A Worsening Culture War
taibbi.substack.com
taibbi.substack.com
My sister and I, living in Germany, have a very loving relationship, but we absolutely disagree on almost everything political and basically are stuck in our seperate bubbles.
This gave us an interesting observation: 5 years ago it took us about two to three months, to have a fight over something that started to become a hot-topic in the US.
Over time, this has shrunken to about 48 hours. This is not because our bubbles are particularly US centric, more that it has become envogue to simply discuss whatever gets "the other side" going.
In particularly, it is very interesting that "the other side" is aligning ever more so with the US political spectrum, where in the past such a thing was unheard of, atleast here in Germany. I've heard similar stories from Friends in other Non-US Nations, be it in Asia, Africa, aswell as other european nations. Does anyone else have similar stories?
>In fact, opinion polls show that Europeans and Canadians crave executions almost as much as their American counterparts do. It's just that their politicians don't listen to them. In other words, if these countries' political cultures are morally superior to America's, it's because they're less democratic.
"Death in Venice" (http://wayback.archive.org/web/20091009111114/http://tpmlive...), Joshua Micah Marshall, The New Republic, 31 July 2000
That’s how unpopular choices can become policy. It breaks down to people with strong preferences deciding issues rather than the majority deciding issues. Farmers care a lot more about subsidies than most people making farm subsidies an easy choice.
It does not seem so crazy to me, after decades of cultural imperialism from America, that we are mirroring the same patterns of behaviour and fighting the same battles. (Just to be clear, I'm not against imperialism)
If American politics are straining your relationship with your sister and you are not even American, sorry to put it like this but only you two have yourselves to blame. Next time your sister brings the topic up say "yeah right" and move on.
Don't worry, that's why I emphasised the loving relationship part, we really don't take our political opinions into this and wouldn't have emotional fights about them. Family comes before all that.
A cousin in my family has a very valid grievance against business owner uncles that support politicians who don’t want to provide meal breaks or bathroom breaks. This cousin has to work 12 to 14 hour shifts, and eat standing up while working and sneak in bathroom breaks.
That’s not “red/blue” shit.
The world is more complicated than that.
It’s easily verifiable that Democratic states have better laws for wage earners, and have pushed for policies that benefit wage earners. They’re nowhere near perfect, but there’s no reason to pretend Dems and Repubs are the same.
For example, there are many people who in a race where one candidate favors restricting or ending abortion and the other favors reducing restrictions on abortion will choose whichever of the two agrees with their position on abortion, regardless of where the two candidates stand on anything else such as economic issues or foreign policy issues.
AFAIK the idea of immigrants impact being a net negative isn't supported by the studies I have read.
I understand this isn't necessarily in line with the rhetoric du jour.
Immigrants as a whole being a net positive might be clear, but the demographics most commonly under debate are things like "refugees" or "illegal immigrants" or "people seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border". Now, it's possible that those groups are still a (financial) net positive, but I'd be a lot less confident in that than "doctors" or "people with a degree".
This also doesn't really address the issue of "what impact does immigration have on US wage earners". An immigrant doctor or programmer might be clearly beneficial financially and to the country as a whole, but the doctors and programmers they're competing with might not be quite so happy. And while those demographics can "take it" so to speak, unskilled laborers facing the same competition are in a bit tougher of a spot.
I could just as easily turn it around and say, "It's easily verifiable that Republican states have better laws for gun owners." Now do you see the issue? Your above statement matters only if your primary goal is benefiting wage earners. It would be like me saying that Republicans are better at building a border wall. Maybe so, but that's not top priority for Democrats.
More recently, we are seeing the rise of the Zero Issue Voters who don’t care about any particular issue at all. It’s purely a team sport. They love their team, love their candidates and they just want to “own the other side”.
However, if we go by cumulative per capita COVID deaths, then the result would have been 228 Trump, 310 Biden.
Why the big swing? I think it is because the big early outbreaks that swept through retirement and nursing homes before we got better at treating it were in big urban areas. By the time it got big in rural areas, we'd gotten a lot better at dealing with it.
It would be interesting to do a similar calculation, but using say the rates over say the last three months instead of cumulative from the start. If someone wants to do that one, a good place to get the COVID data is here [1]. They have links to download the data for all the graphs as CSV files.
Or by the time it hit rural areas, we'd also gotten better at testing for it. Perhaps the IFR is the same across both demographics, but better testing means a higher proportion of cases were detected later in the pandemic.
Using cases, it comes out 344 Trump, 194 Biden. Using deaths, it comes out 354 Trump, 184 Biden.
The big difference this time is largely rural states that are getting hit much harder than the rest of the states. North Dakota in this allocation gets 35 cases EV and 46 deaths EV, and South Dakota gets 30 and 36. Montana get 21 and 23.
For comparison to some high population states, California is 4 and 4, New York 4 and 3, Texas 8 and 10, Florida 6 and 10.
Now I'd be curious to see something that looks at various sliding windows on the data and sees how to allocations change, but that would be a bit more elaborate than I want to do.
The most solidly blue state, California, just enshrined a law to screw over gig workers and has among the worst housing crises in the country for average (and below) wage earners. Both parties are not equally bad, but the idea that the Democrats support working people is pretty laughable at this point. Yes, they’re not as awful as Republicans on these issues, but that’s a pretty low bar and still so far below the wage and labor protections in places like Europe as to be laughable.
This has been Democrats tactics with this stuff for decades, “we tried to do something good, but then something happened that we couldn’t do anything about it. Sorry.” It’s intentional fecklessness, while posturing at progress, so they can keep getting checks from the tech industry.
https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based...
No, they were operating in violation of California law for less than a year.
> instead got friendly with them and took piles upon piles of their money.
If that's the case, why didn't they get a carve out in AB5?
> systemic corruption in the Democratic party,
Which overwhelmingly voted for AB5 and was in opposition to Proposition 22. You are alleging corruption without any evidence.
