Centrally Planning the Culture

Sarah Baker

Artist, attorney, writer. Mother. Grower of things. Inconsistent user of Oxford Comma. I have no natural constituency. She/Her/Any

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229 Responses

  1. Rufus F. says:

    I think a lot of conservatives see cultural aristocracies as natural phenomena- people instinctively seek figures of authority, and it’s better that those figures lead them well, etc. Hence, the strange preoccupation with the character of ivy league undergrads: these are the people who will lead the culture. On the other hand, they also believe in embedded local practices- culture from the ground up- and see this as organically conservative. The problem is most of us on the ground simply don’t have time to theorize about Truth and Beauty and Chastity, or whatnot, because we’re too busy working. My (East Village, natch) coworkers include a trans man and an older cross-dresser, and what I care most about is that one of them is a bit of a slacker and the other works diligently. I think the real challenge for conservatives is most of us really don’t give a shit how other people live their lives, unless we’re really bored.

    I will say one of the ironies about not being “willing to sacrifice the people whose flourishing demands they do something less than what provides the most benefit to society,” is that for most of my working life I’ve been hearing that the laborers are all going to be replaced by automation “in a few years.” It seems to only happen at the margins so far.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Rufus F. says:

      Huh? The Ivy League grads do have a lot of say in the culture, and while conservatives complain about them, others either follow their tastes and beliefs or actually spend their lives attaining those degrees. That seems like a bigger preoccupation.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    I think it’s some variant of looking out, looking at whatever is fashionable, and saying “it should be our turn to pick what goes viral!”

    A desire to have whichever tastemakers agree with them this time.

    A comparison, I suppose, would be with Rowling. As difficult as it might be to believe in the current year, Harry Potter used to be *HUGE*. Like, people would talk about their primary house and their secondary house. “I dunno, I’m sort of a Ravenpuff, I guess?” that sort of thing. There was Harry Potter fanfic (and there was a corner where HPSA did *NOT* refer to a “Health Professional Shortage Area”). People explained that their various enemies were Slytherin (huh, that term is in autocorrect) and the various political leaders who were on The Other Side regularly got called “Literally Voldemort”. To the point where people would regularly scream “READ ANOTHER BOOK!”

    And now? Well, anybody who comes out and says they still like Harry Potter is demonstrating that they’re not really an ally. It might be okay to have liked Harry Potter? But it’s not okay to like Harry Potter anymore. There’s a lot of better stuff out there. Harry Potter really has some problematic stuff in there. The goblins? They make a big deal out of how anti-muggle sentiment is the equivalent of “racist” but they also make a big deal out of showing how people who have magic are better than people who don’t (maybe not morally better, but just regular old better).

    And Harry Potter has moved from the thing that everybody liked to the thing that it’s now embarrassing to like.

    And the tastemakers should do that for Conservatives once in a while!

    Of course, that’s not how virality works.

    The tastemakers quite regularly flop on their faces. Sure, they might be able to make a flash in the pan periodically, but for every flash in the pan, there’s a dozen loud wet raspberries. When the public is sick of something, there’s nothing that can make whatever it is take off.

    But nobody remembers the wet raspberries. They only remember the grand slams. And people think “those grand slams are manufactured… they should manufacture on *OUR* behalf once in a while!”

    Which, I suppose, is an understandable response, I guess. It just doesn’t take into account the sheer number of wet raspberries that did a decent job of catering to that sort of thing that didn’t take off.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:

      The tastemakers aren’t denying health care to women with ectopic pregnancies.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

      My colleague — a 30-year-old woman who works at my crunch liberal West Village nursery school — just told me how much she loves (present tense) Harry Potter.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Kazzy says:

        And Facebook targeted me for an ad for an interactive Harry Potter experience which we got on the wait list for and bought tickets for my stepdaughter to attend… tickets that sold out in days in the metro NY area.

        I dare say your perception of the perception of Harry Potter is wrong.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

        Your colleague is communicating that she isn’t a good ally. There are a lot of trans students out there and her profession of love for Rowling’s works will communicate that her classroom is not a safe space.

        It might be best to get those books out of the classroom entirely.Report

        • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

          “Your colleague is communicating that she isn’t a good ally. There are a lot of trans students out there and her profession of love for Rowling’s works will communicate that her classroom is not a safe space.”

          Communicated that to who? To you? Okay… bully for you.

          I didn’t think that about her. Not for a second.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

            It might communicate that to LGBTQ+ students.

            This is not something that I am making up, by the way.Report

            • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

              Yes, it might communicate that to some LGBTQ+ students.

              And stuff you say here might communicate much worse.

              Your inability/refusal to understand proportionality is mindboggling.Report

          • Kazzy in reply to Kazzy says:

            Harry Potter remains a multi-billion dollar empire, with theme parks, Broadway shows, a film that made $400M at the box office this year, and a 27% increase in Potter book sales in 2022 Q1. I mean, on what planet does what you’re saying represent any sort of broad truth?Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

              I mean, on what planet does what you’re saying represent any sort of broad truth?

              What I am saying is:

              Well, anybody who comes out and says they still like Harry Potter is demonstrating that they’re not really an ally. It might be okay to have liked Harry Potter? But it’s not okay to like Harry Potter anymore. There’s a lot of better stuff out there. Harry Potter really has some problematic stuff in there.

              The fact that it remains exceptionally popular doesn’t argue against that.

              I suppose you could run with something like “the fact that it is so very popular means that it’s still okay to like Harry Potter!” seems to have a different definition of “okay” than the one that I’m using. I’m using “okay” in the “not problematic” sense of the term rather than “socially acceptable”.

              There are, sadly, plenty of problematic things that are socially acceptable.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                You think liking Harry Potter is problematic? Is not okay? That’s your opinion? Okay then.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Kazzy says:

                If The Powers That Be who central plan culture had it on their agenda to make liking Harry Potter problematic, thereby influencing the Wizarding World’s cultural influence and power, they have failed woefully.

                Multiple things can be true:
                – Some people think liking Harry Potter is problematic
                – Some people may be offended by others liking Harry Potter
                – No one is trying to centrally plan culture, regardless of what they say on Twitter about Harry PotterReport

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                I think that what is and what is not “problematic” is outside of my ability to decide.

                But I have noticed that liking Harry Potter in the current year is problematic, yes. Have you *NOT* noticed this?Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                What’s any of that got to do with the topic of this post?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                The desire to keep teachers from talking about a particular topic and pushing it on kids?

                Yeah, I guess it’s got nothing to do with that.

                Carry on.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                Who has expressed a desire to stop teachers from talking about Harry Potter with kids?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                Do we want to jump ahead to “you’re nutpicking”?Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                If you’re nutpicking then, yea, we can get to that point. If you can point me towards a powerful and influential voice who is impacting educational policy and decision making, I’ll probably respond differently.

                I’m a teacher. No one has expressed any desire to me about not discussing Harry Potter with my students.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                Would something like “leaving JK Rowling off of Queen’s jubilee book list” count? Because, if it doesn’t, I just have a handful of teachers talking about how they’re removing the Harry Potter books from the classroom library and the like.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                Da F is the Queen’s Jubilee book list?

                From Wiki: “Commentators discussed several omission of potential titles: J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (ranked number 1 in the 2003 The Big Read); J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books;[12] Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series;[13] Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy,[14] Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook;[12] and the work of Dick Francis, reportedly one of the Queen’s favourite authors.[14] The inclusion of Northern Irish writer Seamus Heaney was explained by the fact that when he wrote Death of a Naturalist he was living in the UK and published by an English publisher; Heaney identified as an Irish nationalist and had previously objected to his inclusion in The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry.[15][16]

                In The Telegraph, Allison Pearson called it a “‘You’ll take your medicine and like it’ kind of list compiled by people who were scared stiff of not being diverse enough.”[17] Similarly, in The Article, David Herman complained: “If you like Hornblower or James Bond, witches and hobbits, great children’s literature, popular poetry or drama, The Big Jubilee Read doesn’t care. What it does care about is post-colonial, ideally non-white, literature.”[18]”

                So, yes, she along with many other people were left off.

                I can tell you that I have never ever ever ever ever heard of a teacher cite the Jubilee List when deciding what books to read/have in their classroom.

                I am not surprised some teachers are choosing not to have Harry Potter books in their classroom. Teachers make hundreds of decisions each and every day for lots of reasons.

                None of this adds up to some sort of powerful cultural forces aligning to move Harry Potter out of the zeitgeist.

                As I continually point out, all things Harry Potter remain immensely popular and millions of people are able to express their love for him without controversy.

                Why does none of that matter but what a few people on Twitter say matters immensely?Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Kazzy says:

                Also… how did we go from ” desire to keep teachers from talking about a particular topic and pushing it on kids” to “Would something like “leaving JK Rowling off of Queen’s jubilee book list” count? Because, if it doesn’t, I just have a handful of teachers talking about how they’re removing the Harry Potter books from the classroom library and the like.”

                Like, those things aren’t even related.

                It’s almost like you can’t substantiate your own claim.

                So, please, point me towards anything evidencing the former and we can evaluate just how relevant it is to a conversation on centrally planned culture.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Kazzy says:

                Wait sorry… did you wanna talk about all the conservative, religiously-motivated attempts to ban Potter in schools?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                We can if you want. Do you agree that that sort of thing is bad?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                Well, the Queen’s Jubilee book list was a British celebration of British authors and the exclusion of the best-selling woman of ALL TIME was seen as a deliberate political move.

                And, as I said earlier, “Because, if it doesn’t, I just have a handful of teachers talking about how they’re removing the Harry Potter books from the classroom library and the like.”Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                “…exclusion of the best-selling woman of ALL TIME was seen as a deliberate political move.”

                Yea, was seen as that. Doesn’t mean it was that. They also left Tolkien off.

                You can see the difference between a decision not to include someone as a list which some people think was political and “desire to keep teachers from talking about a particular topic and pushing it on kids.” Because, again, you have shown zero evidence of any sort of influential movement to do so by liberals or folks concerns about Rowling’s opinions on the trans community.

