I would really like to let all this go, but I’ve been repeatedly challenged, so here goes. After this, no more of this stuff for awhile.
I consider myself a socialist. In that, I mean that I don’t believe that our problems can be solved by more or better capitalism, but by systemic reform that enables us to capture the value generated by our enormous productive capacity in a period of automation and incredible increases in efficiency. Those who respond to calls for socialism by referencing failed, immoral communist states of the 20th century fail to recognize the vast increases in the productivity of our agriculture and manufacturing infrastructure. We have the ability to generate the material needs all humans require to survive and thrive, on a scale and with an efficiency never dreamed of by the most wide-eyed Bolshevik.
My preference would be to begin to transition into a system of market socialism through the implementation of some sort of universal basic income, financed through steeply progressive marginal tax rates for the upper and (yes) middle class. This would replace our current patchwork social safety net, which is paternalistic in the way it directs how poor people spend money and is subject to waste and graft. I think the logic of this sort of program will become harder and harder to ignore in a world where more and more jobs are automated out from under workers, given the incredible and growing capacity for computers and robots to replace them.
I believe that the massive reduction in senior citizen poverty that Social Security engendered could be replicated on a nation-wide scale with such a program. More than just this matter of immediate material need, I think the institution of such a minimum guaranteed income would lead to an incredible flowering of creative and productive potential, as once people were freed from the fear of abject poverty, they would feel free to pursue their passion projects. Those passion projects could very well be businesses, and bring them income; they simply wouldn’t have to fear that they would go hungry if those businesses failed. Of course there would still be tough jobs that would require the incentive of salaried work. I think you would be surprised at how many people continued to pursue traditional employment under these conditions.
The Affordable Care Act, for all of its problems, is a step in the right direction for our health care system. I think the eventual and natural goal should be a single payer system, such as those employed in some of the best medical systems in the world. In the shorter term, a public option would do a tremendous amount of good. I’m not sure if it’s possible to have an efficient and human health care system while our massively powerful health care insurance industry persists, so if I had a magic wand to wave, I’d wave it to institute a system (similar to Switzerland) where for-profit basic insurance is illegal.
We could help pay for the costs by significantly reducing our military expenditures. Because our military is so much vastly bigger than the rest of the world’s armies, we have ample room to cut without sacrificing our self-defensive capacity. Yes, we would have to reduce our ability to dictate terms to the world, but then for me that sounds like a great thing. Ss the last several decades have shown, we are jeopardizing our people, our money, and our morality in the pursuit of military dominance. Given the rise of countries like China and India, I think those who say that our relative decline is not a choice are probably right. And given the size and capability of our nuclear arsenal, we retain an edge that very few other countries would challenge. The benefit to our national morality, and to our international reputation, would be huge, as I follow Martin Luther King in saying that the United States is the greatest force for destruction in the world. In particular, our conduct in the Muslim world is outrageous and needs to change.
I believe that an equitable and just country requires not just high worker wages but worker power. I believe that human beings need more than cheap commercial goods to flourish; they need meaningful power in the workplace, job security, and a sense of meaning in their work, which can be best secured by giving them as much autonomy and responsibility as the job allows. I believe that a great deal of good could be done for workers if we simply enforced extant labor law correctly, if we passed card check, and stopped allowing businesses to abuse our labor rights. Unions can secure worker power, help them redress their grievances, and push back against inequality.
I believe that America is a country that is filled with deep and systemic racism. I believe the only way to counter this racism is with structural economic reform, aggressive policing of anti-discrimination law, and programs like race-based affirmative action to achieve greater racial equality. I also believe that humanity retains a deep and abiding sexism that pervades gender relations in every corner, and I similarly think that only economic and structural systems of reform can redress these. Equal pay laws like the Lily Ledbetter act (thanks for signing, Obama!) are part of this; explicit quotas and affirmative action are too. I believe in abortion rights without restriction, up until birth, under the conviction that women own their own bodies and that this ownership must be total and complete. I believe the federal government has no business regulating women’s bodies. Similarly, I believe that the only legitimate concern for whether sexual behavior is permissible is informed consent. Given informed consent, free of coercion (and recognizing that children and animals are not capable of providing informed consent) there is no such thing as an illegitimate act of sex or romance. Without informed consent, no sex act can possible be permissible. I believe in same sex marriage that is full and equal in all respects. I also believe that gay, lesbian, and transgender people require special legal protections, given their historic oppression, just as racial minorities and other groups do.
