The Self-Isolation of the American Left | Hacker News Reader

The Self-Isolation of the American Left

nytimes.com

38 pointsjohntfella30 comments

>Martin Luther King Jr. were among the great champions of progressive ideas in the 20th century. But they didn’t exist within an insular, self-validating community whose values and assumptions were often at odds with those of the rest of society.

Okay I was going to take this seriously but, saying MLK wasn't 'at odds with society'???

"While many people of all races admired King and Parks in the 1960s, the majority of Americans did not and found the civil rights movement both wrong and unnecessary.

Activists like King and Parks were reviled, red-baited and called extremists in their own time. " > https://time.com/5099513/martin-luther-king-day-myths/

I'm sorry people are at odds with tiny changes in their work place and there is schools of thought to implement change in workplaces to deal with that resistance, but an ideology around 'we need to and can do better by changing' is supposed to not generate that resistance? I think he's the one that needs less time on twitter if he's taking terminally online people as if their represtives of their respective movement.

It's lucky that the author put such a ludicrous claim right up top in the first sentence, because that will save an awful lot of people having to sit through the rest of his twaddle.

> Okay I was going to take this seriously but, saying MLK wasn't 'at odds with society'???

I don't think you're reading it correctly. MLK's values and assumptions were indeed not at odds with society. He was highly religious (Christian) and his arguments with regard to civil rights were largely based on unity, compatibility, harmony rather than divisiveness, detachment, or malice a la Malcolm X.

>Modern progressivism is in danger of becoming dominated by a relatively small group of people who went to the same colleges, live in the same neighborhoods and have trouble seeing beyond their subculture’s point of view.

I think that this small group of (highly political) people's voices are getting quieter and quieter. The citizenry is very keen today of BS detection, and very skeptical of traditional news; rightfully so. Traditional news lives at the mercy of advertisers. Russell Brand recently did a segment about Pfizer and CNN with a montage that was pretty funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5xqP-aPwOU

A lot of this is thanks to the loosening of the stranglehold of traditional news outlets in solely defining narratives.

What do you see replacing "traditional news outlets"? I have a number of strong criticisms, but I don't really see the alternatives as better, or at least not the alternatives that we have right now.

Civilian journalism.

What does that mean? How does that work? This is really vague.

There are plenty of examples, but here is one so you get the idea. This guy is a former cop who, in this video, is explaining how many police cultures work, how they are trained, how the justice system bureaucracy works, and why there are so many issues with police and civilians. You don't get this from traditional news.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhqFDV6iaXI

There are many, many, many examples. There are a lot on YouTube, but that just happens to be the distribution model de jour. Blogging, substack, etc are also viable distributors. When I grew up I always saw journalism as Walter Cronkite (I'm dating myself), Dan Rather, NYT, etc. Those are just corporations who practice journalism for profit. Journalism itself, as defined by the founders in the constitution, isn't limited to that. I believe we are currently experiencing a revolution in journalism, or perhaps a return to its roots. It's exciting.

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising."

Citing rotten tomatoes popularity numbers when internet vote stuffing on behalf of whatever axe someone wants to grind is extremely common is not particularly valid.

The problem is that there's a tendency for everyone to stake a philosophical/social position and starts defending it to the death, demonizing the opposition, and not really talking or understanding differing opinions - they're just blather to be yelled louder than.

Yeah, I don't think the RT numbers are all that meaningful as such. However, I do think he has a decent point: how important is some comedian making some joke, really? Is it really something worth protesting or walking out over?

It all seems like a misplaced priority to me. A day has 24 hours. Your life has ~80 years. Your political clout is even more limited. You really need do need to prioritize, and if you look bad in case A people won't take you serious in case B either.

During those Netflix protests the attitude was fairly aggressive; signs of counter-protesters were destroyed and were treated in a way that was less-than-peaceful. I found myself wondering: if Gandhi and MLK are praised for their peaceful resistance in situations that were many many times worse by any standard, then how come we've somehow come to accept this as "normal"? If they could protest peacefully then so can you. And yes, every community has its share of cranks and we shouldn't judge an entire community by that, but if you don't all out the cranks and even encourage them then it's a bad look on the entire community.

At best I feel these kind of antics are just an ineffective and pointless waste of time. More likely I think they're actively harming the cause in the long run.

Anyway, I have always been on the left and always will be, but I have a strong dislike for American Liberals to the point where it's just becoming the left's version of Fox News and all of that. Not quite there yet, but moving in that direction fast.

This article is flagged – can anyone who flagged it please give your reason? (If you didn't flag it, please don't speculate as to why it was flagged.)

I believe it was flagged by moderators, since it can't be vouched for.

This phenomenon is not exclusive to the left. Trump populism works exactly the same way. For some reason, only the left is called to take responsibility for it.

> For some reason, only the left is called to take responsibility for it

Wait, what? The right is frequently called to take more responsibility for its extreme elements – moderate Republicans being accused of playing down the seriousness of the Capital invasion, etc. And rightly so.

I don't know what you've been reading, but there's a mountain of criticism of populism – including Trump's flavour of it – and then some.

Speaking purely for myself, I would rather criticise my "own side" (i.e the left in my case) than the "other side". I feel it's considerably more constructive and helpful. It's also exceedingly vexing to see someone make bad arguments for a position you broadly agree with.

Fuck off David Brooks.