I fail to understand why you see this whole situation as what happened with one law and one proposition and not the culmination of a bunch of corrupt people who have been in bed with each other for some time.
What state law were they violating? None. What difference would not taking money from them have done? None.
> not take jobs with the companies when they left office (several former, high-level Obama people work at Uber, Kamala Harris’ brother-in-law is behind Prop 22’s legal team),
What does that have to do with the state legislators, who created AB5?
> pursued anti-monopoly action against Uber for engaging in market dumping.
Uber was not a monopoly and still isn't a monopoly, as a court already confirmed. https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/court-rules-that-uber-must-f...
> The list goes on and on.
No item in that list makes any sense. Why did they go through all the trouble to pass AB5 to begin with?
The difference between the two is mostly how they think it best to go about improving things for wage earners, who are the vast majority of their voters in both states. Not saying this makes them equal, but the difference is not what you assert.
https://www.patriotsoftware.com/blog/payroll/states-with-pai...
Similarly, see the list of states (and cities) with half decent unemployment benefits, minimum wage laws, non tipped wages, sick leave, required meal breaks, non compete bans, Medicaid, marijuana legalization, etc.
You will see a trend in which parties’ governance wage earners have these benefits (which are a pittance compared to civilized countries in the first place) and which don’t.
https://hechingerreport.org/why-oklahomas-public-preschools-...
That never got talked about by Trump detractors. Union working class Joe-Schmoe's used to vote democrat, and now solidly do not. There's a reason for that.
Edit: Please note that I never said he did those things, just that they were what he promised. He is completely full of crap on almost everything he says, those promises at the top of the pile. But that is the reason working class Joe love him. He says the things they want to hear.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
The output of Fox is bad enough, but the QAnon nonsense isn't some weird aberration that appeared out of nothing. It's the logical conclusion of a huge social experiment to see how much political benefit you can wring from an industrial lie machine.
And it's working far better than anyone on the left was expecting it to.
The downside is that the US now has a huge voter demographic that is literally disconnected from reality. These are the people who scream that Covid isn't real - because something something George Soros and Bill Gates - while they're in hospital dying of it.
This doesn't end well. You can't push a large percentage of your population into delusion without some very destructive consequences. Even if it does mean you keep your Senate seat.
I would argue that, for the individuals in question, the long-term consequences literally have no meaning, do not matter, and absolutely are not part of the calculus.
If I get power during my life, and secure my legacy as an important, and very wealthy person, my children can buy away any problem that may pop up for them.
Therefore, my actions of destruction today do not matter, as long as I am the one in power.
This is why I believe it is only going to keep getting worse; if the incentive is to stay in power, at all costs, we're in for a wild ride.
I don't think that matches exit polls—lower wage workers still voted primarily democrat, and higher wage workers voted primarily republican: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/...
He said the needed lines, gave them a villain in immigrants (stealing yur jerbs) and then did nothing of the sort for WORKERS. He certainly did go all in on cracking down on immigration, of non-white people, as that matched the narratives of Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller.
Meanwhile, Oligarchs here are richer than ever, and workers are holding on for dear life. And 72 million plus, voted to keep him in office.
All of my fellow republican business owners were bristling at the idea of Obama’s executive order increasing the minimum salary for exempt workers. This is because they would have had to pay their immigrant workers $44k per year for 60+ hour work weeks who they designated as “managers”, rather than $30k per year under current rules.
Again, I’m not saying Democrats are perfect, and they are far from it. But at least some Democrat states, and politicians are making an effort, whereas I can’t say the same about Repubs. Hence, it’s not just color A vs color B.
See, I can play this game too.
I wonder if that would help. I experience a lot that people expect me to have all kind of weird opinions because they think I'm part of a group which they think holds these opinions. They think I'm part of that group because some of my opinions match with the group.
This is good advice for Americans too. The privacy of the ballot box is a cornerstone of America for a good goddamned reason.
As for innovation, that's relative. Europe, for centuries, was the undisputed worldwide leader in innovation, now that has shifted a bit to the USA and seems to be on its way to shift to China or maybe India in the next few decades.
There's also the problem that Europe can't really focus on organizing itself in a self-sufficient manner because there's still separatists bitching about everything and always screaming for separation instead of forcing governments to address issues, and the impending rise of fascism in east-europe that may or may not become a huge deal for the rest of the 2020es. The USA has this problem as well, but to a far lesser degree.
Good! Russia is an enemy.
Now it is just a conflict between different European powers with varying levels of dysfunctional democracy and corrupt elites.
So what is the basis for hating the Russians now; racism?
And this is based on Putin's foreign policy towards smaller neighbors that it historically controlled.
I would have agreed literally with that statement fifteen years ago. Since then, however, the trends in Russia towards state control over independent press, the politicisation of sports and culture, the blurring of lines not to be crossed (e.g. the annexation of Crimea) and overall clinching of Kremlin power at all costs have made lots of people in Europe worried.
I also wouldn't say "Russia is the enemy", for a number of reasons: first of all, it's not true; secondly, it's not helpful; and thirdly, it obviously breeds distrust and antagonism not only between states but between individual people.
But tensions have obviously been rising, and we are not in the pleasant situation we saw 20 years ago when Russia seemed to be heading towards democracy and increased international cooperation. The current regime in Russia, with its increasingly authoritarian and nationalistic pursuits and somewhat erratic foreign politics, has certainly been feeding those tensions. It would be disingenuous to claim it hasn't.
Concrete example of European reliance on the US.
1. NATO
2. The US Fed for liquidity in the EU banking system
3. Acquisition market for companies
4. AWS, Azure, GCE, DO
5. Netflix
1. There's still a narrative here in Germany that the big bad USA / trump is wrong for demanding we spend money on our military when we literally signed a contract agreeing to do just that. At the same time, we're in a bit of a unique position where our defence is also in the best interest of the USA.
4. Yes, technological reliance on the USA when it comes to the internet is amazing and terrifying at the same time. Mind you, there is no lack of European alternatives, but somehow these big companies injected a brand-oriented culture into the web-development world on a scale I'd usually expect to see in regards to clothing, not software.