I am opposed to typical school reform efforts because I find those efforts empirically unsound, incapable of addressing the real economic and social inequalities that cause educational disadvantage, and tied to a vicious campaign against teachers and their unions. I believe in major governmental subsidies for higher education and trade schools. I don’t believe that the government should ever collect interest on student loans, or if it must, that these interest rates should be tied only to inflation. I believe that broad forgiveness of federal student loan debt is a moral and practical no-brainer.
I believe that we should maximize personal freedom, but freedom as such, not freedom just in concept. That means an end to the drug war and a right to privacy from government spying, for instance, but also personal power in the work place– the right to work with dignity and respect, without the fear of termination or ill-treatment based on whim, discrimination, or inappropriate demands. I believe in the freedom to practice religion, but I also believe in the freedom from religion, including from religious symbols and displays in government buildings or public lands. I think a broad opening of our borders to immigrants from all over the world would have great economic and social advantages for us, as well as a move in the direction of greater human liberty and flourishing.
I believe that human flourishing requires a clean and habitable planet, one where endangered species are protected, resources are used efficiently and protectively, energy is generated in as renewable a way as possible, and where all people are considered to hold an inalienable right to clean air and water. I think global warming is an existential threat to our way of life and must be combated actively, perhaps with a carbon tax.
As far as my political bona fides, I don’t claim to be anything special, but the notion that I have never done political work is simply untrue. I first became an activist when I was still in high school, when I was part of a small local LGBTQ rights group, wrote for our (excellent) high school newspaper as op/ed editor, and was vaguely political in that high school way. After 9/11, I became a college antiwar activist. In 2004-2006, I was a 20+ hour a week antiwar activist while a full-time student. In 2005, I worked for months with many dedicated and passionate activists on an antiwar rally in Hartford, which ended up being one of the largest political protests in that city’s history. 2,000 people showed up. For my work, I was given the honor of being the individual permit holder for that event. I moved to Chicago, feeling thoroughly burnt out and defeated by the Bush years. I returned to Connecticut in 2006 and advocated for Ned Lamont’s candidacy. After that failure, I took to political writing. I wrote repeatedly and forcefully in favor of the 2008 Obama candidacy and in support of the ACA. Over time, it became clear that Obama did not adequately represent my interests, and I have largely stopped supporting him since. This is particularly true on issues of foreign policy and domestic surveillance, both of which are areas where he has broad latitude to enact reforms (unlike with domestic policy), and is thus subject to extra criticism.
I do not claim and have never claimed to be any great shakes as a political activist or an organizer. But I have, in the past, worked as hard as I could to oppose war. I also don’t claim to have accomplished much of anything at all in my life as a political writer. I’m just doing my best. I don’t believe Democrats and Republicans are just the same and I don’t believe that partisan politics don’t matter. But I also believe that partisan politics cannot be our sole force for changing the world, and I think neither party represents anything resembling a satisfactory alternative. I think this problem stems in large measure from the tendency of conservatives to push Republicans to the right and liberals to push Democrats to hold the center, causing policy to move rightward even in times of Democratic victory. I believe politics is a fulcrum, and that the extremes define the center, and that we have to push left both in terms of non-partisan local and grassroots organizing, and through primary challenges. I think establishment or movement liberal Democrats simply have to develop a more conciliatory, productive relationship with left-wing critics of Democrats, to cultivate their fringe in the same way the Republicans do, for reasons of both bare politics and of principle. I think we need to recognize that an ideology that never pressures or criticizes its political party leads to a political party that never has incentive to change.
So, there you go. I have a funny feeling that none of this will be good enough to my boo birds!
I’m not sure that the system you cited actually counts as socialism. It seems like a particular sort of welfare state capitalism. I realize that conservatives would call you a socialist for that proposal – but they also think Barack Obama is a socialist. Correct me if I am wrong, but socialism to me implies that the Government actually directly controls capital allocation. If there’s still a free-market system for allocation of capital, that’s capitalism, isn’t it?
Sorry, yeah -I’m an evolutionary socialist, not revolutionary. I think this is a system that we could actually implement at present. The next stage would involve more communal ownership of land, facilities, housing…. I don’t think private property, writ large, would ever go away completely, and for the record neither did Marx.
But Marx did favor the elimination of private ownership of productive capital – or at least the elimination of enough of it that a market system isn’t driving capital allocation. I’m assuming you favor that as well – in the long term?