                Again, you have made claims with zero factual evidence to support them. And you ignored all the facts I offer that dispute the very basis of your claims.

                In short, you are full of crap here. Yet you keep digging. As I’ve said before, there is value in being able to say that you’re wrong. Try it some time.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                Yea, was seen as that. Doesn’t mean it was that.

                I’m not sure how we’d get to what it “was” from here.

                And if you think that that example doesn’t count, then I will repeat what I said again: “Because, if it doesn’t, I just have a handful of teachers talking about how they’re removing the Harry Potter books from the classroom library and the like.”

                My argument is that she’s problematic and there’s starting to be a movement of getting her out of the classroom and replaced by other, more inclusive, authors.

                Your argument is that you have people in your life that really like Rowling and therefore this is not happening?

                We’ll see what happens over the next couple of years, I guess.

                But I think that you will see more movements by liberals or folks concerned with Rowling’s opinions on the trans community in the future.

                It’s not too late to be one of them now, I’ll point out.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                Your argument was people “desire to keep teachers from talking about a particular topic and pushing it on kids.”

                Have you changed positions now?Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Kazzy says:

                My argument that in none of the schools I interact with have I seen any movement to remove or restrict Harry Potter.

                If individual teachers are making that choice, so be it.

                I have read reports of efforts to ban it due to witchcraft concerns and the like. I haven’t personally/professionally been impacted by that.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                My argument that in none of the schools I interact with have I seen any movement to remove or restrict Harry Potter.

                Fair enough. To be honest, I think that the Harry Potter phenomenon got a bunch of kids reading who otherwise would not have gotten into reading.

                If your definition of success is “GET KIDS INTO READING!”, then Rowling is an *AMAZING* author.

                The last two books notwithstanding.

                If individual teachers are making that choice, so be it.

                I think we’ll see more individual teachers making this choice in the future.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                I think that the argument that people “desire to keep teachers from talking about a particular topic and pushing it on kids” is trivially obvious to the point where I’m surprised that it is getting pushback.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                Obvious with Potter? Not so. Quite the opposite.

                But I’m stuck out here in the real world… not on Twitter.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                Dave Chappelle says something similar:

                But I am someone who watched Tumblr bleed out into the real world and have had more than one experience of seeing “NOBODY IS ARGUING THAT!” turn into “but that’s good, though” in real time.

                Report

              • North in reply to Jaybird says:

                DIdn’t Tumblr bleed out because they banned porn?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to North says:

                No? I think that it was a case of Tumblr people going from being ~15 years old (not particularly influential) to being ~25 years old (somewhat influential).

                We have definitely gone from “nobody is arguing that!” to “that’s good, though” several times over the last few decades.

                And, I’ll say, we will continue to.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                I’m not and never have argued that no one objects to Potter and no teachers have removed him from classrooms. I’m saying, as a teacher, I haven’t seen or experienced any outside pressure to remove him or discussion of him from our classrooms.

                We still have kids dressing like Harry Potter characters on Halloween. Kids still bring in Harry Potter lunch boxes and backpacks. Kids still talk about Harry Potter. Kids still read Harry Potter.

                I’m not a fan because I think the writing is crap but I also know kids love Potter and reading is good and if kids want to read Potter, they should read Potter. And if parents or teachers don’t want to read Potter to/with their kids, so be it.

                And when I see a school try to ban Potter — whether it be because of the story’s “evil” or the author’s offensive opinions on trans people — I would likely resist it.

                But like I said… of all the schools I interact with one way or another, I have seen no such organized movement. And of the movements I’ve read about, they’ve all been from the “Sorcery is evil!” angle.

                So when whispers on Twitter turn into a groundswell, I’ll pay attention. Until then, I’m not going to take sides in a war that isn’t actually happening.

                Now, if you want to tell me my lived experience as a teacher and as a parent and as someone who swims in various circles of education aren’t in any way real, you can have that conversation without me as well.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                Kazzy, my argument is *NOT* “you’ve heard this a lot!”

                My argument is that we’re moving to a new place where prominent Potterdom communicates that one is not an ally.

                I’m saying, as a teacher, I haven’t seen or experienced any outside pressure to remove him or discussion of him from our classrooms.

                Okay.

                Well, now you’ve seen hints of what is coming.

                Don’t shoot the messenger.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Jaybird says:

                Kazzy has a fair criticism though. It’s very difficult to quantify tempests in burgers or whatever we’re talking about. They’ll get positive and negative reactions on different sites, and as soon as there’s something that looks like a measurement, the other side will rally to cast dislikes or counter-hashtags. That’s a weakness in citing social media examples.

                I think there’s a corresponding benefit in citing them, because it moves things out of the esoteric, but even so.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Pinky says:

                I am not certain that I could quantify it.

                That said, I’d say that there’s a difference between a post that gets a follow-up of “lighten up” and a post that gets a follow-up of “lighten up” and then writeups on CNN, Fox News, Vanity Fair, People, Forbes, The Hill, Vulture, The Hollywood Reporter, Indywire, Newsweek, Page Six, and Buzzfeed.

                The latter, I’d argue, might be a stupid piece of celebrity gossip about a celebrity that is dumb. Sure. Isn’t that *ALL* celebrities?

                But it is an example of a thing that happened and became a day or two or three of controversy on social media that turned into discussions of racism, police brutality, and what it takes to be a good ally.

                What some might mistake as yet another example of celebrities having poor taste becomes an argument about morality in the current year.

                Discussions of morality are always fraught, of course. Especially when you’re dealing with people from two entirely different cultures who have different moral axioms.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Jaybird says:

                I agree.

                “Here’s an example of a stupid thing.”
                “That doesn’t count, because it’s stupid.”

                But – anecdotes aren’t data. People in the current-year mentality lack the perspective to recognize the oddity of anecdotes.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Pinky says:

                Perhaps pointing to examples of policies or organized movements or petitions would be helpful. But “Some people want X to happen” is a tale as old as time and worth little more than the paper their opinions aren’t written on.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Kazzy says:

                I defended your point to Jaybird, so I’m also going to defend Jaybird’s point to you. We all acknowledge that culture is more than official policies and organized movements. So we’re going to have to deal with anecdotes more than data. Can you accept that even while recognizing its potential limitations?Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Pinky says:

                Anecdotes matter… no doubt. What I’m saying though is that if you want to show that it is anything MORE than people talking on Twitter you need to show that it is more than people talking on Twitter. Pointing towards policies or proposed legislation or organized movements would broaden the argument.

                It’s not JUST about policy but if all you can point towards is a few people on Twitter and if the people who exist in that world (in this case me in schools) are saying, “I haven’t seen ANY of that,” than don’t those anecdotes count as well?Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Pinky says:

                Thinking more about it… it’s not even necessarily that it is stupid. But it’d be like trying to draw conclusions about global weather patterns because a few people Tweeted about how it’s raining out.

                Like, yea, sure, I have no doubt they are accurately reporting the weather where they are. But that is about all it tells me and trying to draw any larger conclusions or patterns is just silly.

                They’re not being stupid. But they are an individual person or small group of people sharing their individual opinions/experiences (which may overlap) and just because it is on the internet doesn’t suddenly make it more than that.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Pinky says:

                anecdotes aren’t data.

                Ergo they’re also not evidence. No more than Harry Potter is evidence for magic existing.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Call them eyewitness testimony then. They’re non-systematic reports.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Pinky says:

                Anecdotes are basically urban legends.

                They’re not even close to being data. They’re stories.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

                I felt a great disturbance in the Force, like a million historians laughing uproariously.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter says:

                There’s a sorites problem.

                One anecdote is not data.
                One grain of sand is not a heap.

                But get enough and you’ve got yourself a beard.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

                With enough of them you have a narrative.

                One problem is when we step from “we think this” into “we want to think this”.

                Another problem is it’s unclear when that’s happening.

                Put differently, the plural of anecdote is not data, nor is it research.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Dark Matter says:

                It’s a risk to trust anecdotes, but there are situations where data doesn’t exist. We can’t add up all the Harry Potter comments online and divide by the total number of online comments. Does that rule out any discussion of comments about Harry Potter?

                It’s also worth noting that Harry Potter is being used as an example of something broader. If people who would have been pro-Potter are turning against it for cultural reasons, and pretty celebrity girl is being criticized because her father supports the police, and dozens of other things are happening that didn’t used to happen, then that’s where the anecdotes start to become a narrative.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Pinky says:

                And the narrative is what exactly? I’ve lost track.

                The most concrete thing that’s been said here is that Potter sales are up.

                If true, then that’s data. And if the narrative disagrees with data, then it’s probably the narrative that’s wrong because facts are stubborn things.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Yeah it’s hard to follow the bouncing ball but the narrative is that liberals are imposing a Stalinesque reign of terror upon fans of JK Rowling.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                the narrative is that liberals are imposing a Stalinesque reign of terror upon fans of JK Rowling.

                I don’t see the data I’d expect to see for that (i.e. sales are up, not down).

                When historians write about this, if they have sales records they’ll write one thing, if all they have is the narrative, then they’ll write something else.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Pinky says:

                If people who would have been pro-Potter are turning against it for cultural reasons, and pretty celebrity girl is being criticized because her father supports the police, and dozens of other things are happening THAT DIDN’T USED TO HAPPEN (emphasis added), then that’s where the anecdotes start to become a narrative.

                All of this has always happened. The only difference is that we have social media and people who never heard of particular instances before hear about them now.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                The only difference is that we have social media and people who never heard of particular instances before hear about them now.

                They also get to *PARTICIPATE* in them now.

                Got an opinion about her dad’s shirt? You can tell her what you think about it! SHE MIGHT EVEN SEE IT!

                Her fans will see it.

                In the olden days, you’d have had to buy a copy of Dynamite magazine and *HOPE* that they mentioned an address where you could write to Donny Osmond’s Fan Club. Maybe you could send the letter to ABC’s headquarters in New York and hope it’d eventually make its way to him.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                So?Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                “My argument is that we’re moving to a new place where prominent Potterdom communicates that one is not an ally.”

