts is far easier than resolving tension.
Second, there is a long history of dehumanization of the Other. That history continues today–Trump has done it since he became a political entity. Scroll X and it likely will take you less than one minute to find it among non-bot randos.
If the solution was as simple as eliminating naked references to identity, replacing it with generic “human rights” or arguing against the notion of intersectionality, the Constitution would have solved all of this long ago. After all, none of the enumerated rights reference identity. Even the three-fifths compromise can be said to be colorblind, because it didn’t apply to non-enslaved Black people. They were counted as a whole person.
@Michael Reynolds:
This is demonstrably not true. People are not created equal — some are born with crippling disabilities, just plain stupid, or to poor families. That list can go on and on.
(Or people can be born stupid to very wealthy families, and then you have Trump)
The notion that people are all created equal is a fiction, that we embrace because it is a fiction that leads to a better and more just society. Equality is granted.
I point this out not just to nitpick, although I do love to nitpick, but because it is beautiful.
We struggle to live up to it, and often fall flat on our faces. But we still struggle, even after falling flat on our faces. And that, again, is beautiful.
It’s also the story of America. A bunch of cranky tax cheats think taxation is theft and pen some overwrought words about “taxation without representation” and how all men are created equal when they clearly meant men like themselves, not all men, and we just pretend that this applies to Blacks, women, and people who don’t own property.
It’s beautiful.
——
One of my favorite details of the revolutionary war period was how the Boston Tea Party was triggered by the Brits lowering the taxes on tea, so taxed tea could compete with the smuggled tea better on prices, and the folks who committed gross acts of cultural appropriation by dressing up as Native Americans were the smugglers and their employees, destroying their competitors products.
@Gustopher:
Is it? A raging mob hunting down a Jewish group? A group becomes a mob when reason goes out the door. A mob sees a kippah and mindlessly attacks. They don’t stop to send forward a reasoned fact finder to query whether the wearer is just Jewish or actually Zionist.
For that matter, the mob is incapable of understanding that “Israel has no right to exist” is just as extreme and harmful as “There is no Palestine”. They have picked a side an by god they are going to get some blood!
@Gustopher:
Nothing to add. Just thought it was worth empahsizing.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
It’s not exactly that bad, but it’s close.
The last reform of the federal acquisitions law, focused on switching the process for acquisitions online. Well and good., as overall it’s been an improvement. but the law neglected the matter of the time of day.
For instance, a request for proposals counts as being published only after it’s uploaded to the online portal and validated by the system, whereupon it’s visible to all. But it can be published at any time of day. So if an agency publishes at 00:01 or at 23:59, either counts as publishing that day.
In practice, there’s naturally a BIG difference when a request is published, especially when it comes with short times.
@Matt Bernius: @Steven L. Taylor:
Of course! I figured that was implied. My fault. Likewise, @MarkedMan, I generally don’t include most OTB regulars when I make statements like that.
@Kylopod:
Yeah, I had forgotten about that.
I read an op-ed recently that claimed that Britt is the new Palin, even though she is smarter than her forebear. Both unfairly maligned victims of media hitjobs.
@Flat Earth Luddite: As one who has spent miserable hours scraping barnacles off small boats, there is nothing beautiful about that picture. It leaves me feeling about like that soccer ball looks.
@MarkedMan: Read the French quote again. It’s not referring to the rampage (if that is in fact what happened), but advocating.
And half is clearly antisemitic, while the other half is anti-Zionist, while they are treated as equivalent.
And that’s without questioning the veracity of the person French is quoting. Harvard likely does not permit The Final Solution Fan Club on campus, and the quoted person is dealing in hyperbole.
I have no doubt that there are antisemites who hide behind anti-Zionism, but the quoted person isn’t making that distinction. French deliberately chooses this quote to blur that line further.
Sooooo, guess who’s landing in NYC for a rave and then flying home tomorrow to go to a different rave. It’s almost like it’s my birthday.
Urgh, plane got bumpy.
@Gustopher:
Yeah, a bit of digging into this lawsuit reveals it’s filled with antisemitic acts like the showing of Israelism, a film made by Jewish people examining how Israel was presented to them in America. The group meanwhile is (like all activist groups) registered as a non-profit in Delaware, has a Trump attorney, and the speaker they had at the event mentioned was also a Trump official. The whole thing smells like astroturf and conservative affirmative action, which is hardly surprisingly: what they are complaining about isn’t anti-semitism and violence but the fact that Israel is becoming way more unpopular amongst Jewish students at elite institutions.
@Beth:
Where’s the rave? Did you read the McKenzie Wark book on raving? If not, you should.
It’s amazing to me when I look at times for actual clubs in NYC and they start more or less at midnight. I have vague memories of when my nights began at that time, but in my late 40s I don’t think there are enough club drugs to keep me upright past 2 in the morning.
@Gustopher: All people are EQUAL …..
….but they are definitely not the SAME
There is a distinction between those two concepts.