I agree that the “Communism failed, look at the Soviet Union” argument isn’t a particularly nuanced critique of socialism, but I am not sure that increases in agricultural and industrial productivity have really eliminated what, to my mind, is the strongest critique of socialism – that socialists don’t have a good method for capital allocation. I’ll happily admit that the capitalist system has serious problems (see, e.g. 2008) but it strikes me that socialism doesn’t really have a sound, tested theory of capital allocation at all.
I think you’re assuming that socialism = state ownership. There have been many forms of socialism that advocate for smaller-scale communal ownership, such as worker co-ops, utopian agricultural communities, etc. Robert Paul Wolff has some insightful comments on how free markets can cohere with socialism just as well as with capitalism, if not better: http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2014/02/credo-redux-part-one.html
You can have markets in a socialist system, but you can’t have capital markets. Wolff recognizes this and says it in the next post:
http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2014/02/credo-redux-conclusion.html
He seems to presume that we are close to being able to centralize the planning of the means of production, but he doesn’t really justify it, at least in this post. He says he’s not advocating for the abolition of markets, but if you want the state to control the means of production, which he says he does, then you don’t have capital markets.
It is. I don’t think you can make true socialism work that well for long periods of time as long as you’re dependent on human beings to produce goods and services in your economy. Maybe that will change if we get very good automation and artificial intelligence, but that’s not now.
That’s where we have to part ways*, because I don’t think such a separation of “productive capacity” and the system of incentives and institutions that create it is possible. If you’re going to go beyond tweaking an economic institution with taxes and rules towards actually trying to change the fundamental structure of the economy, you had better be sure that the new system also carries incentives and institutions that generate that kind of productive capacity.
* That you push for a transitional period with “market socialism” makes me believe that you’re acknowledging this, at least in part.
I don’t see that happening with socialism, not without some type of Culture-esque system where the intelligent robots take care of things for you and give you the equivalent of a super-generous basic income. It’s not just the failed regimes of the 20th century – it’s the failed attempts that came before, like the failed experiment in communal property among the Separatists in Plymouth, the United Order experiment among Mormons in 19th century Ohio, and so forth. They all fall apart or tacitly embrace rules that return to private property and trading/market behavior in communities larger than a small group of extended families.
That said, I am fully in favor of a Basic Income, as long as you can fund it sustainably. True freedom of choice in a market only comes with the ability to exit that market altogether, even if it means you might be living a somewhat austere but stable life-style because of it.
I’d still be interested to know what is the proper liberal reaction to the Eich situation. Should we push for laws that would make it illegal to fire him (or pressure him for his resignation)?
Well, I think that first, a properly liberal reaction is to stop and think very carefully about the long-term consequences of this sort of thing, and not to immediately leap to labeling anyone who worries about the precedent that’s set as some sort of homophobe sympathizer.
That’s it? No specific suggestion other than “stop and think”? The actual result is fine; it just happened too quickly and thoughtlessly?
I mean, I agree that the “homophobe” thing is uncalled for, but you wrote a lot of words just to say “stop and think”. Surely there must be more.
I’d say the proper liberal response to Eich is to criticize the people who demanded that he be removed from his job. If your response to every problem is “ban it” then your response isn’t a liberal one.
“I also don’t claim to have accomplished much of anything at all in my life as a political writer. I’m just doing my best.”
Freddie deBoer’s best is 100x better than what most people accomplish in politics, which is why we read you. You fire up our minds, inspire us, and articulate what’s going on in this whackjob world.
So by all means, time to turn off the boo birds for a while and turn on the blue birds. It’s spring, after all! (Speaking of which, how is “Little Dude” the sparrow doing?)
It’s crazy but I think Little Dude is back. There’s a sparrow that looks identical and is nesting in the exact same spot.
Great! He might be drab instead of bright blue like a bluebird, but he’ll still add some “color” to your home!
Dittoing the advice in your last paragraph. Taking a break from the Matrix is always a good idea.
Freddie, US politics are like European religion around 1550: the Catholics and the Protestants hated each other fiercely, but they hated unitarians, atheists, Jews, and Muslims equally. It’s always tough being a free thinker. So really, when it gets too depressing, take a break. Arguing with people usually just makes them more committed to their belief—one name for the phenomenon is the Backfire Effect.
Should you be interested, I just posted something on my blog inspired by one of your boo birds.
“ I also don’t claim to have accomplished much of anything at all in my life as a political writer.”
I, for one, have been persuaded by many of your arguments since first reading you, and often circle back to some of your better writing when trying to clarifying my own thinking. I am not as disenchanted with party politics, but perhaps that is because I am a bit younger. I have linked to your post, turned others into active readers, and given thoughtful consideration to your posts. I had never heard an argument, or for that matter much of anything, about a universal basic income before reading your posts on L’Hôte, and the concept continues to anchor my thoughts about the welfare state. Moreover, you introduced me to Matt Bruenig, Noah Millman, Jacob Bacharach and a handful of other writers I now count as indispensable.
