From Thomas Frank in Le Monde diplomatique: Can President Joe Biden mend a torn America?
Thomas Frank (author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?) writes in Le Monde diplomatique:
It is the ‘duty’ of American citizens, President Joe Biden announced in his inaugural address last week, to ‘defend the truth and to defeat the lies’. Much of Biden’s speech was an unremarkable stringing-together of patriotic platitudes, but this call for a great truth crusade stood out for its audacity. America is, after all, the homeland of the public relations industry, of televangelism, of Madison Avenue, of PT Barnum. Our leading scholars worship at the shrine of post-structuralism; our brightest college graduates go on to work for the CIA; our best newspapers dynamite the barrier between reporting and opinion; our greatest political practitioners are consultants who ‘spin’ the facts this way or that.
In declaring a national quest for truth, of course, Biden was referring to none of these things. His target was a single man: Donald Trump, the most energetic shit-shoveler ever to occupy the Oval Office.
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This essay is not a brief for free speech absolutism or an effort to rationalise conspiracy theory or an attack on higher learning. It is about the future of the Democratic Party, the future of the left, and here is the suggestion I mean to make: the form of liberalism I have described here is inherently despicable. A democratic society is naturally going to gag when it is told again and again in countless ways, both subtle and gross, that our great national problem is our failure to heed the authority of traditional elites.
Worse, when those traditional elites come together with unprecedented unanimity to insist their high rank proves their correctness and justifies their privilege … when they say we are in a new cold war against falsehood … when the news media dumps its neutrality and likens itself to superheroes and declares it is mystically attuned to truth and legitimacy … when they do those things and then get the biggest news story of the decade fabulously wrong, a society like ours is going to spot the hypocrisy. And we are going to resent it.
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But when they look at liberals, they will shake their heads with disbelief. How could they have thought it was wise to try to enlist the great economic and cultural powers of our time — the masters of Silicon Valley — to try to censor our opponents? Ira Glasser, the old ACLU chief, relates how liberal academics embraced speech codes because they ‘imagined themselves as controlling who the codes would be used against’. What these well-meaning liberals didn’t understand, he continued, was that ‘speech restrictions are like poison gas. It seems like it’s a great weapon to have when you’ve got the poison gas in your hands and a target in sight, but the wind has a way of shifting — especially politically — and suddenly that poison gas is being blown back on you.’
As Glasser’s metaphor suggests, this cannot end well. The mob attack on the Capitol frightened us all. But for Democrats to choose censorship (via the monopolists of Silicon Valley) as the solution to the problem is a shocking breach of faith. There are many words one might use to describe a party that, over the last 30 years, has shown itself contemptuous of working-class grievances while protective of the authority of the respected… but ‘liberal’ isn’t one of them.
Read the whole thing.
Well FWIW that piece was completely conventionally poor. Not sure there was an original thought in there or any information beyond the most superficial. His knowledge of the Russia investigation comes apparently from the Fox news version. He has no clue what the Mueller investigation or the subsequent Senate report or the Stone/etc trials found. Just weak ass ignorant crap. He didn’t read beyond the headline or first para of any piece about any of it.
Other than that was still a weak piece, lots of same old, same old. Liberals control The Media ( just ignore all the conservative media and places like FB where conservatives do great). A handful of liberal institutions promote the culture war makes ( sense as long as you ignore all the conservative media and personalities pushing the CW)
He has channeled the shallow Left with his crit that liberals now like the CIA and FBI. Welp, Frank dude that is the simplest view taking various orgs as 100% evil and to be hated. However intell/law enforcement actually has a role. Not to be taken without thought or care, but not to be mindlessly ignored. He name checked Tiabbi who is a poster boy for shallow contrarian and isn’t having a good day re: his hx of being a royal sexist douche.
If there is a point in there its that many liberal want private businesses to moderate the internet which is true and there are some good arguments for. Gov shouldn’t do it, but some sore of moderation at the giants YT, FB, TW, The OT seems like a positively good thing. He and other free speech warriors would do good to read up on FB’s own findings that they were used to exacerbate a genocide in Myanmar. There arent’ easy answers or solutions without tradeoffs but he ain’t getting anywhere that deep or thoughtful. There is a good discussion somewhere in there about why internet moderation is good and how it should be done. But he isnt’ close to the ball park.Report
Some might see parallels between the left’s attitude towards the CIA and their attitudes towards the police in recent months.
We’ve pivoted from “Defund the police!” to “Nobody is arguing that we should *LITERALLY* defund the police!” to… wherever the hell we are now. Somewhere around “well, you have to understand”, I guess.
Out of curiosity, does pointing out that a critic was horribly sexist in the past make you feel like you’ve discredited the critic?
I mean, if I wanted to argue that Al Franken wasn’t a particularly good senator because he sexually assaulted a bunch of women, would you feel like that has nothing to do with whether he was a good senator or not?Report
Shallow take is shallow. Defund was a slogan. Under the slogan fit all sorts of ideas about how to reform the police from abolition to laundry lists of reforms involving various social services. Hating all in tell services is shallow. Plenty on the the left are shallow about foreign policy or want easy villains. None of that excuses trumps crimes though it does mirror the “always attack” rhetorical style.