@Modulo Myself:
Knockdown Center. Sara Landry all night long. She goes on at 10pm and plays until 5am. lol, I guess today I officially entered my late-mid 40’s. I’m crashing at my friends place tonight. I told her I’m hoping to make it back to her place around 4:30ish. Tomorrow’s race is another story. I think I can make it till 3…
I haven’t read that book, I’ll check it out. Thanks.
@Beth: What is the name of this rave?
(hehe.)
@Gustopher:
Brilliant! If I were going to continue teaching, I’d soooo be stealing this idea!
ETA: @Kurtz: Smarter than Palin is not that high a bar, and even then, she may not be smarter as much as not any more credulous, though certainly not any LESS, either.
@Kurtz:
It was. I was being cheeky.
Everyone upstream, I’m tired after drinking quite a bit of Spanish wine. But you are people defending defeat. We are in the days after the first Bull Run and you’re not getting it, there is real danger, and when you face real danger and are losing ground, maybe, just maybe, consider the possibility that our tactics suck balls.
Do you just not see the shape of the battlefield? Do you not take the threat seriously? I don’t get it. Intersectionalism has manifestly, unmistakably, failed. It’s not even debatable. Fail. Does not work. Is a fantasy. Is naive and ignorant of human nature and history. Not fukkin happening.
Identity politics has not strengthened us, it has made us weaker, more riven by faction, more vulnerable. You know who is kicking our ass? Morons united by an imbecilic slogan: MAGA. That’s who we’re losing to.
But whatever. Everything’s coming up roses. La di da. Carry on.
@DK:
Lol.
Tomorrow is Underworld. It’s an Aztec new years themed rave. 9 hours of Mexican inflected techno.
@Michael Reynolds: TBH, I think you are missing what we are saying (certainly you are missing what I am saying) and are having a side fight in your own mind over a very specific definition of “identity politics.”
It has nothing to do with a “battlefield” to note the rather obvious power that identity plays in all of these discussions.
BTW, MAGA is very much identity politics.
If we’re done playing Reynolds Piñata, here’s some musings on space exploration, namely person vs probe.
On six successful landings on the Moon over the course of 3 years, twelve people managed to explore a fair bit of ground, and brought back tons of data, photographs, and over 350 kilograms of rocks and soil.
The Soviets, who never managed to advance their crewed Moon program past a few crashes of their giant N1 rocket, managed to land several probes on the Moon, including rovers, and to bring back samples, totaling the grandiose amount of (drumroll) 300 grams. At 1,000 grams to the kilogram, that means crewed missions brought back somewhat over 1,160 times as much material from the Moon as did uncrewed probes.
The main point, IMO, is that probes don’t generate the interest than sending people does. On the other hand, after millions watched and followed the various activities of Apollo 11, fewer bothered for Apollo 12, and by Apollo 13 they’d moved on to other things (until the oxygen tank blew mid-way to the Moon).
The bottom line, both literally and figuratively, is what I’ve said here a bunch of times already: space travel will grow when there is money to be made from it.
Probes and scientific instruments don’t make money (NASA gives away all data it collects). So things like the Mars rovers, the Jupiter probes, the Voyagers and other fly-by missions, Hubble, Kepler and other space telescopes, all of that is paid for largely by governments.
Were beginning to see some exceptions to the above, as no fewer than three private companies have attempted to land probes on the Moon. It’s too soon to tell what this means or where it will lead.
Mike Pence will not be endorsing Trump for the presidency. Nor will 40 out of 44 of Trump’s former cabinet members endorse him.
@Michael Reynolds:
Interesting timing. I recently re-read Chesterton’s Manalive, and the thing that struck me the most was how blatantly he did that to everyone in the book who wasn’t an English male. The English males were nuanced; everyone else was the Jew, or the Negro, or the Irishman, or a Woman, with a few cosmetic details applied superficially.
It would be a really great story if it weren’t for that.
@Kathy:
lol, are we ever?
@Gustopher:
The anti-semites came out of the closet very quickly after last October’s attacks. We would have had their reaction to 100 deaths.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Steven,
You’re expecting consistency from a person who makes their living as a writer?
Signed,
A person who makes their living from writing.
@Beth:
Of course we are.
For the time being.
@Beth:
You could play a game of pin the tail on Bill again after he says once more that Biden isn’t up to serving as President.
Oops I said it again.
@Steven L. Taylor:
That reminds me of some dialogue in the film A Bridge Too Far involving Michael Caine and Elliot Gould.
MC- Have you ever been liberated before?
EG- I’ve been divorced twice. Does that count?
@Steven L. Taylor:
Talking about rants, my long time editor Leeanne who is both trans and gay. remarked to me a few times.
“Men you can’t live with them and you can’t shoot them.”
After one serious post, and four non-serious posts (Hey Steven I’m a inconsistent writer) I think I’m out of material for now.
What about this post is it serious or non-serious? Maybe we should take a vote. Nah…..
@Kathy:
Elon’s motive is that humans need a lifeboat, but he’s nuts. Antarctica is heaven compared to Mars.