The Left, as it vaguely exist, was a foreign concept growing up in Northern Indiana. Even in at Purdue, the closest thing to a full blown leftist I encountered was Harry Targ, who lacked the ability to spell out his priors before a class of undergraduates. Even if you discount your writings ability to accomplish much of anything, it has opened my eyes to all sorts of arguments that were otherwise hiding in plain sight.
I say carry on as you have been. Also don’t change where you are writing with no warning again, that was frustrating.
Nice post. Good on you for your IRL activism!
Hey, it’s Doug “I Like Capitalism” J, the post-punk Scoop Jackson!
“I believe that America is a country that is filled with deep and systemic racism.”
“Systemic” means “wide-spread”, right? As opposed to “systematic”, which means “deliberately planned”, “by design”.
I got the impression that the deep kind is not widespread, and the systemic kind (to the extent it deserves to be called ‘racism’ at all) is not deep but quite superficial.
But there is also a systematic phenomenon related to all this: various race-based presences, race-based affirmative action, aggressive anti-racist policing. I believe the backlash against this phenomenon, the resentment it breeds, might be partially responsible for the “superficial racism” (for the lack of a better term) getting more systemic than it would’ve been otherwise. Dialectics…
Unrelated to the context surrounding this post, I think the positions you outline demonstrate a difficult contradiction when it comes to re-distributing based on how much wealth the market currently produces vs. intentionally diminishing that wealth to deal with climate change.
yep
I’ve admired your thinking for some time, but I’m also a pretty hardcore LGM/Balloon-Juicer. Hopefully the following is civil.
In my mind, here’s a fairly objective criticism that I do think is quite harsh: you consistently fail to understand that the primary problem in American politics is white supremacy. While you are aware of it in an abstract sense, you so consistently delve into philosophical wanking about “sickness within modern liberalism” that you don’t see what you should really be focusing on – “sickness within modern whites.” Lots of reliable Democrats in Newton, MA absolutely refuse to pay for the education of reliable Democrats in Mattapan, Boston. And the Cleveland Indians still, um, exist. I am aware you have well-developed thoughts on these issues, thoughts I find agreeable and good-hearted. But I get the impression you don’t actually care.
It’s analogous to the endlessly infuriating habit of libertarians to use black suffering as a cudgel against Big Gubbmint without actually lifting an economic/civil-rights finger to do anything about it. The sickness within many modern liberal thinkers is just racism, whether overt or by blindness, and I think it’s something you’ve succumbed to many times.
Scott Lemieux realizes what the problem is, realizes that Shelby County v. Holder is arguably the biggest threat to the United States. It is the liberals who are apathetic to this that should be targeted, not the liberals who strategically vote for Democrats out of sincere pragmatism. I vote Democrat because it’s unambiguously not a party of white supremacism, and I can’t say that for the other electable choice. It seems like you let your defensiveness and anger get the better of you, and it’s painful to watch a strong mind scour a pool that’s so shallow.
Precisely because opposing white supremacy is so important, it has to do be done well, and in my opinion, we are no longer doing it well. And the proof is in the decades of structural and economic differences that have, in some ways, intensified recently, not receded.
I vote Democrat because it’s unambiguously not a party of white supremacism,
No, I disagree. It’s objectively less of a white supremacist party, and its membership do not think of themselves as white supremacists. But there are tons and tons and tons of Democratic voters and politicians who are of the “I’m sick of talking about race variety,” and there are tons and tons of Democratic voters and politicians who have a bootstraps/free market approach to opposing racism. (Which doesn’t work.) And it’s that tendency– the tendency to constantly revert to saying that your team is better, rather than demonstrating the ways in which your team has massive problems– that’s the problem. Since this is married to the “vote Democrat all the time, always, with no strings attached at all, ever” attitude, there’s no reason whatsoever for Democrats to reform. When you treat anyone who criticizes Democrats and pushes them towards a more liberal direction as a traitor who’s no better than Rand Paul, you’re preempting any chance that Democrats will feel pressure to change.