                You argument keeps changing. This is silly.

                “Well, now you’ve seen hints of what is coming.”

                I’ll have seen hints when I see articles like this focused on the efforts of trans advocates: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/harry-potter-books-banned-nashville-catholic-school-bans-series-read-by-a-human-being-risk-conjuring-evil-spirits/

                For now, all I see is individuals with opinions making choices informed by those opinions.

                Like, I’m trying really hard to find calls to ban Harry Potter. I’ve found satirical articles (e.g., “Owls are dangerous!”) and crunchy articles (e.g., “You can get away with bullying!”). I’ve found nothing advocating for banning or removing Harry Pottery for reasons related to JK Rowling.

                I have seen lots of articles about how Rowling herself seems to have been banned from certain Harry Potter-related events, but that is a different beast.

                Any decision to remove Harry Potter books from classrooms seems rooted in either A) individual teacher choice or B) policies informed by Catholic/Christian religious opposition.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                You argument keeps changing.

                From my root comment:

                Well, anybody who comes out and says they still like Harry Potter is demonstrating that they’re not really an ally. It might be okay to have liked Harry Potter? But it’s not okay to like Harry Potter anymore. There’s a lot of better stuff out there. Harry Potter really has some problematic stuff in there.

                Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                Are you speaking for yourself? If it is your OPINION that it’s not okay to like Harry Potter… well, you are entitled to your opinion.

                But if we’re just talking about opinions, why does it matter what anyone ELSE says? Why do you need to quote Twitter?

                You have your opinion. It is a minority view on a subjective issue.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                I’m using “not okay” to mean “problematic”.

                Is it problematic to like Harry Potter?

                It is 2022. Yes, it is. If you don’t think it is, I can get you some essays that explain why it is. It has to do with platforming transphobes.

                If you feel like you want to argue that it’s not a big deal, you should be allowed to like what you want to like even if its creators were kind of bad, then let me say “I AM FAMILIAR WITH THOSE ARGUMENTS.”

                I’m just telling you that Rowling is one of the creators who is kind of bad now.

                And next time you hear that, you won’t be able to say “I’ve never heard that. That hasn’t shown up in my circle yet.”Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Dammit if the liberals round here aren’t going to fulfil their assigned role of cancelling Rowling then SOMEONE will have to step up and do it!Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I suppose “we weren’t, like, *SUPPORTING* her!” is something that you can point out.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Maybe this will suffice to satisfy our left wing dictatorial credentials:

                Armed protesters clashed with armed counter-protesters outside a drag brunch in an affluent Dallas suburb over the weekend.

                The protesters were outnumbered by anti-fascist counter-protesters, many of whom wore masks and carried AR-15s.

                https://www.axios.com/local/dallas/2022/08/30/drag-brunch-roanoke-draws-armed-clash?utm_campaign=editorial&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

                Man, sh!ts gettin’ real.
                Marauding mobs of woke and gun-totin’ drag queens terrorizing the God-fearing manly men.

                Won’t someone think of the children??Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Man, they should really have door-to-door searches for those guns!

                Wait, it’s Texas?

                Nevermind.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                Sign. So many words, so little substance.

                No one has any idea what you think other than “somethingsomething-those-darn-liberals.”

                Maybe you should just stay on Twitter.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                Kazzy, I’m not saying “those darn liberals”.

                I’ve not said “those darn liberals” anywhere in here.

                I have said that full-throated support for JK Rowling’s works communicates that one is not being an ally.

                That has nothing to do with “those darn liberals”.

                This is not something that I am making up out of whole cloth.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                Yes yes you’re not saying ANYTHING. You’re merely telling us what other people say or think or feel.

                You also said there were those who want to stop teachers from talking to kids about Harry Potter and cited the Queen’s Jubilee list as your evidence.

                Lotsa talk… very little anything.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                I actually posted a link to someone bragging about removing the Harry Potter books from her classroom’s library.

                It was pointed out that this was JUST ONE PERSON, of course.

                As for what I think about Rowling? Meh. The first five books were pretty good as YA goes and then, after that, the series fell off pretty hard. But there were a lot of kids who didn’t like to read who liked to read Harry Potter and, as such, the books are exceptionally successful as YA books in their own right.

                If a book makes a kid (one who doesn’t usually take pleasure in reading) ask for the next book? Hey. That’s a victory. And these books achieved that victory.

                As for criticism of the books? I think that the politics are undercooked, Quidditch isn’t even a sport, and the characterization of anybody beyond the three main students and the three main professors is shoddy. On top of that, the handling of stuff like “House Elves” is, like, actually offensive.

                You know how Hermione was against the treatment of House Elves and this was treated as her being silly? Like SPEW badges and whatnot and everybody else was telling her “House Elves *LIKE* to be doing that sort of thing! They *LIKE* being House Elves!” and then, a decade later, Rowling was asked about diversity in the books and mentioned that Hermione absolutely could be Black.

                Does that change how you see the House Elves storyline? I don’t know about you, but I sort of winced when I had that pointed out to me.

                There’s a lot of other stuff in the books that has officially been deemed “problematic” by the people who use that word on the reg and they include stuff like how Goblins are portrayed, how the entirety of East Asia all goes to the same school while Magical Britain gets Hogwarts, and there’s a bunch of stuff that I am more than happy enough to tamp down and get back to the story about but, seriously, I understand why some of that stuff might bother someone who reads about the Asian student and then sees the name “Cho Chang” and then winces.

                But I bought the books as they came out, read them with Maribou, and we argued about the books at length.

                As it is, if someone asked me about books for their kid that would grab them, I’d be a lot more likely to recommend The Belgariad (and Eddings has even more skeletons in his closet than Rowling) than Harry Potter.

                But the Methods of Rationality was pretty good. I recommend that to people who liked the books. It fixes a lot of the problems.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

      This is just another instance of sitting in moral judgement of liberals.

      In this episode, liberals are accused and pronounced guilty of being cynical hypocrites, erasing JK Rowling for for her freethinking heterodoxy.

      Notice that lack of neutral language and the absence of scale or perspective.

      This isn’t a case where Rowling’s critics might have a plausible claim. And it certainly isn’t a case where only a fringe are behaving illiberally.

      No, Rowling’s critics critics are absolutely Stalinesque and entirely in the wrong, and not even with honest motives;
      Notice the line about how the parties involved are “ looking out, looking at whatever is fashionable, and saying “it should be our turn to pick what goes viral!”

      A desire to have whichever tastemakers agree with them this time.

      These aren’t sincere people arguing over what is just or right.
      These are merely hollow cynical people scrambling for power and influence. These are Bad People, empty of virtue of decency.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        Chip, I’m the one who said “Well, anybody who comes out and says they still like Harry Potter is demonstrating that they’re not really an ally. It might be okay to have liked Harry Potter? But it’s not okay to like Harry Potter anymore. There’s a lot of better stuff out there. Harry Potter really has some problematic stuff in there.”

        Do you disagree with this?
        Do you feel that it does a poor job of representing the current best way to look at the Rowlingverse?

        Notice the line about how the parties involved are “ looking out, looking at whatever is fashionable, and saying “it should be our turn to pick what goes viral!”

        That’s how I was describing the conservatives in this dynamic, Chip. The ones who are hoping to centrally plan the culture.

        I wasn’t describing the *LIBERALS* that way.

        These aren’t sincere people arguing over what is just or right.

        I don’t know how to measure sincerity. Maybe something involving consistency, maybe. Only minor changes over time. Meta-ethics, maybe.

        These are merely hollow cynical people scrambling for power and influence.

        This describes a hell of a lot of them! But not all. Maybe not even most. But I wouldn’t want to pretend that it doesn’t describe enough to make it enough of a criticism that it would need to be addressed rather than dismissed out of hand.

        These are Bad People, empty of virtue of decency.

        Eh, I’m more likely to see issues of culture as matters of taste and making matters of taste into matters of morality is usually a mistake (or a deliberate power play).

        Bad doesn’t really enter into it. Well, unless it’s a power play. Those usually end up in bad places.Report

        • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

          Chip, I’m the one who said “Well, anybody who comes out and says they still like Harry Potter is demonstrating that they’re not really an ally. It might be okay to have liked Harry Potter? But it’s not okay to like Harry Potter anymore. There’s a lot of better stuff out there. Harry Potter really has some problematic stuff in there.”

          Do you disagree with this?
          Do you feel that it does a poor job of representing the current best way to look at the Rowlingverse?

          Yes, it’s a smug, self righteous and insulting way of representing things.

          You’re taking the illiberal fringe to characterize all of Rowlings critics, and then smugly telling us that the entire affair is merely a scramble for power by cynical hypocrites.
          Once again, telling us that these are Bad People.

          You keep insisting you aren’t passing moral judgment, while repeating the moral charge of hypocrisy.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

            What would be an exemplary way to talk about Harry Potter, then?

            Like, if you were talking about how we should see Harry Potter and the Rowlingverse, how would you describe it instead of the way that I did?Report

            • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

              I would say that Rowling offended a lot of people with public statements. She has a lot of critics some of whom are illiberal.

              See, when you describe the Rowling affair (or the Sweeney affair) as merely cynical power politics, you simultaneously excuse injustice while slandering justice.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                This comment is what centrally-planned culture looks like. You’re ok with it because they’re your definitions of justice and injustice.Report

              • Greg In Ak in reply to Pinky says:

                Different opinions are not a centrally planned culture.Report

              • Damon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Please explain how the opinions of a book writer impact justice, and I mean the legal frame work of laws, etc. Do you or others assign more import to her views because she’s 1) rich, 2) famous, 3) etc? And if so, why? I read my fair share of books written by a variety of people who would be considered “inappropriate” nowadays. I don’t’ give a damn what their opinions are if the art is good. Do your politics inform you on who you can like regardless of talent?Report

              • Philip H in reply to Damon says:

                The opinions of famous living authors, actors, musicians etc don’t change laws. They do change public perceptions, which influences both how people relate to each other AND how people analyze policy positions for politicians. Which then can change laws but its a derived downstream effect.