The longing to explore will be the only impetus for sane people. If you found a mountain of solid gold on Mars it would still never be profitable to go there and get it. However curiosity will fuel sporadic exploration, and they will use the descendants of these guys.
@dazedandconfused: Wait…
Martian colonists will have to bioengineer climate, too? Sounds like the proposition needs serious reconsideration.
@dazedandconfused:
“Antarctica is heaven compared to Mars.”
Precisely.
Not to mention the vast areas of the planet that are virtually uninhabited, yet more hospitable (for arbitrary values of “hospitable”) then Antarctica, never mind Mars.
Northern Canada; Siberia; Sahara; Tibetan plateau; most of Australia; northern Scandinavia; Highland Scotland; Namibia; Patagonia; etc etc.
OK, if you want an “off planet” refugium, Mars may suit. But to make it habitable without a Earth line of supply is going to require an exponential step in engineering (broadly defined) capability.
And if you have that, the potential opens up WAY beyond Mars.
But it would still make more sense to focus on stabilizing the planet we actually have.
Terraforming and Bishop rings etc are just gravy.
@dazedandconfused:
re, “these guys”: Charles Stross has for some time argued that humans are NOT suited to extra-terrestrial conditions.
Therefore, if humanity does go extra-terrestrial, the initial instrumentality will, by necessity be “robotic”.
And, once again, if you are that level of technical capability and rational action, screwing up your home base seems rather silly.
@dazedandconfused:
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Maybe Mars has large deposits of unobtainium, adamantium, and dylithium.
We know there’s no upsydaisium. It’s really hard to miss at a casual glance if it’s there.
Seriously, what Mars has is a lot of land no one is currently using.
All planets, satellites, and asteroids, are likely made of pretty much the same stuff Earth is, albeit in different proportions. For instance, Mars is rich in iron oxide, which gives the red tinge. The mere existence of Earth’s magnetic field suggests it’s richer in radioactive elements than all other planets.
It’s not like we’re hurting for iron, so we need to get it from Mars.
Asteroids might concentrate certain elements, or so the theory/hope goes. It may be possible to mine ores from them, and send them to Earth in ton lots to be refined. If so, robots will likely do all or most of the work.
So, no, it doesn’t look good.
Now, about all that land on Mars and the satellites of the gas giant planets, it’s certain we’ll want it, no matter how inhospitable. Why? Because in a billion years or so, the Sun will grow too hot for liquid water to exist on Earth’s surface. Our very far descendants, if any, will want other places to live, where they don’t roast to a crisp.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Not just climate; probably everything from “soil” (as Mars don’t have soil, as we think of it) on up.
Settling Mars requires an engineering capability way beyond what we have; and if we had it, it’s very questionable that Mars would be the best way to direct such resources.
Because what the libertarian types, like Musk, miss is that directing resources on that scale implies either a globally effective governance, or else a “hyperindustrial revolution” that places world changing capabilities in private hands.
Which is unlikely to work out well, unless the base human nature is modified or constrained.
Which brings us back to social control, and to politics.
@Bill Jempty: Look, if you don’t run for president yourself, or get involved in a campaign of someone who is running, you don’t get to complain that you don’t like the alternatives.
You have the mostly good old man who should have retired ages ago, the malevolent old man who should have retired ages ago, and a few novelty candidates like the antivax nutter, the socialist, and the new age freak.
Pick one and stop complaining.
@JohnSF: Mars also doesn’t have age of consent laws, so of course libertarians are interested.
@Gustopher:
Also, the Martian year is 687 (Earth) days.
Oh dear.
@JohnSF:
But the legal drinking age would be 11.
In Jupiter it would be 2.
And don’t ever a Mercurian how old they are.
@Kathy:
But the big expansion of the sun is just the preliminary state of it shrinking down to a white or red dwarf…I forget which…and so none of the planets in this solar system will serve as lifeboats.
This may be a deliberate Darwinian plan by The Great Spaghetti Monster In The Sky. Evolve the ability to travel between stars or die out. Probably goes a long way towards keeping the universal neighborhood free of riff-raff..And property values up.
“As the complaint filed against Harvard states, “Harvard permits students and faculty to advocate, without consequence, the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel, the only Jewish country in the world. ”
Every time, without exception, when i have followed up on these claims when a writer provides examples, which they rarely do, what I find is that students advocated for stuff like Palestinian rights, a cease fire, or wanted food sent to Gaza. It’s a big world so I am sure someone said something bad but I have no seen it yet.
Steve
@dazedandconfused:
I think it will grow too hot before it grows larger. So you’d have at least some hundreds of thousands of years for Mars, and maybe millions for Jupiter and Saturn.
When the Sun finally expands, it will swallow everything to around the (current) orbit of Mars. Then it will collapse to a white dwarf, colder and with a stronger surface gravity. The whole sequence is expected to last 6 billion years.
@JohnSF: I already get that we’d need the other stuff, thus “climate too?”.