This notion of “criticize them, but criticize them at the right time”– that right time never comes. Ever. It’s just a lie to say that these people accept and support criticism of Democrats when the time is right. Look at 2012. I was told all year that absolutely any mention of Obama’s foreign policy, no matter how bad I thought it was, represented being a traitor to the cause and no better than a conservative Republican. “Not in an election season!” Well, guess what: the election came and went, and nothing changed. Please, go into a Balloon Juice comment thread and try criticizing Obama right now about drones, when he’s not up for reelection ever again. See how that goes. The say “primary Democrats!” Guess what? I took part in a primary campaign, and the usual suspects among Connecticut’s wealthy Democrats– who dominate that party– worked tirelessly to attack Lamont and his supporters. You have no idea how aggressive, ugly, and condescending they were. Hell, there was a brief, hypothetical discussion about a possible Elizabeth Warren primary of Hilary, and the “progressive” internet lost its shit, called people asking for it dreamers, “emoprogs,” or (one more time!) no better than conservative Republicans.
The idea that there’s some time or way or situation where they actually change course and accept left-wing criticism of Obama or Democrats simply is not true. It just isn’t true.
*Sigh* Before I read your comment, I was going to respond with a positive note on your admirable defense of Megan McArdle – who I do think is an idiot – from the genuine savagery of her more idiotic leftbot misogynist critics. But then I read what you wrote, and I’m just upset with you.
>>>I vote Democrat because it’s unambiguously not a party of white supremacism,
>>No, I disagree. It’s objectively less of a white supremacist party, and its membership do not think of themselves as white supremacists. But there are tons and tons and tons of Democratic voters and politicians who are of the “I’m sick of talking about race variety,” and there are tons and tons of Democratic voters and politicians who have a bootstraps/free market approach to opposing racism.
Okay, I feel like you didn’t fully read what I said and latched on to something out of context. There’s another problem of yours, by the way – this isn’t a game, and people write paragraphs, not sentences. People also have a diversity of views on the left, and the fact that online commenters are overemotional morons does not mean that John Cole is an overemotional moron (at least not since 2005). And it also doesn’t mean that you have some great insight that we all missed.
Regardless, you’re trying to score a point that isn’t there. I went on later in my comment about how the sickness is in white supremacy that transcends political boundaries, specifically citing inequity between Democrats in Newton, MA and Democrats in Mattapan, Boston. Brookline-Roxbury is arguably a more abhorrent comparison. I already made the point that you’re trying to use against me.
More to the point, I actually live in Dorchester, Boston, in a neighborhood that’s 90% nonwhite, probably 80% black, and live the experience of White Liberal Jim Crow basically every day when I see gangs running unchecked on the streets and people warning me when I walk home from Walgreens alone at night. So don’t fucking try to one-up me here if you’re not going to take my argument seriously.
And I say “Democrats aren’t the party of white supremacy” because Republicans are a party of obvious and explicit white supremacy. They are a party that frequently campaigns on the inferiority of nonwhites.
When people ask why ~95% of black Americans voted for Obama, they need to go look at that 5%. It’s almost entirely far-right fascist nutjobs, people with brains who, given white skin, would be neo-Nazis, and are so enamored with America’s imperial cock that they forget what matters for its citizens. It’s definitely not just because Obama’s black and they thought it would be a sign of racial progress – though I guess noted black Democrat John Kerry got 90% of the black vote, and black Democrat Bill Clinton got 90% of the black vote, and black Democrat Michael Dukakis got 85% of the black vote.
Or maybe just black people – along with over 80% of all other nonwhites – are well aware which party is going to fight for or against their interests. Leaving aside the fact that the most powerful criticism of Obama mostly comes from black and Latino commentators, it really takes a position of white privilege to trivialize the major difference between the parties here.
And nobody beyond some asshole commenters is preventing you from criticizing leftists or centre-of-centre-leftists from the left. The problem is that you elevate it to the primary problem in American liberalism, and are just such a condescending jerk about it all that you invalidate your own arguments.
Freddie didn’t fail to read you, your argument just doesn’t make any sense. The fact that the republican party is more supremacist then the democrats does not make the dems “unambiguously” not white supremacists. It just makes them not supremacists by comparison. If you said “democrats are unambiguously better for Black people than republicans” I’d agree, but you acknowledge that they have a white supremacy problem, so I don’t know why you insist that they are “unambiguously not a party of white supremacism”
Jesus Christ. I realize I write too many words, but please read the whole thing. While white supremacy exists strongly in the Democratic Party, it *defines* the GOP. This difference has existed for decades, since about 1968.
This is because whites are almost uniformly white supremacists, but form a much less important voting bloc of the Democratic party. It hurts the Democrats to campaign on white supremacy, but it helps the Republicans.
