Here’s Who You Should Be Mad at Online

Eric Medlin

History instructor. Writer. Rising star in the world of affordable housing.

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33 Responses

  1. John Puccio says:

    “The most effective strategy to fight these recalcitrants may actually be online campaigns. The Sunrise Movement and other climate change activist groups are enormously sensitive to social media campaigns. Some of these groups exist entirely on social media. They are comprised of young people who spend many hours of their days on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. These men and women are especially sensitive to social media campaigns and could easily be swayed by a sincere, thoughtful online push to call out their obstinance and push them to accept green construction.”

    ***

    Because Twitter mobs are known for their sincere, thoughtful attacks on those they disagree with?Report

  2. Brandon Berg says:

    The American left is nominally supportive of the Green New Deal, the idea that the government can help radically transform and decarbonize American society in order to curb the devastating impact of climate change.

    There are many proposals to decarbonize American society, the most sensible of which is levying a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The Green New Deal specifically is a proposal to bundle that together with a grab bag of left-wing policy priorities. As the name implies, it’s a bunch of hare-brained economic policies bundled thrown together and painted green.

    In fact, the thing you’re complaining about here—leftists fighting against improvements in environmental policy because they don’t also address ten other policy goals—is very much in line with the spirit of the GND.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Brandon Berg says:

      Clarification: When I said that the GND “is a proposal to bundle that together…” the “that” refers to the goal of decarbonization, not to a revenue-neutral carbon tax.

      I regret the accidental implication that the architects of the GND got something right.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Brandon Berg says:

      And if it’s not the “ten other policy goals”, it’s a thinly veiled case of NIMBY: Environmentalist Edition.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        NIMBYism is a truly bipartisan phenomena. Almost everyone is a NIMBY in the United States. Interestingly almost every YIMBY I know is a lef-leaning college graduate in their 30s and 40s. This crowd is just starting to get political power though.Report

        • North in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          The devilish thing about NIMBYism is that it rests, fundamentally on really strong foundations of self-interest. If you buy a microwave oven you wouldn’t be pleased to wake up one day and discover it’s turned itself into a toaster oven. As a consumer that impulse is basic but it doesn’t fit comfortably onto real estate as neighborhoods are, in their natural state, a slowly but constantly shifting environment. So your neighbors or even neighborhood is prone to change and not always to what you perceive as better.

          I recently experienced this very very first hand. Husbando and I bought a house about a year and a half ago. It’s very close in to Minneapolis in a delightful neighborhood full of restaurants and amenities. A single-family house in Whittier, our neighborhood, is maybe one out of every five buildings now and we paid a very solid price for it. To our immediate south our neighbor is a small bungalow that was being rented out to a Hispanic family. About a month ago we discovered the owner of our southern neighbor is applying to tear it down and erect a ten unit, three story, apartment building on the lot.

          Now I don’t care about crowding or more traffic at all but the literal reality of the shadow of a 3 story building appearing directly to the south of us and reducing light to our house is something no one but a vampire would view with equanimity and the impact on the value of our four hundred thousand something dollar property is also something that you’d have to be a naif to ignore. I am a YIMBY philosophically but I will not lie; I felt the claws of the NIMBY spirit digging deep into my agnostic non-existent soul! Why next door to me?! What will happen to my house? What will happen to my property values?

          Happily, the Minneapolis 2040 plan makes it a lot easier for development and density to occur. While I could have gone to the planning meeting and raised hell, I don’t think I could have actually blocked the approval. So, I clung to my philosophical pride and abstained from trying to interfere in the project. But I felt it/I feel it. The NIMBY temptation is STRONG.Report

          • InMD in reply to North says:

            It happens to us all. There is a geographic divide in the county I live in connected to real estate and schools with the ‘haves’ on one side and the ‘have nots’ on the other (to be clear by any rational standards the whole county is haves but you know how relativity comes into this).

            We live on the ‘have nots’ side and my wife is always going off about the people on the ‘haves’ side with respect to holding up development and always fraught associated issue of school districts. So I get to be a YIMBY and it’s nice but I’m also self-aware enough to realize that deep down, if I lived on the ‘haves’ side, I’d probably find myself doing all of the things they are. It is humbling, and a reminder that virtue is earned, not granted.Report

            • North in reply to InMD says:

              This is my first time as a single family residential property owner so it’s a first for me. *sighs* Comes with the territory of being in your forties I guess.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Brandon Berg says:

      If you want to read a fun thread about a new book from a couple of NYT reporters talking about the aftermath of Biden’s election, I have one available:

      Report

      • North in reply to Jaybird says:

        The iron law of institutions continues to gnaw.Report

        • Saul Degraw in reply to North says:

          I don’t really trust a Jaybird troll but the problem for the Democratic Party is that it is the party of “not Republicans.” There is no real base. There are instead of lots of different bases that do not really interact with each other that much. I’m not that upset about younger voters (which could be anyone between 18-45) being attracted to “socialism” or “social democracy” or what have you. A lot of them were screwed over by multiple recessions, a pandemic, student loans, and morally preening boomer NIMBYs. This is a crowd that has every reason to be skeptical that 1990s triangulation and Davos globalism will make their lives better.

