Tiber727
3d ago
Yeah, that's my argument, that's why I never said "at the left's behest" but "for things offensive to the left". Because the right has a higher diversity of views they end up having in-group disagreements, and thus policing their extreme elements in a way that makes the movement less offensive to their opponents. No such mechanism exists on the left, therefore the conduct of the two movements is not equivalent.
Potato, potato. It's still a framing that reduces it to the left, in much the same way as "Republicans pounce." Praising Hitler is something the right also opposes, so if someone (particularly their boss) does not take the view that it was "locker room talk" then it was just the right firing the right for offending the right (and the left was there, too).
Doesn't that say something? If the "center left" exists, it should be mainstream, the places where they exist should be clear and obvious. If it's just a niche that no one knows where it congregates, the very concept of the "center left" becomes a bit dubious.
Not necessarily. The right makes up a half of the voting public, but I have no idea where the right congregates online relative to their numbers. And I think that the left is more online in a general sense. This old but not that old study suggests that progressives are the minority of even the Democrats, but things that are loud are the things that are noticed.
You can compare the reactions to the attack on Rand Paul with the reactions to the attack on Paul Pelosi, if you want. To compare either to the assasination of Charlie Kirk is a bit absurd.
They're both celebrations of violence, even if the level of violence differs.
Then consider me extremely confused. If calling them out is pointless, then why are you upset at all the "who cares" arguments, and demand that people not accept arguments that they'd find unacceptable if they came from the other side? What specifically do you want to see from MAGA? Is the thing that you want to see being provided by the center-left, and if not, why should MAGA be the first one to start?
Because you're conflating two different things. "Caring" and "policing" are similar but different. You can care about something but not be able to police it, because a notable aspect of police is they have the power to punish you. You can also police something without caring, for instance if you punish a subordinate for offending a crowd even though you had no problem with the behavior (which you seem to be implying about the Young Republicans). In the case of the Young Republicans, they are an organization with leadership, and the only "policing" that matters was what those bosses thought. When Obama tries to tell progressives to chill out a bit, he has no power to make them (because being an asshole is legal), so you dismiss that he made the gesture. When Trump does something crass, he polices the people who criticize him for it.
Kimmel is most comparable to the Young Republican situation, and you do have something of a point there, though I would argue it was complicated by A) the right suddenly being very pro-cancellation was culture war fodder and B) The Trump administration threatening ABC became politics fodder.
What I want to see, from all sides really, is self-reflection. The left demands the right apologize and think they have nothing to apologize for. The right demands the left apologize and think they have nothing to apologize for. You point out that the right has factions but so too does the left. I do think the latest election was the moderates being fed up with the far left, or at least the ineffectualness of Biden going after niche issues and ignoring bread and butter issues like the economy.
Tiber727
6d ago
I thought you specifically mentioned "the median Republican" in your argument, so I'm a bit confused why this is suddenly about the Motte community. Again, I'm pretty sure we're a much better example of crazy right-wingers than Trump is.
Mostly I was referring to the median Republican, but I guess I found it casually dismissive. I took as if you were saying "Oh some other people elsewhere flip-flop, big deal," and I think "Yeah but The Motte looks to me the exact same in that regard." But still I'd argue that, if nothing else, Trump's trade policy is crazy, and I have seen the right complain about it, they aside from grousing about it a bit don't seem to care.
No, I said they got fired for saying things offensive to the left. Your examples would be akin to me saying "look how good the Republicans are in policing their own crazies, they fired this guy for being too permissive on abortion, and that guy for being in favor of no-fault divorce".
You did say that. But you also said that the right is not unanimous and that some on the right found it offensive. I am suggesting that rather than, "The right canceled the Young Republicans at the left's behest," the more plausible scenario to me is "Some members of the right found it offensive, some didn't. Ultimately the members of the right who found it offensive won out. The left was also complaining, but they were immaterial to the decision." If we were talking about some guy being fired at Microsoft, sure I'd say the left canceled him. But we're talking about the Young Republicans. It sounds to me like they'd be pretty likely to tell the left to fuck off if the left tried to cancel someone there. And besides that, the Young Republicans weren't fired for policy positions, they were fired for praising Hitler (yes I know, not really).