Nonwhites are aware of this. It’s not a difficult concept. Hopefully succinctness makes my point clear. It’s frustrating to deal with “what about X?” when I addressed X in more detail that you guys did, and you’re just not addressing what I said.
Nick, writing *Sigh* doesn’t work unless you use 4 asterisks, not 2.
But it’s pretty uncivil to begin with, so I don’t recommend it.
I was told all year that absolutely any mention of Obama’s foreign policy, no matter how bad I thought it was, represented being a traitor to the cause and no better than a conservative Republican.
No you weren’t.
I really and truly believe that there is a profound difference between how you talk about left-wing critics of Democrats in the abstract and how actual critics are treated at your blog. Your buddy Loomis said that anyone who was compelled to not vote for Obama thanks to his terrible foreign policy and domestic spying record was someone who didn’t care about the plight of women, minorities and the poor. That goes far beyond mere difference of opinion and into declaring people you disagree with bad people, tantamount to racists.
I thought Loomis’ “only a white person could write” post was kind of a terrible cheap shot, even if there was a small kernel of truth to it (privilege does exist, after all) but, dude, you really must be tired from moving the goalposts so much. Why don’t you just open with a legitimate criticism like that instead of the caricature in your post that you can’t provide evidence for?
Nobody ever said you can’t criticize Obama in an election year. What they said is that third party challengers were a fucking waste of time, and that, on the issues that Obama was bad on (civil liberties, foreign policy) the only other guy who could win was just as bad or worse. The point was that you can go ahead and criticize Obama all you want, but that you should pull the lever for the most liberal option that can win. Scream DRONES from the voting booth if you like, but pull the fucking lever.
This isn’t hard, dude.
Saying that you don’t care about women, minorities, or the poor if you refuse to vote for Obama over his foreign policy– which was explicitly stated by Loomis– is not legitimate criticisms. It’s not engaging with people with whom you disagree. It’s not beginning a dialogue. It’s an attempt to portray left-wing critics of Obama as existentially bad people, to accuse them of the worst political crimes people recognize. And that was his line throughout the election season.
Why don’t you try criticizing him for doing that, rather than me for pointing it out?
Uh, for whatever my opinion as an occasional commenter there would matter, I’d be happy to chime in the next time I see something like that, but as I said, there is some truth to the central idea of that post, which was that a vote for Gary Johnson was a vote for the policies of Mitt Romney. You tried before to explain why that wasn’t the case, but you never made a convincing argument.
Focusing on the fact that many of the people urging protest votes were white was problematic and counterproductive to a real exchange of ideas for a variety of reasons, but there were dozens of other LGM posts on the third party vanity candidate issue before that one, so there was ample opportunity to have that conversation. At that point, nobody was changing their minds, which isn’t an excuse for that post, but you can’t focus on that and forget that there were many other more substantive posts about the issue without the accusations of indifference toward the poor, women, etc. You, Friedersdorf, etc. had your chance to argue your side, IMHO you lost the argument, so I understand why you’d want to make it all about how Loomis was a jerk, but there was a much larger conversation than that. Making it all about that one dickmove doesn’t change that you were wrong about protest votes for vanity candidates.
I do find it interesting that a) you seem completely unaware of the 1000 posts or so I’ve written at LGM except for the 1 you want to focus on and b) that you know I have personally expressed some regrets for the phrasing of that post to you directly in the past but you refuse to acknowledge that in the characterization of me that I don’t think others who actually read my work would agree with.
That’s a fair criticism.
“I will try this out for shock value. It happens to fit with a larger theme. The liberal project began to fail when it began to lie. That was the mid sixties when a range of social science appeared — Think Coleman [i.e. the 1966 report by James Coleman on equality of education] — which said it was going to be a bitch. The response was that said social scientists and their craven lackeys were objective right wing deviationists. Whereupon the rot set in and has continued since.” – Moynihan to E.J. Dionne, 1991
The part that’s a “bitch,” if you’re familiar with this social science, is only partially attributable to white supremacy. I admire Freddie’s moralism and find it bracing, but there is no reason to believe evolutionary socialism would destroy, say, achievement gaps on tests.
But it would keep people from falling into poverty because they don’t perform well on such tests, which is the sad reality in a society that has overestimated them so enormously.
If you seriously think the ‘most important problem in America is white supremacy’, you’re officially in la-la land, and should go back to kindergarten before you think about casting a vote next time.