I'll risk sounding ellitist, but I do believe this only works because of the recent influx of newcomers to the world of web and their mentality of doing only what gets them employed. This is a way bigger problem that I could write many pages about, but in this context the important detail is that these people often choose to learn products rather than methodologies, buzzwords and brands rather than theory and logical principles.
This. America is not actively shoving its politics into our conversations, we're doing that ourselves (I'm from Germany as well, btw.).
Yes, talking about whatever social shenanigans are currently relevant in the USA is fun, but applying those weird ideas to ones own society is a completely different thing.
They choose to cover it.
Not at all. You could say it's a "western" thing, but definitely not an USA thing (although they do tend to claim it for themselves like they invented it).
What's unique to the USA is the weird idea that personal responsibility is somehow a counter-argument to regulation. "Guns don't kill people, so everybody should be free to own them". At the same time, it's mostly the american left that argues against personal responsibility just because it's considered a right-wing belief.
To come to a conclusion: As so often, the USA is wrong, on both sides. The only "right" mentality, in my opinion, is one that acknowledges both personal responsibility and the option for society to step in.
You could easily argue that the "Conservative" party in Canada is equivalent or possibly even to the left of the mainstream Democratic party in the US. So yeah, it gets a bit weird when right-leaning people in Canada then also support Trumpian politics— sometimes it's hard to know if they're there after a considered review of the positions, or if it's just a knee jerk "pick the guy on the right" response.
The 2nd Amendment issue in the United States is something I don't expect a non-American to understand. The rest of the world tends to take the process of enumerating freedoms positively. The law says you have it or don't.
In the U.S. the culture was framed around the preservation of liberty and the enumeration of the boundaries, and limitations on the ability of government and regulation to encroach. The problem with that is it opens a can of worms constitutionally that increasingly have led to the torture of common language in order to attempt to change the meaning of already passed laws instead of passing new ones which seem to be growing increasingly difficult to do.
Further, you have an entire caste of people specifically trained to use language in unintuitive ways.
As far as "Assault rifles" go, most people can't even define what one is. The fact is, an AR-15 that has the "look-and-feel" of a military patterned rifle is functionally equivalent to more "traditional looking" stock rifles like a Mini-14.
They are the same fundamental device. Neither one is more or less capable of killing someone. To anyone with experience with firearms, the "common sense" espoused by gun control people amounts to hysterics. All it is is a bunch of people tryimg to legislate everyone else's rights without demonstrating any understanding of the subject matter at hand other than being a special interest mouthpiece.
But it's because of this misalignment across a variety of issues that it’s difficult to have a straight discussion of cross-border political alignments— you need to have at least some semblance of a picture of how the Canadian left and right differs from the US left and right. (Another key one, for example, is that the Liberals in Canada officially strive to be a centrist party; the "real" Canadian left is the NDP and Green party, neither of which have ever held power at the federal level, though the NDP have come close a few times.)
I read a book a few years ago that made an interesting point about cultural exports like TV shows (the book was written pre-youtube and pre-netflix).
If you're a small country (with your own language, culture and traditions) and America has 30x the population of your country, films and TV shows made for the American market will have 30x the budget.
And yet, when that American show is selling broadcast rights in your country, no matter how far they have to drop the price, making a sale makes more money than not making the sale. So the price of the American show will never be out of reach of your broadcasters.
So when a broadcaster imports an American show instead of producing locally, they get a much flashier, more polished product - and it actually costs them less!
And so, for example, Belgian TV shows more scenes in American courtrooms than Belgian courtrooms. And if American TV shows include American politics, they can't help but shove it onto Belgian TV screens.
There's not a moustache-twirling Uncle Sam deliberately orchestrating this, of course. It's just a natural consequence of copyright, deregulation and free trade.
That’s not to say there’s no such thing as influence or persuasion. And those can be powerful. Ultimately we can all decide how we engage with our family, person to person, regardless of how the USA or anyone in the USA indicates.
It’s incredibly important to be aware of that and act accordingly. If mainstream media from another country can change your relationship with your sister, it seems to me that something is wrong. Negative external influences aren’t about to go away, so it’s on the individual to be cognizant and vigilant about responding appropriately.
As an aside - why? Imperialism seems like something one should obviously oppose. Who wants their lives governed by these forces?
Sure, when Trump says something about renegotiating NAFTA, yeah, cover that. When Trump says something stupid about the Democrats, no, that doesn't deserved prime time coverage in Canada. There are too many important things happening in Canada and the rest of the world for that to be front and center.
But I understand why they do it...ratings. Covering outrageous stories gets ratings. Generating outrage gets people to tune in tomorrow to see what happens next.
Frankly it doesn't deserve coverage here in America, either. If he hadn't been gifted billions of dollars in free advertising from all of these networks that hate watch his Twitter feed I don't think we would even have Trump as POTUS. And now he's never going to go away. And they're going to be hate watching his every step to keep "reporting the news." For the life of me I do not understand why people watch the news in this era.
This is a very dismissive argument to make. It's just like saying Americans have just themselves to blame for this culture ware and should just stop arguing and move on.
Everyone watches US TV shows and movies. Many media outlets all over the world give way too much attention to US news topics, for reasons that are not really clear to me.
This kind of cultural affiliation is not a personal choice, but brought on by news media and the dominance of US entertainment.
> you two have yourselves to blame
That's not how imperialism works.
American culture is weird like that. We all consume it via mass media.
I think it’s just an empire thing. During Victorian times everyone was trying to be a little British, or a little French, maybe a little German. Depends who’s closest to you. A long time ago, everyone tried to be a little Roman.
Another way of putting it: News doesn’t tell you what to think, it tells you what to think about.
No offense, I just find this hilarious for some reason. Kids can be so impressionable.
I can't say if it aligns more with the divide in the rest of the world, but saying US politics "spills over" into the rest of the world makes it sound like the US is static. The parties are evolving though: maybe the US is just shifting to toward a more internationally palatable ideological divide.
