Skibboleth
No bio...
User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
11d ago
Your mistake is thinking these are different groups of people instead of the same people at different times of day.
Listicles are still clickbait filler even if they're published by notionally-respectable outlets. The purpose is not actually to come up with a comprehensive list of the 100 best books of the 21st century. It's to get people to click on the article so they can either feel outraged at the writer's tastelessness or validated by the writer sharing their opinion. They will then ideally start a fight and share the article with their friends, saying "so true/can you believe this bullshit".
As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review.
It's literally just a popularity contest. They asked a bunch of writers their favorite books and tabulated the results.
What’s the big actual object level disagreement between the reds and the blues here?
The proper way to live and the ordering of society.
(More practically, most Americans are way too comfortable (and in many cases, literally too fat) for anything like an actual civil war. Something like the Troubles is more likely, though even that I find doubtful, if for no other reason than the most dedicated Reds and Blues live in different places)
Skibboleth
12d ago
Mary Todd double-tapped Abe while Booth was distracting everyone by jumping on stage.
Skibboleth
13d ago
You're the first person I've encountered who claimed that the economic problems his base have been talking about just don't exist.
I am saying the problems afflicting the rural working class and poor (as distinct from the suburban conservatives who make up much/most of Trump's base and who are generally doing more than fine) are not the product of the urban professional class, immigration, or free trade as Greer hints. These people have, by and large, chosen to side with political leaders who favor economic and labor policy disfavorable to them for social/values reasons. Insofar as this represents their priorities, fair play, but to turn and blame low standards of living in the rural midwest or deep south on the urban professional class is nonsensical.
I don't know if you are accurately representing the body of Greer's argumentation, but if the way you characterize it is accurate, it's sort of giving away the game. US manufacturing dominance in the mid 20th century was a bubble of anomalous circumstances that was never going to be sustained. Europe was always going to rebuild, East Asia was always going to industrialize, economic growth was always going to make American manufacturing less competitive internationally, automation was always going to make manufacturing less labor intensive, etc... Even a maximally protectionist policy regime wouldn't fix this (ignoring the harm inflicted on the rest of the economy in the name of manufacturing fetishism), because it wouldn't fix the fundamental issue of a world that had grown beyond US manufacturing. Japanese and later Chinese industry frequently ended up beating US industry on both price and quality.
I'm not going to say that nothing can be done about the US' relative position in global manufacturing, but it isn't what Trump is promising and it isn't what a bunch of 60 year old ex-factory workers from Ohio want. It probably means more immigration, not less, more international partnerships and less protectionism, more capital/automation-intensive facilities, and more federally directed industrially policy. It also requires acknowledging that no, the US is not going to go back to manufacturing most of the world's steel or cars.
I feel like this is extremely uncharitable - this is the mirror image of the argument that Trump haters are simply immature people who hate their fathers, and that sense of childhood grievance is what actually informs their opposition to him.
A major distinction is that Trump haters don't say this, whereas many Trump supporters cite the arrogance, condescension, and judgment of 'coastal elites' as a reason for supporting him. They frame it more sympathetically than I do, but it's coming from their own mouths.
He actually spent quite a while living in the areas he's talking about, and he's old enough that he actually has childhood memories of the 60s. He was actually there!
He was literally four in 1966. If he has any expertise on the socio-economic conditions of the 60s, it is purely incidental to his personal life. (TBF, it wouldn't be appreciably more credible if he was ~20 instead, though he could at least cite a singular adult perspective).
As I said, I don't think he's lying. I think he's bullshitting.
Skibboleth
13d ago
It's very hard to tell on this forum.
Skibboleth
13d ago
...Reagan was severely wounded and Kennedy was literally dead.
Skibboleth
24d ago
How many have been fired for not hewing to CEL social mores?
Extremely few. Especially once you factor out instances of nonconformity that boil down to things like "don't sexually harass your coworkers so badly that even HR can't ignore it".
the primary ways these classes interact are power relationships, and the power almost always goes the same way
Does it, though?
Alternative theory: the asymmetry of "resentment" vs "contempt" is because the mean things liberals say about conservatives cut significantly deeper than vice versa. When conservatives call liberals godless degens, liberals' response is generally something to the effect of "hell yeah we are 😎". This is because they fundamentally don't care about the accusations. There's also a degree of reactance, especially for LGBT individuals, but there's no sense of shame or humiliation. Its like accusing a Christian of being a bad Muslim. On the other hand, almost everyone in the US thinks bigotry is bad and education is good. So when liberals call conservatives ignorant bigots, that actually lands. Notably, conservatives tend to get way more riled up about being accused of racism than homophobia (and don't care at all about being called things like gun nuts).