Oh wow, looks like the Neocons are not only the crazy-wing of the right, they're so far off they're actually left-wing according to you.
Oh wow, the notably unbiased and always reliable wikipedia called them conservative. You know you can go to the page and look at the names, right? Here you go: Harper's Letter. Kmele Foster, John McWhorter, Yascha Mounk, Kat Rosenfield, J.K. Rowling, Jesse Singal, Chloe Valdary, Andrew Solomon, Bari Weiss, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Matthew Yglesias, Cathy Young, Fareed Zakaria. I know these names and they are not neocons.
That doesn't bother me, but I just haven't seen the jeering at all, let alone at the same volume. When Jimmy Kimmel got cancelled, the left rallied around him, and as far as I can tell kept mostly quiet about the people who said something egregious enough to get fired for good.
There's been a bit of it, see here, but I'll be honest that I don't actually know where most of the center left congregates online, and they're the ones most apt to condemn it. If you want to say the left is worse on the subject of celebrating deaths, sure. Though the Paul Pelosi incident doesn't make me feel that the right is that much better.
That still works more in my favor than it does yours, if we're debating whether or not it's bad to say "I don't care" to the excesses of your side. That thesis only works if it's reasonably certain that the sides are symmetrical, if it's merely debatable, then well... my mind is open, but you'll need a bit more to convince me to care.
I'm not trying to convince you that the left is better than the right, and I'm not trying. It's debatable because "badness" is subjective. But I don't think the goose and the gander need to be exactly symmetrical for the goose/gander principle to hold.
Look, there's other strains of evidence for the right policing itself more than the left that don't boil down to the observer's bias. The right has more diversity of thought within itself, as per actual studies and their endlessly memed graphs, so it will contain more loud disagreements.
My point with Obama and this is the very idea of "policing" one's side is pointless. Plenty of the right have criticized Fuentes, but he still has a sizeable audience. Plenty have criticized Trump, and if anything they came out worse. It's the old, "So you called me a racist, now what?" You can't make them do anything or actually go away. Calling them out is kinda the most you can do, and if they ignore it not much you can do except maybe sabotage yourself by switching to a party whose policies you actively disagree with.
Side note that your links aren't useful. One seems to link to this comment chain and I wasn't sure if that was pointing to anything, and the other is a scatterplot with no context.
That can be true even in war. 9/11 didn't do much to directly hurt the USA, and for that matter neither did the American invasion of Afghanistan do much to hurt the Taliban. Now, I will agree that in times of peace, and within a nation the dynamics are somewhat different, but not completely so. There's a reason for why conservatives were looking for ways to get a Supreme Court majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, and didn't just pack to court the moment they had the chance.
I'm more saying that politics is fought with weapons that are, long-term, useless. Anything you do can be undone. Even Roe v Wade could later be restored, albeit with difficulty.
Tiber727
7d ago
What do you want me to say, "first time?" I remember when the war in Iraq was the most important issue ever, right up until Obama got elected. Or the surveillance state. Or antisemitism. People do this stuff all the time, and the idea that the Republicans are worse than the Democrats in that regard seems baseless. What's more, if we accept this argument it would mean that Biden and Obama are the Demicratic crazies.
Doesn't have to be the first time to be true. Nor does it have to be exclusive to one party. But I'm not just talking about parties in general, I am referring to The Motte community. I certainly remember all the talk about lawfare.
Not only is it not entirely analogous, most of these examples are missing a critical component, other than the cancellations over Kirk, these are examples of the left cancelling itself for things offensive to other parts ot the left, not the right. Even the Kirk example is missing the other component of left-wingers jeering at the left wingers that just got fired.
Hold up, there's a hidden assumption in this. First you said Republicans are not in solidarity because otherwise it wouldn't have been leaked. But then you pivot to saying the Young Republicans were fired because the left demanded they be fired. Why do I have to grant that the left was the determining factor in them being fired? You yourself pointed out that that there are some on the right that have standards, and I don't think the left really has influence over an explicitly right-wing group.