So I'm not sure I entirely understand what you mean with the divide being more internationally palatable. "Spilling over" also doesn't imply the source is static.
Diplomatic relations with the US matter a lot for the economy and trade - as you've seen in many countries over the last four years.
If you support an authoritarian/populist/homophobic ruler at home (in Poland or Hungary or Brazil or wherever), you also support Trump because he will support your country where a Biden administration will be far less likely to boost Hungary if it costs relationship points with Germany or France...
What BLM protests in Poland? I live there and it's first time I'm hearing of them.
I'm seeing it, too, and it's annoying. I'm American, but a while back I stopped consuming anything but local news in English for the sake of my sanity. Doesn't work anymore. I keep wondering if maybe I just need to learn a new language? Maybe the mind virus hasn't yet spread to the Swahili coast. . .
Many people seem to agree that the rise of social media and its correlated loneliness have pushed people down their rabbithole/echo chamber/whatever people want to call it nowadays. Opposed to the popular narrative, the apparent view from people into the social sciences seem to believe it's a problem with social technologies, rather than it being the inferior North American cultures bleeding out and corrupting our pure untouched global cultures.
I have to agree with the other view that all of us on this planet we are barely evolved hairless tribal monkeys using technology that makes us more anxious instead of secure - and all of these problems are actually pretty predictable from this perspective. It's not Americanification, we just naturally start acting like this when we start using things that make us anxious for clicks.
It's more of a bidirectional soup, I think. A lot of the tumult in the US is due to the breakdown of historic norms and views. That has been sped up by social media, but the actual ideas taking hold on one side are largely Marxist, by way of the Frankfurt school, in nature. Those both originate within your own boarders. What you're experiencing is more an echo bouncing back than a spillover, in my opinion.
I fully support discussing racism in the UK and what we can do to counter it but I don't get why we're discussing it as if it's the exact same situation over here with the same solutions. This might to a symptom of London centric-ness where there is far more ethnic diversity and therefore racism.
Living and working near London I always assumed the increased ethnic diversity and global outlook in the capital led to less racism. I assumed it was the rural homogenous countryside that had more endemic racism. I guess we all misunderstand each other all the time.
From https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477....
>In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.
There's plenty of secondary sources reporting on this study if you want to have a look for the varying opinions on it but I thought I'd link the source of it itself.
Whether less trust, less cohesion etc. == more racism is something I'm not in a position to draw a conclusion over, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Moving to another place (Seattle) where (for instance) racism is still a part of the fabric of everyday life but a part of the social discussion was challenging as I was introduced to ideas that felt unintuitive. But empathy helped me grow and understand more than I did, and helped me value and pursue that growth.
It also helped me recognize (for other instances) I had unconsciously internalized other biases. I had rejected my own sexuality (I identify queer, demisexual) and my gender identity (I accept he/him/they/them pronouns equally).
I hope a little empathy goes far for you. It’s not often in a followup like this I see someone willing to reciprocate the empathetic spirit and acknowledge a contrary view kindly. Who knows where it’ll take you, but I hope you’ll consider that your experience may be coloring your ideas and that you may have room for other ideas in that consideration.
And I don't like to pick apart semantics, but the way you use the term "American BLM" is a Straw Man and an Ad Hominem deployed in tandem. It's difficult to have a constructive debate when it's posed in those terms.
When you say "American BLM" as if it were a monolithic entity and attach negative attributes to it, that goes to the heart of the matter.
I don't know how to have a conversation with you from across that chasm.
More flareups, perhaps, especially riots against the Metropolitan police, but more diversity tends to make people less racist as they actually meet people of other ethnicities rather than just repeat what they've heard about people they've never met or seen.
Was the Bristol statue teardown an import? The tactic of just dumping it in the sea was, and the "triggering event" of solidarity protests was, but the underlying question of why Bristol has a statue of a man who committed crimes against humanity had been rumbling on for years and the council had voted down even a recontextualisation plaque.
Scotland has some similar "historical benefits of slavery" questions to look at; Edinburgh's own pro-slavery politician statue (Henry Dundas) is somewhat protected by being at the top of a 150-foot column.
British police officers don't routinely carry guns and therefore couldn't possibly shoot you even if they wanted to. In fact, there is an almost zero probability of anyone in the UK getting shot by the police unless they happen to be committing an act of terrorism or murder at the time.
And of course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jean_Charles_de_Me...
This is the disputed evidence at the center of the question; the gun was found several meters away from the scene, on the other side of a fence, "wrapped in a sock". There is a protracted argument about how plausible it is that he threw it there after being shot in the arm.
> they invariably seem to be about people who were in the process of attacking the police when they were shot.
If the police shoot someone, then of course all the official reports will say that they were attacking the police. There have been a number of mass casualty incidents in the UK (Hillsborough, Bloody Sunday) where the police or army reports turned out to be lies.
In a democratic society, you have to influence the public opinion to stay/get in power. Propaganda is free, information costs money.
If the majority of voters are not willing to pay for quality journalism, you have to get them engaged by fueling outrage and projecting fear. It doesn't matter what side, as long as there are sides you can join and identify with.
Combined with the fact that American politics do have an effect on the quality of life in other parts of the world (trade wars and refugee crisis for example) and the working (aka non-capital) class suffers in most western societies, it is very easy to project similar fears and foster divisiveness.
Go back to the start of the Second Gulf war and you had the NYT and other media outlets complicit in the WMD lies.
Neither CNN nor Fox is quality journalism, "quality" being the adjective you left out.
The NYT also issued an apology for their coverage about WMD which was not rigorously fact checked. One of the reporters, Judith Miller, later joined Fox News.
Quality doesn't mean 100% correct all the time, it means significantly better than the alternative.
Comparing the coverage of different sources is part of how you can reach your own conclusions, instead of blindly adopting whatever opinion is broadcasted to you.
That's the way the ruling class operates in any society. They try to divide the rest of the people. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they the rich, can run off with all the fucking money.
