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The future Liberals want by Noah Smith on substack. It’s not that interesting a vision really: the future of the West is highly diverse, urban, self-expressive (trans accepting), and abundant with oh thanks an olive branch for conservatives.
I think the bizarre thing about this is that Noah — as woke, neolib as it comes — felt the need to write this at all. Everyone knows this is the vision; it’s all we hear about! Conservatives all know that this is what is on offer if society remains on autopilot towards the future too.
What strikes me about it is a vision of total anomie and dissolving of any sense of common culture and this is supposed to be good. Each nations singular (or maybe 2-3 tops) religion replaced by anything or nothing. Each national ethnic group replaced by a multicultural hodge podge with inclusion and acceptance for all. Diversity of income (inequality). Imagine there are no countries…
I can’t help wonder what families are supposed to be like in this vision — or indeed if they really exist. Is a world of radical self invention fuelled by technology compatible at all with human flourishing as its always been known: freedom to choose the burdens we bear for maximum meaning. What if blank slatism wasn’t a description of the world, but a challenge!
It just all seems so ugly. Most people have poor taste so radical self invention will be mostly just ugliness like architecture ripped from its patrimony and place. If politics ultimately springs from aesthetics, this liberalism is eventually doomed (but not before it wins and destroys what little of left of pre-modern life).
I've wondered whether I should make some kind of post about why neoliberal (so to speak) visions are so ugly. Like when the Soviets or Nazis dreamed big they dreamed a perfect world, where people were strong and brave and smart and beautiful. (nevermind the pile of corpses just out of frame)
But then you compare that with whatever the hell this is. This was a Green poster for the most recent German election. Forget about whether or not it's feasible. Their idea of a utopia is just ugly (and never mind all the weird elements that frankly make it look like a far-right parody of what a liberal would want)
Liberals at the moment seem very bad at articulating what kind of a world they want to create. More and more I wish the Soviet Union hadn't fallen; we've just gotten so pathetically complacent without a rival ideology
I'm curious why you describe the idea of utopia depicted in the poster as "ugly." The poster itself is not aesthetically pleasing -- the color scheme is pretty awful -- but is the scene it depicts any uglier than, say, this one?
I also don't get your claim that "Liberals at the moment seem very bad at articulating what kind of a world they want to create" -- doesn’t the poster do just that? It apparently does clearly enough for you to opine that said world is "ugly."
Yeah, I'd call it uglier. The scene in the painting looks mundane, not pretty but simply normal because it depicts a real situation in a real place, realistically. The scene in the poster is an illustration of an imaginary ideological utopia, so ugly that it needs to be stylicized in order to avoid reactions of disgust.
Again, I am not sure what it is that is depicted there that is disgust-inducing. Disgust is an awfully strong emotion, after all. And, the OP used the term "ugly" -- I took that as an aesthetic comment, rather than as a synonym for disgust, but perhaps that is indeed what they meant. I can certainly understand if someone found certain elements of the scene objectionable, such as the Antifa reference. Or even the LGBT-adjacent couple. But the overall scene of people going about their day -- walking the dog, flying a kite, going to work, hanging out with friends, etc, is a pretty regular street scene.
Again, I took the OP to be saying something other than "I disagree with the Greens' political vision," but perhaps that is indeed all they were saying.
The art style is ugly, and I've noticed it online a lot recently, this particular sort of graphic design for progressive-type issues. Part of it is how they draw body hair - they can't do facial hair, they do these tiny black lines which don't look real. One I saw recently tried to show 'real women come in all shapes and sizes, smash patriarchy beauty standards' messaging by having a woman with visible arm hair - and if you know a woman with hairy arms, or are a woman with hairy arms yourself, you know this is not how arm hair looks. The style is just ugly, and they are so eager to show "smash the gender binary, smash patriarchy beauty standards, challenge the normies" that they do these fat, tattooed, ugly people (and I'm fat and ugly myself, before anyone leaps in with "who are you to talk?")
They don't have to do supermodel thin waifs, but jeepers, can they at least draw plump women and men who look like humans, and not with tattoos, piercings, undercuts, and Visibly Queer And Differently Abled all over them? 'yes, we can't just have a guy carrying his young child with him as he goes shopping, Dad must be drawn to look gender fluid, maybe even trans, and preferably a different colour to the kid'.
EDIT: I did like the gardener woman on the delivery bike, so that was one thing in its favour. A normal person going about their job. I won't comment on the tattooed woman in a very old-fashioned wheelchair in the middle of the road trying to walk her dog on a lead with one hand while she wheels herself with the other, because think about it for one minute: imagine wheeling a wheelchair one-sided, and how that would wobble all over the place, and then imagine that in the middle of a road with bikes, pedestrians, and what-not. Yeah, that works just fine and no accidents at all will ever happen!
Note that the gardener woman is fat, dark-skinned, and the gardening company she works at is Turkish by name. There's a lot of signalling going on even there.
Yes, it is a political advertisement in a country in which people of Turkish descent make up a substantial (and probably electorally relevant) portion of the population. And, no surprise, the Green Party in Germany advocates for their rights, and indeed a Turkish-German was named leader of the party as far back as 2008. So, the "signaling" is simply a statement of the party's political position.
Well, yes. I do not disagree with any of these observations; I merely pointed it out.
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