There are more strikes happening in the USA now than ever before in my lifetime. Most Americans want free, or at least cheaper healthcare. These are not isolated beliefs. The fact that this jerk wants to label a few things 'The American Left' and then decry them as isolating just means he either isn't paying attention to what Americans actually want, or intentionally ignoring obvious trends.

Frankly he's isolated and out of touch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik

Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. It's a tedious internet genre that degrades the forum and in the end just burns it to a crisp. We're trying to stave that off here, if possible (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).

I'm sure you can make your substantive points thoughtfully—can you please do that instead of name-calling and fulminating?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: I just had to ask you about this not that many posts ago. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the site guidelines and taking the intended spirit of this site more to heart, we'd appreciate it. You're welcome here, and we don't need you to change your views, but we do need you to stick to the rules.

Toning down would probably prevent your post from being flagged.

Being right and being able to bring it across in a non-offensive way are two different shoes.

Of course he avoids discussion of any topics with a direct material impact on working class people and instead engages in the same “culture war” crap he’s trying to rail against.

Pundits be pundits – through the process of claiming that there is a perception of "X" they try to engender perception "X".

The irony is you are arguing the same point as him, but took it to heart in some odd agressive way.

Cheaper healthcare and worker's rights are universal left wing qualities.

The isolation he is pointing out is that instead of these principles, most discussion has been captured by fringe issues which alienate more people than they attract.

America is just too big. Time to split up or cede power completely to the individual states as originally was intended (but not really since Federalist vs Anti-Federalist was a thing). Ultimately geographic and socioeconomic factors are what fuel the division. No amount of politicking can override reality. Either America strikes down dissidents (whatever that means to you) or we accept the oscillations that is the never-ending American culture war (not to imply other countries don't have similar problems).

When one group believes in big government and the other believes in small government in contradictory and circumstantial ways, there's no reconciliation.

> When one group believes in big government and the other believes in small government in contradictory and circumstantial ways, there's no reconciliation.

Well good news: both the left and the right believe in big government. The bad news is that they each want a different type of big government.

Like you said, one of the issues is we have a strong federal government that passes one-size-fits all laws for everybody (Hamiltonian model). Traditionally the country was governed by states, so each state had its own set of rules to live by (Jeffersonian model). We've moved from the Jeffersonian model to the Hamiltonian model starting around the 1900s and WWI. Both have their issues.

Of course a split up would negate the power of groups, meaning, each individual independent region would be weaker than the whole. This is what Lincoln was talking about during the Civil War about secession. We want to design a system so that we get the benefits of a large, powerful union but also the benefits of independently run states with none of the bad things that both can provide. Ideally each state would run itself in the way the citizens want, that also don't violate minority civil rights, while having a strong defense of a union of states.

I would argue the Civil War put the nail in the coffin of the Jeffersonian model. The 14th amendment buried the coffin. That's been over 150 years ago, in our "tween years" so to speak. The United States has spent the overwhelming majority of its lifetime under our current model. What I find ironic is the Right abhors Freedom - they don't like people having the freedom to marry whomever they want, they don't like people having the freedom to have sex with whomever they want, and they don't like people having the freedom to be whomever they want. Those are profound freedoms to argue so vehemently against.

When you step back you realize it's not even a "small government" vs. "big government" thing - both sides want a big government. To me it appears the right wants a theocracy and the left wants a secular government. Which means, ironically, it's an argument over religion. Which is supposed to be one of our freedoms, but here we are.

>I would argue the Civil War put the nail in the coffin of the Jeffersonian model.

I would think the Civil War certainly started the move from Jeffersonian to Hamiltonian, but that is one of the oldest arguments of the design of the country (thus why each theory is given its father's name.). I think the pendulum moved back towards Jeffersonianism after reconstruction. I've heard the Civil War called essentially the prototype of the world wars, and I can see that. I feel WWI really started the movement back towards Hamtonianism with Wilson in earnest. It's been a long road though.

>is the Right abhors Freedom

I would argue both political parties abhor freedom, it's just different freedoms. To only see (or support) one party curtailing freedoms while ignoring the other really supports that system. Political parties weren't in the original design and cropped up as a power grab during Washington's administration. They've hijacked power ever since.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell...

> I would argue both political parties abhor freedom

Agree with you 100% there! It's just one of the parties claims to be the party of patriots and freedom - and they're not. Meanwhile, neither party can claim they're the party of freedom. As you pointed out, there are some freedoms each party supports and others they suppress. It just goes to show that freedom is still a terrifying concept to the political class!

Yeah, exactly.

Personally I think small states + active democracy is the way. Ultimately, freedom of movement plus observation of different modes of governance will force states to change or be abandoned.

The government should apply a thin layer of rules to be followed, and otherwise let states do their own thing. In theory that's what we're already doing, but it's a matter of opinion.

one group believes in small government? What group is that? Not the GOP, certainly. In 2017, trump asked congress for huge cuts in many departments/agencies (e.g,. EPA (-33%), DOL (-21%), and many others)...however, congress offered a budget to trump that had no cuts, essentially, and actually increased the budget....who controlled congress (senate and house) in 2017? The GOP controlled both senate and the house...

so which group wants smaller government?

There are plenty of groups that advocate for smaller government - one being "Citizens Against Government Waste."

I intentionally refrained from naming specific groups since that wasn't really the point.

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