Fairly simple thing. Happens to work.
You know, anything different, thats what they gonna talk about. Race, religion, ethnic and national backgrounds, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality. Anything they can do, keep us fighting with each other so that they can keep going to the bank.
You know how I describe the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep them showing up at those jobs."
George Carlin had us pegged ages ago.
So did Doctor King:
The other day I was saying, I always try to do a little converting when I'm in jail. And when we were in jail in Birmingham the other day, the white wardens and all enjoyed coming around the cell to talk about the race problem. And they were showing us where we were so wrong demonstrating. And they were showing us where segregation was so right. And they were showing us where intermarriage was so wrong.
So I would get to preaching, and we would get to talking—calmly, because they wanted to talk about it. And then we got down one day to the point—that was the second or third day—to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, "Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. [laughter] You're just as poor as Negroes."
And I said, "You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. (Yes) And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white.
And you're so poor you can't send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march."
Apple, on the other hand, does not wade into the culture war. What they do instead is make money off people's status anxiety by selling luxury products to people on food stamps.
I agree with you about Twitter as their stock had been stagnant until Trump's election and people started equating tweets as news.
And yet the percentage is lower. It really doesn't matter the comparative amounts; to put this to an even more egregious extreme, if the top 1% had 99% of the wealth, and paid 20% of that in taxes, and the bottom 99% had the remaining 1% of the wealth, and paid 0 taxes, it's not a sign that all is well, and the fact that the rich are paying -all- the taxes does not somehow make it okay.
And, no, pretty much every business benefits. The whole "keeping up with the joneses" mindset that keeps the wheels of consumerism turning is predicated on class distinctions. Our economy is dependent on consumer spending, and the obscenely rich become rich, and remain so, because of that level of spending by the middle and lower classes (meanwhile they have so much wealth they can't find ways to spend it without literally giving it away)
"The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes..."
It's blatantly untrue, as are most things comedians say, but Carlin somehow is treated like a scholar. The spamming of his quotes only adds fuel to the culture war.
Consumerism is completely orthogonal to polarization. Video games and Netflix promote consumerism and keep the lower classes "distracted" from change. There's no need to intentionally stir conflict. See how much corporations were willing to spend against Trump on the last 2 elections.
And, see how many corporations also funded Trump. Political polarization keeps people from seeing the robber barons that are benefiting in excess from others own hard work.
> And, see how many corporations also funded Trump
Corporations aren't a unified block. Biden got over half a billion more in funding, which is telling.
> Political polarization keeps people from seeing the robber barons that are benefiting in excess from others own hard work.
This is a narrative invented because if people find a purpose to polarization, they can blame someone else besides themselves. What is the greatest distraction from the proletariat rising up against the "robber barrons?" It's Netflix, not Fox News. Without polarization, people won't suddenly be plotting about how to take down the rich. They'll go back to rewatching the Office. If anything, polarization brings more attention to class issues.
Maybe the 99% should have more wealth and income so that they could pay more taxes instead?
The mantra about wealth and income being about merit/hard work/etc, is partially true. A lot of wealth and income has to do with laws/privileges/etc.
The 1% paying more in taxes really means that they'd taken more of the wealth/income. So I don't think that's the solution.
Not to be too on the nose, but another equally valid phrase here is “leaned heavily towards being a christian minister”, which he was. The religious motivations of the civil rights movement are ones we seem blind to, and the only reason i can think of for it is that when i, an american, hear “christian”, i have been taught think “republican suburban or rural white man probably interested in being horrible to gay people” instead of “democratic urban jew or black lady who is super damn interested in workers rights and housing access”. At a certain point one begins to wonder if that isn’t very carefully intentional.
Tangentially: at some point, someone in the media is going to diff AOC’s speeches against the last 150 years of papal encyclicals and realize a few things about where her rhetoric originates. If you s/bipoc/the least of these, it’s slightly easier to see. If you know who Oscar Romero was, it's blindingly obvious.
"GOP" is as much an epithet to those inclined to dislike the party, as it is a proud accolade for those inclined to like the party.
Sort of like "liberal", though admittedly many who use that as an epithet make their meaning clear by changing it to 'libtard' or a similarly puerile play on words.
I don’t agree at all that that statement or population is somehow emblematic of “the real religion”, because the unspoken priors there are precisely the sort of white- and christian- centric circular definitions that, for example, white american evangelicals believe and promulgate. It’s giving up the game before you even get started.
Tangentially, the sanctification of Dr. King as an american saint is part of an extremely long tradition of blunting the impact of prophets. If you put someone up on a pedestal you add them to a history that is done and somehow over and safe now. We remember “i have a dream” and tacitly conclude that the dream is realized now; we forget that King died largely hated and in the process of screaming against the war and organizing for (mostly white) trash collectors. And we forget that the work never stops.
To conclude more hopefully, though, I’d also say that people do keep the flame alive — and, i suspect and pray, we’ll look back at this year as a time when the embers were fanned back up into a flame to get some more work done at a great cost.
As to American evangelicals I don’t think we have a lot of disagreement, but I remembered an an excerpt from “Letters from a Birmingham Jail” that I thought was very apt:
I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"
This is right if you say "America" instead of "the west". And then you're talking about a timescale of maybe 200 years, tops.
But when you say "the west" you're talking about a longer history of Christianity in Europe. You're talking about the Catholic Church, the Protestant Reformation, all that.
And on long historical timescales, Christianity's record is quite a bit more complicated than that. You can certainly associate it with various sins -- it suppressed the pagans, it launched the crusades, in Spain it justified conquest in the New World, and (though it was its own team) it often sided with royalty and aristocracy. And yet it was not an essentially "pro-slavery" religion. That would be to project relatively recent American evangelicalism backwards onto the rest of Christianity in a totally ahistorical way.
> There was notable involvement in the abolitionist movement among northern Protestants, and civil rights activism among catholics, Jews, and northern Protestants - but acting as though that is in any way representative of American religion is missing 99% of the history.