The actual power asymmetry is that educated liberals can make uneducated conservatives feel bad about themselves, whereas uneducated conservatives can merely scare educated liberals.
Skibboleth
24d ago
TheMotte has confidently assured me it's no big deal.
Skibboleth
25d ago
I actually agree with this, but I think that this is true of any large political movement.
What is very distinctive about Trumpism is that the loyalty is to Trump, specifically. Non-personalist political movements can and do regularly replace leadership figures when they become a liability, while their duller supporters are usually the least motivated and exert minimal influence over leadership selection.
you don't seem to have grasped the point actually being made, which is that Trump has been using this tendency on the part of the left to ingratiate himself with his base
I was never disputing it it. It was central to my claim: "they are attracted to Trump because he promises to vicariously remediate their sense of humiliation." My point there is that the "grievance" is hollow. There's no material injury. Trump supporters have an inferiority complex and feel humiliated when college-educated liberals look down on them. (They, of course, have never been shy in their own hatred for CELs, but nobody seems to regard this as a reciprocal grievance. Nobody is visiting yoga studios to do pop-anthropology of Hillary voters or hand-wringing about how they might start a civil war if we prosecute her.) To the extent that these people have been abused (referring primarily to rural conservatives, rather than affluent exurbanites), it has generally been by their own leaders who they continue to support. The reason the town's factory closed down wasn't because of snooty Democrat journalists from NYC. Though in fairness to the Republicans, even a maximally protectionist industrial policy isn't going to fix competition on the international market.
Do you have any kind of argument against the claims he makes?
The socio-economic composition of Trump's voters and the economic (and political for that matter) history of the United States. Like,
In 1966 an American family with one breadwinner working full time at an hourly wage could count on having a home, a car, three square meals a day, and the other ordinary necessities of life, with some left over for the occasional luxury. In 2016, an American family with one breadwinner working full time at an hourly wage is as likely as not to end up living on the street
is prime bullshit - a politically expedient claim made with no regard for the truth. I won't go so far as to call it a lie, because while I think Greer probably knew it wasn't true he wasn't so much willfully misrepresenting facts as making an... emotionally satisfying statement. Nevertheless, the fact that he says this with a straight face makes it hard to take him seriously. It is both an overly rosy portrait of life in 1966 America and a comically pessimistic one of life in 2016 America. Single income couples with children are still common in the US and are overwhelmingly not homeless, as I'm sure he knows. They're not as proportionally common as they used to be, but that's mostly due shifting social norms around women working, not because modern America is such a wasteland that there's no other option. And let's say nothing about the legal status quo in 1966.
You don't have to think the US is a utopia with no economic issues to doubt the claim that Americans are worse off now than they were in 1966. At least on grounds of material abundance like Greer appears to be making. If you want to make a normative argument about the desirability of segregation and women's labor force participation, I'm going to have to pass on that discussion.
But to pretend that's the only motivating factor strikes me as absurd.
For Trump's die hards? It's the sine qua non. They have other concerns, but they are either standard Republican things (tax cuts, abortion, nativism) that most Republican candidates would deliver on (and thus don't really explain Trump's particular appeal) or at odds with the reality of policy under the Trump administration (e.g. the Republican Party continues to be anti-labor).
there's no way to create a law code that can't be interpreted maliciously by one of the thousands of legal jurisdictions.
They can already do this.
Do you want to be right, or do you want to have a functioning country? The only reason that elected officials are not routinely prosecuted is because it is not done.
We already prosecute elected officials. If we concede to Trumpist threats every time it comes time to punish him for his lawlessness, we won't have a functioning country. Why not say the stubborn insistence that Trump must be impervious to prosecution and punishment is a threat to the stability of the country because the message it sends is that procedural politics are futile? If corrupt politicians will never face justice, why not deliver it yourself?
Skibboleth
25d ago
IMO, the impetus for the lawfare is that Democrats thought they had fully captured the institutions, and could now impose their will with no risk of retaliation.
IMO this is a bullshit story right-wingers tell themselves to rationalize power grabs. Throw in regular ominous remarks about the dangers of prosecuting (their) politicians just so people understand and it looks more like a story of incredible Democratic naivete where they thought a conservative judiciary would act in a principled manner rather than closing ranks to protecting their guy.
Skibboleth
25d ago
If the postulate is that I plan to punch everyone in the face and also have 1000 fists so I can punch everyone in the face simultaneously, the fact that I am only punch one guy strongly calls into question whether or not I actually plan to punch everyone.