          The abortion language should be strong rhetoric though. There is a significant chance that Roe is overturned and that Republicans attempt a nationwide legislative ban on their next trifecta.

          However, polling does indicate that white members of the Democratic Party tend to be the most socially and economically liberal. The issue of the Democratic Party though is that while there is no real base, everyone thinks it is the real base. Kathleen Rice’s district of suburban realtors and white-collar profesisonals does not interact or really know AOC’s district and vice-versa and the communities have radically different needs.

          However, there is a whole lot of nutpicking in this entire post.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

            You don’t have to believe *ME*, Saul. You just have to believe Alex Burns.

            Do you think he was lying? Maybe he was! You live in Nancy Pelosi’s district, right?

            Does that sound like her?Report

          • North in reply to Saul Degraw says:

            *shrugs* You may or may not believe Jay (I do) and you could just as easily say “Twitter is flaming garbage” and I’d agree 100% but the basic story is not surprising.

            AOC probably would enjoy being the queen bee in a shrunken and defeated Democratic Party dominated by its left wing more than she’d enjoy being the face of a small marginal left wing caucus within a broad based victorious Democratic Party. The former would be much worse for the Democratic Party than the latter.Report

            • Saul Degraw in reply to North says:

              You are inclined to believe him because you dislike AOC and that is a pretty bad accusation against her on your part.Report

              • North in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                I don’t actually dislike AOC. I disagree with her on a number of policy issues but I like her just fine. AOC has blown up… *checks notes* a grand total of zero significant Democratic Party efforts. Any time when her vote was the difference between success and failure her vote was always in support of the party’s success. She is a very liberal Democrat but she’s a Democrat and that makes her aces in my books. The party is fortunate to have her.Report

            • Saul Degraw in reply to North says:

              The tweet comes from a journalist trying to promote a book and I am highly suspicious of journalists withholding information or stories to save for future book sales. I don’t understand why people think the best way for the Democratic Party is always to be shrinking violets on contested issues. The Republican Party is going full frothing mad on abortion and LBGT rights currently. Moderation and being a shrinking violet is not a virtue in these circumstances.Report

              • North in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                Heheh, No doubt what the squishy undecideds and low info/attention voters need to persuade them to vote dems are a few more assertive DEI seminars from that snake oil salesman Kendi’s ilk calling them racist and a few more add campaigns talking about how men have babies and menstruate now. Those electoral victories will roll in any time now. Refresh my memory Saul, me lad, how many pale blue or swing districts do the squad hail from again? How many congresscritters and Senators is ideological purity worth? I suppose the correct answer is all of them- surely we can enact our policy goals on moral virtue alone, votes? Pah, who needs em?Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to North says:

                I’m discussing actual laws against abortion and tansperople passed by actual Republican state legislatures and you go into an unnecessary dig about Kenji and DEI. I don’t think Kenji is the bogeyman that OT makes him out to be and it is kind of revealing that a lot of middle-aged white guys can’t help making digs at DEI and Kenji though.Report

              • North in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                I don’t think Kendi’s much of a boogeyman- he’s just a left wing version of the grifters that swarm over the GOP like lice on a roadkill raccoon.

                My point stands though. What’s more likely to sway the kinds of voters who might make a difference in Texas and Florida? Some hectoring preaching-to-the-choir left wing screeds or conciliatory, explanatory and, ya know, self aware outreach?Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to North says:

                https://www.valleycentral.com/news/local-news/starr-county-woman-arrested-for-self-induced-abortion/

                Texas just charged a woman with murder for a self-induced abortion. No offense but I am out of fish to give to hypersensitive middle aged white guys and I am not sure soft-peddling is the best way to keep abortion rights alive.Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to North says:

                I get that it is a nice fantasy to think we can get rid of all these divisive social issues and talk economics for the Baileys but that us not this world. It is also not a world where all the stuff we fight about can be labeled “small potatoes fights over pronouns.”Report

              • North in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                Fair enough- shrieking impotent virtue signalling is your preferred approach. Who knows, maybe you’re right (I hope you are) and it’s a base rallying election. We’ll see.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to North says:

                Seen around the intertubes:
                https://twitter.com/itzkovitzing/status/1512600094729809921

                We spend entirely too much time talking about how the fascists think or how to speak to the fascists. But fascism is a rejection of thought. And as Sartre noted, fascism is a rejection of the idea that anything but violence is worth it. We need to move on. We need to focus on us.