There used to be a phrase, "mainline Protestant", used to distinguish "normal" Protestants from evangelicals. They're dying now, but those churches used to have huge membership. The kind of Christianity that was "centered" in the past in America (at least in the North) was //not at all// the southern Evangelical variety that so often claims the word "Christian" these days. You're missing the amount of change that has occurred. The Evangelicals were "weird".
Your discussion of "Catholics and Jews" in the context of "abolitionism" is also confused. Catholics and Jews were not //totally absent// from America at that time, but it really wasn't until later that they came over in large numbers. Like, Irish were just arriving around the time of the Civil War (and hadn't even won respect for themselves yet, let alone taking up the political cause of others), and Jews started to really show up later around the turn of the century. You're ignoring the timeline of immigration.
Finally -- your whole dichotomy of "American religion" vs... atheism(?) is confused. In the past, atheism was taboo -- "everyone" was religious to some extent -- and //even so// things like the Civil War happened. Why? Because it was religion that //animated// those movements, particularly within the emerging "white" ethnic group (whose material interests they did not necessarily serve in an obvious way).
Mostly, American history has not been "religious people vs nonreligious people". It's been different kinds of religious people fighting over the contents of their religions. Mostly, the battle lines have been drawn right //through// Christianity in America.
I meant those as two discrete times, civil war era abolitionists and civil rights era Jewish and catholic activists. I didn’t claim that Catholics and Jews were active against abolition. I’m fairly comfortable with the history of immigration of different ethnicities into America and the ‘whitening’ of certain immigrant populations, so I doubt I’m ignoring their timelines.
Additionally, rereading my comment you’ll see I try to distinguish between northern (mainline Protestants, but also catholic) and southern Christians, as I mostly associate (possibly incorrectly) evangelicals as tracing their lineages through southern baptist & Midwest fundamentalist denominations.
I never mentioned atheism so I’m not quite sure how you constructed a position from my comment, but that’s not really applicable to any view I hold.
My point in the comment was to disabuse readers of the revisionist idea that Christianity, in particular American evangelicals, are natural champions of oppressed people - and if we measure their net effects on minorities in America in the aggregate, I’d wager it’s mostly been a tool to justify and propagate oppression and segregation more often than not. You are correct that my argument was centered on American Christianity, as even British Christianity (particularly quakers) had a markedly different relationship to abolition than their American southern Baptist counterparts.
I wholeheartedly agree with your argument that the battle lines have been drawn through Christianity, but I don’t think that it split the population into 50/50 proportions.
Rural white Christians greatly outnumber urban Jewish Christians. Most major denominations discriminate against LGBT people. People who are super damn interested in worker rights and housing access aren't disproportionately Christians in my experience. Some are and some aren't.
Yeah, this a smart answer.
> urban Jewish Christians
This doesn't even make any sense. Judaism and Christianity are related but they're separate religions.
> People who are super damn interested in worker rights and housing access aren't disproportionately Christians in my experience.
Nowadays, yeah, though things like food banks and hospitals often still have Christian names, origins, and even (particularly older) members.
And progressive institutions like the YMCA and the Salvation Army were explicitly Christian from the beginning.
But you notice I am mostly naming older things.
Charity and economic justice are different.
Even the Salvation Army and many religious hospitals discriminate against LGBT people.
Well, yeah, Jewish Christians, urban or rural, are pretty rare. Black and Hispanic Christians are more common. And if you look at regressive attitudes on race, it's mostly White Evangelic Protestants where those views are concentrated. White Catholics and White mainline protestants are fairly evenly split, and non-White Christians (what usually has big enough samples to show up in broad surveys are Hispanic Catholics and Black Evangelical Protestants) tip strongly the opposite direction as White Evangelical Protestants.
If you were a foreign power and wanted to sow discord in a rival country, you had to buy off dozens of journalists and funnel money to media houses and hope that they'd at least be secretive, if not effective.
Now you can just pop open Photoshop, come up with 10 memes in 30 minutes, and use your sock puppet accounts to spread them everywhere - an operation that a single person can handle all by himself.
It's incredibly naive to think that social media is not absolutely flooded with propaganda and counter-propaganda by malicious actors. And it's only going to hasten the collapse in democratically minded countries across the world.
4chan has always been like this. Pre-2007 it was basically the boiler room of the internet. You could find memes before they hit mainstream along with all the shitty ones that didn't make the cut.
I'm sure this natural filtering was disrupted when we brought millions of users online for the first time and convinced them that social media is the internet.
Whose fault is that though?
The Flat Earth conspiracy was easily the best example of this
It's all middle and upper-middle class Americans who have the luxury and time to spend time on social media (often at work).
So, no, it's not just middle- and upper-middle class Americans on social media.
Your opponent nowadays is a very pragmatic autocratic regime, with it's own issues, but this corona-crisis at least showed they can keep their mandate of heaven. Four more years in this culture war and you won't be able to get consensus on anything.
We don't see protests when the internet goes down; we see them with people are killed by the police.
In Los Angeles (where I live) the people out in the streets in July during the pandemic protesting and burning cop cars were almost all unemployed young people, a veritable cross-section of all ethnicities in the city.
It's not just about risk. Most protestors had little or nothing to lose or risk anything to be out there.
Clearly, the fact that young people don't have dignified jobs and nothing to do but sit on social media all day and watch viral videos about obscene police violence is the fuel to the fire in this situation. I'm not saying police reform doesn't deserve a reckoning in the US, but there's definitely a correlation in internet use and protests.
[citation needed]
And even if that was established, “unemployed” is often an axis of social inequity, too.
Funny that you think the problem is the internet.
The taboo I think is it's not a culture war, it's a class war that sets largely publicly employed people against mostly privately employed ones. For all the rhetoric around race, this is mostly a Girardian schism between white city "burghers" and their country "redneck" complement. The former see their role as global, and the latter see their identity as national.
I don't think even a model with predictive power can do much to mitigate the consequences. It may have festered too long. If you destroy what a culture has built, it will have to contend with you and your organizations to rebuild afterwards.