Frank was to lazy and tiabbi to ideological/reflexively contrarian to see the large pile of evidence in front of him.Report
Hating all in tell services is shallow.
Is reframing what he said about the CIA as “hating all in tell services” shallow?Report
What does this mean?
The common lefty view that all intell services are evil and should never be trusted is shallow. That seems to be what he is channeling. It was a great way for contrarian types to ignore evidence they didn’t want to see.Report
“What does this mean?”
It means that your paraphrase of his position on the CIA as being identical to the common lefty view that “all intell services are evil” is indistinguishably shallow from the shallowness you’re criticizing his (misparaphrased) position as being.Report
So what is his position? None of that changes the substance of my argument that his take on the Russia deal was ignorant of the actual facts or that a lot lefties take all intell agencies as evil. Like none of this relates to my points.Report
“What is his position?”
Well, let’s look at what he said:
It seems that his position is that “Liberals” knew that the CIA was bad (and gave reasons) until the FREAKING SECOND it started saying bad things about Trumpler.
At which point they broke out the Lee Greenwood songs.
And you’re conflating “the CIA” with “all intell agencies”.
And your points, such as they are, are built on the sand of your mispharaphrases of his position.Report
“Lee greenwood” songs… Yeah that is good faith rep of what has been said. None of this addresses the facts that were shown about trump which neither frank nor you know or seem to care about. It’s all the CIA was bad therefore ignore the info you don’t like. He’s saying liberals knew the CIA was correctly bad until trump was mean to them. Trump was attacking everyone who didn’t fall in line and tried to bend them to his ego. That is bad even if it’s the CIA.
Contrarians got suckered by his deep state crap. He hated anybody who spoke against him but if it was something you didn’t like you were fine with it. All of a sudden he was attacking the elites when he was just trying to crush any dissent.Report
It’s all the CIA was bad therefore ignore the info you don’t like.
That’s not what he said.
Here’s what he said:
Not long ago, the CIA was the great bête noire for peace-minded liberals: as everyone knew, it was the government agency that overthrew foreign governments, deceived and misled people in distant lands and fought for dictatorship around the world. Its list of crimes against democracy was long and disturbing.
Is this statement of his accurate?
This is important.
Because, if it is accurate, then we’re in a place where we’re noticing that what he said is not the same thing as, and let me copy and paste this, “Hating all in tell services”.Report
Interesting if true.
I think we have to assume that it isn’t true.Report
It’s probably true but demographic size of each category, and the baselines, matter.
White college slice is growing over the white college slice. African American vote is ‘dead cat bouncing’ from the Obama years. Asian/other is still just a single percent fraction of the national electorate.
The sole interesting number is Hispanic shift.Report
Are blacks less enthusiastic about the D’s than when Obama was running? I’d expect so.Report
“when the news media dumps its neutrality and likens itself to superheroes and declares it is mystically attuned to truth and legitimacy…”
He writes this, as if neutrality is a good thing, and declaring oneself attuned to truth is a bad thing.
What Frank is doing here, with his sweeping condemnation of some shadowy cabal of “elites” is an illustrated example of the reactionary mind.
There is one group of citizens called The People, the rightful and legitimate holders of power; And then there is this other group, The Elites, who have no legitimate claim to power, yet possess it anyway.
It isn’t just that he compresses all media outlets, from the New York Times to the Epoch Times into one singular entity; Its that these entities are expressing a vision and will which is opposed to what Real People have or want.
Frank is, ironically, setting himself up as the arbiter of truth and legitimacy. He assures us that The People don’t like what The Elites are saying, and that The People won’t stand for it, and The People think this, and The People believe that.
Does he entertain the idea that maybe there is such a thing as objective truth, and that some media report it, while others don’t?Report
The quote: “mystically attuned to truth”
Your statement quoting the quote: “attuned to truth”Report
What does that mean to you, “mystically”?Report
Something non-neutral enough for it to not warrant exclusion.
There are a lot of beige adjectives.
“Mystically” ain’t one of them.Report
Declaring oneself to be attuned to the truth without having the actual evidence of said truth in hand.
Like just knowing that a given demographic is motivated by racism just because some noisy subset of that demographic is openly racist.
Or just knowing that there was widespread election fraud because there was no possible way your preferred candidate could lose without it being true.Report
OK so if Frank meant to assert that media outlets like the NYT and WaPo are attuned to the truth without having the actual evidence of said truth in hand, that is a big statement requiring some big evidence. And further, he’s asserting that there is no significant difference between these media outlets and others like Newsmax, Fox, or the Epoch Times.
Lets stipulate that the first group gets things wrong at times and have a subtle bias towards certain cultural mores;
What evidence does anyone have to support such a sweeping conclusion as he does?
Does anyone here actually believe what Frank is saying?Report
Sweeping? No.