                Also, “justice” is a moral and ethical concept that exists outside the legal system. The Holocaust was legal, but it was not just.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Damon says:

                As I mention below, the culture which creates justice or injustice is always crowdsourced.

                Whether supportive parents of trans adolescents are allowed to nurture their child, or are imprisoned for abuse is going to be decided by how public opinion turns.

                And in the battle for public opinion, every voice is a combatant, especially public figures.Report

            • Philip H in reply to Jaybird says:

              We all thought you were talking about JK Rowlings and her critics RE her Transphobia, not Harry Potter as a literary work.

              Which is it?Report

              • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

                No we didn’t. We read the comment which described the literary criticisms of Harry Potter.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Philip H says:

                So let me re-copy/paste what I said before:

                Well, anybody who comes out and says they still like Harry Potter is demonstrating that they’re not really an ally. It might be okay to have liked Harry Potter? But it’s not okay to like Harry Potter anymore. There’s a lot of better stuff out there. Harry Potter really has some problematic stuff in there.

                Is this an inaccurate description of the state of affairs?

                If so, what is inaccurate about it?Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                I will, as one of the people who generally disapproves of Rowling, come out and say you are mostly correct, but the word ‘says’ in your statement is very important.

                To clarify, people’s personal like or dislikes about a work are mostly personal, and the problem is more people publically promoting and talking about how they like it..,.and giving her money.

                If someone just has the books, and enjoys reading the books, well…whatever.

                I mean, we do already know how this works. We can substitute the words Bill Cosby for J.K. Rowling, and how we would feel about someone who was publicly a Bill Cosby fan.

                Of course, if someone were to say that, we would either assume that they _didn’t_ know something important, or were completely seperating the artist from the work in a way that is somewhat distasteful but…okay. Whereas with Rowling it’s entirely possible that they are someone who is trying to make a political point by liking Rowling.

                And a reminder, it is not just the public statements of Rowling. There is actually a boatload of stuff in actual Harry Potter that is problematic, and that was pointed out _way_ before she started her current dumbness. But, again, people are allowed to personally like problematic things.

                Now, I’m sure this proves something about ‘centrally planned cultures’, but…having preferences in cultures, and what sort of cultural rules you expect others to follow, is not ‘centrally planning’ anything. No one is attempting to bar Harry POtter books by law…well, ironically, some of the same people who are Rowling’s best friends _now_ are the exact same political ilk that _did_ attempt to ban those books, but no one on the left is trying to ban them.Report

              • Pinky in reply to DavidTC says:

                “some of the same people who are Rowling’s best friends _now_ are the exact same political ilk that _did_ attempt to ban those books”

                I’m sure that some of the ilk who supported Rowling before now oppose her, too. But that only demonstrates how broadly the word “ilk” can be cast.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                Believe it or not, there was a tempest in a teapot the other day on twitter over whether or not teachers should have Potter-themed classrooms. Apparently, that’s something that some ham-fisted millennial teachers do.

                There’s been a turning point, however:

                Whereas with Rowling it’s entirely possible that they are someone who is trying to make a political point by liking Rowling.

                There’s been mention of someone in comments already who talked about how much she loves (present tense) Rowling’s work. It ain’t just theoretical.Report

              • Saul Draw in reply to Jaybird says:

                One teacher on JB. One. I can think of numerous bien pesant liberal parents I know who still gush about their kids Potter mania. But you are the master of “anecdotal evidence for me but not for thee.”Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Saul Draw says:

                Want me to find more? I’m feeling lazy. We can move to “five examples is just five anecdotes!” if you want and I’ll agree that it’s just five anecdotes and it’ll be win-win.Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

                I’m sure you could. It is still not indicative of how this plays out among the not very online which is a group that you think has more power than it really does. There are still a lot more straight-down, solidly liberal parents who let their kids go crazy for Harry Potter.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                The not very online has the dough, that’s for sure.

                There are still a lot more straight-down, solidly liberal parents who let their kids go crazy for Harry Potter.

                I do not disagree.

                I’m just saying that this is now getting pushback that it wasn’t getting, oh, a decade ago when it was mostly the Dobsonites that wanted Harry Potter out of the classroom.Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

                There is more censorship being done in school libraries on the right than the left these days but you are still in the “Winemom Democrats are so cringe” land of “anti-establishment” politics.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                Saul, at this point the discussion is over whether Harry Potter is problematic.

                My position is that the books are.
                Your position is that the books are not?

                As for whether “Winemom Democrats are so cringe”, I’m unclear as to whether the Winemoms in question have the position that:

                1. I’m a Gryffindor but I totally could have been sorted into Ravenclaw and we are going to Universal Studios to watch the Hogwart’s Christmas Lightshow in December!

                2. Wait, Harry Potter is unfashionable now? Better tear down the old posters and put up the new ones. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia and now I’m going to tell the kids to read ‘Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond’ by Sayantani DasGupta.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                “I’m just saying that this is now getting pushback that it wasn’t getting, oh, a decade ago when it was mostly the Dobsonites that wanted Harry Potter out of the classroom.”

                My stepdaughter is Harry Potter OBSESSED. We have got exactly zero flack from anyone we have shared this with. Zero. Not a word or a whisper.

                I acknowledge that there are new opinions on Rowling and her work as a result of comments she has made that she had not made prior. This is how the world works. Something didn’t happen… then it did happen… and people react.

                Remember the other day when you asked where you insisted you didn’t insist I was wrong about things I tell you about schools and teachers and such? Well, this is you doing it. I’m a parent of a Potter-obsessed kid, I work in schools, I have a co-teacher who is Potter-obsessed. The climate regarding Harry Potter in schools and for kids today is barely different than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

                Some teachers have decided to remove Potter books from their classrooms.

                And some classrooms and libraries have damn near twice as many Potter books as they did then.

                Kids still love Harry Potter. Teachers are still allowed to teach with Harry Potter. People are still allowed to take their kids to Wizarding World or whatever the heck it is called. No one has been farmed from the local food co-op as a result.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                I acknowledge that there are new opinions on Rowling and her work as a result of comments she has made that she had not made prior. This is how the world works. Something didn’t happen… then it did happen… and people react.

                Please check out this page. These series are inclusive. Play your cards right, you can be the cool adults who found the next big thing!Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                And? More nonsense, more distraction from how wrong you are.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                In the coming years, there will be more flack for Potter love.

                You can head this off at the pass by reading one of the series mentioned in that link.

                I’m not just saying “Harry Potter is problematic!” and not giving other, better, options.

                I’m pointing to more than a half dozen series that are inclusive.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                I’m content to let the kiddo continue to enjoy something she loves. If/when she’s ready for something new, she’s free thinking and can choose for herself.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to Kazzy says:

                “I’m content to let the kiddo continue to enjoy something she loves.”

                yeah, that’s what they said when they put kids in the Hitler Youth.Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

                Yes.Report

    • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

      My general impression is the Potter series has aged a lot better than the author. I don’t own any more elementary aged children so it was always expected that they’d age out of Potter.

      Can Potter still get elementary children enthusiastic about reading. If that’s true, then she is still big. If it was a decade long flash in the pan, then idc.

      Now she’s clearly demonstrated that after Potter she doesn’t know what the next big hit is and she’s not as good a writer as we thought. Nor is she skilled at staying clear of things that might damage her brand. I’d say she’s also not good at world building outside of England but whatever.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter says:

        Meh. The books very much had a “of their time” thing going on. The first book was *PERFECT* for a 3rd or 4th grader. It was about as scary as a particularly intense episode of Scooby Doo. The 2nd book was a little more advanced than that. Good for a 4th or 5th grader. 3rd book was a little more advanced than that. Good for 5th or 6th grade.

        By Order of the Phoenix, there was, like, actual political theory in there. Perfectly appropriate for 7th or 8th grade discussions.

        Of course, at that point, the series fell off.

        Nothing happened in the 6th book except we learned about horocruxes and there was that major plot point that happened in the last chapter and spawned a thousand entries to the HPSA.

        The 7th book kind of sucked. It had a good last third, I guess.

        Maybe ending strong is all you need to do.

        As for the movies, I saw the first four and, despite the 5th book being my favorite by a darn sight, never got around to watching any after Goblet of Fire.Report

        • Michael Cain in reply to Jaybird says:

          The series fell off when the author decided she was now writing The Lord of the Rings. After the sixth book I gave my son a sealed envelope with what I claimed were all the important plot points for the last volume. The only one I missed depends on whether you count Dumbledore’s portrait as him still pulling the strings.

          I long for a rewrite from Dumbledore’s perspective, developing his plot and honing children to be the final weapon to defeat Voldemort. Not a nice man, that Dumbledore. Same thing I said after finishing The Lord of the Rings: not a nice man, that Gandalf.

          ETA: It’s been many years, so I don’t remember if the list included, “The book will be at least a hundred pages too long.”Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Michael Cain says:

            The Methods of Rationality fanfic was pretty good. It cleaned up a lot of the biggest problems that the world had, made Slytherin something a little bit more interesting than just Nazis, and has some amazing monologues.

            I mention this because that’s the closest we’re all going to get to a decent rewrite.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

      “As difficult as it might be to believe in the current year, Harry Potter used to be *HUGE*.”

      Harry Potter remains huge. You are wrong on this.

      “And Harry Potter has moved from the thing that everybody liked to the thing that it’s now embarrassing to like.”

      Many many many more people like Harry Potter than are embarrassed to admit they like Harry Potter.

      “And the tastemakers should do that for Conservatives once in a while!”

      What tastemakers have meaningfully change the broad cultural perspective on Harry Potter?

      Like, you’re just wrong on the basic facts you’re trying to build your argument on.

      There are no tastemakers who meaningfully changed the culture vis a vis Harry Potter. It remains a hugely popular part of pop culture.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

        I wrote that part poorly.