As for the Kirk example, your "critical component" was never mentioned before. I grow a little tired of the whole, "My example was on a Tuesday, yours was on a Wednesday so it doesn't count." Comparisons are never exact, deal with it. Also, I posted Kotaku because that was the link I had, but the people who would jeer at it would not be found on Kotaku.
I know. You were trying to show how, if we take the right-wing arguments seriously, it would mean that the broader right-wing is there to cover for it's crzies, the same way they accuse the left of doing so. My point is that this argument doesn't work, because there is no symmetry in the conduct of the two sides.
Debatable. And there are people on the left that call out the left. The Harper Letter crowd for instance. Hell, Obama himself has called out progressives for some of their behavior.
I'm sorry I'm not seeing how anything in this paragraph connects to whether or not people of the Motte hate left wingers for saying "who cares" about their crazies.
I'm saying that "the left" is treated an amorphous blob. And yes, the right is too by the left, but they're not here right now. I'm saying that in order to say that "John Smith" should have his visa canceled because "protestors" have committed harassment is to say that the way for the left to not deserve this is to police their crazies. I'm using this as an example of how people might not think they are doing something when in fact they are.
Deterrence works almost exactly like that in war, and war is part of politics. The mechanics might be a big different during timesnof peace, but I'm not seing any fundamental issues with it working there as well.
War involves people dying or the threat of dying. Politics involves a pendulum of the people who temporarily lost coming back into power and often just undoing whatever the other person did as much as they are able. None of your deterrence is actually hurting people outside of making them angrier and more motivated to act again. Political arguments don't really have the power to really act as deterrence.
Isn't that literally what you asked me to do earlier?
In which part? Because overall what I'd say I want is for people on the Motte to stop and think, "Would I accept this line of reasoning if my opponents used it against me? Or would I try to find some excuse to invalidate it?" Again I do this too, but I'd like to think I try.
Tiber727
8d ago
Whatever you think of him, most Republicans either aren't all that bothered by it, or think the Neocon wing is worse, therefore it is them that are the "crazy Republicans", not Trump.
All I can tell you is these are the things that seemed to make the right upset when a Democrat was doing it. To the point that from this side it looks like them being mad when a Democrat did it was outrage bait.
The kids from Yong Republicans got fired for making edgy jokes. If the right existed to provide cover for "crazies" like that, their messages would never get leaked in the first place, but if they did you'd see a unified front of Republicans actually covering for them. What you see instead is a significant of infighting between the "muh principles" wing of the Republican party (represented for example by James Lindsay or Seth Dillon) and the "don't do cancel culture against our own people, ffs" (for example Matt Walsh). I don't think there was an example of a similar amount of infighting on the Democratic side over one of it's subgroup saying something offensive to conservatives.
Point of order: it's not my view that your average Dem/Rep voter is covering for crazies. It's something that in my view gets thrown at me by members of the right when I say I vote left because I think the right is worse. That said, the left is perfectly willing to cancel its own, just not generally at the behest of the right (and yes, the right do try to cancel people for non-"turnabout" reasons). Not entirely analogous I admit, but I remember Al Franken. And yes people on the left have in fact been fired over Kirk comments. Or here's an old issue I remember about a lefty making an edgy joke about Africa.
Well, I think you're wrong about who is hated and why. I don't hate the people who say "who cares" about their crazies, I hate the crazies. The people who say "who cares" only start being annoying when they acting outraged over me saying "who cares" over my side's crazies, and thus demand that I hold myself up to a standard they never followed themselves.
This ties into group culpability. I had a rather long back and forth with JarJarJedi not too long ago. One of the things I'm reminded of is Trump canceling the student visas of people who protested Israel, on the logic that members of said protest harassed people. Whether the person whose visa was cancelled was one of the people harassing was irrelevant. Where I'm going with this is that many of the arguments made require group culpability in order to make sense. Someone can say "I don't believe X" and then support a policy that relies on it, and at that point I would say they're in denial about it. Note that this is a generic comment, I don't remember everything you specifically have said.