Are there pockets of left elites who fit that bill to some extent? Sure. And they like to hear themselves talk, and they like to see themselves in print, and they have enough cachet to get themselves broadcast.
So, squeaky wheels and all that.Report
*snort* Frank does a mighty fine number beating the heck out of the strawman of the Democratic Party and Liberals that seems like it was lifted right off the WSJ opinion page and Drehers fever dreams. I suppose his alarmism has its uses and places but his utter failure to grapple with liberals as they actually exist or the Democratic Party as it actually exists badly weakens his point.Report
Like a lot of the paid punditry he also fails to grapple with the fact that the policies promoted by the Democratic Party since at least Reagan are not liberal or leftist in nature.Report
That would complicate his point too much.Report
Anytime someone starts railing about “the media” without distinguishing between reliable sources like NYT and gutter stuff like the Murdoch tentacles they are on thin ice.
I see a lot of this on the ostensible lefty side of the aisle, where people rant about “FTNYT” and routinely “cancel their subscriptions”; But then when they are asked for evidence of such and such, the response is “Oh, here’s a link to the New York Times.”
Even around here, no one ever supports their argument by citing Fox, Newsmax or Breitbart; Because even conservatives know these sources are comically unreliable and categorically different than the mainstream media.Report
It’s not even just that.
Every time this whole genre of critics seem to adopt the theme from the right that “The lamestream media” is hand in glove with the Democratic Party in a similar manner to how Fox is a propaganda arm for the GOP (Or should it be that the GOP is the political arm of Fox now?). That’s ludicrously, knee slappingly, obviously not true. The mainstream media shares a number of cultural and moral similarities with liberals and the Democratic Party, sure, but they have some -huge- gaps and differences and their interests are sometimes deeply divergent. How anyone can suggest the Media is in the tank for Democrats after witnessing the 2016 election process baffles me to no end.Report
I’d phrase what he observed another way.
What he saw was, instead, “The Cathedral”.Report
Are you citing Curtis Yarvin unironically?Report
Not citing him as much as pointing to one of the same things that he pointed to and using the name he used when he pointed to it.Report
Does it make any difference to you if the thing he is pointing to exists only in his head?Report
It depends on whether other people see it too, I guess.Report
Isn’t that just “views of the shape of the earth vary”?Report
It depends on the extent to which you can be confident that your viewpoint (and the ones that agree with it and/or help prop it up) is the only one that can be trusted to accurately describe social constructs.Report
“The Cathedral” is not a social construct about which reasonable people can differ, but a conspiracy theory on par with The Illuminati or The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion.Report
The way that Yarvin describes it is that it is *NOT* centralized. It doesn’t have a core of nefarious people (of *ANY* race, color, or creed) at the center driving it.
The Illuminati or The Protocols offer hope at the bottom. “If we killed the right people, we could be free!”
The Cathedral, by contrast, is emergent.Report
The very term “Cathedral” is sophomoric.
It attempts to strike a pose as some sort of Martin Luther speaking truth to power, but ironically he (and the rest of the neo-reactionaries) are more like religious leaders who, when imagining God see their own face.
Strip away all the intellectual pretensions and its just the pigs from Animal Farm.Report
I’m pleased we’ve moved to attacking their pretentions instead and will thus say “fair enough”.
Because, seriously: Yarvin is pretentious as hell.Report
Did he steal “cathedral” from Eric S. Raymond?Report
Frank is a very firm class not race or anything else leftist. He really believes that if the the Democratic Party adopts his preferred agenda than millions of what he sees as authentic working class white Americans, because they fit is priors on what it means to be working class, will abandon the Republican Party for the Democratic Party. That the Democratic Party would have to abandon anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-homophobia in order to do this is of no concern to Mr. Frank.
The Democratic Party isn’t going to abandon social liberalism though and under Biden is promoting more actively liberal legislation of the classic social democratic sort than any existing social democratic party in the world. Denmark’s female social democratic prime minister is aiming to reduce asylum application to zero while Biden is proposing big liberal reforms that will make entering the United States much easier for immigrants. Probably the closest to open borders as politically plausible.Report
Frank has been complaining that Democrat’s have had the temerity not to throw everybody whose not an anti-immigrant factory worker in Wisconsin under the bus for the past 30 years.
The whole problem with the “class, not race” argument is the most successful nominees among the mythical white working class in the past 40 years for the Democrats was…Bill Clinton, who was far more right-wing economically than any other candidate before or after him, but most importantly, he was also the most right-wing culturally.
This has been consistent in Democratic primaries for decades now, the white working class gets behind whomever they perceive as the most right-wing culturally – now, this can lead to hilarity like the same people who voted for hard drinking Hillary against effete Obama in 2008 backing Bernie in 2016 over That Bitch, Hillary, and then backing Diamond Joe over Bernie in 2020, but it’s also just true.
There are any number of economically progressive things the Democrat’s can do that will also be popular – they should do them, even though it actually won’t effect the WWC vote all that much, unfortunately.Report