        “And the tastemakers should do that for Conservatives once in a while!” was intended to be the other bookend of my sentence (near the beginning of the post) that said “A desire to have whichever tastemakers agree with them this time.”

        That is: the desire of the conservatives is to be “celebrated” in the culture the way that NOT conservatives get “celebrated” in the culture. That was intended to reflect the attitudes of the conservatives. It wasn’t intended to be read as my argument that I was making. I regret the error.

        So when you ask “What tastemakers have meaningfully change the broad cultural perspective on Harry Potter?”, well, I’d say that the nudges are certainly there. If you visit any given thread on JK Rowling on Reddit, you can see…

        Well, here. See for yourself. Pick a post. (Note: The Harry Potter subreddit has a rule that says “No modern politics” and, without getting into whether this is a good idea or not, I’ll just say that they seem to enforce this rule. So maybe the Harry Potter subreddit would make a good third or fourth pick rather than first or second.)

        Nudge. Nudge. Nudge.Report

        • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

          Is Rowling conservative? Is Harry Potter conservative culture?Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

            Is Rowling conservative? The hero of her story finished up by getting a government job after spending his schooling in an invite-only elite school.

            I suppose part of the problem is that we don’t really have definitions of what “conservative” is or what “progressive” is.

            I think that Harry Potter’s universe is fairly conservative. But, you know, it’s not evangelical Christian.Report

        • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

          This just sounds like an attempt at winning the Victim Olympics on behalf of Team Red.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

            I certainly hope I didn’t misrepresent it!Report

            • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

              No, this whole subthread is a very good demonstration of Belligerent Victimhood, where the alleged suppression of Rowling is an exhibit in the moral denunciation of Team Blue.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Please understand: I’m not saying that she has successfully been suppressed!

                If anything, she’s a great example of someone who has not been cancelled (thus proving to some that cancel culture must not exist).Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Rowling is now in the great pantheon of right-wing grievance objects along with Bork and Mitt Romney.

                “When were you radicalized and decided to shave your head and wear a swastika?”

                “It was when some girl on Twitter sad nasty things about JK Rowling.”

                Republicans are endlessly searching for some excuse to do what they have always wanted to do.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Sure. Okay. I’d agree with that.

                So do we agree that she’s problematic then?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                I don’t like the word “problematic” with regard to anyone.

                Frank Lloyd Wright was the greatest architect since Palladio, and was a complete asshole.

                Rowling is a terrific author who has bigoted attitudes towards trans people.Report

  3. CJColucci says:

    Just as the Problem of Evil exists only if insist on an Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnibenevolent deity, the problem you discuss exists only if you posit a substantial population of social conservatives who have a coherent philosophical position that they understand and feel some obligation to be consistent about.

    That does not appear to be the case.Report

    • DavidTC in reply to CJColucci says:

      That does not appear to be the case.

      That was my thoughts when reading this, that this premise might have been something I found useful pre-Trump.

      It’s…not anymore. You don’t get to select Trump and claim the goal is ‘wise elders (often faith leaders, almost always men and usually white men) figure out (often from reverse-engineered interpretations of scriptures) how each person can best serve the goals (proscribed, again, by the wise leaders, again based on the goals they’ve unilaterally derived from subjective interpretation of scripture) of the community’. You just don’t. We are well past any ideas of hypocracy and into ‘This supposed goal is literally not a thing that is cared about’.

      It is increasingly clear that conservatives, both social and economic, care mostly about retaining and recovering power and not actually what is done with it, or at least don’t have any _ethical frameworks_ about what is done with it and the main concern is how things might alter where power rests. I.e.,m Paul Ryan’s complaint that giving people student loan forgiveness might get some new (lazy) voters to start voting for Democrats…weren’t we all supposed to be pretending we _wanted_ everyone to vote?

      And I’m sure there are exceptions, hell, I’m sure there are a lot of exceptions in this very forum because this forum attracts people with specific political positions that they have thought about. But the both the leadership and the actual way conservativism is structured do not function in that manner…it is entirely about the question of political and social power and who has it, not the actual things done with that power.

      Which is also something the left is concerned about, but the left is a) honest about that, and b) has a much stronger moral claim in the ‘power should be distributed more evenly across society’ position than the right’s position of ‘no, we get to keep all the power, as wealthy white straight men!’…or, at least, has a stronger moral claim in the moral framework that we pretend to all follow in a modern liberal democracy. (Which is, of course, why they are trying to move away from that.)

      And, importantly, c) the left wants this power because it has pretty clear goals and would actually be completely cut off at the knees if the right actually did those goals! Whereas we’ve seen what happens if the ‘wrong people’ accomplish the conservative goals, we don’t need to look any farther back than the ACA where the Democrats passed the _conservative_ solution to health care reform. But the point was never ‘accomplishing the goals of giving people access to healthcare, in a conservative framework’, the point of offering that plan was ‘undercut what the Democrats were doing and keep power because no one accomplishes anything and nothing changes’.Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to DavidTC says:

        the right’s position of ‘no, we get to keep all the power, as wealthy white straight men!’

        Straw man

        a much stronger moral claim in the ‘power should be distributed more evenly across society’ position than

        This is happy spin on “there will be collective rights, not individual rights”. And no matter the “moral” claim in theory, the actual implementation requires unethical things.Report

        • DavidTC in reply to Dark Matter says:

          This is happy spin on “there will be collective rights, not individual rights”.

          No, we’re not doing this again.

          There is no such thing as ‘collective rights’. All rights that anyone demands are individual rights, despite the political right trying constantly to attempt to make a difference between them.

          Any specific right states that an individual has a specific right at a specific time. It’s just the right is very good at claiming ‘right to possess a gun’ is an individual right, but somehow ‘the right to not be near a gun’ or even ‘the right to bar guns from property you have leased'(1) are not individual rights. Whether or not you agree with those rights, they are just as much rights applying to an individual as anything else.

          And if you want to argue there are collective rights, it is just as often the right arguing for them. For example, the right of businesses to discriminate, or the right of some supposedly collective of ‘parents’ to decide what schools should be teaching. How are those not collective rights except you’ve decided they are not?

          And no matter the “moral” claim in theory, the actual implementation requires unethical things.

          All implementations of any sort of government action require ‘unethical things’ in the sense they require force. You do not get to pretend the society you wish to build is the ideal minimum one when legislating that parents can have their kids taken away for letting those kids decide their own pronouns.(2)

          Or are we still pretending that there is No True Conservative, all this stuff being done by Republicans is not conservative? Because…like I said, that is clearly nonsense at this point. There is nothing _but_ that.

          Legal references:

          1) The Atlanta Midtown music festival was just canceled this year because of Georgia’s ‘Guns Everywhere’ law and the courts seemingly deciding that the law applied even to public property leased to the Midtown music people, which…means the entire thing got canceled because obviously the insurance of musicians will not allow them to play where guns are allowed. (Before anyone thinks this is the court overstepping, the law actually appeared to apply to all rentals of public property, the courts just said ‘That doesn’t apply to long-term leases, like commercial businesses in public buildings’. But Midtown Music is a short-term lease and it apparently does apply there..)

          2) Texas. Need I say more? Yes, their ‘take trans kids away from parents’ law applies to _social_ transition, aka, ‘Going along with what the kid says about themselves’.Report

          • Dark Matter in reply to DavidTC says:

            There is no such thing as ‘collective rights’. All rights that anyone demands are individual rights

            Maybe you’ve heard of Affirmative Action?

            The Left insists that racism can be measured by looking at the percentage of the population who is X. Anything other than collective equality or collective representation is something that needs to be fixed.

            So we have Affirmative Action (in both hiring and college admissions), Black Lives Matter, and so on.

            Collective results is the lens through which the Left see the world, and the only way to get to their desired utopia is to do things like prevent Asian Americans from going to high level colleges at rates which their success would indicate because they’d be over represented.

            So this means individual Asians are being asked to take one for the team, because we don’t dare evaluate them in a race-neutral individual manner.Report

            • Philip H in reply to Dark Matter says:

              You don’t see the glaring contradiction in failing to “elevate them in a race neutral manner” while carving them out by race? Or the glaring irony about wanting to elevate Asians in a race neutral manner in a system that refuses to do the same thing for blacks?

              Fascinating.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Philip H says:

                What evidence do you have that the current system doesn’t evaluate blacks in a “neutral” way? Or in what way isn’t it “neutral”?

                What would you like to do to improve it? And I mean “inputs”, not “outcomes”.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Philip H says:

                “elevate them in a race neutral manner”

                I said “evaluate”, not “elevate”.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to DavidTC says:

        More money of us, fish you is a kind of belief systemReport

  4. Chip Daniels says:

    The comparison to the epic struggle between socialism and capitalism is apt, because it points a way forward.

    The end of the Cold War was the fall of socialism and the triumph, not of anarchic market capitalism, but mixed managed economies with liberal democracy. If the Communist countries proved that total government control was a bad thing, the Western European and American countries proved that a certain amount of government control was actually a very good thing.

    Advocating for anarchic unfettered morality runs into the same problem as unfettered free market economy- Namely, that some degree of control is necessary. An obvious example would be age of consent laws, or debt peonage.

    As with economies, the only real debate is a negotiation over where the boundaries are.Report

    • LeeESq in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      There are lots of people who are basically wild for lack of a better term. They don’t do well being under any sort of control and chaff at it. These people exist in larger numbers than the civilized want to admit. The issue for the civilized is what to do with the people whose naturally inclination is to be wild and you can’t abide being under control.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to LeeESq says:

        Civilization, liberal democracy, prosperity- these things are very fragile and only exist as the happy outcome of a lot of prerequisites and cooperation and trust.

        The default human condition absent these prerequisites is some form of authoritarianism.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to LeeESq says:

        Wild is a very overbroad term. I think I get what you are trying to state but to hardcore social conservatives, homosexuality is a sign of wildness or even not wanting to spend Sunday in Church is wild. All people have areas where they resent being under control.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      I suppose the issue is what is the morality then. Sacramento is a blue city and solidly Democratic but it always surprises me how many conservative ways of life it has compared to SF. These are minor things but Sacramento is still a shirt and tie town which is something that has been almost vanquished in the SF Bay area except in court. This not a super-big deal I suppose but I do find it interesting how 88 miles outside of the bay area and they are still of the view that being a professional means you need to wear a tie and a jacket to work.Report

      • Philip H in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        I suppose the issue is what is the morality then.