To be honest I don't really want to keep score for either side. Historical memory is good when someone starts acting like whatever media-invented outrage is unprecedented, but my goal in punching back isn't equalizing of scores, it's deterrence. If I'm reasonably sure I'm not going to get sucker-punched again, because I taught a belligerent a lesson that I can hold my own, I don't need to leave him with the exact same amount of stitches he originally gave me. But we're nowhere near this point, I don't even see the other acknowledging they did anything wrong, let alone incapacitating their crazies so it doesn't happen again.
That's not how politics work. By and large it's somebody punching in your general direction because they feel someone punched in their general direction. It can hotter or colder, but it will never stop and never admit wrongdoing. They don't care whether you think they did something wrong, they only care either if they think they did or, rarely, if a critical mass of the public thinks they did.
Tiber727
9d ago
Why is Trump supposed to be the crazy wing of Republican? The wokes being called crazy is a result of the moderate Democrats not wanting to be associated with them, but Trump being deemed crazy is purely the result of outgroup slander.
Disagree. Even from a right-wing perspective, he lies habitually. Republicans may be protectionist, but his trade policy constantly changes. He's weirdly deferential to Putin (whereas the median Republican might not want to get involved in Ukraine but still admits Putin is bad), and his Ukraine policy is incoherent whether you think we should be involved or not. There's pretty much everything relating to RFK. He's pardoning corporate fraudsters. People are completely silent on his own blatant lawfare.
as to whether the right exists me to provide reputational cover - I dunno no man, half of them are doing some weird "neener-neener" bit about the YR kids getting fired, can you provide a similar example from your side?
Sorry I'm confused what point you are making here. Could you rephrase?
I don't know about you personally, but hasn't the majority of the left, in fact, taken that license?
The more charitable interpretation is they consider their bad apples to fall under the lizardman constant, similar to the responses I'm seeing regarding the right. But let's say yes anyway, because that is my criticism of the left. That they do so is in fact what I think is why The Motte hates the left so much. So why would you do it yourself? Yes the constant refrain is "Why should I better than my opponents, when that will only result in losing?" My point rests in how exactly one keeps score. It's relatively fine to say, "I'm keeping track of the bad things both sides do, and I think side X is worse." It's another thing to say, "I'm going to keep counting the score of my opponents, and stop counting my own." At that point you've decided you want to keep your head in the sand and have become just a rage reactionary. Your opponents are fully justified then in playing dirty, because you're saying you can be as corrupt as you want and it doesn't matter.
Tiber727
9d ago
The standing principle is noninterference. I dont care that you dont care. If I care thats my problem not yours.
On a personal level maybe. Well you wouldn't expend many thought cycles on me, but I would farm downvotes here on the Motte if I earnestly expressed such a view, and that is itself at least a tiny form of caring. But on a meta-level I'd say The Motte does care. That's why they keep coming back to whatever crazy thing the left did today, and their refusal to take responsibility for it.
The right is perfectly capable of rejecting the worst excrsses by its own terms: the expulsion of the wrongthinkers is proof of the right not being held hostage to every crazy statement within its base. That Myron Gaines or Fuentes or other random fuckwits claim to the banner of the right and have admiring listeners is immaterial, they are not thought leaders within the right wing intellectual ecoststem.
The extreme of the extreme, maybe. Though I will note Trump himself has met with Fuentes, claimed to not know who he was, and then dodged condemning him. If Trump prances with a rainbow flag, I do think that on that subject they would be very unhappy, though they might console themselves that they are happy with him on other issues.
The left mostly just ignores its crazies. Within the DNC, AOC seems to be mostly the crazy uncle that rants while everyone eats their Thanksgiving dinner and then they never talk to otherwise. For all the talk on Palestine, Biden himself didn't actually do anything college kids wanted, which may have contributed to Trump's win.
And yes, to be fair, arguably the notable exception is trans. On this issue the moderate Dems mostly seem to be along the lines of "Well the doctors say this is the right approach."
Tiber727
9d ago
This sounds like the horseshoe version of the progressive complaint that centrists provide cover for the far right. But no. The moderate left exists because they have their own policy goals, and a democratic system often involves allying with people whom you don't entirely agree with but can tolerate to an extent. This is true for the right as well, which is why Mr. "Trump is unfit for our nation's highest office" is now playing second fiddle to the guy he once insulted.