So-called ‘white supremacy’ isn’t among the top 10 issues in America, probably not the top 20. I realize you may feel differently, but facts are more important than feelings, and part of being a mature adult means recognizing that our feelings often have little relations to reality. This is a lesson that it seems like you in particular need to learn.
To me, too, this is amazing to read. Unbelievable. Sounds so much like a parody of liberalism that it’s hard to believe they can be serious. White supremacy, too few female bosses, and homosexual marriage are the existential problems of our times.
Man, this is funnier than The Onion.
But it’s also educational. I bet none of these guys – nor their parents and grandparents – had to work, really work, for a living. I bet none of them know anyone who works for a living. I mean real work, producing something tangible, or cleaning something, you know, with a broom.
I’ll say this about your political writing. I really value your education writing and would welcome more of that.
Paul Campos had an IMHO excellent post at LGM in which he celebrated the role of gadflies in the leftosphere. Based on the last couple paragraphs of this post, I reckon you fancy yourself as playing a similar role, albeit on a smaller scale. The thing is, Greenwald, for all of his faults, generally gets the facts right, and engages people who call his claims into question. I don’t always agree with him, but I’m glad he’s out there keeping people honest.
If you want to play that role, you have to come correct, and I think you failed to do so with respect to this particular dust-up over Isquith’s Salon post. You made unsubstantiated claims about the perils of using public pressure against assholes. Lemieux asked for some evidence for those claims, which were not at all incidental to your initial critique, but instead of supporting them, you chose to keep it focused on the fact that Isquith was mean to Julian Sanchez, which may be true, but is irrelevant to the criticisms of the rest of your original post.
I don’t see any blatant ad hominems in Lemieux’s initial response, so I don’t know why you chose not to address his points, but I see that lack of willingness to engage on the merits as a significant reason why this discussion went pear-shaped.
I’m not really one of the “boo birds” — I do read LGM regularly, but I used to read your old blog as well, and now that I know this one’s here, I’ll probably keep reading. But in this case, I think you did a really shitty job responding to substantive criticism of your original complaint. You could have engaged the front-page argument, but instead, you chose to make it all about the meanies in the comment section.
Nicely done. If I ever look to explain my world-view, I’ll look to this as a helpful example of how such a daunting
Also, as a side note, one area where I think you might have more alignment with LGM and even room for dialogue is the college financing side of thing. Paul Campos, along with other writers, have radicalized me in some ways on the student loan issue. As you’ve written about before in terms of athletics facilities at your own campus, it seems that much of loan subsidies end up being eaten up by college amenities and administration costs. My current leaning is that resources used to make loans cheaper might be better aimed at shoring up the public university system, particularly the lower tiers and community colleges. Campos has done a pretty good job of writing up how some sketchy law schools are basically getting subsidized by loan forgiveness programs that give them the full benefit of debt that should have never been extended in the first place.
As an interim step, I’d think that it might be more politically feasible to go for removing the rules exempting student debt from bankruptcy. That seems to be key under-girding of many of the pernicious aspects of the system and the budgetary costs are indirect which can make the politics easier.
Ergh, edit: how such a daunting task can be handled.
Finishing ones sentences is the first step.
It is a bandaid. You are barely challenging the enlightenment underpinnings that are playing out. But it is a start.
LGM is a sewer. Just stay away.
FFS, who gives a shit ?
I’ll drink to that!
Hey Freddie, here’s a thought Re: your Swamp post.
I don’t think your detrimental remarks towards pseudonymity (That’s what it’s called. It’s not anonymity.) are at all tenable. Not only does your talk of “saying things without consequences” already reek of the same sort of public shamer /censor mentality I applaud you for typically disowning, but this is an age of mass profiling, spying, advertising, etc.: everyone you should have the common sense to be wary of has a deep, vested interest in propagating this sort of blanket ad hominem attack on anons and pseudons. Don’t be their tool. It’s good enough to condemn the raiding/mob mentality, plenty of which is carried out by people under their real names, without tarring the extremely valuable tool of flexible identification.
As always, it’s what’s said, not who says it.
Pseudonymity achieves anonymity in effect.
Pseudonymity has a key distinction (among several), however, which is that of linking separate posts. Admittedly, this may be less important on the fragmented comment sections of the blogosphere, but take, for instance, an attempt at “doxxing”: with anonymity, a poster may discuss their political affiliation in one thread, their hometown in another thread, and their job in yet another, all without leaving themselves open to attacks. But if those posts are linked under a pseudonym, finding out who is behind that pseudonym is trivial. On a simpler level, they’re held to that identity: if they want to change their mind, then they’ll face resistance from others simply for being persuaded. They’ll be labeled a hypocrite, or a turncoat… Pseudonyms are still identities, with nearly all of the associated baggage.