        It’s more fundamental then that – the single animating questions is who gets to decide. Everything flows from that question.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        We’re seeing this negotiation playing out right now in real time.

        Are trans people normal, and their desired identity something to be recognized in both law and culture?

        Or are they abnormal and is it immoral to allow them to hold positions of influence around children?

        Who gets to decide? All of us.

        We all get to decide whether to respect them or rebuke them, we get to decide who gets ejected from the family gathering, who gets shunned or shamed.

        The collective outcome of hundreds of millions of those decisions will determine which moral vision governs the future.Report

    • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      “A certain amount” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. We have increased gov spending and gov meddling in the economy a lot since Communism fell.

      Equating the gov’s ability to enforce contracts and building infrastructure to it’s meddling in other sectors obscures more than it illuminates.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

        It’s not doing a lot of work, it’s doing all the work.

        The evidence accumulated over a century from a hundred different nations across the globe is that a mixed economy with liberal democracy produces the optimum outcome of prosperity and freedom.

        But what is the precise mix of public versus private ownership, publicly regulated behavior versus individual liberty, is a question that is never settled and can never be settled, but needs constant negotiation and adjustment.Report

  5. Saul Degraw says:

    I don’t know how surprising it is that most people are “Cafeteria” whatever and like to pick and choose the means based on the end goal. The number of people committed to consistent means despite their preferred ends appears to be very small. Sometimes it is a group that can punch above its weight though based on economic power. A lot of conservatives dislike centrally planned economies because of their preference for capitalism/business/making lots of money and not being told what to do in this regard.* However, they don’t mind telling people how to lead their personal lives and think it is absolutely necessary to do so, often in order to not incur the wrath of their god allegedly. So they don’t mind centrally planning for that.

    *Some of the rad trads might not be so keen on Capitalism but they are small and this is theoretical.Report

  6. Greg In Ak says:

    This is more a general comment re: how people talk about culture. There is no top down culture creation. There are powerful people who influence culture but markets decide. Sure companies try to predict and profit but what sells is ephemeral. Culture is a million different large and small things that are beyond any one or group of peoples control. Always has been since mass media/ communication technology grew.

    We dont’ have a national culture expect in the super broadest sense that i dont’ tells anybody anything. We have many cultures and always have had. Much like people say we look at the 50’s for how our economy/ family should look people do the same with culture. But the mistake is that we only see the TV/ commercial version of the 50’s. That version was very white and sanitized. Even in the 50’s we had multiple cultures but very little of it got on tv.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Greg In Ak says:

      This is a valid point. We haven’t defined culture, much less centrally-planned culture, so we’re not necessarily all talking about the same thing. I think the center of this article is an analogy rather than an equivalence – that is to say that the socon’s relationship to culture is like the socialist’s relationship to economics. I personally find the analogy seriously flawed, but that’s for another subthread. There’s one aspect of it that I think you’re missing though. Central planning isn’t central production. The communist leaders didn’t produce machinery, they made rules and allocated resources for the production of machinery. Likewise, we can have a (somewhat) centrally-planned culture to the extent that a small group of planners, or even a set of plans, hold sway.Report

      • Philip H in reply to Pinky says:

        we can have a (somewhat) centrally-planned culture to the extent that a small group of planners, or even a set of plans, hold sway.

        Which in turn means the culture wars are all about whose set of plans get picked.Report

        • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

          It’s mitigated by Greg’s point that culture isn’t monolithic, but yeah. I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at. I think we all recognize that there are areas of disagreement, and often core principles behind them, and that the resulting debates end up everywhere from the comments sections to the courts.Report

  7. Jaybird says:

    One of the little tempests in a teapot that happened over the last few days involved Sydney Sweeney.

    She’s an actress in Euphoria. You may have seen the “you had better be joking” meme.

    Sydney is the one wearing the “Oklahoma” outfit.

    Anyway.

    Her mom celebrated her 60th in the last week or so and Sydney posted a picture or two and, unfortunately, her father happened to be wearing a “thin blue line” t-shirt in the pictures.

    This, of course, resulted in people asking questions. Has Sydney publicly disavowed her nazi relatives? Why hasn’t Sydney disavowed the nazis in her family? Is it because she’s a nazi too?

    Well, this resulted in a lot of nazis coming out of the woodwork saying “jeez, it’s just her parents birthday party” and “not everybody’s family agrees with defund” and whatnot and you can’t help but wonder about why those people are so quick to defend nazis.

    The nazis, of course, think that there’s some centralized group of content managers who think that “that man is a nazi!” is a perfectly acceptable opinion and “that guy is just a guy” is an opinion that requires a fact-check.

    Anyway, the dogpile on Sydney Sweeney is still going and will probably continue until some new shiny two minutes hate shows up. Which should be right about…Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

      How many people asked questions? 11K comments on Instagram, all of which I can see while scanning are positive.

      How many people liked it? Quick glance at Instagram says over 2M people, including a friend who identifies as queer.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

        No idea.

        CNN has an article about it, though. So does Fox News. If you want something with its pinky extended, here’s Vanity Fair. If you prefer to have something pre-chewed, there’s always People.

        I hope we can hammer out whether this was something actually representative or something or if it was just a tempest in a teapot.Report

        • Philip H in reply to Jaybird says:

          I regularly read 2/4 of your sources and I missed this. I suspect there’s no tempest or teapot.Report

          • CJColucci in reply to Philip H says:

            Well, at least I now know who Sydney Sweeney is, which I didn’t know when I woke up this morning. I already knew that Twitter is full of as*h*les. Now Ms. Sweeney does, too, though I suspect she knew it already. I fully expect, and devoutly hope, that she will weather this exposure to Twitter a*****ery without much more than annoyance.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Philip H says:

            Well, maybe I can find you some sources.

            HEY WAIT A MINUTEReport

            • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

              Sources? For what proposition? The ones you provided, which can all be read in five minutes, show neither tempest nor teapot. Just another small-bore Twitter “controversy.” Maybe there’s something else you have sources for?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                It was an instagram controversy, not a twitter one.

                Is there a particular source that would meet the bar of “tempest in a teapot”?

                Forbes? The Hill? Vulture? The Hollywood Reporter? Indywire? Newsweek? Page Six?Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                They were your sources. You put them up, presumably to show something. The point is what they show, not what they are.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                Yeah, they showed that there was a tempest in a teapot.

                Now if you’re saying “no they don’t!”, I will ask:

                How do I reach the bar of “tempest in a teapot”?

                Buzzfeed?Report

              • Greg In Ak in reply to Jaybird says:

                You’re going to a lot of effort to prove something is a silly nothingburger that will be correctly forgotten by the time i finish typing this sentence.

                What was i talking about again??Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Greg In Ak says:

                We were talking about “centrally planning the culture” and various ways that the culture is propagated, how it goes viral, and how it’s policed.Report

              • Greg In Ak in reply to Jaybird says:

                How about that flagpole sitting thing all the kids are doing nowadays????

                Culture isnt’ and can’t be centrally planned in the modern world. Didn’t work all that well before the modern age. Random viral silliness is a good example of that. It’s not policed. People yammer about it then talk about the finale of Mad Men.

                Stupid ephemeral bilps on social media are just that.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Greg In Ak says:

                Culture isnt’ and can’t be centrally planned in the modern world.

                I mostly agree with that but there are examples of centrally planned cultural thingybobs. “Boy Bands” are probably the best example I could give of that.

                Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t.

                BTS has worked out.

                It’s not policed.

                I disagree. I could give examples but they’d be quickly forgotten, I’m sure.Report

              • Greg In Ak in reply to Jaybird says:

                Except boy bands are not centrally planned. Unless you want to say that all advertising , marketing and business is centrally planned. That seems a bit much. Is capitalist business central planning? Seems no. My local quik e mart gives me a good deal on diet pepsi to get me in the store. Not central planning.

                BB’s are one of billion kinds of entertainment that people try to sell. Just like New Coke, the McDLT ( keep the hot side hot and the cold side cold!) and reality TV.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Greg In Ak says:

                Here’s an article from NPR.

                “How The South Korean Government Made K-Pop A Thing”

                In the late ’90s, when Asia went through a huge financial crisis, South Korea’s leaders decided to use music to improve its image and build its cultural influence. So the country’s government poured millions of dollars into forming a Ministry of Culture with a specific department devoted to K-pop.

                “It turns out that the Korean government treats its K-pop industry the way that the American government treats its automobile and banking industry, meaning that these are industries that have to be protected,” Hong says.

                This included doing things like building massive, multi-million dollar concert auditoriums, refining hologram technology, and even helping regulate noeraebangs — karaoke bars — to protect the interests of K-pop stars.

                Crazy, huh?

                Anyway, BTS has worked out.Report

              • Greg In Ak in reply to Jaybird says:

                Oh yeah those new kids The Monkees have a great new sound the kids really dig.

                Lots of gov’s have pushed industries in capitalist countries. That’s a low bar for central planning though cornering the boy band industry is key to strategic defense in the 21st century.

                This is one of those define terms super wildly and broadly so they are essentially, literally and figuratively meaningless.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                Still don’t get it, do you? It’s not the source, it’s the content. All the sources you cited — and probably all the hypothetical sources — showed an inconsequential social media blip. And surely you wouldn’t waste our time just to tell us there was yet another inconsequential social media blip.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to CJColucci says:

                Shorter Jay: Whenever liberals do something that could be remotely considered bad, it is evidence of the inherent evilness of all liberals and liberalism. When conservatives do, well, anything… you have to understand.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                I merely called it a “tempest in a teapot”.