But again, my point is the consistency. Does the right exist to provide reputational cover for every crazy Republican, up to and especially Trump? Do you also have to answer for everything your side does, and abandon your beliefs if someone odious holds something vaguely similar? Because that's the same argument progressives lob at me whenever I argue against wokism.
Many on this forum have said they flat-out don't care about the right's excesses but the left's are so egregious that nothing could top it. If I say I believe that I believe the right's excesses are actually pretty damn egregious, does that give me license to just dismiss any complaints about the wokies with "I don't care?" No, it wouldn't. It would just prove there's no point engaging with me, because I'm just a partisan with no principles.
Tiber727
10d ago
Personally, while I do think kitty is grasping at straws making equivalences, I do think there is smoke here. I don't think "I wouldn't care if the party I seem to support became pro-Nazi" is to a significant degree better than actual support for Nazis.
I am in the unenviable position of being anti-woke left. I am pro legal immigration; want regulated, anti-oligarchy capitalism; some gun regulation; and broadly think the the Republican party does more shitty things than the Democrats. But I hate the left's obsession with race and identity. That's why I'm here, because I'm looking for places I can talk that aren't too group-thinky one way or another.
But the popular sentiment here seems to be that because I vote left I bear some culpability for the shit leftists do because I enable them. Conversely, the right gets basically an unlimited-use free pass so long as there is some leftist act that can be deemed worse. They never cancel each other out either. The same leftist act could be used to excuse 10,000 different right leaning actions.
And here it's stated pretty much crystal clear. Right up there with MovieBob's "There are no bad tactics, only bad targets." It's a pretty flat admittance that there's no point engaging with you because you don't have any standards. It's not even "I don't care about this example," it's "I will never care."
I'm not looking to change anyone's mind on which side is worse. What I'm aiming for it consistency on whether a side is culpable for its own bad apples. Everywhere I go, left or right, it's "excuses for my side, maximum uncharitability for my opponents." I won't say I'm immune to it either, but I try to see things how the other side would see it.
Tiber727
13d ago
Here's an 18 minute video that goes into the text and cites how the creators of Critical Race Theory (the actual academic theory) literally say they were inspired by Marx and Critical Theory. It's not that Marx himself would necessarily approve of the goals of CRT, more that CRT adopted Marx's framing of class struggle and class consciousness.
Tiber727
19d ago
2 and 3 can go together. Farming has already been trending towards "Go big or go home." The margins on farming already suck, so big farms may eventually automate while small farms go under. Though honestly, I think big farms already automate as much as they can afford, and I think the crunch from lack of labor will hit faster than the relief from tech innovation.
Tiber727
19d ago
These two statements:
The left-leaning media will paint Republican efforts in the most negative light
and
Trump wants ICE to be seen as a force to be feared
are not incompatible. The first is true, but doesn't actually dismiss whether the second is true or not.
And as to this second point, Trump is currently the guy who frames illegal immigration as an invasion, pays for illegal immigrants to be sent directly to a foreign jail without trial as gang members despite having no criminal record even close to gang membership and suggests sending Americans there, and sends the National Guard to progressive cities.
Trump's entire shtick is portraying everything as war and himself as champion. He wants that image and uses the media's attempts to smear him as fuel for it.
Tiber727
19d ago
Generally yes, more so because in today's day and age we can indefinitely keep someone in jail for the off chance that they are later exonerated (and given the amount of red tape to go for the death penalty I think life in prison is cheaper).
But I said this more because of the motivation of the situation. If the context is along the lines of wishing a politician that is not even on trial gets a trial with the specific outcome of the death penalty, I think you've cast your thinking far enough ahead that you want to see the person dead.
Tiber727
19d ago
Open border, a functioning economy, a robust welfare state. Pick two, and the welfare state is functionally non-negotiable.
Ah yes, how could I forget all the wonderful government benefits that illegals most definitely qualify for. The rest is quite frankly a parody of how other people think and what motivates them.
Or that it could just be automated, and that it's insane to import tens of millions of farm workers right as we're looking at an AI/robotics era-defining revolution.