Skibboleth
25d ago
it's insane to expose the President to prosecution for executing the duties of the Presidency.
Why? If the president can't do his job without committing crimes, maybe we need to either review his job or the law. The constitution certainly doesn't suggest immunity from criminal liability.
Furthermore, is there are reason why this standard is particular to the presidency and not any elected official? Shouldn't Bob Menendez be accountable to his voters, not some dodgy DoJ official? Who are federal prosecutors to to contravene the will of Illinois' people by charging Mike Madigan?
Skibboleth
25d ago
If you never hold politicians accountable you encourage corruption and tyranny. Holding politicians accountable means prosecuting them when they commit crimes.
Once prosecuting ex-politicians was on the table
We already prosecute politicians. The constant special pleading for Trump makes no sense.
Skibboleth
25d ago
None of those other figures are subject to the jurisdiction of blue states.
Trump's major cases are in Federal court or a red state. Why would the Democrats not simply cook up fraudulent Federal charges against their other political adversaries as well?
Skibboleth
25d ago
Ring me back when they're charged.
Skibboleth
25d ago
For some reason this problem only seems to come up with one specific guy. McConnell isn't buried in criminal accusations; neither is Desantis, Abbott, or pretty much any other major Republican leadership figure. Maybe Trump really is just unusually shady?
We can’t be having presidents going to jail all the time like Illinois governors.
Why not?
The Trump base might not be the most articulate but there are absolutely smart people in their orbit who understand their grievances and why they're so angry.
I didn't say every Trump supporter is stupid. I said that he has a dedicated core of supporters who are very loyal but not very bright or discerning, which I will stand by because I think it goes an enormous way towards explaining the durability of his support in particular despite losing as an incumbent and because it conforms to the general pattern with populist politicians more generally.
I recommend https://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-01-21/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-resentment/
I've read it before. I'm not impressed. Many of its factual claims are tendentious or more reflective of self-image than reality (e.g. the persistent efforts to paint Trumpism as the voice of the working class). Much of it boils down to saying "liberals don't like conservatives and say mean things about them." Conservatives don't like liberals either and say mean things about them, so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from that, other than that maybe conservatives care more about what liberals think of them than vice versa.
Once we cut past that, it is essentially a more sympathetic framing of my claim that Trump functions as an empty vessel for the nebulous fury of his supporters. The difference is that Greer thinks they are basically justified on grounds of economic neglect while I think the economic anxiety narrative is bullshit and they are attracted to Trump because he promises to vicariously remediate their sense of humiliation.
Trump's unique asset is that he is deeply and irrationally loved by a significant body of low-IQ conservatives who will rabidly attack anyone who challenges him. As such, he can threaten to spoil any Republican strategy that doesn't elevate him. The point the strategy outlined above is to try and break his hold on these people because insofar as they are responsive to anything, it's to vulgar social dominance. You're never going to win them over by arguing that you're better qualified or more competent, because they don't care. Nor can you win them over by appealing to principles, because they don't have any. You have to simultaneously tear Trump down as a weakling and present yourself as a better vessel for their inchoate rage.
Insofar as Desantis had a plan, it was hope that Trump was too old or too imprisoned to run.
Skibboleth
26d ago
Until such time as Trump's supporters unstorm the capitol and Trump didn't try to have his VP declare him the winner despite losing, it seems entirely reasonable to say that Trump tried to seize power. "It was to force a debate" is just another flavor of Trumpist cope deploy to reconcile the gap between their self-image as patriotic Americans and the reality that they prioritize loyalty to their wannabe caudillo.
Skibboleth
27d ago
However, it has likely also struck a crippling blow against the Democrat Party's primary value proposition: "Democracy."
I doubt it. The central thrust of the "Donald Trump wants to destroy democracy" critique is that Donald Trump tried to seize power when he lost in 2020, and nothing has changed on that front.
Skibboleth
27d ago
Desantis lost because he was too much of a coward to actually run against Trump. He was facing an uphill battle anyway, but his plan of tickling Trump's balls was always guaranteed to fail. He never answered the question of why MAGA voters should support him instead of Trump when he should have been slamming Trump for being a fat old man, a puppet of his advisors, a sore loser, a man who fundamentally did not have the right stuff to Make America Great Again.
I don't think that it is - at least not in a political sense. Conceptually it's an easy distinction to make, but in practice it's just arguing over whose subsidies and legal privileges don't count.
More options
Context Copy link