Silicon Valley pastor decries hypocrisy of area's rich liberals
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
What they do instead is that they boost their PR image and invest it in the "next big thing" like driverless cars, augmented reality, etc., and these endeavours often fail in a few years time, effectively wasting the capital and disproportionally enriching the selected few.
i don't have access to their balance sheets and P&L statements, but nowadays i assume most of our well-respected thought-leaders, entertainers, politicians and other public figures are fundamentally fakes and frauds, continually perfecting their SJW cover stories.
and i think they do it as much to fool themselves as to fool the rest of us.
They fall flat on their face because those who are best placed to counter-act the Bay Area's NIMBYism find it fashionable to market their political laziness as cynicism.
I think there is an additional, confounding element in the transient nature of the population in San Francisco.
Many, many people (rich, successful, young, etc.) are just here for a few years and have no intention of making long term investments in the community or becoming true stakeholders (by, for instance, raising their family here).
This makes it difficult to engage in any way, much less in messy, difficult social problems that are somewhat unique to San Francisco.
And many of the long-term residents like it that way.
If transience is defined as the fraction of the population who moved in or out in 2015, San Francisco is a relatively non-transient city [1]. The five most transient cities in America by this metric are Provo, Ann Arbor, Gainesville, Boulder and Tempe. Transience does not appear, at first glance, to positively correlate with inequality.
[1] https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-most-transient-cities-in...
That's not to say that other countries aren't following in the same direction - for more classist segregation and isolation.
It’s pathetic really. Always say what you mean and mean what you say. It’s better to have a strong connection to a small niche of people, than a shallow connection to the general public.
That's a radical notion for almost everyone, not just the rich! Surprisingly difficult in practice too.
Strong connections to a small group of people is exactly what the article is getting at. It's a members only wealth club effectively, much like what you find in New England. (If I'm being honest, it's EXACTLY like what we've had in New England since our inception.)
At any rate, these people already have extremely strong connections to their small group. What we're trying to do is get them to have some, at lest shallow, connections to the rest of us.
But liberalism (both in the modern American sense, and in the classical sense of which both modern American liberalism and mainstream modern American conservatism are subsets) is a system which overtly valorizes greed and the pursuit of personal gain in a facially neutral common market-based environment as both a deontological good and a practical engine of social progress. (Modern American liberalism differs in its expression of this from the modern conservative expression of classical liberalism in favoring modest and limited active correction of the impact of past deviations from the ideal of facial neutrality as a matter of Justice and restoration of the ideal neutral condition whereas the conservative expression of classical liberalism favors studious current facial neutrality.)
Pastors burn out all the time. But it is still sad to see.
If you attend a church or know a pastor, just know that they are probably dealing with a lot of stuff you don't know about.
Each year at my kids school they had a gift tree with cards with things the kids on the other side of the 101 (East PA) wanted. 99% of it was shoes. They just wanted a shoes. Every year we would take a few cards and wait for others to do the same. Every year at the end there where still cards on the tree and my wife and I would take every last one. How f'ing hard is it for someone to do this? Why the hell would there be anything left?!? I never understood that until I realized it would take time out of their schedule to have to do this. Sure people gave money, but god forbid they had to do any work.
I personally give the respect to people to refer them as they would like to be identified. If a Muslim jihadi says he is a jihadi, I respect his self identification and call him that. Similarly, I respect these people's self identification as liberal or progressive.
I think he's simply alleging that their revealed preferences do not line up with their stated preferences.
[Delete rest of comment, not relevant]
No, but claiming someone isn't truly in a category to defend the category from the hypocrisy of the individual is, because it ignores the possibility that the category lends itself to hypocrisy.
Besides, powerful and wealthy people have often claimed to be "on the side of the poor and helpless", to "protect" their subjects and so on throughout history.
This applied to: emperors, kings, aristocrats & knights, shogun & samurai, military leaders... hence the hypocrisy that the pastor is pointing out.
To make no issue of someone calling themselves "progressive" while not supporting the policies considered "progressive" is perfectly possible, but it basically shifts the conversation away from the topics at hand and pushes them one level of abstraction into the slippery nature of the way we use language.
There is a substantive disagreement that could be addressed head on: What does the person calling themselves "progressive" believe that title mean? And why do they believe that the title applies to themselves?
Huh? Why?
Seriously, I don't understand that kind of thinking. I don't think individuals necessarily deserve that kind of power others. Sometimes we should adjust to save other peoples feelings. But having that as the default seems crazy. What if they are full of shit? Or misuse that power? Or I simply disagree with them.. shouldn't I have the right to disagree with their self identification?
True
> so self identification is the only reliable way of applying labels in any sense
No, it's not. Self-identification is one of many ways of operationalizing a categorization, and it's useful for some purposes but not others. You can also operationalize by sets of concrete policies, which is useful for different purposes. And there are other options.
The relevant basis of categorization depends on the purpose of categorization.
The old 2x2 model of Left vs. Right and Authoritarian vs. Libertarian doesn't really work on a "longitudinal" basis. Community has been redefined in a few ways, and we're more bipolar -- Liberal Libertarianism for "us", the full authoritarian treatment for "them".
It's very common for progressives and leftists to be skeptical of tax-subsidies for private charities viewing them as mechanism for redirecting resources from public priorities to the private priorities of wealthy donors.
It's less common to see them actually campaign against private charity as such, and I suspect any claim of the latter is based on the former.
I'm waiting for the day you literally see city government in Palo Alto or Berkeley obscuring a homeless camp from view with a rainbow banner or a Hate Has No Home Here sign.