                I figure that an inconsequential social media blip wouldn’t get a, I assure you they are not hypothetical, writeup in:

                Forbes
                The Hill
                Vulture
                The Hollywood Reporter
                Indywire
                Newsweek
                Page Six
                and
                Buzzfeed

                An inconsequential social media blip wouldn’t get that.

                A tempest in a teapot? Well, indeed that might!

                Indeed it did.Report

              • Greg In Ak in reply to Jaybird says:

                Order up!!! Got a nothingburger with who gives a crap fries waiting to serve. Good pickle though.

                So how does modern media often work. They just dont’ repeat the now trending section of every social media like its a story. That would worthless.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Greg In Ak says:

                Again, all on an Instagram post with 2M+ likes and… how many critical comments?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Greg In Ak says:

                Maybe the problem is that I don’t know how to distinguish between a “nothingburger” and a “tempest in a teapot”. I think that an “inconsequential social media blip” is smaller than a “nothingburger” but a “tempest in a teapot” would be bigger than both.

                What distinctions are you making?

                I may be able to incorporate them into the next kerfuffle.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                Why don’t you figure that something utterly inconsequential wouldn’t get media coverage? I didn’t think you gave that much credence to the media’s news judgment.
                And if, when pressed, all you will cop to is “I was simply pointing out that some inconsequential thing exists and I saw coverage of it,” you’re wasting everyone’s time.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                I wouldn’t go so far as “utterly inconsequential”.

                I would go higher than “nothingburger” to “tempest in a teapot”.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                It’s nice to see confirmation so quickly.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to CJColucci says:

                “Why don’t you figure that something utterly inconsequential wouldn’t get media coverage?”

                Oh, wait! You’re the dude who said that Epstein’s death wasn’t worth talking about because there weren’t many newspaper articles about it!Report

              • Philip H in reply to DensityDuck says:

                The suicide of a child sex trafficker is not worth talking about, except to say good riddance to bad trash.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to DensityDuck says:

                1. There were plenty of newspaper articles about Epstein’s death.
                2. Much of the “talk” was conspiratorial nonsense from non-sources running in advance of what anyone did or could know. Actual informed talk was always welcome.
                3. The mainstream reporting was ultimately vindicated.
                4. The quoted language is a reference to what Jaybird said, which was rather different from what I have long understood, though possibly misunderstood, to be his position on the news judgment of the media.

                What is it like?Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

      So I went through the Instagram thread and it seemed to be about 100-1 positive to negative comments. But let’s say I’m off by a power of 10… let’s be SUPER generous. We’re looking at 90% of comments saying things like, “Amazing birthday!” and “Happy birthday mama!” and “You’re outfit is beautiful!” and “You’re the best daughter” and 10% saying things like, “That shirt!” And then 90% of the responses to those 10% of comments saying things like “Sit down and shut up.” Which, again, is being generous by an order of 10 to Sweeney.

      The news reports were not on this dogpile-that-was-really-a-love-fest but on Sweeney’s RESPONSE to the “backlash.” If Sweeney just ignored the very few negative comments, nothing would have ever come of it. But, hey, she is entitled to respond and I can understand how annoying and hurtful even a couple negative comments could be on a post meant to honor your mother on her special day.

      And yet again, we have a situation that you have misunderstood or misrepresented and, with the least bit of analysis, does not support any argument you are trying to make.

      It’s a distraction. Stop it.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

        I don’t know how to gauge whether something was a lovefest or not (is it like telling the difference between a nothingburger and a tempest in a teapot?) but, as far as I can tell, Sydney seems to be communicating that she feels attacked rather than that she feels to be lovefested.

        I don’t know how relevant her feelings ought to be. Is the consensus that they ought to be secondary to the ratio of support/criticism?Report

        • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

          Sure, her feelings matter. So do other people’s. Continually, you are only willing to sincerely consider some people’s.Report

          • Kazzy in reply to Kazzy says:

            None of which changes the facts on the ground, which do not support any of your claims here.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

              I don’t know what the “facts on the ground” would be.

              There appears to have been a bit of an online controversy, as evidenced by the fact that she posted something to the effect of “it was just a birthday party!” and this response got coverage in a dozen “news” organizations.

              I called it a “tempest in a teapot” and, you know what? I stand by that.

              If you want to argue that those are not particularly representative, you can check for yourself on a Twitter search on Sydney Sweeney. Warning: a lot of folks are taking this opportunity to post scenes from Euphoria that involve Sydney not wearing any clothes. So it’s not safe for work.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                What’s your point?

                I’ve acknowledged that some people were critical. Fully conceded.

                Sweeney pushed back. The critics were not particularly persuasive.

                And the overwhelming majority of folks were supportive. The media reports were largely sympathetic to her.

                So… how is this representative of anything other than some folks will complain on Twitter if they see something they don’t like?

                Nothing will change because of these critics. Culture has not been impacted.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                You’re arguing against me as if my argument is that “EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED!” but, really, it’s that “there was a tempest in a teapot after she posted pictures of her mom’s surprise birthday”.

                And the counter-argument seems to be that it wasn’t a tempest in a teapot but more of a nothingburger.

                I see it as yet another example of the policing that goes on in the culture. Your consumption choices help define your morality.

                Are you consuming harmful products? Are you putting money into the pockets of evil people?

                Do you not see that sort of thing as a big deal?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                This is what we are a talking about, how you on the Right constantly see yourselves as the victim of some dark force.

                The “policing” of people’s choices is the most ancient of all methods of enforcing social mores, and until just a short time ago, conservatives were the primary champions.
                I mean, you are the guy who just a few weeks ago was fretting about teachers allowing their students to dress however they please and telling us how understandable it was that the authorities wanted to put a stop to it.

                But…suddenly…the very moment social mores turned against you guys, immediately you start wailing about the danger of having your cultural consumption choices being policed.

                Harry Potter, the Dr. Seuss book, “Cancel culture”, Political Correctness”…its all just one big grievance-fest for the Right.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Chip, I assure you, *I* do not see myself as a victim.

                I can withstand arguments that focus on the morality of consumption choices. Like, without feeling bad about it.

                The “policing” of people’s choices is the most ancient of all methods of enforcing social mores, and until just a short time ago, conservatives were the primary champions.

                I tend to agree with this.

                (You wouldn’t believe who, until just a short time ago, were the primary champions of letting people enjoy whatever they want to enjoy.)

                I mean, you are the guy who just a few weeks ago was fretting about teachers allowing their students to dress however they please and telling us how understandable it was that the authorities wanted to put a stop to it.

                I am not sure that that is how I’d describe the exchange here but, hey.

                But…suddenly…the very moment social mores turned against you guys, immediately you start wailing about the danger of having your cultural consumption choices being policed.

                I’m not wailing about the “danger”, Chip.

                I’m merely saying “here it is, here’s an example”.

                I *DO* think that the Dr. Seuss thing was bad, but I don’t think you understand why.

                (It has to do with who is better at censoring things, at the end of the day.)Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Who you kiddin?

                Your most consistent theme, is to warn us of the dangers of left wing policing of the cultural choices made by conservatives.

                You write about it on nearly every single post.

                When you aren’t writing to scold us for making moral judgments on the actual policing that conservatives are doing.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                You misunderstand.

                My most consistent theme is that the game is iterated.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                You guys keep retreating to that-

                “But Mom, you just don’t understand the beauty of Rev. Moons Unification Church!”

                “The game is iterated” means “We will use our grievances to justify our planned oppression”.

                This is why the “groomer” stuff was so important- it provided a justification for the censorship of LGBTQ books.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                “The game is iterated” means “We will take past defections into account when planning the next move in the iterated game.”

                If you want to argue that this is a perfectly reasonable position no matter who holds it, I’d agree.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Like I said, you guys can only speak using the language of grievance, self pity and resentment.

                If LGBTQ people become widely accepted, you’ll ban their books and terrorize children’s hospitals.

                If Trump loses an election, you’ll launch a violent attack on the Capitol.

                If Trump is held accountable for his crimes, you’ll riot.

                If Mitt Romney fails to get good press, you’ll turn to fascism.

                If Robert Bork loses a confirmation vote in the Senate, you’ll use any procedural games to gain control.

                If you’re asked to wear a mask,you’ll lash out in rage at some minimum wage store clerk.

                The entire stance of the Right is one of sulking resentment and rage at their fellow citizens.
                Forever the victims, never responsible for their actions.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Chip, this is the language of game theory with regards to the iterated prisoner’s dilemma.

                There are wikipedia pages dedicated to it.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Yes, we all understand that, and have for some time.

                The Right can only see itself as being engaged in an existential battle where the enemy is the local schoolteacher or LGBTQ barista.

                They reject utterly the idea of peaceful acceptance and coexistence.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                No one should be saying “you conservatives” to Jaybird. I mean, not even close.Report

              • Jesse in reply to Pinky says:

                Yes, I know, Jaybird claims not to be a conservative, but since Trump’s election, and the fact the Democrat’s in both culture and politics actually punched back a bit, Jaybird has consistently used right-wing framing and sources to criticize the too woke left everytime a cultural argument comes up.

                If there’s a bugaboo that right wingers on Twitter are upset about, I can guarantee Jaybird will be in these comments pushing the right-wing framing.

                Jaybird’s just another center-right old white guy who thinks because he likes pot and isn’t squeamish around gay people, he’s a liberal and thus, the Woke Left has to listen to him.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to Jesse says:

                Jaybird is as conservative as Freddie De Boer.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck says:

                I do not communicate tribal membership.

                Therefore I am not a member of the tribe.

                Therefore I am a member of the other tribe.