A, if they could be easily automated they already would be. B, Honestly the entire farm industry sounds like a mess to me with smaller farmers being pushed out of the market or being beholden to shitty John Deere's locked-down repair practices. I'm not as anti-AI as your average lefty, but I don't think this is coming in the next let's say 10 years and I don't think it'll be all that great when it arrives.
Tiber727
20d ago
The quibble is that if Jose is willing to work on a farm in California for what are shit American wages but still a better deal than staying home, the progressive view is that allowing Jose to stay is not advocating against our own interests or wealth redistribution, it's Jose contributing his labor to the economy and getting paid.
Progressives simply don't care that he had to enter illegally to get to this point because they'd rather immigration be expanded in the first place. I'd personally rather more expansive work visas that allow them to do this while still being vetted, and with better wage/labor controls. The conservative view seems to be that if we got rid of all the illegals farmers would pay more and Americans would do it, of which I am skeptical.
Tiber727
20d ago
Is life in prison due to a kangaroo court much better? As that is something Dem actually attempted to do to Trump. And certainly I don't remember if any Dems were vocally against it.
The bolded is your subjective assessment, and rather the pivotal element which changes the situation from fair to unfair. If the Democrats don't think it was a kangaroo court, would you still expect them to be against it?
Tiber727
20d ago
There are some interesting parallels here to the run-up to the election, when the common talking point was that the Democrats using the legal system to go after Trump, or removing Trump from the ballot for treason were massive norm violations.
If we were talking jail maybe, but personally I don't see how adding "...by the government, after a trial (in which my desired outcome is the just one)" to "I hope my political opponent is executed" makes it not support of violence.
Tiber727
20d ago
I didn't want to chime in originally because I didn't know what comments you were seeing. From my end I generally thought the sentiment was, "Kamala is not a great candidate but Biden is clearly done for so maybe we have a chance. Trump is pretty widely disliked after all." The excitement was more from Biden dropping out than enthusiasm for Harris.
Tiber727
1mo ago
You don't even need to guess. Cancel culture is all about the views one finds morally offensive and thinking others should not be able to express those ideas publicly. That is, actively punishing people for their views on LGBT, Israel/Palestine, or criticism of the right.
Tiber727
1mo ago
I would agree with that description of what they are doing, and agree that some truly detestable opinions should maybe be cancel-able. But I think the most common form of hypocrisy is not saying what you mean. That is, when you declare a pretty unambiguous rule (don't cancel people for their personal opinions), and then when it comes time to actually test it you suddenly declare an exception. Because the obvious assumption is the outgroup is simply going to continue to declare exceptions until fair rules become "my rules."
Tiber727
1mo ago
While I do think Carr's comments make this situation legally murky to put it mildly, if you make the kind of money Kimmel makes speaking with a lawyer is the smart thing to do. You should absolutely pay a few thousand to see if it's worth pursuing millions.
Tiber727
1mo ago
I'm a fan of three-strikes type rules. If one guy does it there are multiple possible explanations but if people keep leaving maybe something is going on.
Tiber727
1mo ago
An ex-Presidential intervention. Meaning there was no element of "Will the FCC try to go after me if I refuse?"
Tiber727
1mo ago
Even if all of the above were true (and I don't grant that):
Yeah imagine an administration putting pressure on a television channel to fire a comedian they didn’t like.
A former President is not an administration in any meaningful way. He doesn't even have any real government influence during the Trump presidency.
Tiber727
1mo ago
Even I have to push back on this one. While anti-gun people are almost exclusively on the left, the left contains people who like guns, people who think gun ownership should be possible but harder, and people who want to ban all guns.
From what I can find on Robinson, all I've found on his political leanings is that didn't really vote one way or the other and that he bickered with his conservative family on trans issues but didn't really talk about much else politically. Which seems directionally left but the limited info we have suggests he was largely single-issue trans rights.
For the record, that's more on the civil rights groups than the people they're supposed to represent. Wanting less policing is a minority position among all groups, notably blacks. Most are happy with the current levels, and with the exception of Asian Americans, "more policing" is more favorable than "less policing."
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