No, pseudonymity does not achieve anonymity in effect. It achieves a *feeling* of anonymity in the user, liberating them in their mind to say hurtful things they would otherwise be too scared to say, but so does posting with a real name on the internet. That’s just what the internet tricks its users into believing. It doesn’t mean anonymity and pseudonymity are remotely equal.
That said, I do wonder why that was your sole objection/response. I can only hope you took the rest of my comment into account, but I don’t have expectations.
Pseudonymity (or whatever you want to call it) does not create assholes. The real question is: why do so many asshole choose to congregate at that particular place? And I don’t think this is a particularly difficult question: mindless mocking of infidels is their shtick. And I’m sure it seemed okay to you, until you became one yourself. So now you know what is, from both sides. So what? Lean your lesson and let them be.
It’s always tricky to generalize from personal experience—which never stops people who exalt subjectivity, of course—but I’ve known a few people who are nice offline and are extremely offensive under their pseudonyms. I agree that pseudonymity and anonymity are not the same, but pseudonymity is closer to anonymity than it is to legal identity, and the purpose of pseudonymity, like anonymity, is to create a persona that is not linked to your most accountable identity.
I’m sure pseudonymity can liberate and unleash the inner asshole, but it still doesn’t create one. It’s not impossible (nor even rare, I don’t think) to sign with a pseudonym while remaining good-natured and polite.
Sure, there are civil pseuds out there—but I’m not thinking of any offhand because the assholes are so prominent. One of the reasons I use my legal name is I know my inner asshole, and I have no desire to unleash it. I upset enough people by disagreeing with them—I don’t need to upset more by ridiculing them too.
I think the best counterexample has to be Facebook. Facebook goes tremendously out of its way to force its users to connect their accounts with their “real” identities, but Facebook still has plenty of assholes on it all the same. There are a lot of things about the Internet which encourage people to be rude, anonymity and psuedonymity just make for an easy target.
I’m not saying legal names make everyone politer—they only make many people politer, and everyone accountable. I once got sucked into a huge flamewar, and one of the worst flamers used her legal name. But most of them used pseuds.
I think it has a lot to do with context well beyond the simple binary of real names versus pseudonyms, though: like whether there are any sort of moderator(s) and a consistently enforced commenting policy, how active the site operator(s) are in the comments, and the tone the operator sets. Back in 2007–2009 when I spent the better part of many days commenting on the Gawker blogs, we had consistently great conversations, and nearly everybody used a pseudonym; I’d say the same thing is true on the A.V. Club today (I don’t comment there often, but I read a lot of the comments). Those are both cases with a lot of active involvement from the people running the site.
There are a lot of good aspects to writing under your real name online, whether it’s as a blogger/author or commenter. And ultimately, I think a better world would probably be a world where everyone did. But as it stands, there are very valid reasons for people to comment pseudonymously, especially if we’re talking about sharing valuable but controversial opinions. I also think there’s something to be said for weighing the merits of someone’s arguments without any awareness of what they look like or who they are.
I agree with all of that. In an ideal world, either no one would have to use pseuds, or everyone who used pseuds would be respectful of others when they disagreed. I really don’t mean to suggest this is simple.
Yeah, I didn’t think you did. Just a topic that is close to my heart and that, randomly, has specifically been on my mind this week, so I was spurred to add my two cents.
So there is a pingback to Lemieux at LGM with a title that contains, apparently without irony, “Not Effective Strategy.” Because, obviously, once we ‘re done ridiculing Freddie deBoer and Ralph Nader into subservience then social justice is at hand.
Thank god I’m middle aged and only have to witness this idiotic dance of death for a few more decades. You younger folks, I’m sincerely sorry; you have to live an awfully long time with both climate change and an utterly clueless American liberal-left. Move to Iceland while you can.
It heartens me to know that you joined a LGBTQ rights group in high school — before, of course, the gay rights movement existed, if we are to believe Jo Becker!
Oh, and right on for “inalienable right to clean air and water.” You should run for congress in West Virginia, perhaps.
am I just nitpicking if I question why you only use the words “racism” and “sexism” but not “white supremacy” and “patriarchy”? I feel like the -ism words signal slightly different phenomena, making racism and sexism sounding like oppressive things within the broader structure—subsumed within capitalism—as opposed to being constitutive structures underlying the fabric of our society the way capitalism does. and the way you frame the issues and your proposed solutions appears to suggest this as well