I'm sure the billionaires are terrified.
I'm focused on culture, which are things like family, community, spirit, code, music, sport, art, fiction, and thought. War also is a part of life, and if it ever came to that in my lifetime, I suppose you could say I will be engaged in politics then too, but that kind of reckoning i think is a last resort.
In Taiwan they have social media designed to reward agreement - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/27/taiwan-civic-h... - whether it’s truly successful or not I can’t say but if so, then Facebook and Google could adapt
This is what I have seen professionally.
Edited a bit.
If I recall from my Sociology studies, smaller minority opinions (in this case what you call "right wing ideas") coalesce into smaller silo'd communities BECAUSE their ideas do not resonate with any majority.
In a wide open environment, the minority ideas / culture would not survive, so the participants of the minority views shrink the environment into the bubbles so their ideas don't have as much competition.
How does that square with the commonly accepted observation that "any community without moderation turns into a 4chan cesspool".
It's funny, but it's actually the opposite.
The right wing folks using Facebook become so incensed and outraged at being shown left wing content that they complain all the way to Congress, and the radical right-wing politicians who are slaves to the whims of the populist movement then haul social media executives in front of Congress and literally pepper them with ignorant conspiracy theories.
Facebook has notably had to wine and dine famous radical conservatives for years to prevent negative press, something they never have to do with the left.
Facebook notably even created "Conservative-only" high level level positions to ensure that their entitled right-wing users were placated. They added outright propaganda outlets to their "Fact Checking Initiative" not based on any objective metric, but on the political calculus of "Both-sides-ism -- we'll put your fact checker next to this liar, both sides get a spot at the table".
When you look at the radical right-wing populist movement, the search for Parler and more right-wing safe spaces, and how they use their fact-free media and conspiracy theory-friendly politicians to push truly ridiculous nonsense, I think you can see the full picture of a quickly-radicalizing right wing populist base that becomes incensed and even violent when viewing left-wing or moderate/centrist content.
Remember, this is an America where Fox News is currently being abandoned for being "part of the Left", and there are millions who are abandoning Facebook and Fox News for Parler and OANN, so you have to see this as the radical right actively seeking out and creating ever more ideologically pure safe spaces.
I'm guessing most of them rationalize it in some way, or figure that they will be on a plane to New Zealand before the effects of this is really felt.
But how do you get neighbors to shake hands when one believes that gay marriage is truly evil and another is gay?
Both sides in America constantly fight bitterly over identity politics and it seems like many of those identities are irreconcilable with one another.
I'm non binary and use singular they, and I've had some absolutely incredible vitriol directed at me for nothing beyond, "hi, I'm name. I use they/them pronouns. Nice to meet you!" How do we get past the part where people decide it's ok to tell me I should be sterilized or committed, and get to the point where we start turning towards the capital class together?
I can work with people whose personal views I consider morally bankrupt. If they start threatening others because of who those others are, that's a problem. And it's an uncomfortably common problem.
People have asked about my politics, and I'll often say simply, "I'm a democratic socialist." and I've had people tell me I'm "a cursed person who has drunk from the trough of the demons" and that I'm "here to destroy freedom and the constitution."
Those aren't exaggerations, those are real quotes in response to a short introduction. I'd be thrilled to get to the point where I could work alongside those types of people.
It's why I find it so interesting (and concerning) how people respond to, say, college, or urban areas, coming from rural and more homogeneous ones. Some people find themselves realizing that those who are different than them...aren't so different, and learn to accept and respect others despite those differences. Others resist, seeking out others like themselves, building a bubble to operate in, avoiding the 'other', and become even less tolerant than they were before (while also demonizing the 'liberal brainwashing' happening in colleges and big cities and the like, that they saw happening around them).
I keep the initial focus on them and I first introduce myself as a blank canvas with a known role between us. "Hi, what's your name, my name is yourapostasy your new neighbor/who waves at you on your 0500h run every day/who the mailman mixes up our mail all the time/etc." Then elicit details of "their story". People pretty universally love talking about themselves. Somewhere in that tapestry are common threads, and I build upon that. I've fortunately never met someone through this approach so odiously unrelatable we could not bond over something they care about.
After that, it is a matter of time and resources put in the relationship, as long as you maintain a Nash Equilibrium. The more time and resources, the more differences you both will generally tolerate; not a linear relationship, but everyone I've met has a "clearing price" to voluntarily associate with another.
I don't think in terms of "take back power and wealth from the rich", because there are too many layers between us for me to effectively address, and it doesn't scratch my agile itch. I instead have worked towards increasing both mutual assistance capabilities and self-sufficiency at the same time, and reducing my and others' reliance upon capital in an organic fashion. My position is that the capitalists (the 0.1%) have for all intents and purposes "won". They've "taken their 'ball' and gone home". The more I can decouple from capital "churn", the more I can save of myself and those I care for. There are some extremely broken systems (real estate, legal, political, medical, etc.) in the US that take unreasonable levels of capital to access for ordinary income citizens.
Autarky isn't my goal; it's long-term consistent survival at an "acceptable" standard of living without requiring a poll tax of capital out of reach of ordinary income households. Sometimes that takes some involvement with capital, but preferably a more frugal method is used when feasible, trading off convenience/time/etc. that I have more readily available. I don't hate capital nor capitalists. I'm just (in the scheme of a US reality where booking a billion in annual individual income doesn't even place in the top 10 income list) capital poor and working around it as best I can. Let it be noted in this discussion however, that there are many US citizens who would give their left nut to be in my "poor" position; many of us by virtue of being on HN in a well-compensated industry (at this time, I never take good times for granted) are in a similar position. But if you're talking about grand "take them down" terms, I've found I've achieved far more stability, sooner, by pursuing the above path than getting all pissed about a system I have neither the capital nor power to help change at this time.