(The lovely thing about "hate has no home here" is that neither does anyone else.)
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
It's a rare thing for Jesus to make a pronouncement like that in the text. Which leads me to believe it's an important part of his teaching.
Also, out of curiosity, what translation is that?
First returned Google result in Firefox private mode[1] indicates this wording is specific to the King James Version (KJV).
Is that true?
Its been enforced haphazardly in Atlanta over the last couple of years.
In Tampa, Food Not Bombs was arrested for not getting a permit for "having an event on public land". http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article1253... even though they've been feeding the homeless there for 10 years. The real cause for the crackdown appears to be when there's some event going on in the city, like football championships, where visibility on the city's homeless problem could be problematic for politicians.
In Orlando, Food Not Bombs also gets arrested for feeding the homeless. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/crime/os-homeless-feedin...
It was illegal in Fort Lauderdale, until the police arrested a 90 year old man for feeding the homeless. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/0... It's probably still illegal, though.
http://www.bacbsa.org/contact/48588
If you know of other organizations in need of volunteers, please reply for others to see too.
Hindsight isn't really 20/20, is it? I look back on that era and think how blatantly racist and classist it was. But in contrast to today's segregation based on race and class, all we've done is move the servants out of the homes they serve, put them on public transit, and make them live 50 miles away. It's just feudalism vs a kind of neo-feudalism.
And meritocracy in practice is different than meritocracy as an ideal. Perhaps Vulcans have the extreme discipline required to actually adhere to a strict system of merit. But humans do not. Anyone in a meritocratic environment lowers the ladder to friends and family, people they like, which immediately corrupts the meritocracy. Meritocracy in practice corrupts itself, the very thing the ideal proclaims to avoid. And even the ideal version pretty much pre-supposes that those without merit, without wealth, don't really deserve anything other than what they have (or don't have), there isn't anything to do about it, and it might even be immoral to intervene.
The book of Job, and numerous stories of Christ in the New Testament are very critical of wealth and merit. And that's probably why the message doesn't go over very well anywhere with institutional power and wealth, be it the Pharisees, or Silicon Valley's wealthy (and regardless of whether they're liberal or conservative).
Ok, I agree, but that seem to be unusual take for American nominations. At least my impression was that they did not tend to preach help to poor, rather the opposite.
Did I had wrong impression or is this take really the minority one?
You might be conflating it with American politicians who wear religion on their sleeve. Religious Americans make up a huge and disproportionate chunk of voters. This includes the traditional religious conservatives as well as a diverse group of WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) types, but also black and Hispanic voters who are also largely religious. This is the reason for absurd pandering like Hillary Clinton stating that her favorite book was the bible.
Religion, in theory, is a great thing since it encourages people to follow an [ideally] positive value system and gives people a way to meet and organize things. In practice the value systems are often pretty screwy, and the whole divine imperative turns plenty of people into self righteous assholes. In many ways modern notions of social justice are turning into a new religion and suffering the exact same problems. This is why we can't have anything nice!
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/11/28/are-...
That result is both unsurprising and meaningless.
The posts in question
>Should this type of person and the organization he represents oversee a Palo Alto Community Center?
Haha, wow. Can you get more stereotypical Silicon Valley than running to the nearest authority figure because you don't like someone's opinions and choice of (not even that) strong language?
I'm really fascinated by the idea of the College of Hortation.
I think Wright actually sees it as sinister, but I thought it was a good idea.
Rough idea:
Make all laws extremely libertarian, and then have a voluntary group people join that does things liberals say they want (free healthcare with progressive membership dues, etc.)
Except in his book, if you weren't a member, no one would do business with you - because it was against the terms of membership, and almost everyone was a member. So then those people who rejected society could, but they couldn't trade with almost anyone.
Including blue collar workers in their community or network of friends does not grow their wealth. They provide no benefit to these people's social worth in their eyes so they are exiled from the community.
When you create wealth you are already helping poor people and blue collar workers. Who do you think mows Mark Zuck's lawn ?
True but why? Most of this was rooted in power and wealth. The Catholic Church is one of the most wealthy empires ever to have existed. Why do you think they became bigots, and racially radicalized? They wanted power, exclusiveness, and wealth. Legitimizing servitude and slavery through religion made them incredibly powerful.
"A Pastor should not engage in this type of virtue signalling.""
Like everything else religion is evolving, this Church is LGBT friendly. As someone who has a gay family member who attends an LGBT church these things do exist.
"When you create wealth you are already helping poor people and blue collar workers. Who do you think mows Mark Zuck's lawn ?"
That's fine, as long as you pay them enough to live near where they work in a house that isn't a shanty or ghetto. We don't need modern age indentured servants in the United States.
I'm assuming you identify with the Republican party? My only interest is if you identified as being "Liberal" because you definitely aren't.
Keep fighting the good fight Gregory, this evil atheist is on your side :-)
Reminds me of "liberal" SF/Bay Area. Everyone talks the talk, but no one walks the walk. It's quite sad really.
Most of the "liberal" folks today are really old-style chamber of commerce republicans with a different flavor of conformity. More accepting of old social taboos, and we've replace suits with khaki.
Religion is defined in the popular consciousness as regressive right-wing fire and brimstone types, with a helping of swarmy prosperity ministry. The success of the political parties of polarizing folks on wedge issues like abortion is incredible and dangerous. The catholic church I grew up in, for all its faults, was basically the backbone of the social services sector in my region. Now many of the holy-roller types are so aggressive about pro-life activity they are supporting GOP candidates. That's leading to more political rally nonsense, less service like food pantries, helping the aging & sick, etc.