                Stop seeing them as a problem to be solved. Start thinking about how to defeat them. Stop staring into the abyss. Stop pretending they have the upper hand. Stop accepting their claims to be patriots. They hate this country. That’s all we need to know.

                There isn’t, ever, some clever savvy strategery that will win the day for us.
                That’s childish fantasizing.

                Even if all we can do is scream the truth, we scream the truth.Report

              • North in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Yeah, scream all ya want. Personally I’m more interested in the winning. Like I said to Saul- perhaps a rally the base turnout approach is the way. It hasn’t been before but there’s a first time for everything.Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to North says:

                So am I. I just don’t see how ignoring the rash of laws in Texas and Florida and talking about the earned income tax credit does it. That attitude is very cult of savvy. The 90s are gone.Report

              • North in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                I never suggested ignoring it; perish the thought!Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                Especially given all the trial balloons they are floating about Obergefell, Griswold, and the way Viktor Orban is their keynote speaker.
                They are telling us, openly, what they want.

                There really is no “hyperbole” anymore.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                A journalist! (spits on the ground)

                Is the argument that the guy is lying about what Pelosi said?
                Or that maybe Pelosi might have said that but she was wrong?

                Do you think he was lying? Maybe he was! You live in Nancy Pelosi’s district, right?

                Does that sound like her?Report

              • InMD in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                In fairness Abigail Spanberger made similar remarks in that leaked call after the 2020 election.

                Like you though I’m not sure how much to extrapolate. Someone has to be the furthest left member of the house, that person will always be a Fox News punching bag, and if it wasn’t AOC it would be someone else. I don’t really have a problem with her beyond the occasional tone deafness. Like for point of comparison I think Dennis Kucinich was a little more self aware.

                The harder truth I think for AOC’s fans to swallow is that if the Democrats were to get a big legislative majority it’s going to involve a lot of people much closer to where Spanberger or even Manchin are than to where AOC is.Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to InMD says:

                I like Rep. SpanbergerReport

  3. North says:

    Eh, the less said about the Green New Dream the better. Erics’ core point, however, is pretty solid. The NIMBY dominated local lefties who’re blocking environmentally useful projects should, at least in theory, be pretty susceptible to a social media campaign from the eco-left. I suspect/fear, though, that the social media left and the ecological left may be constitutionally unable to go after these targets. While the local NIMBIES blocking these projects should be susceptible to the larger enviro-lefts criticisms that actually runs both ways and the larger enviro-left is also quite vulnerable to the anti-commercial, localist and racialist language the obstructionists cloak their NIMBYism in.Report

  4. Saul Degraw says:

    1. Most people do not pay attention to twitter. Only 22 percent of Americans have a twitter account and a majority of tweets might even only come from a very small minority of those account holders. The problem is that the very online want or think that twitter has much more power and sway than it really does.

    2. Weaponizing twitter for nut picking is not very knew or original. Most of the nutpicking done to troll Democrats is often from taking tweets out of context from various people who are only marginally associated with the Democratic Party, if associated at all.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      One of the weaknesses of the pundit class is the desire to be viewed as savvy, and an essential ingredient of savvy is to be counterintuitive, or to possess a superior field of vision and see things that are hidden from the rubes.

      Thus the perennial “Everything You Know About X Is Wrong” pieces. Or “The battle over X Is Actually About Y”.

      The desire to view politics as a grand chess game and each legislative bill or campaign merely a pawn to Queen 3 feint concealing a deeper strategy.

      And sometimes this is actually true. But as often, it is the blinkered parochial view of people who really aren’t seeing the picture clearly.
      And sometimes, the moves are exactly what they appear, and the play is not hidden but right in the open.

      So it is with the current moment.
      The Republicans are set on imprisoning women for abortion.
      No, not as boob bait to rile up the base.
      They want to imprison women for abortion.
      That’s it.
      Nothing hidden, no secret strategy, just enforcing their views on the rest of us at the point of a gun.

      The pundit class seems like a mouse before a cobra, mesmerized and unable to see the danger that is right in front of them.Report