"From the “vast right-wing conspiracy” through the “basket of deplorables” to now, the Democratic message increasingly focuses on the illegitimacy of the ordinary conservative voter’s opinion: ignorant, conspiratorial, and racist, so terrible that the only hope is mass-reprogramming by educated betters."
And Eric Schmidt is looking at tax havens, ironically reported in the media arm owned by Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-24/wealthy-u...
I find the ideas of fixing healthcare, reinvesting in our economy and infrastructure, and shoring up our social programs highly convincing. And I'm pretty sure the polls show those ideas resonate across the political spectrum. And I only hear those ideas coming from one party.
After the latest fixes, insurance for a self employed family of four is about $25k a year after insurance and deductibles.
Over less than 3 months, a friend of mine's monthly premium went up an order of magnitude - with reduced benefits - to the point where it made no sense to do anything but drop it completely and start seeing a doctor who takes cash.
There was nothing wrong with the concept other than the failure to include single payer. Democrats under Obama managed to come up with something less good which still was a net gain, but it was destroyed by Republicans. Just wanted to make that clear.
Sounds like they are doing short term self preservation well.
A Dem win or a Republican win (wherever) will not improve things much, it'll just flip flop things around for a little bit and the other side will be pissed off until they win again. It's a downward spiral and I'm not seeing anything being done to break the cycle, it's just damage control and short-term improvements.
Reboot the system, change the democratic system, allow for more varied representation, reduce the power of the president (and for fuck's sake moderate their statements, Trump's twitter diarrhea was an embarrassment to everyone), etc.
We're most likely heading towards a society of private laws, but the path to that is likely to be very painful.
One of the few major pieces of legislation that Republicans actually passed while in power over the past four years were tax reforms which were very beneficial to the wealthy. And the Trump administration changed several of the EPA's environmental policies to be more business friendly (and less friendly to the environment).
Democrats, on the other hand, are in broadly favor of increasing taxes on the wealthy. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in particular had some policy proposals that would have taxed the wealthy quite significantly. Democrats in recent history also passed the Dodd-Frank act, which imposed a number of regulations on the finance industry (and was partially repealed by Republicans in 2018).
These issues are front and center in the culture war. Remember Joe the Plumber and "Drill baby, drill" in 2008? Or Trump's vows to save the coal industry in 2016? And how many times did Pence bring up the subject of fracking in the 2020 vice presidential debate?
Edit: you don’t have to agree with the position I just stated but it is a fact that that it is a socialist position and has been since the days of Marx. I’m just pointing out that the author is trying to paint it as a middle position, and it’s not, it’s a left position. In its most extreme form it has a specific name: class reductionism.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.urbandictionary.com/define....
Now I think you can make the case that this is too ideological and not good HN material. That’s fine. But if it is HN material is it not fair to make basic points about the topic of the article itself?
Are there any right leaning bloggers/talk show hosts that you would recommend?
In a rare inversion, the headline is more correct than the article.
The wealthy (really, the elites: a wealthy small business owner has nothing to do with this) want culture wars because they want the middle and bottom fighting with one another, rather than with the elites. They aren't accepting anything, this is what they want, and they have the means to achieve it.
Small businesses suffer much more from a minimum wage increase, so of course their owners are against it. Meanwhile, large business owners benefit from a minimum wage increase thanks to the ensuing reduction in competition.
I'm not arguing for or against a higher minimum wage here, but saying small businesses owners "rabidly vote against" it simply because it "might affect their lifestyle" is disingenuous. Both types of business owners have clear incentives which have nothing to do with altruism or avarice.
I'm sure Bezos would be happier if the Trump adminstration wouldn't rig a multi billion dollar defense contract in response to his newspaper. Youtube, would make a lot more advertising dollars if they weren't pressured to demonetize so many videos.
I would also agree that it is important to define what "rich" means since making class distinctions and comparisons does change the emphasis and logic considerably.
That said, the (ultra) wealthy tend to profit either way and prefer chaos because it puts an incredible downward pressure on the classes below them. That downward pressure minimizes the likelihood of future competition. It's a long game that only the (ultra) wealthy can afford to play.
Also, leverage is an important consideration. It's easier for a billionaire to leverage 1 billion dollars compared to 1 billion people leveraging 1 dollar. There would be measurable consequences either way, but that billionaire is in a much different position by having singular command of that wealth.
Is there any quantified evidence that supports this hypothesis? The corporations owned by the ultra wealthy spent a lot more money on backing Hilary and Biden rather than Trump.
I'm comfortable saying there is considerable evidence to back up the argument. However, I suspect any researcher who put forth such a hypothesis might have difficulty finding a grant. Take from that what you will.
The article is really interesting, so it's too bad he mars it with this kind of unproven, cruel and vitriolic thesis.
Don't be nasty. Engage in legitimate conversation or be quiet.
It's not 100% valid or exhaustive proof, but at the very least shows that it's a reasonable avenue of exploring rather than shutting it down and calling it "unproven, cruel and vitriolic".
In fact, the Dems' agenda is anti-rich (raise taxes enormously, etc.) and the Republicans are currently controlled by non-college-educated blue-collar people.
This is obvious. If Taibbi has a counter-narrative to the obvious, that's fine, but he needs to present evidence.
This characterization lacks credibility. Let's look at some leaders:
- Lindsey Graham [0]
- Mitch McConnell [1]
- Kevin McCarthy [2]
- Ronna McDaniel [3]
Characterizing them as "non-college-educated blue-collar people" is odd. First, what do you have against working class people? Second, what inference are you trying to make with college education?
> In fact, the Dems' agenda is anti-rich (raise taxes enormously, etc.)
Maybe? Bloomberg famously tried to buy an election and the DNC certainly capitulated. I don't know that I'd call that "anti-rich", I think I might use the word "opportunistic". In a time where we're dealing with a lot of inequality guess what kind of opportunity is rife for exploitation? The kind that makes Dick Costolo think he's not "rich". [4]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsey_Graham#Early_life
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_McConnell#Early_life_and...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_McCarthy_(California_pol...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronna_McDaniel#Early_life,_edu...