                It’s a pretty understandable gut check.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

                (It is useful to remember that I consider Freddie De Boer to be conservative.)Report

              • Pinky in reply to Jesse says:

                “Jaybird has consistently used right-wing framing and sources”

                No he doesn’t. Maybe the framing looks unusual to you because it’s not left-wing, but it’s not right-wing either. As for the sources, I’d say he’s more eclectic than most overall but still sources from the mainstream center-left institutions where available. He also uses a lot of Twitter, which isn’t my cup of tea, but again, just because something isn’t the way I’d do it doesn’t make it part of the Other Side.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Pinky says:

                (I try to do my best to link to Wikipedia and original sources where I can. It helps to avoid the “He always links to right-wing sources!” Or I thought it would, anyway. I’d think that “he always links to non-representative left-wing sources!” would be a better attack.)Report

          • DensityDuck in reply to Kazzy says:

            “Sure, her feelings matter. So do other people’s.”

            nice demonstration of allyship, thisReport

  8. Philip H says:

    One of my pet peeves in these discussions in the assumption that capitalism, as practiced in America, isn’t a somewhat or majority planned economy. Look at which industrial segments get government subsidies, who gets the benefit of tax breaks, and what drives environmental and labor laws. Government may not be telling Apple or Chevron which products to specifically crank out, but government is definitely ensuring Chevron both thrives, and is insulated from the impacts of its decisions.Report

  9. Dark Matter says:

    I’m not sure “central planning” is the right phrase.

    How about “me and mine should be/are in charge”? Related to that is “what we like is good and what we dislike is bad”.

    Also related is “I need an enemy to justify my existence”.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Dark Matter says:

      “Related to that is “what we like is good and what we dislike is bad”.

      Also related is “I need an enemy to justify my existence”.

      So… Jay’s whole shtick basically?Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

        My existence would do just fine without enemies. I’d kinda prefer smoking a doob in a basement somewhere listening to doom metal and reggae and watching Quantum Leap again.Report

        • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

          Nah, seems like you would rather scour Twitter for any instance of folks you dislike being “bad.”

          I’d really be curious to see how long you could stay off Twitter for and how it’d impact your understanding of what is happening in the world.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

            Nah, I’m not seeing them being “bad”.

            I *DO* think that they’re doing something close to “policing culture” and, yes, it’s not particularly centrally planned. It’s probably possible to nudge things…

            But, as far as I can tell, negative attacks work sometimes to squash something that might catch fire but it’s downright difficult to make something actually catch on. (You saw this a lot with the YA fiction market. Seriously. Bloodthirsty like you wouldn’t believe. Skilled at squashing stuff, not so great at making stuff take off.)

            Twitter is where I’m seeing a lot of the policing… but also second-hand accounts of policing, and policing policing, and policing policing policing.

            And, yes, manifestations of this whole “culture” thing that the original essay was discussing.Report

            • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

              Are the 2M+ people who liked the photos trying to enforce any sort of culture? Or only whatever number were critical?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                I imagine that they’re trying to show their support and push back against this or that narrative.

                The entire petri dish is full of policing, and policing policing, and policing policing policing.

                If I communicated that I thought that any given opinion was necessarily shared universally, please let me apologize and say that I did *NOT* mean to communicate that.Report

          • DensityDuck in reply to Kazzy says:

            “seems like you would rather scour Twitter for any instance of folks you dislike being “bad.””

            brother, I assure you that learning of this is hardly the result of winkling oneself into the deepest crevices of Crazy Tumblr Refugee Twitter

            the fact that you’re an idiot who doesn’t pay attention to things does not mean that these things aren’t happening

            but if you’re so incurious as to glazed-eyes swipe past a meme without wondering what the hell they’re talking about, well, go on with that.Report

  10. Chip Daniels says:

    Cultural central planning in action:

    The district said the freeze was implemented to allow the Florida Department of Education to give additional guidance and allow the district’s curriculum team to interpret the new law. The freeze also allows time for the district to hire three media specialists to comply with state standards.

    Government “Media Specialists”.

    https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/education/2022/08/12/sarasota-schools-library-book-purchases-donations-frozen/10307632002/Report

  11. Slade the Leveller says:

    (I started this out as a reply to Jaybird above, but thought it would be better as a stand alone comment.)

    When the Harry Potter novels came out, some conservatives were in a twist because the characters were witches and warlocks. No one knew what J.K. Rowling’s views on the immutability of gender were. Once they became known, Rowling had plenty of, as you say below, allies with a conservative bent. Nothing about the art changed, but now we knew a little more about the artist.

    If there is a more conservative artist (for want of a better word) than Disney, I don’t know who is. The movies are pro-family, pretty virtuous, and they don’t really wander into cultural minefields. They’re generally fairly good. The Disney company found themselves on the business end of conservative ire because management questioned whether Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill was a good idea.

    In both of my examples, nothing new was learned about the art, and nothing was changed within it. What did change was we learned a little tidbit about the artist. I would posit that (recalling the Republican sales pitch piece that went so badly off the rails here), conservatives can’t really dictate what culture is since they don’t really know what conservative culture is, other than it’s not what liberals like. Until a positive definition of conservative culture comes along, IMHO we are in no danger of it being centrally planned to reflect a conservative viewpoint.Report

    • Until a positive definition of conservative culture comes along, IMHO we are in no danger of it being centrally planned to reflect a conservative viewpoint.

      I think that this is fairly accurate.

      One of the problems, of course, is the whole “there are only two kinds of culture… progressive culture and universal culture” debate. (Instead of hashing it out again, I recommend reading the last time we did it again. I pretty much stand by everything I said in that.)

      There are a lot of little things that bubble up here or there, though. The last Top Gun movie (something that I have not watched) apparently made more than a billion dollars at the box office without tapping into China.

      From what I understand from friends, it’s an old-school conservative movie. (“Conservative” is defined as “Military Hawk” with a dose of “USA!, USA!, USA!”)

      Now, of course, others might point out that hardcore pro-American military attitudes and Patriotism is Universal rather than Conservative and I guess I’d say that we’re back to the whole “only two kinds of culture” thing again, but there are occasional blips of what might have been considered “conservative” culture back in the Reagan years selling really, really well.Report

      • Slade the Leveller in reply to Jaybird says:

        I never saw if, but from what I read Zero Dark Thirty might qualify. I refused to see a movie glorifying torture.

        Truthfully, the only for sure genre I’ve ever come across that has a lib or con viewpoint is post-apocalyptic sci-fi. The bad guys are either always former U.S. Army super soldiers or Green Party types who finally get a chance to impose their worldview on what’s left of civilization. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decipher which is lib and which is con.

        This is the one, you would hope, piece of film that I’ve seen in the last 10 years that *ought* to be considered universally American, but you sure can tell where Spielberg was coming from.

        https://youtu.be/D2gLGW9w8HkReport

  12. DrSloperWazRobbed says:

    What a great essay. As a moderate and center-left person myself, i just wanna say OT has turned up just in time as my formerly fave deep thought site has gone a little whackadoo, or at the least is obsessed in a funny w the Ukraine-Russia war in a way that may be accurate, but just seems a little anti-American, even for a lefty like me. Off topic! Point is great stuff. I have thought similarly before, but this crystalizes things. I do think the Dems and GOP could be fighting for more and mor libertarians as time goes on. Thing is there the econ libertarianism, which tbf is too rough on blue collar america and anyway prob isnt smart anymore w China playing so dirty trade-wise, and social libertarianism-which is the only way that makes any sense long term. So. everyone is gonna have to shift around on their priors, and there may even be political gold available to do soReport

  13. Chip Daniels says:

    I know it’s not as bad as criticizing JK Rowling on Twitter, but this seems bad:
    Teacher quits in protest after being punished for banned-books sign

    Even before the first day of the school year at Norman High School, Boismier suspected her personal classroom library would get her in trouble by running afoul of that law, so she covered her books with butcher paper. But she added a touch of defiance, scrawling a message in permanent marker across the paper.

    “Books the state doesn’t want you to read,” it said.Report

  14. Chip Daniels says:

    Apparently JK Rowling’s ears were burning, and she has posted a response:
    https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/j-k-rowlings-latest-book-ink-black-heart-transphobic-views-1234582911/

    J.K. Rowling’s New Book Just So Happens to Feature a Character Persecuted Over Transphobia

    In her new book, Rowling introduces readers to Edie Ledwell, a creator of a popular YouTube cartoon who sees internet trolls and her own fandom turn on her after the cartoon was criticized as being racist and ableist, as well as transphobic for a bit about a hermaphrodite worm.

    Yeah, uh, I guess I can see how a hermaphrodite worm is, um, transphobic. I would need to spend a lot of time drinking it over, but sure I could get there.

    Anyhoo:
    The creator is doxxed with photos of her home plastered on the internet, subjected to death and rape threats for having an opinion, and was ultimately found stabbed to death in a cemetery. The book takes a clear aim at “social justice warriors” and suggests that Ledwell was a victim of a masterfully plotted, politically fueled hate campaign against her.

    Wow. Masterfully plotted campaign leading to a stabbing death. In a cemetary!

    Those, how do you say, “Social Justice Warriors” sound pretty badass, actually. I wonder if they have monthly meetings.

    To be clear- I’m not saying JK Rowling is problematic.
    Juvenile, petty, and falling into late-stage-Lenny-Bruce levels of self pity, sure,

    But not problematic.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      Would you say that prominently displaying her earlier works as centerpieces of your classroom would communicate to LGBT+ students that your classroom is not a safe space and that you are not being a good ally?Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

        Not at all.
        Her earlier works are wonderful and I would recommend them for children.

        But I’m one of those who easily separates the art from the artist. I happen to love Gina Caranos work in Mandalorian.Report

        • CJColucci in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          You and lots of other folks. But for some reason Jaybird is trying to set the rules for a game he doesn’t play.Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to CJColucci says:

            Teachers are being bullied into silence or hounded from their jobs for fear of Republican bigots, and the laserlike focus of conservatives is on people snarking on JK Rowling.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              It appears that the Reagan voters are interested in explaining why they are still recommending people read her earlier stuff.

              I’m the one saying… here, let me copy and paste this…

              Well, anybody who comes out and says they still like Harry Potter is demonstrating that they’re not really an ally. It might be okay to have liked Harry Potter? But it’s not okay to like Harry Potter anymore. There’s a lot of better stuff out there. Harry Potter really has some problematic stuff in there.

              And I’ll be able to say that tomorrow. And the day after that.Report